Palm Pre (activated with Sprint) :
Cons :
The notifications, all the notifications fill your hold screen and often take up valuable screen space, instead of being icons they are large first and then go away when you dismiss them, which isnt a problem with one application like mail, but if you use chat, twitter, set an alarm and have your calendar reminders, soon you have more reminders than screen.
The battery life: this device will stay in standby quite some time, but use it for calls and email heavily and it will be dead in less than a day.
The keyboard: The keyboard on the bottom is nice, but very tight, I cant type quickly.. and the copy and paste functions are challenging, there are no directional keys so you have to use gestures to move across the screen which isnt very easy.
Pros:
The camera is fast, it processes the photo in the background and takes bright quality pictures but it doesnt take any video, which is a huge oversight. The camera has no features either, like zoom, but the speed and quality make of for that.
Task management: The pre (webos) uses a cool task card system which makes finding a task and killing a task very easy and so intuitive, this is one of the nicest features of the operating system.
The form factor: small and sleek, this is a nice looking and relatively responsive phone.
Phone : the phone works well and is straight forward, the downside is that if you click a notification to clear it for a missed call, if immediately calls the person... this is really annoying.
Network: viewing webpages and getting email with this phone is great, I was surprised by sprints network.
Messaging: The email application on this phone is good and very easy to use. The IM/SMS system is also very nice, it has a combined contact, so if you IM someone and text them, it keeps them in the same thread.
The Droid:
What Can I say, I have only had this device two days and I am very pleased.
Cons:
The camera: This is a terrible camera, my settings must be wrong, it takes very dark photos and takes quite some time to do that. Its like an early era camera phone. I am hoping there is a firmware or tweak I can do to resolve this. video is equally dark.
Task management: There isnt a good task manager by default, so you have to download one but there are plenty, and plenty of good ones, but task dont usually exit so you will need a task manager to help you clean up your memory.
The keyboard: this is a pro and a con, its great to have one but this one is very tight to the top of the screen so it can be a little challenging to type, but overall not as bad as other reviewers have made it seem.
Moving desktop icons around: if you fill your desktop you have to trash an icon and then move icons around like one of those number puzzle games, or move the icon to another desktop but this isnt a huge problem unless you are moving icons often.
Pros:
Where to start
The Keyboard: it has one, I hate when I use a iphone and half the screen goes away so I can type, I cant see what I was working on which is a bit of a pain. With the droid, if you dont mind the half screen, you can use the onscreen keyboard or you can use the real keyboard.
The screen: It is high resolution and very nice to look at, switching from landscape to horizontal has little or no delay, this is another big plus. The touchscreen is also very responsive, a bit faster than the pre, but does not support multitouch at this point.
The CPU: many of these feature rich phones often are horribly underpowered, but the droid really performs here it is fast and responsive.
GPS: Another thing I am impressed with is how fast the droid locates the GPS satellites and finds its location. The HTC touch pro took way to much time to do this. Even better is with google navigation you dont need a tom tom or garmin, it gives you great turn by turn directions.
Networking: Verizon's network has always been fast but this device performs well on it.
Messaging: This also does the combined sms and IM thread that the pre does, but not a seamlessly, which i actually like, it will only combine them when you sms that particular person. Email is great for Gmail, just like any google app, it works incredibly well, I have not tried this with non google mail.
Apps: While not as many apps as the iphone, but more than the palm pre, this has a great app catalog with such heavy hitters as facebook, pandora, imeem, foursquare, and twitter, I even found a great ssh terminal application. It also has desktop widgets which are great, allowing you to see twitter et al updates from your desktop without launching the app.
Battery: I bought a spare battery because the Droids slim form factor and my heavy use tends to render a phone dead in a half day, but thus far, it seem like the droid will actually last a full day without a charge and heavy use. Again this is only after two days.
Summary
While I haven't had a iphone to compare the droid to, the palm pre is the closest contender, and while it does some things better (camera and task manager), the droid is just a more robust and functional device and operating system. It is the best smart phone I have used thus far. I would definitely recommend it. I will be keeping an eye out for a camera fix/update from Motorola, but its not a deal breaker for me.
Phone
This is one of the coolest parts of the palm pre. With most touch devices, you "butt" dial or turn off features with your ear while talking, the palm pre included a proximity feature that allows your phone to sense when its in your pocket or next to your face and turns off the screen, eliminating accidental "touch" dialing or hanging up by ear. The rest of the phone is pretty standard and works well. It has a slide to unlock feature which is very good.
