In principle, my European Galaxy Tab works fine on AT&T, but AT&T can’t figure out how to activate the SIM card or how I might pay for it; that requires a pre-installed app on their iPad. Buying a second Galaxy Tab just doesn’t make much sense.

T-Mobile doesn’t seem to have any tablets yet. Even if they did, they would likely only run at Edge speeds in Europe.

Tablets on Verizon are totally overpriced, as is their service; they also don’t work in Europe, and the only way you can use them anywhere is… to buy Verizon’s overpriced service. It’s no wonder that you can get iPad 2′s on Verizon; nobody wants them. Of course, they aren’t giving you a discount, their iPads are just as expensive as AT&T’s.

The only tablet that people know how to activate and that works in both Europe and the US (on AT&T) is the iPad 2. I don’t like the software that much, I think it has usability problems, and it uses the tiny SIM cards that are hard to get. Well, I’ll ponder it some more.

In Europe, the problem is the opposite: there is such a great selection of tablets becoming available on all carriers now that it’s hard to choose.

Image quality is similar to a paperback, with decent contrast, but not overwhelmingly good. Of course, it’s not backlit, so if you’re reading at night, you’ll need a reading light. Refresh is fast enough for fiction reading, but too slow for flipping through reference books. WiFi connectivity is good, although you can’t easily do fancy WiFi configuration with the limited user interface. Its 2G flash memory is stingy but holds a decent number of books; a Micro SD slot would have been nice.

The biggest issue is battery life. When everything goes well, battery life is spectacular. But frequently, the Kindle will discharge by itself within a day or two for no apparent reason. It quickly recharges again, but it is kind of a nuisance.

I usually read books on my Galaxy Tab now; it’s about the same size, far more flexible, and has a much nicer screen. I use the Kindle as a second device linked to the German Kindle books store now; it’s good for that purpose, because most of the German books I read are pre-20th century German literature anyway. Most of those books are free, mostly due to the efforts of volunteers who typed them in (no thanks to the German publishers). 20th century German literature is largely unavailable on Amazon at any price because German publishers are greedy stick-in-the-muds.

What’s inside isn’t quite as ice. The keyboard is usable but cramped and cheap. The iPad stand is fiddly and cheap plastic. The arrow keys on the keyboard are in an odd location. And the edge of the Zagg case may get in the way if you keep your hands low while typing (it’s fine for me). To use the Bluetooth keyboard, you need to turn it on with a switch, and you need to remember to turn it off when you want to use the tablet as a tablet (since otherwise the onscreen keyboard won’t pop up).

It’s probably the best case/keyboard combo out there right now. But it could be a lot better than it is. Zagg should use bigger letter keys and make the TAB, DELETE, backslash, and enter keys smaller, and move some of them out of the way altogether. Since many of those keys don’t really work as they do on a desktop anyway, it probably doesn’t matter if they’re somewhere else. They should also get rid of that weird plastic stand and instead figure out a way in which the iPad is held securely just in a slot, or at least with a metal bracket that just flips up. The Bluetooth on-off key could be triggered simply by inserting the iPad, instead of a separate switch.

Both the Galaxy S and the HTC Desire series are excellent phones. The Motorola Droid series is also pretty good, but heavy, and Motorola is slow with software updates.

The big differences between the Galaxy S and the HTC Desire are: screen, build, custom software, and software updates. I prefer the Desire build (more solid, but heavier), screen (traditional LCD; Galaxy is larger but has blue cast), and custom software (HTC did a good job enhancing the functionality, Samsung merely made it look more iPhone like). Software updates have been more timely on the Desire by a few months.

The Sony-E phones have good hardware and good cameras (the X10 Mini is just impressive in terms of size), but Sony made Android worse with their customizations and their software updates are really slow. Unless you need a tiny phone, stay away, but if you do need a tiny phone, the X10 mini is still decent.

Also think about whether you need a hardware keyboard; they are nice, not necessarily because typing is faster, but because you get to see more of the screen while typing. But they also make the phone much heavier.

Also consider the Nexus S; it is another Samsung, but runs standard Android (a big plus), and the very latest too.  Look at the frequencies, it may support both T-Mobile 3G and AT&T 3G.

I’m not sure which of those are available on which carriers in the US; in Germany, they all work on all carriers. In Europe, the HTC and Motorola phones update over the air, Galaxy requires a desktop connection.

