Hi, Alex.

I have a Vodafone HTC Magic Android phone. Fortunately, for me, it came with Cupcake (Android OS 1.5) by default, so I haven't had any of the problems you describe. Although I'm pretty sure I don't have Flash support - that's supposed to be on the way, but it's not in Cupcake out of the box. October was the last date, I remember reading ...

I haven't hacked it much - I've installed some apps that weren't in the Android market but, so far, I haven't seen any real need to root it, tbh. Android is pretty flexible anyway, and does most things out of the box or with apps from the market place so I haven't felt a need to put Debian (or Ubuntu) on it.

Peter.

2009/8/17 Alex Scotton alex.scotton@gmail.com:

Hi guys,

I'm a relative new comer to the world of linux, I use Ubuntu when I can, however have used Windows for most of my life :( .. love reading the newsletters and various problems and solutions that come up; however never find myself with the knowledge to answer coherently ha ha..

Anyways, with you all being people of the Open source persuasion; I wondered whether any of you had one of the Google Mobiles, as the OS it uses (Android) is completely open source, and there are reports of installing Ubuntu onto the device, and loads of alternative OS's. Have any of you had any experience of "modding" them, because I am planning to do so with mine when i feel comfortable enough to do so.

This has all cropped up regards a phone call with T-Mobile's "Technical Support" this morning, because of course the phone has come brand new with the old version 1.0 OS, missing many of the features I got the phone for (Google Latitude, Increased share functions, and flash 10 support) telling me that the Update for the 1.5 version of Android (CupCake) will arrive at some point in the form of a question on the screen.. but they couldn't tell me when that'd be, it could take upto 3 months!

Anyways, hi to all... and thanks for reading :)

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On Mon, 2009-08-17 at 13:04 +0100, Alex Scotton wrote:

Anyways, with you all being people of the Open source persuasion; I wondered whether any of you had one of the Google Mobiles, as the OS it uses (Android) is completely open source, and there are reports of installing Ubuntu onto the device, and loads of alternative OS's. Have any of you had any experience of "modding" them, because I am planning to do so with mine when i feel comfortable enough to do so.

I have one and overall I am quite pleased with it.

The first thing to note about this phone is the tie-in to Google. You can make phone calls without Google but the default software loaded on the phone forces you to either log in to an existing Google account or create a new one before you can get to all the fancy phone features. Of course, if you install a different or modified OS you may be able to get around this restriction.

So far I have not had any need to try a different OS on it. I tend to use the phone as a PDA too and a task list was notably missing from the default set of applications though I quickly found there were several available from the Market.

The calendar and contacts which sync with Goggle work well for me and I have found this week that version 2.27.90 of evolution has full support for Google calendars and can be found in Debian experimental. Version 2.26 seems to have support but does not support recurring appointments (which for me is most of them) and so is not very useful. There is also a GNOME application 'conduit' that can sync Google contacts with evolution and various other things.

The GPS/GIS support on this phone seems pretty good. The first big advance compared to my previous phone (an HTC Artemis with Windows Mobile 5 marketed as the T-Mobile MDA Compact III) is that the GPS can tell you are moving even at walking pace so it is quite practical to use Maps (bundled), Tracks (from Market) etc. on foot. The current Maps is not quite full SatNav in the sense that it doesn't have voice prompts and also has the limitation that the map data must be fetched from the network which would not work on some of the more remote locations.

Battery life is ok if you don't use the phone much but pretty short if you do. Some people report having to charge it multiple times/day though I have found daily to be sufficient in most cases. Walking around in Maps with the GPS receiver on and the screen lit up seems to be a good recipe for discharging the battery in a few hours.

This has all cropped up regards a phone call with T-Mobile's "Technical Support" this morning, because of course the phone has come brand new with the old version 1.0 OS, missing many of the features I got the phone for (Google Latitude, Increased share functions, and flash 10 support) telling me that the Update for the 1.5 version of Android (CupCake) will arrive at some point in the form of a question on the screen.. but they couldn't tell me when that'd be, it could take upto 3 months!

By the time I came to check in setting for the version, mine was running 1.5. There have been a couple of updates I was prompted to install in the short time I have had it so it is possible that one of those updated it to 1.5 from 1.0 or it may have come with 1.5.

I looked for Latitude too (after the upgrades) and did not find it, then I discovered there is an update to Maps available from Market that does seem to have it so perhaps this should have been part of 1.5 and got delayed.

I have not noticed if it has flash or if so what version.

Major upgrades over the network is an interesting development in that it should be possible to have new things without having to replace the phone hardware.

Steve.