On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 04:29:49PM +0000, James wrote:
> My son wants a droid phone. I'm pushing him towards the HTC droid
> as I think we can customize it, if not eventually run embedded
> Gentoo on this phone.
I have a G1, normal model, not flashed. I too wanted it because of
its physical keyboard, but then someone developed a pay program ($5 I
think, well worth it) called Better Keyboard which has been so good
that I don't use the physical keyboard any more and no longer consider
it a necessity, at least for Android. Friends who have an iPhone say
this Better Keyboard is better than the iPhone's soft keyboard.
I would also look at Nokia's open source phone, Maeomo I believe,
which actually runs Debian, much much closer to true open source.
Android apps HAVE to be written in their subset of Java, at least on
the normal phone -- I don't know about jail broken ones. The Maemo
can take programs from anything -- perl, python, etc, no doubt plain
old C and even assembler if you want to. No doubt you could put
gentoo on it.
One problem with the G1 is its small memory, making it possible that
it won't be able to use the 2.0 features. It can take humonguous SD
chips, but the internal program flash is just too small. Plus it does
not have multitouch like the iPhone or the new Motorola Droid, which
would be a big improvement.
I have not looked into these new phones much because my G1 is only a
year old, still runs fine, and still has a year to go on the danged
contract. But if I were looking for a new phone today, I would start
by investigating the Maemo, then look at other Androids which don't
have a physical keyboard but do have multitouch, and finally at the
Droid. The physical keyboard adds complexity and cost and bulk and
weight, and Better Keyboard is so good that I don't use mine any more.
(for the record :-)
Here are some of the things I like about Better Keyboard:
Vibrate feedback on each keystroke.
Long press on a key pops up a small window with all the extra chars
on that key, such as accented keys.
Side swipe brings up alternate keyboards, such as 2 chars per key
like a cross between standard num pad texting and a real keyboard,
or a numbers-only keyboard, or symbols-only.
Lots of different themes which are useful, making it easier to find
one that your eyes are happy with.
Easy to invoke -- just tap in any text area and it comes up.
Switches horizontal and vertical layouts as you switch the phone.
Provides a list of possible words as you type, and you can build up
your own local dictionary.
All of these are configurable, near as I can tell.
If you have a chance to try Better Keyboard on someone else's phone,
you might find it so good that you won't insist on the physical
keyboard. The biggest problem I have with the physical keyboard is
that since it is half depth on the G1, the very right side keys are
hard to get sometimes, with my fingers banging into the right side of
the G1 which is full height. This may not be so on other Androids.
And don't forget that the physical keyboard does not rotate 90 degrees
as you rotate the phone, unlike the cirtual keyboards. I find Better
Keyboard almost as easy to use when crammed into the vertical position
as when horizontal.
--
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