Messaging
Lets face it, texting is a key feature for any phone, and this phone does it very well. It combines all of your account messagers into one thread, so for example you can AIM someone then switch to sms and this all appears as one seamless thread, very impressive. I am a little disappointed with the configurations on this phone. If I just want to display I have an SMS, Email or MMS it should say so, but it shouldnt display all the info in the sms or email to prying eyes when my phone is laying around. So you either turn you notifications off or have the contents exposed when then phone is locked, there is no inbetween.
Web browser
No flash support but everything else works very well. It uses multitouch to zoom in and out on pages and renders very quickly. With Sprints 3g network there is almost no delay. Not much more to say here. Sprint defaults to a bookmark page where all your favorites are listed, which means it two keypresses to get to your default homepage but a nice interface.
Camera
This is biggest oversight on this device or lacking feature.. no video. I dont know why device designer skip this? As for the camera, the quality is good, 3.2 megapixels, the flash is ok, but no zoom.. overall not very much here in comparison to better phone implementations.
GPS
This phone has a fast gps radio, so location based apps work quickly, and a nice implementation
Applications
The app store is new, and has only a few apps, not much there. I am not sure if you can add your own app but it doesnt look that way, this is a big downfall. I should be able to install an app on my device even if palm doesnt want it on the webstore.
It does come with great apps like google maps and a youtube app and you can download where and pandora.
Keyboard
The palm pre has a slide down keyboard that is easy to use with both hands, I have large fingers and have no problems using it.
Battery life
It seems like power users will drain their device in a day, otherwise it should be fine for light users.
Cables
It uses the less common Micro USB as apposed to the very common mini usb, very lame choice, it might as well be a proprietary cable. Mine came with an induction charger as well, which is very cool. just set it on the charger, no cables.
Summary
Pros
For a pda that does your basic communicating, this is a great device, Its fast and easy to use and it has all the core features you would want.
Cons
lacking notification options, no video, no micro sd, and no non palm store applications.. This phone is probably not for a power phone user at this point, but with some os changes it could possibly be.
* * * * * /user/cron.sh
then in /user/cron.sh put
#!/usr/bin/bash
TEST=`ps ax | grep firefox | grep -v grep | grep -v /usr/bin/firefox | wc -l`
if [ $TEST = 0 ] ; then
/usr/bin/firefox &
fi
and make sure it is set to chmod 755 /user/cron.sh
-Utorrent here
-IMG burn here
-The OSX86 driver disk for the m1210 (only if you plan to upgrade to 10.5.3) Download file
-Kalyway OSX ISO 10.5.2 Download file
-Kalyway Combo Update 10.5.3 (only if you plan to upgrade to 10.5.3) Download file
-Your Vista install dvd
Things you should know now before starting...
-Scary things will happen (drives will have problems, but hopefully this will walk you through that) but you should be fairly os savvy before using this, I dont go into a mass of detail but if you email me I will add more
-if you have the nvidia card, your computer or monitor cant go into sleep mode, it just wont work
Check this blog for update on Nvidia (Nvinstaller.com)
-if you have the 1394 wifi card you will have to follow the iwidarwin project (iwidarwin) which had stopped as of the time I wrote this , I recommend the Dell 1390, it works out of the box
- this process causes osx to load by default, if you dont want that, dont follow this ( I will work on a fix for this but I dont have one yet)>
- Audio does not work without a different how to
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With the Gparted ISO:
If you are shrinking your drive, first off find the drive that has your Vista install, this is usually the largest.
#1 If you have a spare 15-30gig partition skip to step #2
-Load Gparted and delete all the other partitions but the vista partition, (NOTE: I dont use the media direct, if you do, dont follow this, because this will delete media direct)
- move (using resize/move) the vista partition to the very front of the drive and allow for 15-30gigs at the end of the drive (for macos) (this takes forever so get dinner and a movie)
#2 make your second partition (the empty one) a NTFS partition with the label "OSX"
#3 set the attributes to the partition to bootable or boot
(now vista wont load but dont worry about that yet)
With the Kalyway 10.5.2 ISO :
Once the DVD boots it will ask you for the language, then tells you to agree to kalyways terms, click agree, then their will be a bar at the top that says Utilities
-click utilities -> disk utility
-pick your "OSX partition"
-click Erase
Choose volume format macos extended journaled
label it OSX
- click Erase
-once completed close the window
-in the main window now it will ask you to choose and install location
choose the osx partition
-next it will ask you to install (DONT)>
-Click CUSTOMIZE
under this use all the default settings
- Graphics
if you want the computer to sleep correctly choose INTEL GMA
otherwise if you have the Nvidia card choose nvida
- Network Drivers->Network Cards
Choose AppleBCM440xEthernet
Under Patches -> leave the SMBIOS all as the default
and choose the rest (boot_with_cpus=1 is the most important)
then Close and install
OSX should boot and work fine
next getting vista working
- get your vista boot disk
- load the vista install
- click repair
- under repair it wont find anything
-click next or whatever and it will show a page one option is cmd prompt
-click command prompt
-type the following
diskpart
select disk 0
list part
(usually osx is part 2)
select part 1
active
go back to the window with the utilities and hit repair
it will say your disk has been repaired
reboot
vista should now come up
after vista boots (it may need to boot twice to repair completely)
then go to command prompt
type the following
diskpart
select disk 0
select part 2
active
Now you are set... when you reboot your system, the darwin boot loader will give you 5 seconds to stop the boot (by pressing any key)
it will label OS *usually and OSX,
choose OS for Vista
choose OSX for Mac OSX
to upgrade to 10.5.3
boot into osx
place the drivers / 10.5.3 combo pkg update into the CD drive
-click and install the combo package update (it will ask you to reboot at the end DONT!)
