I've finally upgraded my Galaxy S from Android 2.1 Eclair to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. This move was smoother than I thought it would be under the Kies Samsung's software. The hardest was to make the driver able to initialize itself.

Indeed Android is maturing and polishing nicely upon each release. I enjoyed the ability to be able to watch flash web application(shame on you Apple !).

The system is much more responsive. Android 2.1 was flawed on the Galaxy S to the point were it become unusable, hanging forever between each user action. I can now switch quickly between applications, hangup phone calls right away, without having to repeat the hangup gesture a dozen time.

With the new generation of Android phone hitting the market, I felt like early phone were lacking the raw power need for a true Android experience: multimedia, multi-tasking and multi-touch.
The miserable 192mb ram of the G1 were cleary not enough, as the phone was constantly slowing down, swapping memory and the 500mhz cpu was quickly overwelmed when too many apps are running in the background at the same time.

Why did I choose the Galaxy S over other phone available : Htc Desire, Nexus One, Xperia X10 ?
Although the specs of these phones seems close ( 3.7-4 inches screen, 1Ghz CPU, 512 Mb Ram), there are certain things that make me feel that the Samsung Galaxy S is the first true high-end Android phone:
1. It comes with Samsung's own version of the Cortex A8 CPU instead of using Snapdragon likes the others phones. This CPU seems slightly faster at matching frequencies than Snapdragon more important the embedded GPU is much more powerful in term of raw performance which is a great advantage when it come to gaming (also the GPU is able to process hd video playback, that am not sure Snapdragon is able).
2. It comes with 8Gb of memory (extendable), with 2Gb for apps. I can't belive others phones are still sold with only 512 rom memory. It's a heavy limiting factor when installing Apps that are certainly getting bigger and bigger as you cannot install apps elsewhere that in rom memory (unless you do some hacks that consists in formatting a sdcard in ext2 format but then you'll lose the ability to use it as mass storage under windows).

I think that phone maker are purposedly making phone not as good as they can be in order to be able another 'improved' model next year. The Samsung Galaxy S is the first Android mobile that do not lack important features.

Google releases its own branded phone, even though It looks more like another HTC android phone.

Specs make it by far the most powerful android phone to hit the market. Other HTC phones were a bit disappointing by using the same Qualcomm MSM7 201A over and over again. The 1 Ghz Snapdragon is a good step forward as more and more demanding softwares come out.

The Snapdragon has a new ATI made GPU that supports OpenGL ES 2.0, that is mainly pixel and vertex shader, compare to OpenGL ES 1.0 and partially 1.1 for the G1 (fixed-pipeline).

Memory has always been an issue with Android as it is not possible to install applications on sdcard for piracy concern, from 256 mb on the G1, the flash memory has been extended to 512 mb, but I'm still expecting phone with 8 Gb of built-in to come to the market. On multi-tasking environnements as Android, RAM is another big concern, thus going from 192mb to 512mb is also a good thing too.

The new 3.7" sceen with its huge resolution of 840*480 will probably be the most exciting point for the average customer, even though it has existed for years (well at least since HTC HD release). Having a bigger screen is a good thing for multimedia and web. Although I dont really know how older applications will behave since 480*320 had been the de-facto standard resolution since the G1, and shared the convenience of being the same as the iPhone.

Still, for me, 3D performance is the most important point and even if the Snapdragon seems to bring performance a step forward. I'm not convinced that ATI's software implementation of OpenGL is the best out there, and I doubt it ever will. Games on the iPhone, with PowerSGX (which is supposedly equivalent on paper to ATI Imageon from the G1) usually look much better and smoother, I think I'll stick to the G1 waiting for the forthcoming of the Nvidia Tegra platform which is already faster than Snapdragon by specs at least for the GPU part.

I finally decided to update my G1 to the android 1.6 version which was release in october 2009, I did put the G1 aside and only used it as my regular phone, but I really want to do something on the G1 cause I still do think it has a lot of potential.

I didn't go for the regular rom from htc but instead go for a custom version from the xda forum.

