What the Raphael expands on, replaces or begins to replace? - Touch Pro, Fuze General

I thought I'd start what I hope become a regular event at xda-developers.com. Posting how valuable our devices are to us. Specifically, what our devices...in this case the Raphael....replaces or begins to replace with native or expanded functionality.
I'll start off with a not so exhaustive list of the obvious and give others a chance to share. What I propose is that we post the function and specify what software or setup allows for this function. You don't necissarily have to go into detail, for example, if you've setup your device to be a "router" on your home network because that would take a little time...but you can post something like "LAN Router = configuring device without additional software" or something like that. If you list VoIP Device you can say "Replaced my VoIP Device using Skype" or something similar.
I'm curious how much functionality we can squeeze out of these devices. This post will also serve to give others ideas, provide a place to share your ideas, and give new people an idea of how powerful these devices are.
Here we go...
- Replaced my GPS device and I use TomTom.
- Begins to replace my digital camera and cam corder. Even though it doesn't take very high resolution images and there is still room for growth it does a decent job and i no longer have to carry around those two devices. I use the native components and software of the device. If anyone has better software to accomplish this let us know.
- Replaces my voice recorder. I'm still trying to narrow down which software I like best for this so your suggestions are very welcome.
- Replaced my FM Radio but only when away from my car
- Replaced my portable XM Radio as I stream XM using PocketXM. This is an old software and i think there are newer and better ones out by now but i havne't taken the time to go look so your suggestions are welcome to enhance this experience.
- Replaces the newspaper. I subscribe to newsfeeds using Egress. I've tried a dozen or more Windows Mobile feed readers and imho this is by far the best and has all the features i want.
- Allows me to stay in touch via IM using BeeJive IM.
- Allows me to stay in touch via IRC using zsIRC. zsIRC is missing a few things and is not perfect but is the better freeware product taht comes close.
- Expands on e-mail by allowing me to stay in contact with Pocket Outlook.
- Replaces my wireless/wifi scanner using WiFiFoFum. There are other software products i've tried but this one does exactly what i need and also works in conjunction with GPS so I can later map my scans using Google Earth or other mapping software. I even use it in conjunction with other software to perform wireless audits for my work.
- Provides me with mobile Bluetooth scanning capabilities using Bluezard and btCrawler. Please provide your suggestions if you have other software that does a good job in this area.
- Begins to replace my MP3 player. My MP3 player has a lot more space but the Raphael does a good job as a temporary replacement for this device.
- Allows me to watch my TV/Cable at the house from anywhere using Slingbox's SlingPlayer and the Slingbox Pro.
- Replaces the Weather Channel using WeatherPanel on SecondToday.
- Begins to replace my gaming devices because you can play some nice Windows Mobile based games, not to mention you can also install several different emulators to play other device games on your Windows Mobile device.
- Enhanced the way I input business cards into my contacts by allowing me to take a picture of the business card using WorldCard Mobile.
- Enhances the way I store critical information by using eWallet.
- Replaces the dictionary as there are tons of superior dictionary software products on the market now. I use several so won't list them here unless asked. If you have a favorite please let us know.
- Replaces the encyclopedia using Brittanica Concise Encyclopiedia or Pocket Wiki. I know there are others out there and I welcome your suggestions on this as I'm looking for the most complete solution possible.
- Replaces the phone directory using Live Search, Google, or numerous other products.
- Provides for a portable packet sniffer beyond the laptop using Handy Sniffer.
- Begins to replace the eBook Reader for many but not those that can't read off the tiny screen. I'm still looking for a better and universal solution that will read all formats and allow for better viewing on the smaller screen.
My list could go on but i'm going to stop there and give others a chance to respond with their list and also help me with mine if they have better suggestions.
Let's see how much functionality we can squeeze from this little device.

