First, there was the Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, which set the bar for Android powered phones. Then, the Nexus S, which barely moved the bar at all, and everyone ignored in terms of innovation (which is to say the only new features in the Nexus S were all but neglected by other manufacturers, nobody implimented them); now, there's the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They're not even HIDING the fact that samsung made this version, and it is raising the bar again.

Allow me to elaborate. The Google Nexus One, was all but unknown to be manufactured by HTC, you actually have to look it up to find the information. of course, the phone was only so popular, considering you could pretty much only buy it, unlocked, from google (a smart move, if I do say so myself). At the time at which the Nexus One hit the market, Android was primarily running Donut (v.1.6) on phones like the HTC Hero. a 500Mhz BEAST with a WHOPPING 256MB of RAM... The Nexus One raised the bar and said no more to these pathetic clock speeds and measly amounts of RAM... THIS is what Android should run on! A 1Ghz Snapdragon processor with 512MB of RAM! Twice as powerful as almost everything else on the market at the time, the flagship Google phone paved the way (and the specifications) for a multitude of variants, including the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire, and Motorola's Droid 2. There were also new sensors introduced and a whole pile of great stuff that really defined a new standard, that almost all manufacturers followed from thre on out, until recently.

The Galaxy S brought nothing new to the tabe. Well, that's unnecessarily harsh, it had NFC. The Galaxy S is the first major Android phone to include NFC. Despite this, the majority of the Galaxy S's hardware was nearly identical to the Samsung Galaxy S, from where it borrowed a portion of its name; with the obvious technical exception of NFC, which the Galaxy S was missing. They were both manufactured by Samsung, so the phones are practically identical. What's hilarious to me is that the Nexus One defined the standard by which the Galaxy S was based on, and the Nexus S was based on that. So you end up with a phone that's identical in almost every way.

To be fair, probably the biggest consumer-oriented change with the Nexus S was the move to internal NAND style memory, as opposed to the SDHC, External style found in the Nexus One. This memory is faster and more efficient than using an external SDHC card, with the obvious downside of not being able to be upgraded, and if something goes horribly wrong, anything saved on your phone, while that data may still be intact, is impossible to retrieve without special hardware.

The Galaxy Nexus has the same level of innovation that it is bringing to the market, as the Nexus One did. The Galaxy Nexus stands as a new standard for Android; it's a dual-core, 1.2Ghz System with 1GB of RAM. The phone also has all the usual sensors, aGPS, Gyro, Compass, light sensors, capactive multitouch, etc. and the same communication functions as the previous Nexus: NFC, Bluetooth, Wifi and Cellular. Though, it's notable that the Galaxy Nexus has an upgraded Wireless chip, capable of 802.11a/b/g/n - this indicates a dual-band chip (both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, also a feature yet unseen in cellphone technologies). This has already spurred a whole line of new phones from every major manufacturer; from HTC: Sensation, Evo 3D, Amaze, etc. from Samsung: Galaxy S II and S II X. from Motorola: Atrix, Droid Razr, Droid 3, etc.

To put it briefly, I am not, and have never been a huge fan of the Nexus S. It was more popular than the Nexus One based on two merits: it was more widely available, many carriers actually sell the Nexus S in-store on contacts, making it faster and easier to get ahold of one than ever; the Nexus One, 9 times out of 10, you had to buy at full cost, no contract, from Google directly. Secondly, the Nexus S came out much later into Android's development, as a much more mature ( and much more popular ) platform, it was easy for the Nexus S to become as popular as it has become; despite not bringing much new to the table.

New celly

So the other day I decided to get myself an upgrade from my old Moto Milestone. I moved on up to the HTC Desire HD.

While there are other phones on the market in canada that are also very good, or even better (ergo, Moto Atrix), I'm not big on locked bootloaders. I am however, big on HTC Sense. I've only read all the great things about it.

Using my phone for only a few days, Sense is great. But I'm looking at the community seeing much room for improvement, since my carrier is historically bad for updates and there's a mostly stock 2.3.3 update floating around the community... So within a week, I switch my phone Eng S-Off and went ahead with the flashing, I couldn't be happier. It's amazing the amount of battery life improvements that google made, software side, between 2.2 and 2.3 simply amazing.

I chose a very stock rom to maintain HTC Sense and all the features in sense. I especially love Locations, where you can browse maps, offline. Which is amazing.