Here is the new noticable feature:
- Virtual keyboard
- Video recording(.3gp) and playback
- FLAC audio format support (nice!)
- MMS support
- Youtube app finally allows to view videos in high quality over 3G and not only over wifi
- Multi-touch support for browser and photo, but it's obviously a uglyhack as Android 2.1 will bring the real normalized API for multi-touch.
- built-in USB tethering (but only because it's a modded version)
- Android Market( with my old version, I was only able to see free apps for 1.0 android, I can see that there is a much bigger choice now)

Overall the system has a much more nice look and feel. Hope Android 2.1 will come for the G1 very soon.

Oh and happy new year btw.

Scummvm is available on the Android Market
Scummvm is a game engine that allows to run old school point and click games like Sam and Max or Indiana Jones.
I tested it and I must say it runs very well with sound and decent speed but the clicking system is wrong because some object are too small to be touched by a finger on the screen, so getting the right object can be a headache.
Besides the gaming aspect, the more surprising thing is that Scummvm is written fully in C++ so being able to make it run on Android is really something.

After all and despite the screen bad quality, I've decided to keep this laptop.
There's some great things about this laptop:
- Feather light.
- Stylish ! Really robust feel.
- Low power consumption and low heat dissipation, even when playing games or watching videos.
- Absolutely silent, fanless build, with a small 1.8" hdd.
- Good touchpad.
- Card reader.
- Complete linux support: everything works with the bundled Ubuntu, Wifi, Bluetooth, Webcam, hardware 3D acceleration (except Compiz), hardware video overlay. It runs the free game Warsow at around 30fps in native 1280x800 resolution. Warsow is a simple quake-like, that can be found here: http://www.warsow.net/ .

In more philosophic point of view, this laptop has everything that matters and leave out what I don't need so it remains light and efficient. That's exactly the way computing should be.

There's still some cons:
- Bad screen quality.
- Ubuntu lacks of polish, for instance, I hate to see command line text when booting and coming out of idle.
- Keyboard is not fullsize but slightly reduced which is a shame as there's place left on the side for a larger keyboard.
- Crappy sound quality with speaker and addiditional headset.
- Slow hard drive maybe I'll buy one of those 32GB MTRON PATA SLC SSD on ebay.
- Lack of power, especially on heavy web pages with lots of flash involves.

Unexpectedly, the Dell Mini 12 is able to display 1920x1200 resolution on its VGA output.
[UPDATE]
Another nice thing that I just come to discover is that the hardware video acceleration fully works on h264 movies in 720p and 1080p resolution so that unplayable movies will become smooth with the little intel atom, with restriction though, you have to use totem player and not vlc (because accleration is achieved through ffmpeg with VA-API), and compatibilitiy is not optimal, it actualy works on about 30% of my h264 movies.

I received the Dell Mini 12 I ordered. At first glance it feels very nice, thin, perfectly silent as expected. But I notice that the screen has a white halo at the bottom of the screen visible on dark picture.
This really disturb me as it ruins the contrast of the bottom of the screen in movies.

Audio quality of the G1 is disappointing, I just receive my micro-usb to jack adapter so I could plug the G1 to my little hi-fi system (homemade digital amplifier + monitor audio br2 speaker), I must say the result is very far from what delivers my audigy2 ZS. I've listen to the two first track of Norah Jones album "Come away with me", encoded in MP3 320kps, which are very good test samples.
- Noise level is very high.
- Dynamic is bad, instruments hardly come to life.
- There's lot of litte detail lost.
- Sound stage is fuzzy.
In comparison, I also own an iRiver MP3 portable cd player and the quality is very close to my audigy sound card.
In conclusion, the audio quality is ok for casual usage but will never be sufficient for audiophile people.

The iPhone 3G delivers a much cleaner sound with better dynamic.

Skype is finally available on Android, great you might said, except that is does not include VoIP functionnality so contact that want to speak to you will have to use voice line which is not free as skype is charging for receiving call as well as initiating call.

Touchscreen

Touch are received on a "view" element(which a graphic element of an application).
Implement the android.view.View.OnTouchListener interface which contains only one method: public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event);
On the view that is "touchable", register to receive the callback
this.setOnTouchListener(myOnTouchListener);

Accelerometer

Little different, as accelerometer is an element that is not always present in an Android device, it is necessary to first querying the system for available interface:



Then register it