In the US, I’m likely to upgrade to a Virgin Mobile prepaid Android phone. They only have one model, a low-end Samsung, but that’s fine for me. Virgin Mobile’s deal looks very good. You might want to consider that, depending on your needs.

Having used both platforms, I find that both iOS and Android both have their rough edges and usability blunders; I don’ think there’s a clear winner in that department. Android seems a little more complex at first (e.g. application drawer), but it’s well worth it in terms of functionality (home screen widgets, better keyboards, easier setup, etc.). Both platforms will become unresponsive under some circumstances, but not enough to be a problem. iPhone has more and better games, Android has much, much better productivity and system tools. What kills iOS for me is the need to hook it up to a desktop for maintenance and syncing; unacceptable for travel. Contrary to naysayers, the different screensizes and buttons on Android devices are not a significant problem; I have had more problems with iOS screen size differences.

This being Europe and sim cards being cheap and plentiful, I have an HTC Desire, a Galaxy Tab, and an X10 Mini. My mother (not a computer person) got my old Droid and is happy with it and actually uses many of the smartphone functions.

• The iPod Touch get an underpowered camera, a microphone, and a retina display.  It should have gotten a 5+ Mpixel camera. 3G data would also have been useful.  Or maybe Apple should just do the right thing and bring the iPhone 4G price down to roughly where the iPod Touch is now and sell an unlocked GSM version.
• The iPod Nano gets a tiny touch screen.  It’s not clear what that’s good for, but it is definitely not good for sports or jogging, where buttons and knobs are better.
• The Apple TV loses storage and thereby access to most content, making it even less interesting than it used to be.  Apple should have move iTunes to the cloud and created an iOS-based Apple TV with full access to the app store.
• A cheaper 7″ iPad would have been a great idea, but Apple didn’t deliver that either.

It’s hard to remember a worse set of announcements from Apple than this.

via Update: Oracle sues Google over Java use in Android – Computerworld.

Most of the commenters on this story are missing a couple of important points:

• Android isn’t Java and doesn’t pretend to be.  It’s using the Java language and some open source Java libraries, but its class file format and VM are completely different.
• Oracle’s lawsuit seems to be based primarily on a number of patents.  These patents generally have to do with sandboxing, capabilities, and class initialization.  Those patents probably do apply to Android even though the Android VM is very different.  The real question is whether those patents are valid, given that the concepts predate even Java.
• Oracle also claims copyright violations.  Since Android isn’t using Oracle source code, this is likely some kind of “interface copyright” claim, meaning that anybody implementing any Java APIs would be subject to the same copyright claims.

Overall, this lawsuit is a problem for Google, but it’s an even bigger problem for Java.  If Oracle’s claims stand, then Java is owned lock, stock, and barrel by Oracle and the platform is as proprietary as Microsoft Windows.  Furthermore, if the patents stand, lots of other virtual machines are potentially at risk as well, including the CLR and Mono.

Ironically, Apple’s iOS is probably safe, although not for a very good reason: iOS is seriously deficient in modern security and sandboxing features, putting its users at risk; but the consequence of that deficiency is that they aren’t subject to lawsuits over patents involving such features.  Of course, Apple has its own patent problems with Nokia.

via Nokia’s VP talks N8, MeeGo ‘milestone product,’ tablets, Android and more! — Engadget.

Your current destiny is losing the smart phone market and heading for bankruptcy.  Qt and MeeGo are not going to change that.  You can keep following that path if you like.  It is unimaginable that Nokia not just catch up with Android and iPhone on the UI front, but produces something so compelling that developers and users will come back.  I certainly see nothing about your roadmap that would make me want to come back from Android.

Why not hedge your bets?  Ship some models with a choice of Android and MeeGo and see which ones catch on.  Putting all your eggs in the Qt/Symbian/MeeGo basket is at least very risky, even if you believe that you do have a chance.

Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for Linux. It brings the most popular social networking web services to your desktop and gives you the ability to control how you communicate.

I’m sorry to say, but in its current form, Gwibber really sucks.  Some of the problems with it are that it doesn’t reliably display Twitter messages and that it doesn’t forget messages associated with deleted accounts.  Worst of all, however, is that it somehow manages to fill up the disk with enormous log files, bringing the machine to its knees.  It took a while to figure out the culprit, but Gwibber has been purged from my machine for the time being.

