Android? Why Android?

It's been a long time since I've written a tech orientated blog post so I'll take this opportunity to talk about my reasons for choosing the Android platform over iOS (iPhone OS at the time) and why I wasn't swayed by offerings from the Windows Phone and Blackberry camps. If I had to summarise it in a few words? Openness, Customisation, Choice.

Why openness? Well Android is an Open Source operating system (which essentially means that anyone can see the source code for the software and can use/modify it for their needs, subject to the licence agreement) that uses the Linux kernel (which is also Open Source). This means that anybody can use Android on any device, even devices that it wasn't originally designed for (typically phones and  tablets). Examples include the Android x86 project and the Ouya games console. Apple likes to take control of its devices creating a "Walled Garden" for it's its users which mean that the users are free to use their environment as they've set it up but if they want to vary the formula a bit they've few choices. I'm no iOS developer but am told that a third party app cannot duplicate the functionality of a system app. For example the phone dialer, the contacts, the on screen touch keyboard, and for a long time this included the browser, Opera were able to get away with it as they did the processing on their servers and not on the device itself.

Android is the complete opposite. Don't like the camera app? Change it, the on screen keyboard? Change it, The phone dialer? The contacts app? The web browser? Yep change it. There are alternatives both free and paid in the Play Store (I know terrible name) for literally everything, amongst the the normal apps such as games, gps apps, social media apps etc. You can even completely change the look and feel of the device with themes and custom app launchers (yep, if your phone maker hasn't supported the latest release of android, you can change the theme and app launcher to emulate the look and feel of the new version).

Now this part is where I get really nerdy, it's not for everybody, it's not even for the vast majority. Custom Roms. Custom Roms are custom builds of the Android operating system, and it sounds exactly as it sounds, Some completely change the look of Android, an example of this is MIUI (pronounced My U I) where they've taken the Android core and totally changed the UI (or User Interface) to their custom needs, and when I say completely, I mean COMPLETELY, every graphical interaction the user has with the phone has been completely rewritten with this design in mind. It's a totally new way of interacting with the phone.

In sharp contrast to this is Cyanogen Mod which has been there since the very start with one guy "Cyanogen" who got the first phone and started messing around with the code to see what made it tick, decided he mostly liked the direction Google was going with it but decided to add in a few custom tweaks by himself. He also noticed that manufacturers weren't necessarily supplying legacy hardware with the latest versions of Android (understandable vested interest, why would consumers upgrade to newer phones if the older ones had the latest software version) so he started porting over these new software updates to older phones (provided they had the capabilities to run the new version). I've had several Android phones. While I've been using Android since 2.1 (Nexus One), my latest is the Samsung Galaxy sII (i9100), which originally came out with Android 2.3 and then 4.0.4 (first by CyanogenMod and then officially) and then finally 4.1.2 (again first by CyanogenMod and then officially) but this is where the official support seems to stop. CyanogenMod has continued on to 4.2.2 (as you can see from my screenshot below). Any phone that can run Android 4.0.4 can run 4.2.2 in terms of processing power as 4.2 is actually faster and more responsive. The problems that are plaguing the CM team are that the i9100 uses Samsung's own Exynos processor and that the drivers either have to come from Samsung or have to be reverse engineered. This problem doesn't affect the North American variants (as much) as these tend to use the Snapdragon and thus don't have to rely on Samsung to release any new drivers for OS updates.

So why the sudden resurgence in my love of the Android operating system. Well I recently got quite a scare when I tried to upgrade to the version you see above, my phone all of a sudden became sim locked and wouldn't accept my sim card. I had to get a local IT shop guy to "downgrade" my phone to the  official 4.1.2 rom with Samsung's Touchwizz UI so he could unlock them sim card (it seems all he did was use an app from the Play Store (I prefer when it was called the Android Market) to accomplish this and charged me 20 euro for the privilege. That seems to misrepresent him slightly, it seems changing to the official rom was a bit of a challenge on his part as he told me to come back the next day.

But you do not understand how much I think Google have hit the nail on the head with their Holo theme. They hired one fine gent called Matias Duarte (responsible for the design of webOS also). Samsung's Touchwizz just rubs me the wrong way by comparison. Everything is just well designed and integrated but with a futuristic minimalist almost Tron-like look. I had to, simply had to, get back to that design and integration. I suspect this is how OSX and iOS fans wax lyrical about the design of their operating systems.The difference is this was an operating system that I felt passionate about, I liked the interface elements but maybe not the aesthetics of them, it didn't really bother me that it didn't seem to get me enthused about the aesthetic design like other operating systems seem to do for their fan base. Now Android finally has reached that point with 4.0 and it's only refining it with 4.1 and 4.2. Now not only do I prefer the operating system because of it's roots in openness and customisation. I also love the aesthetics of it.

