Digital Prolixity
"There is no real life; you're either online, or AFK"- Ramzi Yakob
Living with the Android G-1
Nov 3rd
I’ve been living with my G-1 now for about 4 days. On the launch day when I went and picked it up, I suffered the frustration of not being able to sign into my Google account. On this phone, that means being locked out of it completely.
Its ingenious that on launch day, when they’re bound to have a heavy load on the ‘system’, (whichever system that may be) that the handset is designed to not let you use the phone at all, with the small exception of dialling the emergency services, without being able to sign into your Google account.
After this initial frustration, I’m glad to say that I’m loving the Android experience. As every review under the sun has explained, the software is really quite lovely, but the hardware is a bit pants. I’m afraid to say this is very true.
The build quality of the phone feels poor. I have a particularly annoying quirk on my phone where the back cover doesn’t seem to fit perfectly snugly and if I press my finger on a certain place, the cover buckles ever so slightly. This is a problem I feel which is inherent in having a plastic back cover which isn’t rigid – and clips which aren’t really substantial enough to keep a firm hold on the grooves they slot into.
Despite these small annoyances (the kind that are responsible for many a divorce and I’m sure a few people going nuts) – I really do enjoy this phone.
The small notifications you get from texts, e-mails and IM’s are almost addictive and so far haven’t failed to make me smile when they appear along with the charming little alert noises which are preloaded onto the phone. I may not always visibly smile, but the times I’m not, I’m smiling on the inside.
The App marketplace, although without a lot of what I would call necessary filter options and no decent browser based counterpart (the online marketplace is a bit rubbish…), its still entertaining. About 10 new apps or updates are posted daily (so far), and that type of activity is enough to make you go back to it once, if not a few times a day to see what new apps are available.
A lot of people are complaining however, and quite rightly so, that at the moment, apps can only be saved onto the phones ridiculously small 128Mb internal storage. T-mobile have apparently said that there will be a fix for this in the near future, allowing people to store apps onto their SD cards – but with the phone having only been available for a few days and people already encountering space issues – it really does seem a bit daft that there wasn’t more done to avoid this situation.
In fact there are a lot of things wrong with this phone.
But somehow it makes me happy. I’ve got an ipod touch and I’ve used an iphone before, and neither of them make me feel the same sense of glee that I’m given by playing with this phone. It does help that the 3G speeds on the t-mobile network seem to better those on the 02 network – a quick test in the office today between myself and 2 colleagues who have iphones proved as much. My download rates were between 1200-1400kbps – and the iphones were getting about 600-1000kbps which does result in a noticeable difference when browsing. All of us were getting full reception by the way.
My verdict on this piece of kit is: Buy. A lot of people talk about better android handsets being released in 09 etc – but if you’re all about hyperconnectivity, then you’re better off getting this now – and simply upgrading when a significantly better handset comes out. Just because more handsets will be released in 09, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be better.
I once heard a really insightful bit of philosophy which I’ll share with you now:
“Life is the time you spend waiting for stuff which never happens”
This couldn’t argue my point any more concisely. Technology is always advancing at a ridiculous pace – so you can either keep waiting – or you can enjoy it as it grows. Of course… this depends upon your disposable income. If you find yourself having to eat waffles for dinner, then your name may well be Kenny, and someone called Cartman might really hate you. If this is the case – then you should probably find some offline hobbies which are free – like running and such like.
Below is a quick vid of me doing an unboxing. It was done a bit hastily and on the fly which is why its a bit lame – but its there nonetheless.
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Confirmed UK HTC G-1 Tariffs
Oct 29th
If you click through on the image you’ll see it in full size. £40 per month with no initial cost for the phone – just as the rumours had been saying. The contract itself is competative with o2′s which you can see here but bear in mind that along with the contract price, expect to pay another £15 for an 8Gb micro SD card as it only comes with a 1Gb card which isn’t a whole lot. Also another £10-15 to get a converter for HTC’s stupid headphone socket to let you use your standard headphones which have a 3.5mm jack.
I’m excited about the launch event on Oxford Street this Friday – I’ll be there at 7am with bells, whistles and very possibly a video camera to try to capture the event. I’m convinced there won’t be much of a queue at the T-Mobile store, which will be a small smack in the face to HTC and Google when we cast our minds back to the massive queues the iphone and iphone 3G were able to attract.
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Good coffee
Oct 27th
I walk past a little shop near Great Titchfield Street every day called Reynolds. Its sign on the outside usually has nice little messages along the lines of the one you see here, never really pushing their product, but more inviting people in through the charm and character which the messages it purveys.
Rumour has it that the dude who owns the place is an ex-marketing chap who is putting his creative mind to good use.
Needless to say… on the day I saw this sign, I went in and tried their coffee.
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My first covering letter
Oct 13th
I stumbled upon my first ever covering letter tonight. It was for the first job I ever applied to, which a couple of weeks later I got, at i-level. I look back at it now and wonder where my awesome writing skills have disappeared to. Am posting it here for nostalgic reasons and also to remind me that, despite day to day work having a tendency to make me pessimistic, I really love digital. I think that I’ll need to look at this every so often to help keep my youthful spirit alive and to remind myself, that I was convincing once.