-click the kernel package (install both kernels)
-now reboot
-hit the F8 key in the boot loader
-type update -v
The system will boot and possibly reboot ... then you will need to reinstall the ApplceBCM440xEthernet driver
reboot into osx
place your OSX drivers CD back in the drive and
go to system/library/extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/contents/plugins and drag AppleBCM440xEthernet.kext from the CD in there and replace
Open Applications->Utilities->terminal
(type the following)
sudo -s
*give password*
cd /system/library/extensions
rm extensions.mkext extensions.kextcache
chown -r root:wheel *.kext
kextcache -k /system/library/extensions
exit
Now reboot
Now everything should work fine again.
Last but not least the clock fix
boot into osx and unset the clock to update from apple automatically
then go into applications->utilities->terminal
1. Create new file /sbin/localtime-toggle with the following contents:
type vi /sbin/localtime-toggle
type i
type ESC
type :wq!
2. at the promple type:
chmod +x /sbin/localtime-toggle
3. Create new file :
at the prompt type
vi /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.osx86.localtime-toggle.plist
type i
type ESC
type :wq!
4. Reboot.
(set your clock to update automatically in windows)
Please send me errors you run into or suggestions on how to make this better
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for f in *_3; do mv "$f" "${f/_3/_0}"; done
this renames all files ending in _3 to the same filename but now ending in _0
]]>Cons:
SPEED, the blackjack 2 is sluggish
The dial wheel is unresponsive for at least one turn.
Phonecalls are hard to hear
The moto Q9h
Pros:
keyboard (much easier for me to type on)
call quality - loud and clear, easy to use
camera flash- it has a very bright camera flash that does its job in low light
SPEED-while not noticeably faster than the blackjack 2 initially while running regularly it is substantially faster
accessories- it comes with a usb to mini usb adapter, opera browser, a better IM client, documents to go, a headphone adapter and a 2nd battery for extended use!
Cons:
if this guy had wifi and a touchscreen it would be perfect.
the hotkeys are not very good.
The windows key is awkward.
every once and a while the interface locks during heavy processing or heavy communication, this doesnt happen in the blackjack ii
I recommend the q9h over the blackjack 2, I usually am not a moto fan, but this is an good phone.
go to your mythtv user dir (~mythtv), make sure that the mythtv user has a valid shell:
vipw
in vipw "/mythtv"
if it has /sbin/nologin as the shell change it to /bin/bash or your favorite shell
next edit your /etc/gdm/custom.conf
add:
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=mythtv
or
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=mythtv
TimedLoginDelay=20
for a timer
then
edit ~mythtv/.xsession
add the lines:
#!/bin/bash
metacity &
i#xterm &
mythwelcome
chmod 755 ~mythtv/.xsession
from your bash shell in cygwin type startx a x11 xterm will come up and type:
DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 ssh -Y remotehost
you set... then any remote x app will appear on your desktop
Download and Install bitpim
Once setup, Run Bitpim, under view, check view filesystem.
On the left filesystem will appear. Click Filesystem and expand "/"
Download paramtable1.fil
(Do this at your own risk, I am not responsible for any damage to your phone)
Browse the filesystem, under OWS (click OWS) right click paramtable1.fil, click overwrite and select the version of paramtable1.fil that you just saved.
Then start the browser and select search from the menu (#3) and it should be google moble replacing the lame VZW search.
A confirmed open wap server is :
An unconfirmed Open Wap server is:
Link1-IP1: 194.204.012.042
Link1-Port1: 9201
This will save you the $5 a month charge to verzion but still cost you airtime
one way is to spend a bunch of more money with verizon and buy their sync kit, but I suggest another option using BitPIM. This is a great opensource package that works with most verizon phones. For the Vx8600 you will need to get the development version if you get the "provider blocked: unable to access filesystem " message, here is the version as of this article Development Windows install