Monday, August 16, 2010

Update

Been a while since I've published anything... I've been busy cleaning and consolidating code for both the basic and pro versions. This should hopefully make both of them easier to manage. Coming from a .NET world, the Eclipse IDE has a bit of oddities that takes a bit of getting used to. Plus switching from VB to Java and back to VB is alot like going from English to German and back.

I only updated the basic version and this was really intended for people who have upgraded to 2.2 already. The long press on the first button (Phone by default) will give you the choice of the Phone or a picture gallery application. The long press on the fourth button (Browser by default) will give you your choice of browser(s), Google Talk, AIM, Twitter or Facebook. If you don't any of these applications installed then you obviously can't choose them...

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Not Quite Frozen Yogert?

I'm sure the apple fan boys are going to making the same jokes, so might as well beat them to the punch. Apparently I was one of the "lucky" few to get the runny version of FroYo via the OTA update.

Quick update in case someone links to me saying that USB tethering doesn't work. A coworker currently in the UAE sent an email from his laptop by tethering his Droid which was connected to WiFi. I suspect the the reason why he did this is that TV in the middle east is very bad and he was very board.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Froyo...

Being a Moto Droid owner, I was happy to see the news that Froyo was finally available. I planned on doing the manual update at lunch today. However, I was greeted by a message on my phone after returning from a meeting saying that I had an update to install. In my small circle of Droid owners here at work, I am the only one to receive the OTA update. This also includes my wife who is the primary account holder. My guess is that since I'm a android developer I go to the front of the line?

One of the things that I noticed was that the camera icon on my Launch Bar went away and was replaced by a second Google Maps Icon. I'm sure that they changed the class name or something stupid like what they did with the HTC Sense and Blur. However after running the configuration screen I was greeted with a force close... I still haven't heard the end of it. I found that not all of the code that went into the last update / fix for the Base version made it into the Pro version. So, a little code merge and testing later and all seems to be working again. I really need to learn more about the Eclipse IDE. I shouldn't need to maintain two sets of code that are the same in both applications.

First thoughts on Froyo...
  • Updated Multimedia dock is nice
  • The gallery and camera apps seem to have some nice enhancements
  • The speed increase is very noticeable.
  • No wireless tethering? I'm pissed at that and more pissed at the BS reason of "The Droid doesn't have the necessary hardware."
  • Although, there is a USB tether which just means I need put a micro USB cable in the laptop bag for emergencies. (Although rumor has it you can only get to Verizon's web site...)
So far that's it for now...