Real Talk: The Android OS is amazing

[Beezy]

Bow down to your Google overlords!

      Android

  iPhone

[The Fake Shemp]

Yeah, I love my Android phone. I do most of my browsing/posting on it.

[Beezy]

I got the Motorola Droid two days before Christmas and I can't put this thing down. Love the fact that it has a physical keyboard. The touchscreen keyboard works okay I guess, but actual buttons will always be better. I could never get a touchscreen only phone.

My only problems with it are the camera and the Android Market's crappy interface.

[The Fake Shemp]

I've got the Cliq, Motorola's baby sister device for T-Mobile. The physical keyboard is what sold me too. Android Market isn't too bad, I've had no problems navigating it.

[Beezy]

I just think it can be better. It looks cheap and lazy.

[Sho Nuff]

I like the multitasking aspect of it, playing Pandora in the background while I run an IRC client or some shit.

[The Fake Shemp]

Is Pandora better than LastFM?

[The Fake Shemp]

I was about to say, who cares when there are apps that already do that and do it well?

[Beezy]

The Droid's battery lasts all day for me. Oh well, people are dumb. Slime has a good idea.

[Mupepe]

I love the apps <3

imusic - scours the web for you to either stream or download a song.  i always download. why the hell not.  It hasn't not been able to find something yet.

ivideo - same thing.  like a video on youtube?  it will grab it for you.

shazam - listens to songs and tells you the name.  amazing app.

shopsavvy - takes a pic of a product's barcode and tells you if you can find it cheaper locally or online.

Flixster Movies - look up theaters, showtimes, buy tickets and even manage your netflix queue.  amazing.

ringdroid - edit your songs for ringtones.  amazing and so easy to use

the schwartz unsheathed - turns your phone into a fucking lightsaber.  i light that bitch up at least once a day.  no one fucks with me anymore.

[Mupepe]

Battlesea is a fun battleship game

that's all i've got :'(

[cool breeze]

yeah, are there any games for the Droid? I've been meaning to buy a new phone and it will probably be one of these smart phone things, either iphone or the droid.

I'm watching a youtube video of an snes emulator. Does that work well?

[Beezy]

I'm gonna have to check out imusic and ivideo.

Anyways, can any of you provide any game recommendations?

Robo Defense is crack. CRACK. Try the demo. I got hooked on Christmas Eve and ended up buying it for $3. It's just a tower defense game, but it's so addictive. My most played game last week.

The Gameboid emulator (GBA) works great. You have to download some GBA bios file for it first though. It tells you the name. On the Droid you can flip the image and setup your buttons so that you can use it's D-pad on the left side. You can't do diagonal directions though, so you have to stick to slow paced games. The other -oid (nes, snes, gbc, genesis) emulators supposedly work well too. I haven't tried them. All of the emulators are free. The pay versions just add save states.

One problem though is that sometimes it doesn't flip the d-pad directions after I've changed them. I don't know why.

[AdmiralViscen]

I like Android a lot but I still like webOS more.

[Beezy]

Wow, downloading individual songs is so much easier and simple using imusic than it is on my PC.

iVideo is great too. It randomly cuts off videos when I try to stream them, so I just download everything.

[Mupepe]

I LOVE imusic.  so fast and easy.  in the time it takes you to get to a youtube song, you could have downloaded it.  and it finds pretty much everything you throw at it.

[Beezy]

For the Droid owners, stolen from GAF:

Don't have a Droid but saw this on slickdeals - Free battery door replacements (up to 3 - free shipping and no credit card needed).

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/accessory?action=accessoryDetails&archetypeId=11653&cm_ven=Performics&cm_cat=Affiliate&cm_pla=Primary&cm_ite=Slickdeals%2C%20Inc.&cm_ite=**Slick%20Deals**

Sorry if its old.

[fistfulofmetal]

so what exactly is new and exciting about 2.2? I just got it updates on my Droid and I do see the new buttons at the bottom and the new app viewer. anything else?

[Beezy]

I have no idea. I didn't even know we were getting it already. I'm installing it now.

[Reb]

Baked in wifi hotspot mode! To me that's amazing.

[Beezy]

What I noticed so far is that it performs faster and it's a lot smoother, there are 5 home screens now, there's a button for the phone and browser at the bottom of the screen, the new facebook app is great, and you can set apps to auto update now. I'm not sure what else yet.

[Brehvolution]

At work, we have some people who upgraded and now can't connect to the exchange server. I haven't had time to research this though. It was working fine before the upgrade though so they'll just have to 

[fistfulofmetal]

actually reversed for me. couldn't get my email to sync before and now with the update it's all working

success!

[Saint Cornelius]

I'm glad you guys your Android phones but there's nothing at all about them that is as compelling as holding a sexy, sleek iPhone4 in your hand. I guess after all these years of having iPods I am an official iFhag.

[Beezy]

Enjoy your AT&T service. Now shoo.

[fistfulofmetal]

it does feel a little bit faster. apparently there's flash support too.

[drozmight]

A couple days ago they also released this if you're on 2.2: http://www.google.com/mobile/voice-actions/index.html

Adds some nice voice-command functionality.

[Beezy]

nice, thanks

[Saint Cornelius]

Enjoy your AT&T service. Now shoo.

I barely talk on the phone, so that shouldn't be much of a concern.