With this new knowlege, of flashing on HTC, I'm starting to take an interest in Android as a platform. I'm probably going to try to pick up some Java coding manuals, and get started on some apps. What I was hoping to ask, if I could, is if anyone wants to see an app that does not yet exist. The simpler the better. Has to be for Android. I'm looking for start-up projects to get me started learning the coding so that I can learn how, while producing something useful.

When posting please include your device, so I know what platforms I should expect to make the app work on.

I'll try to post again soon if I get some good ideas.

HTC EVO 3D

I just came across this little tidbit

http://youtu.be/JSuD45mRl_o

now, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the supposed "3D" technologies, but one outcry I keep hearing is how horrid they are for straining your eyes. Having products on the market, like 3D Televisions, and the Nintendo 3DS is bad enough, but they want to take something you use, all day, every day, and make it 3D? talk about eye strain.

Prescription glasses time.

I'm sorry HTC, but if you produce this, I will NEVER BUY IT.

as a side note, could you guys POSSIBLY, put out a newest generation cellphone (no 3D please), that has a dual-core 1+Ghz CPU and MORE THAN 512MB RAM, running android 2.2 or newer, that has a keyboard? possibly? please?

My moto milestone is getting dated.

It's been a while.

I know it's been a while since my last update, I've been thoroughly enjoying android and there isn't much I can say that's poor about it.

I've been intensely invested into mechanics, and therefore, I don't have much productive content to add here. I will say that I've taken a new job that's more technically oriented. Hopefully I can find new and interesting ways to do the same job that everyone else is doing, but faster.

I'm hoping that learning the systems involved in the new job, and all the contributing technologies will cause me to be able to modularize the information I learn and generate some new posts for everyone with some (hopefully) useful information.

There are some points about android where I think they can improve, however, they're actively upgrading the operating system so I don't have a lot of room to complain.

My main point of complaint is that, as a Motorola Milestone owner, I miss out on HTC's Sense home screen... I don't even have the option of buying it to use. Keep this in mind when comparing Android phones. Go check out your local cellular stores and compare a non-HTC Android phone, like the milestone, to an HTC phone, like the Hero, Legend, Desire... etc. Particularly note the unlock and home screens. also check out the media player and examine the differences.

I'm sure that if I rooted my phone, I could probably install a hacked version of sense, however, that's not what I'd prefer to do. All the features I would get from rooting my phone, I either already have, or don't really care to have (besides using hacked software, which is probably illegal anyways).

No matter what you do, I recommend you buy protection for your phone. It's become painfully clear to me how many people drop mobile devices; so protecting your phone, either with a hardshell or soft shell case, is necessary. I use the hardshell Otterbox case for my Milestone, however I know many phones have silicone skins that are also good at absorbing shocks. Choose what you're most comfortable with, because if the case drives you crazy, you're just going to eventually remove it, and then it will just be a costly lump of waste in a corner somewhere.

I wouldn't normally care too much about software versions, however, there are some devices still sporting very old versions of Android (eg, the HTC Hero, at least until recently)... where you'll only get Android 1.5 or 1.6. Normally I say, whatever works, go with that, however, I've had a chance to use an HTC Hero with droid 1.5, and I have to say, that the changes are significant. Do your best to ensure the version of android on the device you buy is at least 2.0 or 2.1 (Eclair); if you don't have at least version 2.0, pinch to zoom and other significant features, will not be available on your device until an upgrade is issued for it.

My last comment on the Milestone is that the network access is incredible. As far as broadband goes, it's meager at best, however, for a cellphone, the access speeds are incredible. The droid (aka Milestone) is using full HSPA on the network I'm attached to in my area. The speeds are so similar to the speed I expect from using the phone on wifi, that there's not a significant enough difference between the two to warrant switching over to the wifi for any reason almost ever. The only time I activate the wifi on my cell is to do updates to the apps on my device (where I'll be downloading several megabytes in a short period of time), and even that is merely to conserve 3G usage on my data plan, since my carrier charges per MB, and allots only so many MB per month for data access.

Android is fantastic; if you're looking for a new smartphone, droid is the way to go. with the thousands of apps in the market, you're sure to find something to suit your gaming, entertainment, and productivity needs... Additionally, the system is fast, with lots of integrated features; the base OS is so good, in fact, that I tend to use the defaults for many things, since it suits me just fine. You are capable of manipulating almost every facet of the device functionality, if you're so inclined.