eSpecialized Blog

Go get yourself Firefox 4 downloaded, and checkout the WebGL demo’s!

In the demo it mentions firefox4 is available for Android! Kewl

https://demos.mozilla.org/en-US/

Now if iOS could just put WebGL in Safari!

Basically I  updated to Android 2.2 which works a lot better than 2.1. Just wanted to provide an update here.

I feel that for all the positive reviews this device receives, I should give you my negative experiences.   Now for all of this, I enjoy using the phone, but it really diminishes the experience.

Samsung Vibrant (2010) Running Android 2.1  Stock T-Mobile cell phone.  Uptime is 421 hours.  (17.5 days approximately) I’m going for the long haul uptime here.. This is a Linux Kernel after all.  And Linux OS’s are suppose to be robust.  I’ve read that a lot of people reboot daily,  without Advanced Task Killer, this may be true.

1. Without Advanced Task Killer,  the battery lasts about 1 day.  This is due to a large amount of apps running in the background that I have no need for. (See below)

2. Apps that came bundled with the OS end up running in the background when I don’t want them.. Visual VoiceMail is one such example.  Maps Also.  These apps will start running at random times in the background, this is a small sample 2 minutes after killing all tasks.. These apps just wake and begin running;

Voice Search (probably because its on the main desktop with Google search. I’ve only used it a few times. but not in the past week.)
Maps (I don’t use this, not registered, but it runs?)
My Account
Slacker (I don’t use this, not registered, but it runs?) ->I never ran the application
Amazon MP3 (I don’t use this, not registered, but it runs?) ->I never ran the application

Some of these apps come when I run them, of course.  Some apps I never ran the, and its popping up in the background.

3.  Battery life can be extended to 2 days with low usage.  A few 10 minute phone calls,  SMS during the day.
4.  Movies (Avatar), and some built in apps refuse to run, like Camera, when the Battery is less than 20%

5. Background killers.  After about 1 hour of usage, I have to kill background tasks to keep the phone operational.  The System gets bogged down.  Even the main screen won’t respond in a timely fashion, sometimes taking 5-10 seconds to complete a transition by swiping left/right on the main home screen will take this amount of time with background tasks.

6.  I have un-installed some offender apps; Yahoo mail- never used.  But some things cannot be removed.  All services running seem bare minimum.

Battery Monitor App;
I wanted a battery Monitor App,  it runs background.  But it appears to be using a lot of power.  I dropped from 49% to 31% in just 2 hours. Now I know that the low end of the battery bottoms out quickly. So I will see how well it goes from here.

What are the positives;
Good Display.  Avatar looks beautiful on the display.
It can play the 3D games very well with the powerful GPU
Cell functions great. Even on low signal I can hear great, and the other person can hear me too.

Cons;
I’m a Sysadmin, and know you need to reboot a Linux system from time to time. But usually because of the flaws in OS.  Asking consumers to reboot is a simple fix to a big problem.  Background tasks.  Use “Advanced Task Killer”, its simple and works.  Background Tasks are not a flaw, but get to many of them and the phone will go into shock.  To many Programmers are making use of the background run feature when its not needed.  Making background tasks run less frequently (2-5 minute intervals or longer). Or implement task switching (Like the iPhone) is more ideal.  Your tasks are running in a Java Thread, and java is not fast on a portable device.  It may be fast enough to draw a game, but imagine 10-20 background threads all competing for execution time continuously, and you would go into shock too.
No others.

Of Note;
Later here in September Android 2.2 should be out.  This should improve a lot of the problems I am experiencing, except some apps will still run in the background which I do not want..  I’m also going for max uptime before I reboot the phone.  Usually I would do a reboot weekly if inclined to do so (slow response time etc), but so far this doesn’t appear necessary with killing background tasks.