can't add attachments while replying an email in iPhone. How many years Apple wants to hold this feature and project as premium feature.

Galaxy S Android and iOS iPhone 3GS - Hands On experience

I have been using iPhone 3GS on 3G at Seoul, korea for almost a year. Back to Pune, India I decided to buy the famous Andorid 2.1 Eclair , Galaxy S (I9000) Samsung phone. I was delighted to have a large 4” Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz snapdragon processor. But as I started to use, it fell short of my expectations compared to my previous iPhone 3GS.  Well, here are few good things and bad things about Galaxy S in short

What i Liked about Galaxy S -

• Large AMOLED screen.
• Same look and feel like iphone. So no learning.
• Samsung has very well integrated SNS (Social Network Service - Facebook, Twitter, Gmail).
• The Contacts book can show latest SNS updates for each contact.  You can comment and post from there
• The Dialer has T9 search that directly match contacts in adress book as you type numbers. Unfortunately it only matches the First Name field.
  
• The best is wifi Hotspot. The mobile acts as the wifi hotspot and my wife can use my internet plan to browse internet on her phone (iPhone), even when i am on Edge service. Horribly in India 3G service is not with every operator. Big scams have hit.
  
• Good 5MP camera but without Flash.  HD video recording.

 

What i hate about Galaxy S and Android -

• The most important thing is SPEED. Even after a 1GHz processor the phone behaves like a old 200Hhz Nokia phone. Having used Nokia N97, I think Symbian system is far better in performance then Anroid.
• The Phone hangs constantly and there is a known Lag problem for Android and Galaxy S. Things just dont show up. Funny is when someone calls, the phone rings and i dont see the screen activated with Accept button. Its black for few seconds. Very shameful.
• I just miss the iPhone Gestures for keypad to place curser and select text. Android has a horrible mechanism to select text. You have to change the mode of keypad to 4way Arrow buttons. Then use thse arrow buttons to move the cursor. Very shameful and unusable. 
• They keyboard is very slugish and Predictive text is a big nonsense. It types all the wrong words. iPhone spell check and auto correction is far better then foolish word prediction android.
• Galaxy S has a hardware problem with Proximity sensor. Most of the time when you hold the phone to your ears the screen dosent go off and your chic hits the Big Cancel button.
• The auto rotation of screen is also buggy. Even if you change the phone orientation, the screen hangs in the pervious orientation. You need to shake the phone hard to unlock the buggy roation Gyroscope.
• Samsung Galaxy S which use Kie as desktop software to sync data has bugs. My Galaxy is not recognized by Kie. This problem is written everwhere on internet and Samsung has done nothing.
• Samsung has perfectly copied the iPhone as a typical Korean company always does. The Galazy S shape is having similar corner radius like iphone. Even the home button is similar to iphone, only its square instead of circular. The number of hardware button location is also copied from iPhone. The look and feel of for icons docs and homescreen is exactly like iPhone. 
• Samsung is not a Responsible and dedicated company like Apple. They are not worried for Galaxy S  bugs as they have many other mobiles to sell. Samsung phones come with bugs and they never correct it. They just discontinue the phone and release new model.  Samsung makes around  Apple only has one phone. Apple is CUSTOMER caring company. They will release patch immediately to eveyone if there is aproblem.

Generic Anroid Problems -

• As compared to Apple iOS operating system for iPhone, the Android OS is horrible. Even Symbian is far better then Anroid. Only that Symbian is not designed for touch interfaces.  The Android OS is not smooth like iphone. The scrolling or paging is jurkey and hangs. I have hardly seen any application crash in iPhone. But Android and Galaxy S are full with application crashes, not respongind, exception errors, and what not.. 
• The Emailing application takes lot of time to load emails. It dosent scroll properly.  You cannot edit the quoted email text.
• There is no Copy and Paste from email to other apps or from Internet pages to other apps. This was one of the best features in iOS.
• Not the worst part. Just compare Android and iPhone app from the same company. Example the most popular- Facebook.  Facebook app for iPhone will be beautiful, but for Android it will be half backed. eg. when you click any comments it wil leave the native app and go to browser. Half done work.  Not only this app, take Skype. Skype dosent work in many android phones.  I have notices that the same company makes a perfectly designed App for iPhone but when it comes for Android, they just throw some code to say that they also have android app.  Why is this ? Is it because they follow Apple Human Interface Guidelines properly and for Android they dare to make all mistakes ?

Advantages of Android over iOS (iPhone)

• The best part of Android, i think is, they have allowed more freedom to apps developers to access native OS features and apps. Eg. You can attach a file from your SD card. Or write to the calendar and photos. For iPhone, the native apps cannot be touched or modified by 3rd party apps. The apps developers have to import data and make another copy in their apps database. 
• Android can be customized by handset manufacturers to make their unique homescreens and dialers and SNS integrations. But i heard this is going to stop.
• Well, you can replace battery and add external memory card.
• Have better camera and FM radio. iPhone dosent have Radio.