It's awesome how instead of trying to convince someone who is on the fence about a smartphone that Android is better, I get told to "shoo". Enjoy one in five apps having security issues.

[Tieno]

Still drowning in the amazing of iOS on my new iPad

[Saint Cornelius]

Riddle me this, Android fans: does it play MAME? Does it play MAME well?

[muckhole]

Riddle me this, Android fans: does it play MAME? Does it play MAME well?

I know it's available, but I haven't personally tried it yet.

Still no update for me. : (

Still waiting for 2.1 here.  :'(

[Saint Cornelius]

I know it's available, but I haven't personally tried it yet.

That would definitely push the Android over the iPhone for me if it worked well.

[Eel O'Brian]

Still drowning in the amazing of iOS on my new iPad

they need to get off their asses and release iOS4 for it so we can get some "multitasking" and folders up in this piece

[Saint Cornelius]

Enjoy your AT&T service.

I just spent 20 mins. waiting for a sales rep to answer my question (what the fuck is the difference between the DataPro for iPhone Enterprise and iPhone Personal besides $20?) and then they hung up on me.

Enjoy the schadenfreude, Beezy. You earned that one. 

[Saint Cornelius]

AT&T service in the bay area is a fucking mess.  There is even one dead spot in fucking Cupertino

Pardon me for being a dunce - when you say "dead spot" do you mean where you can't make / receive calls but you can still text and access the web or do you mean it just doesn't work at ALL?

[muckhole]

I know it's available, but I haven't personally tried it yet.

That would definitely push the Android over the iPhone for me if it worked well.

Emulation software is pretty good on Android but touch screen controls kill it for me. The Droid has a keyboard which sort of works but the layout and the small keys suck. :'(

I think most the emu's can also use bluetooth game controllers which, while a nice touch, isn't really terribly handy. I suppose somewhere out there someone is making little mini bluetooth controllers.

[Saint Cornelius]

Oooh, that blows.   

[TakingBackSunday]

ATT rocks in Nashville 

[fistfulofmetal]

Noticed animated gifs animate now with the browser but it makes it run kinda bad. In fact the browser doesn't run as well as it did before.

[Beezy]

Enjoy your AT&T service. Now shoo.

I barely talk on the phone, so that shouldn't be much of a concern.

It's awesome how instead of trying to convince someone who is on the fence about a smartphone that Android is better, I get told to "shoo". Enjoy one in five apps having security issues.

Enjoy your AT&T service.

I just spent 20 mins. waiting for a sales rep to answer my question (what the fuck is the difference between the DataPro for iPhone Enterprise and iPhone Personal besides $20?) and then they hung up on me.

Enjoy the schadenfreude, Beezy. You earned that one. 

Your post made it sound like you already bought an iphone.

[Beezy]

I just noticed that there's now an auto brightness setting for my screen.

I know it's available, but I haven't personally tried it yet.

That would definitely push the Android over the iPhone for me if it worked well.

Emulation software is pretty good on Android but touch screen controls kill it for me. The Droid has a keyboard which sort of works but the layout and the small keys suck. :'(

I think most the emu's can also use bluetooth game controllers which, while a nice touch, isn't really terribly handy. I suppose somewhere out there someone is making little mini bluetooth controllers.

Someone on GAF posted a pic of him playing SNES Mario Kart on his Droid X with a wiimote. I'd try it on my Droid if I still had a Wii.

[muckhole]

Yeah, just checked, looks like psx4droid works with one too. Dunno what you'd do for all the buttons though.

[drozmight]

AT&T works fine for me everywhere except work... which I think has something to do with work being a technological hive of scum and villainy.  A place where everyone seems has an iPhone.

I think I'm going to switch to Verizon.

[Brehvolution]

AT&T works fine for me everywhere except work... which I think has something to do with work being a technological hive of scum and villainy.  A place where everyone seems has an iPhone.

I think I'm going to switch to Verizon.

Complain a bit to the local ATT store. That is all we had to do to get a repeater installed for free and a 10% discount for a corporate rate.
Barely any of the line are under corporate though. We just get reimbursed.

[chronovore]

Is Pandora better than LastFM?

Dude.

....Duuuuuuude. Pandora is amazing. Last.fm is crap. When Pandora was available in Japan, it felt like one of the reasons the internet was useful. Every day I'd tune in, find new things, hear songs I'd never heard before, but were instantly enjoyable because of their shared characteristics with other songs which I'd told Pandora I liked.

Last.fm on the other hand saw that I listened to Rob Zombie, White Zombie, Limbomaniacs, They Might Be Giants, Laurie Anderson... and kept suggesting, "You might like Coldplay." Wat?

Last.fm pushes the label's choices, while Pandora attempts to make qualitative associations.

[The Fake Shemp]

You're about eight months old, I've switched to Pandora and never looked back. I was using it today, hooking it up to a stereo by the pool.

[chronovore]

Sexcellent.

I didn't notice the date on your post. Glad to see we share the same opinion of Pandora's value vs. Last.fm

[Beezy]

Just got flash player on my phone.

iphone

[Van Cruncheon]

if my phone EVER suggested "you might like coldplay" i would chuck it out the car window

[chronovore]

if my phone EVER suggested "you might like coldplay" i would chuck it out the car window

Mercy killing, that.