Technology and Making

Image via CrunchBase

Answer: No, it's bloody not.

Well, that was easy.

One of the most eagerly anticipated benefits of the Android 1.5 update, apart from the soft keyboard, was an improvement in battery life.

I got my over-the-air update last week, fully discharged and recharged my battery to make sure it was calibrated, and took a careful note of the time when I took it off charge, eagerly awaiting a nice long runtime from Cupcake's much-lauded efficiency improvements.

I kept my configuration exactly as before - GPS, 3G and Bluetooth off, and exactly the same screen timeout. The time to beat was roughly twenty-four hours, my usual average time between charges before the update.

Twenty hours later, my battery was dead.

This is just my experience, and there may be something specific in my configuration which makes the new improvements irrelevant. Prove me wrong, somebody, please! Leave your own experiences of post-Cupcake battery life in the comments.

Labels: Android, android 1.5, Battery, battery life, charge, cupcake, Google, lifetime, over-the-air, T-Mobile G1, update

Image via CrunchBase

So, the 1.5 update to Android downloaded to my T-Mobile G1 yesterday morning, and I've been playing around with it for a fair bit of the last 24 hours.

My first impressions: The tweaks to the interface are very nice. Everything feels a little more solid and easy to use, including the use of paler backgrounds in a lot of applications (the calendar in particular is a lot easier on the eyes).

The new rotation feature, where the display switches to landscape mode when you rotate the phone (instead of when you slide open the keyboard) looks smart. The fade over from one mode to the other is an obvious attempt to distinguish it from the iPhone's spin effect - it looks snappy, but can be a little slow.

The new windows animations (which you will have to turn on from Settings - they're not on by default) giving a slide from one screen to another - also very smart. They're shiny without being too distracting. The new dialogue boxes which pop up to the screen look good too.

I've only used the soft keyboard a couple of times, but I'm very impressed. It's very precise despite the small keys - I've yet to hit the wrong key - and pops up fast when it's needed. There are a few features which aren't immediately apparent, and are only explained in the System Tutorial which is hidden in Settings/About Phone: You can hold a letter key to get a popup menu of accented versions, and hold the number/letter switch key to bring up some additional options.

The new camera and video camera (camcorder) are just excellent - Google have somehow managed to significantly improve the focussing speed, images are definitely sharper and there are more features, and the interface for both looks very smart.

Video comes out looking very good for the compact size of the device. The previous option for video recording - Android7.org's unofficial video camera hack - suffered from a very high rate of battery drain. Hopefully this integrated solution will be more economical.

On the topic of battery drain, I have yet to determine how much better Cupcake's power economy is. I discharged it fully yesterday afternoon and charged it to 100% in the evening to start a full power test, but stupidly left it on the cable this morning for an hour or so while swapping some files around, so I've had to start again. I'll give a full figure on average battery lifetime when I have it.

Labels: Android, cupcake, Google, HTC Dream, iPhone, over-the-air, release, smartphone, T-Mobile G1, update

Yes, the 1.5 Android update finally downloaded to my G1 this morning. I'll post a full report once I've had time to try it out a little - battery life test commencing shortly.

Labels: Android, cupcake, G1, Google, over-the-air, update

Over on my Hubpages G1 article, loyal commenter Antient has confirmed that Cupcake downloaded to his phone this morning. Happy days! Looks like Talk Android weren't full of crap after all :)

Labels: Android, cupcake, G1, Google, over-the-air, update

Image by netzkobold via Flickr

Following on from T-Mobile Germany's announcement of the Cupcake update rollout, T-Mobile have now confirmed worldwide Cupcake release in May via over-the-air update.

This ends a long saga of uncertainty, misinformation and seriously jumbled messages from both Google and T-Mobile which has made a sizeable portion of the G1 user base very angry and confused.

The first rule of customer relations is that the more information you give your customers, the happier they will be. But happy customers doesn't necessarily mean good marketing, and the months of vague and conflicting messages, speculation and false hope have created a vast amount of traffic and publicity for the newborn Android system.

Could it be that all this delay and vagueness were a cunning move to spread the Android buzz, in the same way product shortages create frenzies around consoles and toys? Share your views in the comments.

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Labels: Android, cupcake, frustration, G1, Google, Marketing, rollout, T-Mobile, T-Mobile G1, update

Image via CrunchBase

OSNews has a post about Android version 1.5 (commonly known as Cupcake from the development branch which has driven it), believed to be coming in a couple of weeks, with a list of features and tweaks. This is certainly one of the most complete release descriptions I've seen so far.

Of course, it's by no means guaranteed that we'll actually see all these features at release, even in the US and particularly in Europe. We've already seen the previous Over-The-Air update stripped of a lot of predicted features in Europe, rendering it largely a bugfix. Until the thing actually arrives on someone's phone, we just have to wait and see.

Labels: Android, cupcake, G1, Google, Handhelds, release, smartphone, T-Mobile, update, US

(via TalkAndroid) T-Mobile Germany have announced on their homepage that they will be rolling out the Cupcake update for Android in May. Previous updates have surfaced in the US a couple of weeks before Europe, and in the UK about a week before the rest of Europe, so we should be seeing an update in the US very shortly with the UK following.

Labels: Android, cupcake, Germany, Google, over-the-air, T-Mobile, UK, update, US