To Whom It May Concern,
Having grown up in a world where the internet was first flourishing from something that can only be described as a tool for programmers or academics to share star wars jokes and scientific data respectively, into a phenomenon which is continually changing life as we know it, I have been drawn to its cogency in an almost unnatural manner starting from an age of reasonable thought. In the day when dial up services were the only option we had, I spent my youth begging my reluctant parents for the best Christmas present anyone could ever ask for; access to the internet. After the several years it took to convince them that the internet wasn’t the devil, I began my exploration of the world, wide eyed in awe at all it had to offer. As the recent AOL television ad has asked the question ‘Is the internet a good thing? /discuss’, I am most certainly one of the people in this world who is able to say “Yes it is, and I didn’t need an ad from an ISP with a horrific reputation for poor service to reach that decision”. However, I realize there are still some people who need convincing that our global community is a good thing, although looking at the speed at which broadband is growing in the UK, perhaps the only sceptics left are the ones who can remember when butter was being rationed, and although this demographic may have thicker skin than most, they are still susceptible to the power of suggestion; my parents who do their shopping on Tescos’ website and email their family across the world are living proof of it.
As you quite rightly point out on your website, the age of digital media is today, not tomorrow, but as digital media changes, and amalgamates into one giant organism which will no doubt be a Microsoft Windows based machine that connects wirelessly to the latest hand held multimedia device which incidentally will also probably be powered by a Microsoft OS and will possibly be faintly recognisable as a mobile phone, the world of marketing in this age of rapid change must evolve with and more importantly, at the pace at which technology chooses. This idea is what really interests me in [insert agency name here]; the fact that even the leading digital media agency in Europe is not able to decide the pace at which it evolves, as its growth and life cycle is essentially dictated by the unpredictable and volatile world of Information Technology, but even more importantly is it continues to stay ahead of the curve and continue to offer the most effective digital media marketing solutions to its clients. I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than to be apart of that team of minds.
Sincerely,
Ramzi Yakob
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An Engineer’s Guide To Cats
Sep 29th
When I find myself short of interesting things to say about the digital landscape. I like to default to things which make me smile.
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All Powerful Rabbit
Sep 26th
HTC G-1 doesn’t look to be an iphone killer yet
Sep 23rd
I’ve got to say I’m pretty disappointed with the ‘final’ build of the G-1. With no multi-touch functionality, the G-1 is going to be more cumbersome to use than the iphone. One of the most smile inducing parts of using an iphone is that when you’re using the web browser, you can zoom in on things you want to read very quickly either with a double tap, or by dragging your fingers across the screen in opposite directions. The G-1 does have handily placed zoom buttons, but these don’t compete in my mind.
Also it looks as if the touch screen itself just isn’t as good. The lag time between touching/scrolling and the screen actually reacting is enough to be annoying and I can see it making life very frustrating when you overshoot where you wanted to scroll too because the screen just wasn’t keeping up.
Having said that, there are clearly a large number of nice things about the G-1 which do look amazing. The 1 login functionality to access all of your Google products immediately is definitely welcome, and the fact that anything you do both on your phone and PC are automatically synced is spectacular if not obvious.
My favorite part I think will be never having to use iTunes again. I know I’m not in the majority when I say this, but I really hate iTunes. Its massively bloated and slow and can be excessively frustrating if your music isn’t labeled 100% correctly. It actually makes me die a little bit on the inside when iTunes fails to group albums properly simply because the album has several artists.
Ultimately even a massive Google enthusiast like myself is put off from snapping up this phone as soon as I can find it because of simple yet obviously irritating features as mentioned above which really need to be fixed. Intuitive use and a smile generating visual interface is needed to revolutionize mobile and the mobile web. A laggy touch screen with no multi-touch functionality is enough to make me a sad panda. I’ll keep an eye on Android as it evolves over time in the hope that these features appear in the not too distant future. It just seems dumb to me that these weren’t in the launch release because Google really had to prove itself to everyone that Android isn’t a flash in the pan like Google Lively and Orkut were.
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ITV Fail
Sep 16th
I just spotted this on the Guardian and started laughing, but at the same time became a bit angry. I would compare this conflict to the episode of the Simpsons where Homer starts repeating “Urge to kill rising”.
It made me laugh because its yet another example of old people in high powered positions not only openly admitting that they’re daft when it comes to the real world (i.e. the world of today where the Internet > individual broadcasters), but in fact embarrassing their entire organisation, reducing investor confidence in ITV’s ability to cope with the new challenges they face.
It made me angry because I at the same time realised that this person, who clearly should retire so he can spend more time listening to his wireless, is certainly earning vast sums of cash through publicising his ignorance and assocating that characteristic with ITV.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and one might consider Michael Grade to be a relic, but nevertheless this is his opinion which in itself doesn’t make him foolish. What does however, is publicly stating an opinion which both industry commentators and investors will view as being the result of ITV’s inability to cope with today, let alone the future.
“Do I believe that this business has a long term future? Absolutely I believe that. I believe that because of our content skills.”
The thing is there Michael, that you need to distinguish between content production and distribution. If you’re super awesome at making content, then why don’t you let the experts do the distribution for you and dump that side of your business completely? That way you get to make good content, without the cost of a failing distribution system.
Verdict: Fail
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