I hope they’ll be able to fix Gwibber in time for Ubuntu 10.10; it looks pretty nice, but right now, it’s a worse disaster than f-spot was.

Why is it a nice phone?  It’s cheap (€200), tiny, sturdy, and very functional.  It’s also very responsive, has a decent battery life, and has all the standard features that Android phones need to have (Edge, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth).  The device also makes a good music player.  Included are a nice set of accessories: screen protector, silicone case, stereo headset with microphone, and a USB cable and charger.

The stereo headset, while functional and with a microphone, looks dorky: the wires are too long, tangle up too easily, the microphone is too big, and left and right sides have different length wires; Sony should really try to emulate Apple in this regard.

With the tiny size, however, come inevitable limitations: the screen is only 240×320 and some Android applications just need more pixels.  Typing on the touch screen is not that easy (but also not that hard with Better Keyboard).  And the device only runs Android 1.6 (although a 2.1 upgrade is supposedly in the works).

Sony tries to compensate for the tiny screen size by having custom versions of some applications: home screen, mail, music player, calendaring, etc.  Unfortunately, although they kind of get the job done in a pinch, Sony still seems as incapable as ever designing good looking, easy-to-use applications.    Fortunately, there are plenty of good third party replacements available.  A minor nuisance is that you can’t remove Sony’s software.

The use of Android 1.6 turns out not to be so much of a restriction; Android 1.6 is plenty fast on the device, and although some popular apps are missing, you can find pretty much everything you need, and for the most part even free.

A serious problem with the user interface is Sony’s widgets and themes; for some unfathomable reason, they use gray text on a blue background; applications that don’t override the theme’s default end up having nearly unreadable text, rendering another portion of the Android market applications useless (the same problem afflicts the large X10 phone). Some of the user interface elements are also confusing, such as check boxes that always contain a checkmark (it just changes color when you select/deselect it).

On the whole, the X10 is a typical Sony phone: great form factor, decent hardware, but marred by awful Sony software. But there is some progress: Sony is now using standard connectors and storage media. Maybe they’ll come around and ship a less hacked Android UI as well.

Here is an overview of the software I’m using:

The X10 Mini is a nice device, in particular as a second phone. As a primary phone, the on-screen keyboards may be too limiting and you might want to consider the X10 Mini Pro.

“I guess its just human nature that if someone or some organization gets really successful there’s just a group of people who want to tear it down. I see it happening with Google.”

Well, yes, that’s right, and you are at the forefront of that, Steve, with your attacks on Google like “Google’s ‘Don’t be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit’” and your false claims that Google Android copied iPhone.

“I see some of these people jumping on us now. It’s like I am not sure what you are after here. Would you rather we were a Korean company instead of an American company? You do not like the fact that we are innovating right here in America and leading the world in what we do?”

Apple has outsourced most of its manufacturing and much of its engineering to China and other Asian countries; in what sense is Apple a US company?  And why should anybody outside the US care whether they buy from an American company?  What are your Korean customers supposed to make of your statement?  Are you so parochial that you think of Apple as a US company and the rest of the world as irrelevant?

And how does the US benefit from Apple anyway?  Apple has comparatively few employees in the US and  Apple also doesn’t fund research much anymore: you closed your research labs, you don’t hire Ph.D.’s in research positions, you don’t publish, and you don’t fund academic research.  All you do is cherry-pick the best graduates and startup companies, patent ideas that were usually incubated elsewhere, and then pretend like your company did the innovation; that is, you do that when you don’t just outright clone your competitors and pretend you invented it all.   Or, in your own words, Steve Jobs: “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Yes, indeed, you have been.

“I look at this whole ‘Antennagate’ thing and say ‘wow.’ Apple’s been around for 34 years, haven’t we earned the credibiity and trust from some of the press to give us a little bit of the benefit of the doubt?”

As someone who has been an Apple customer on and off during that time, there is indeed no doubt and your record speaks for itself.  Although you often release nicely designed products, you also screw up in big ways by releasing products with fundamental design flaws: the Apple III, the Apple Lisa, and the Titanium Powerbook are examples.  Of course, some of your design flaws are deliberate, such as when you save engineering effort by basing your products on open standards, but then introducing deliberate incompatibilities.  And your PR department has a record of lying.  Now, with the App Store, we can add censorship and restrictions on programming freedom to your list of offenses.