The little things that keep you entertained

Well today was quite an eventful day. It started with me going into college and logging in to Facebook on my laptop to discover that on the college group, that I'd set up for the class so people could post notes or other college related things, that there was a photo of a personal ad posted in the local free newspaper concerning a certain lecturer in the college (see above). Now I've not heard any gushing reports from my female peers in the course so I take it he doesn't register much on their PHWAH-ometer, so I suspect it was one of the guys winding him up for the laughs. Now we did have him today but not till the afternoon.

When the lecture did come around and we were sitting around during the usual 5-10 minute lull at the start of lectures we were chuckling away and passing the paper around to those who hadn't seen it. One guy even left the paper open to the relevant page up on the lecture table where the PC is. Anyway in walks the lecturer to a chorus of chuckles and he spots the paper and said “ Alright, yis have all had your fun” while semi chuckling himself. That was it pretty much, he got on with his programming lecture.

Windows 8, my thoughts and the leaked RTM

I downloaded the supposed Windows 8 RTM release that was leaked to the torrent sites and I installed it in Virtual Box to kick the tires a bit. This isn't my first experimentation with Window 8 as I've had a look at the developer preview and I think the consumer preview also. I'm not sure if there was one after that, there's references on the 'net about a “release preview” I don't know if that's new MS talk for an RC or what.

I downloaded it and installed it (which went slightly faster then I expected). The installation prompted me for my “Microsoft Account” now I had one from the MSN days (approx 2000 when I got it) but I was being spammed out of it on that account so started afresh with a live.com address a few years back. I only really use it for MSN chat these days but even that has been taken over by facebook chat. Email is tried and trusted Gmail. Anyway, I inputed the live.com account details and that was fine, installation went ahead. I noticed that this is your user account and password for accessing Windows 8 which is a huge leap into the relms of cloud computing ala Chrome OS.

The UI (Metro), seems to be responsive and fast but it just isn't designed with a mouse in mind. You can navigate using a mouse but it seems to be an after thought and not the main focus. All the apps are fullscreen with touch friendly toggles and a universal Metro UI/Windows Phone/Zune look about them. There is also a “desktop” interface which is pretty much a carbon copy of the Windows 7 desktop but without the start menu. The full screen Metro tiles UI is the start screen which makes it incredably touch screen friendly but fairly useless with the tradional mouse and keyboard input methods. I'm sure there are substantial behide the scenes updates with Windows 8 vs Windows 7 and I am told it is possible to install a 3rd party start menu on the desktop for a more tradional Windows 7 like experience.

Overall I'd not recommend it unless you had it on a tablet or some other touch input device. Windows 7 will continue to get updates and you can always give linux a go if you have a itch about changing Windows 7.

Bit of an update in general

Ok in my last post (a few weeks ago at this stage) I said I was liking 12.04 in general but didn't really have the best of luck with the AMD graphics drivers, well I remember trying out Xubuntu (ubuntu with XFCE interface) a few years ago and ended up liking the lightweight nature of it alot. It's a more light weight UI and running environment then the likes of Unity and Gnome 3 but since it's still ubuntu 12.04 it gets all the updates that the Ubuntu team release. I must say I like that I can install all the same programmes that I would normally but the desktop environment never really gets in the way with effects and eye candy. Don't get me wrong the eye candy has it's appeal (I have eyes that can be candied :P) but I've found out that I like responsiveness and multitasking more. Sure there's the argument that my specs (core i5, 4gb ram) are overkill for Xubuntu and other lightweight distros, but it just means it's all the more responsive.

As for my adventures with LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) well I did indeed install it in virtual box, and although I am quite taken by the nostalgia trip that is Mate and the retro/modern Cinnamon and was sorely tempted to switch over and may still yet (so sue me, I do this sometimes before I settle) but the idea of reinstalling all my apps, themes, music etc is holding me back and as I've said I'm quite happy with xubuntu for the time being at least. Mate has finally matured to be 90% of what I remember gnome 2 to be (not bad for a 1.2 release) and Cinnamon is quite compelling also.

