got root…now what?

I was able to get root permission on the droid. Problem is, I am just now starting to explore what that even allows me to do. The phone is new…and progress is being made all the time but as of right now AFAIK there is no tethering. I am looking into other apps.

The takeaway – this is an awesome site if you are into hacking your droid. That’s going into a permanent link.

So now for getting to root…first update to 2.01 if the software has not already been pushed to your phone. Just follow the instructions, download the file, rename it update.zip, put it on the top level of your sd card. Then, this is the only tricky part, turn the phone off. Turn it on again holding down the X key until you see a triangle and an exclamation point.  Now press and hold the camera button while hitting volume up. This should get you into a menu that allows you to reboot or install the update file. Use the D-pad on the physical keyboard to move up/down/select on the menu. Reboot. It might take a while.

Now download the root update file here and follow instructions. Same deal, rename as update.zip and go through the above steps.  Reboot the phone. Now go to Android Market and get Android Terminal. Launch it. Type “su”. Now you are root. Whoohoo! What next? That’s the big question.

gps overview

Here it is…the screen capture overload on the new Google navigation on the Droid. This concept is going to destroy the GPS market…why pay $100 or $200 for a GPS nav unit, or re-up for expensive map updates when you can use Google Maps Nav in real time for free?

entering in an address in Google Map. Could have used voice search instead!

searching…

list view of directions. note the “Navigate” option.

Now we’re in navigation mode.

Like any good GPS nav unit, the map will update as you move, and you’ll get spoken directions.

With a press of a button you can change to street view with map overlay.

One more button takes you to a full Google street view that rotates. It rotates quite smoothly with a finger on the touchscreen.

Here are the menu options. We’ll look at layers next.

You can select different categories of items to overlay on the map like gas stations or restaurants.

Another menu item is the overall trip view.

verizon – tethering, but $$$

I guess Verizon is going to offer tethering on the droid, as long as you want to pony up $30 a month. What are they smoking? Will somebody hack root on this thing already?

android fragmentation – googlephone?

An article over at Wired talks about open source affecting the portability of apps across different handsets. Seems the fact that Android is open source is proving to be somewhat problematic as phone makers dive into the code and make changes that can cause problems with Android apps. Apple’s tight control over the software and hardward combo means far fewer problems. I wonder if Google’s new phone will be the next iPhone slayer candidate since Google is controlling it end to end. More on the Google phone from droiddog.

first screen capture

I’m able to get screen captures of the phone now. Check out the earlier post of first impressions now updated with screen shots. You too can do this, by simply installing 4,000 pieces of software and using up nearly a gig of disk space! I used this article as a guide but I have to say it was a pretty loose guide. Hit the link to see my redone version. I did not want to put this “experiment” on my linux box so this will be the Windows version (my laptop):

more on gmail sync

I’ve found that some people have had issues with delayed email notifications with Android and Gmail. I thought it was due to wifi shutting off, so I found out how to lock wifi on (there’s an app for quick access but it is a setting under “settings->”wireless”->”menu key”->”advanced”). But that still resulted in a delay of maybe two minutes judging by my test email. So I found a post where a guy said do the opposite – for better syncing turn off wifi. I did that, and the delay was still about 1-2 minutes. Seems like that’s the best one can expect from the Droid. I still think it’s a shorter interval than my iPhone. Maybe that’s just the Verizon network though.

Another note, if an email arrives during the “interval” between syncs, and  you read it, you will not get a notification beep (although the email will be on your phone). If you don’t read it, you will be notified.  Makes sense. [UPDATE: if you receive an alert, and do not check it, the next email will not cause an alert. It seems satisfied to alert you once that you've got unread items, regardless of how many pile up. Demerit.]

overall thoughts #1

So overall how does this rate against the iPhone? First, the bad stuff.

horizontal touchscreen mangles page. yuck.

It does not have the seamless UI experience that the iPhone does, which means it has some rough edges. One example would be filling in web forms using the horizontal touch screen keyboard. You don’t end up with much screen space, so your input field (for example, on a website form) fills the entire screen, with a “next” button right there.  When you fill the field and hit “next” you go to the next field, but it’s easy to lose where you are on the page and which field you are filling. Of course, if you don’t like this, you can use the slide-out keyboard instead and your view of the page goes back to normal. Most of these are not showstoppers, which is why I call them rough edges. Click on “more” for example images.

notifications 2

So if you are at your “home” screen, hitting the menu key will bring up some options, one of which is “notifications”.  This screen is pretty cool…it’s a list of all the notifications or events that have occurred on your phone since you last cleared the screen, including emails, application installs, etc. Selecting any one of the events brings up the associated app. It’s a handy way to jump to the most recent occurrences on your phone.

I just figured out a shortcut to this screen. On the home screen, put your finger on the very top statusbar, and drag downward. You should see the notifications screen revealing itself. Cool.

the home page with status bar

dragging notification screen from status bar

notification screen fully open

gmail account data syncing

When I first got this phone, I started it up and it prompted me to enter my gmail name and password. After that, everything auto-synced. I mean everything. My calendar showed my google cal, complete with all the different calendars I’m subscribed to. All of my gmail contacts were there.  A note on that, it only syncs the contacts you’ve entered or uploaded, it does not sync all the different email addresses that it may use to “autoprompt” you when typing emails. I’ve spoken with people that have asked about using gmail to store contacts. It’s not great, it’s not bad. But this is where it shines: no effort whatsoever, enter a name/password and boom…300 contacts show up in the phone.

Another feature is the ability to sync with multiple gmail accounts. It works smoothly however I have a suspicion that it will only sync the calendar on the first gmail account you use. It does not sync calendars on subsequent accounts you enter.

I don’t know if that is google or moto, but how about a gold star for both. Google for inventing Android and Moto for using it.

verizon – no tethering

Looks like i will have to wait for somebody to hack root on this thing. Verizon says no tethering. Of course, the closer these things get to being actual hand-held computers, the less  you need tethering. My blackberry sucked at browsing the web so I did like hooking it up and using Verizon’s network to surf while traveling. But the iPhone, and the Droid, are great at surfing the web. Now that you can get apps where you can actually edit Office documents, it’s one step closer to where tethering is unecessary.

Just kidding, this sucks, I can’t give the phone a demerit but I can give it to Verizon. Bad Verizon.