What i miss in Android -

• There is no good music player like iTunes. There is no desktop iTunes like app to sync music and take backup of data
• Upgrading of Android OS is hell and country dependent. iPhone OS is updated globally at the same time. I am Still waiting for Android 2.2 Fryo update to my Galaxy S for India
• Wort part is, the Samsung Kie desktop sync app for Galaxy S is only for PC and Windows. I have Mac and i have no option to update my Galaxy S. I think Google is paying every handset company to not to have a Mac OS desktop app.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

Jailbreak iPhone to Enhance Experience & Efficiency - easy steps and apps

Like many iPhone users I was very curious about this whole Jailbreaking stuff. I did tried to google it when I first brought iPhone. But after reading all the techie stuff, i gave up untill I read about www.jailbreakme.com . Going to the website Jailbreakme.com from any iPhone offers possibly the easiest jailbreak method in iPhone history. Using a PDF security flaw the website uses a corrupt font that makes running code possible.

And so I just pointed my Safari browser to jailbreakme.com and within half a minute, I got the Cydia store icon on my phone.

So why would you want to Jailbreak anyway ? some of my thoughts?

• You are a freak and tech savvy that you want to keep experimenting
• You are bored with the same old iPhone UI, lack of functionality and want something new.
• You want to transfer files & photos over Bluetooth to PC and other phones
• You want a view all files and email them as attachments.
• You want a good tools for multitasking, email notifications, alerts, T9 supported dialer etc.. 
• You want to tether your iphone to use internet on laptop
• use skype and other messengers to make VOIP over 3G.
• Add new UI themes and icons to iphone.
• and do many things you always wished.... :)

And what is really a Jailbreaking ?

Its a process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to run third-party unsigned code on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many extensions and themes previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia & RockApp

Jailbreaking Myths and Risks - many stories

Jailbreaking is not unlocking! It is risk free and totally legal (as many claim). Everything that works before jailbreaking continues to work after. Jailbreaking only adds features.  You can simply restore in iTunes at anytime to get back to a factory state.

Why Apple is against Jailbreaking ?

Of course Apple wants to keep control of the iPhone platform. Apple has made Apps store rules for their benefits. Some of these rules include: patching system files such as SpringBoard, allowing apps to run in the background, running apps out of the “sandbox”, and simply doing things Apple decided that they don’t want you to do often for reasons to their benefit, not yours (such as tethering).

When iPhone was launched, it had 1-2yr old features that rest of competition already had. May be they want to create customer curiosity for next release and not provide everything at once. 

Read more at http://thebigboss.org/why-jailbreak-iphone

 

How to Jailbreak ?

Just point your iphone safari browser to www.jailbreakme.com  Dont know when this hack will be fixed by Apple. So hurry.!!!

The process ?

• Once you point your browser to jailbreakme.com and swipe your finger on the lock button, the iphone will rebooth and add a Cydia store icon on homescreen. thats it. Done. 
• Now use this Cydia store to find another Apps store RockApp. Now you have three app stores. The original iphone apps, Cydia and RockApp
• You  can now search the apps you want and download them. I have found the paid apps in cydia and rockapp are costly then the iphone apps store. Generally the jailbreak apps are in the range of $10 to $20. There are few at $3 to $5. But  hardly any at $0.99
• The skeleton basic :
  • Springboard is the name given by Apple to the home screen
  • Summerboard is the name of a Jailbroken app that lets you customize the Springboard
  • Winterboard is the new 2.X Jailbroken app that basically succeeded summerboard in its functions

Many of the functionality that Jailbreaking apps provided earlier to iOS4,  are now directly available from iOS. These are background apps (backgrounder App) , Folders, etc. So be careful before downloading apps. 

 

Jailbreak Apps that I have on my iphone with actual screenshots

This is the G.O.C. Theme Pro by ToyVan $1.99

See and download the full gallery on posterous

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/g.o.c.-pro.html

This theme makes transparent circular icons and adds a 5 icon deck. It has custom sounds and wall paper. You need to also install 5 icon app to get them on the deck.

The Cydia Store - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is probably one developer Jay Freeman show. The store is self sufficient to buy, download apps, update existing apps and remove apps. It also shows the space available.

RockApp Store - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is another store to download apps.

 

SB Settings - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This provides a one click access to any running tasks and you can switch it on/off
http://cydia.saurik.com/package/sbsettings

 

The Activator App - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is accessed from Settings > Activator. It provides all your dream touch interactions. You can assign any gestures to any action now. I wish Apple provided this in their core OS

 

The WinderBoard - free 
http://cydia.saurik.com/package/winterboard 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is the place where all UI stuff happens. The order of rendering the apps are decided here. It controls the homescreen layout.

Notified

This app pulls all your notifications together. I would call it unified messaging.

 

IntelliScreen - $9.99
http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/intelliscreen.html 

This is my favorite. It shows all notifications on your homescreen like emails, calendar, weather, news, etc.

 

 

iBluenova
http://www.medevil.net/

my another favorite. Now you can send files over bluetooth using this app. I dont know why Apple is so cruel to prevent people sharing photos and files from iphone to other devices. 

 

 

Elert $1.99

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/elert.html

Shows a quick summary of new email no matter what App you're using on your phone. This is really helpful.

 

My3G

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/my3g.html

this app fools the other apps that your iphone is on wifi and you can use other apps on 3G. Like make a VOIP call from skype. 

 

Posted via email from Sameer's Design Blog