As for my long leave of absence well my parents left me to my own devices for two weeks and between social nights in Dublin city (of which there were at least 3 if not 4) and being lazy and ordering pizza a few too many times then I should have I ended up just about getting away with it. I've a few accounts and 400 is supposed to go into a savings account on the same day every month (it's automatic there's no flex in it) and anyway I've about 401 in my current account now and won't get more till Tuesday (yep that's how fine I've cut it). I can "borrow" 50 from that savings account till Tuesday to tide me over the weekend. It was a close call but it looks like I might get away with it. Well my parents don't check my account balances, as long as I have an X amount of savings by September (college fees) I should be ok and between my two savings accounts I'll be on track as long as that 400 a month never gets interrupted.

General Geeky History

I've used pretty much every version of Windows from 3.1 to 7 except 2000, but that was pretty much ME except it didn't suck.

I'm 25 now so that means my dad had a 3.11 machine when I was very young and I remember windows 95 was the thing to beat all things when It came out. Dad upgraded the 3.1 machine to 95 (I can't remember was more ram installed but I've a vague memory of it. Next there was a new desktop with 98 SE and we cept the monitor, keyboard, mouse and ancient printer from the old PC. Those were the infamous and much detested dialup years (this video will bring you back http://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0). 

We moved onto a new Dell during the pentium 4 time (with xp) and that's still the "family" PC (though dad uses it exclusively). My first laptop was in or around the purchase of the Dell (maybe 6 months to a year later), it was pretty basic and slow my parents paid 400 new for it off dell. My parents were probably under the "new car" philosophy to get the kid a basic model and it'll incentivise them to work to get something better even though I was 19-20 and wasn't gonna spill crap all over it. It had a 1.4ghz celeron singlecore that could barely run xp). It prompted me to work and save and blow over 1000 euro on a 1.66ghz core 2 duo Acer (just before vista was on the cards so I got XP MCE). That was my well used (and abused) personal workhorse for ages (saw manys the OS experiment including vista, quite a few ubuntu releases and the various public, and not so public, test builds of windows 7). I'm currently on another acer that's 1-2 years old and has a 2.26ghz core i5 with 4gb ram.

Around 05/06 I heard about this thing called Ubuntu and that it was a free OS. I looked up the website and screenshots and I didn't like the Gnome top panel and dismissed it as too OSXy. I then heard about a "windows user friendly" version called Kubuntu. Our house had slow broadband at the time and I thought I wasn't gonna download it as it'd take ages. So I saw that they'd post it out for free to any country so I opted for that. I installed it on my laptop and wifi didn't work out of the box and this was a deal breaker. I wanted portability and needed wifi for college so back to xp I went (I had a system install cd).

From about 9.04 (or possibly earlier) began an on again off again flirtation with ubuntu, monitoring it's progress and doing a full install (as I wanted to go full out using as my main OS to give it a fair chance, and also I hadn't heard of virtual box at the time). I always was left thinking it's 85% there to being my main OS, ... ok it's 90% there,.... ok it's 95% there etc. But If i'm prefectly honest it wasn't until 11.10 and Linux Mint 12 that I thought "I really can use this as my full time OS and not have a niggling 1% instance where I want to use windows. I have a PS3 for gaming and Libre Office is now at a level where I don't have to install Office 2007 under wine anymore (it's possible and works 100% but after a while and the rate I tend to distro hop or try out new stuff in virtual box, the functionality gain isn't worth the hastle of installing as I don't use it really). Any games I do run are mostly emulators and casual stuff.

Terminal, I don't touch really unless it's a "copy these sudo commands into the terminal to install". I've gotten used to the fact that ubuntu and mint are easy to install software to and Wine is now virtually bomb proof unless you need direct x or .net framework or something).

In conclusion right from the beginning I was fascinated by the prospect that a full desktop OS can be completely free but in a way that has hindered it as it doesn't have the financial resources of Microsoft and Apple to iron out the niggling aspects as quickly or to get huge software vendors to support their platform. For me it has taken this long to rival them in my mind and cause me to possibly switch for good. I'm more mature now and so are (some) Linux distros. The back and forth with windows has stood to me well as both my parents and the vast majority of my friends use 7 and I can help them as I've used it extensively since the public beta.

Windows 8 hasn't impressed be at all thus far. I realise it's just a developer preview but I guess it's a "love it or hate it" interface. It's geared towards touch input (tablets and in the case of Windows Phone 7, phones) I understand that, and they are making a huge gamble by porting it over to the ARM architecture. What I wish they would do is have an option upon installation to install the Metro UI (what they call it) or to just stick with a refined and updated Windows 7 interface. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the Windows 7 "Superbar" (the bottom panel) and the Ribbon interface they employed in Office 2007 and 2010 as well as MS Paint and Wordpad and a few others. I find it's pretty intuitive yet powerful.