Related

Windows Mobile software & hacking news (11/17/2007) & tips

1. There is a brand new HTC CAB (program) collection HERE. It’s, to my knowledge, the largest and most up-to-date collection of HTC’s own programs, ready to be installed on any WM5+ phone. It’s really worth reading the descriptions of the CAB’s to quickly find out what these small utilities really do. It’s REALLY worth – some of these apps are excellent; for example, HTC Equalizer reviewed HERE and HTC Streaming Media reviewed HERE. There are tons of other, useful utilities in there – do check them out!
2. There is a new music player at works, Lumen. Also see THIS MoDaCo thread.
It, right now, is totally useless and nothing really more than some screenshots - it's unable to play anything, as can also be seen HERE.
As the player is written using the, for multimedia / gaming, sloooooooow Compact Framework 2 (CF2), I don’t think you can expect it to be fast at playing back anything, unless it calls native code. All in all, I don’t think you should bother.
3. There are several threads on adding SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) support for models that, officially (not even via official ROM upgrades), don’t support this technology. The latest of them is HERE. Note that there are a LOT of (sometimes contradicting) reports of it NOT working on some models – that is, you WILL want to backup your device before installing the patch. I’ll also report more on it as soon as I receive my brand new 6 GB microSDHC card.
4. Several people use the built-in Pictures & Videos program (note that its previous, pre-WM5, as can also be seen in THIS pretty much important article, name was Pictures) to quickly watch their pictures. (Not that it is of any good – there are MUCH faster, MUCH better image viewer apps out there; the brand new PQV 4.0, Resco and Spb Imageer are the three most important & recommended ones, as has also been explained in the Image Viewer & Editor Bible. Note that Glass Lantern has just gone out of business; therefore, I no longer recommend their PocketLoupe any more, no matter how excellent it was. RIP Glass Lantern, yours was a great product!
Now, MoDaCo forum member mandt has published a quick tip on how you can make Pictures & Videos use a default directory different from \My Documents. If you use these LNK files (you can safely edit them to point to any directory), you can greatly speed up the startup and the initial directory lookup of your pictures.
5. Fring, the most revolutionary, multiplatform, real VoIP client (see THIS article for more info), didn’t use to work on the Qualcomm-based HTC Kaiser (AT&T Tilt), the current flagship model of HTC – the speech became complete garbage, independent of the transfer speed (not that Fring were as dependent on the speed as Skype – actually, it’s perfectly usable over EDGE connections and, if only one party speaks, even over GPRS). The current version, however, fixes this problem. That is, you can safely download the new version into the Kaiser. To do this, the easiest is navigating to http://www.fring.com from your handset and just click the download link.

Guitar Pro tabs on Pocket PC?

Hi all you great minds out there.
I've been hunting around for a little while trying to find out if this is possible.
I've got this program on my PC called Guitar Pro, a cracking little program which plays midi and guitar tabs together on screen so that you can follow on the guitar, theres a huge online archive of songs that have been converted to guitar pro *.gp3/.gp4/.gp5 format.
Its been great but I find it most annoying that I have to sit in front of my PC to work with this program, so I was really hoping for a program that would recognise the Guitar Pro tab format and run them back a full/half speed ect. I not even that fussed about the midi background.
Now, according to the Guitar Pro website, they MAY release a pocket PC version, this has been the stance for about 2 years, so I can imagine that its a non starter.
Looking around the net I found a program called DGuitar which is supposed to be able to run on any platform with Java, I managed to get a .Jar file to play with but it doesn't install on my pocket PC (would have been a bit too easy eh)
I dont suppose anyone has any input to this conundrum?, perhaps Im being a bit of a lemon with the DGuitar JAR install? or maybe theres another bit of software out there?
Id love to hear everyones input into this, cheers in advance y'all
P.S. I attach the open source DGuitar files to this mail perhaps someone might be able to take a better look at the distribution files
I'd love to be able to use Guitar Pro on my PPC. I'm unable to download this DGuitar file at the moment so I can't verify whether I can get it to work, but I will definitely be watching this thread.
please do, Im tempted to put a flash app together, since my Java skills are lacking. The Flash Lite platform is pretty good.
u should try this..
i think dguitar technically will work on your device together with java emulator software..
Unfortunatelly it's not so easy to convert Java SE (Swing) application to a J2MEE one. There are a lot of problems and as here we would need to convert both GUI and MIDI (sound) I think it's better to find an application predestined for PPC.
Maybe you could use Milktracker. Not exactly guitar but piano! http://www.milkytracker.net/
Or maybe :
MilkyPlay 0.9.7
MilkyPlay is a free module player for PocketPC supporting various formats.
Features:
- support for 669, AMS, AMF, CBA, DIGI, DSM, FAR, GDM, IMF, MOD,
MDL, MTM, MXM, OKT, PLM, PSM, PTM, S3M, STM, ULT, UNI and XM
- linear interpolation for better sample quality
- volume ramping for click removal
- audio visualisation
- nice GUI
- Song info viewer (instruments/samples/songmessage)
- playlists
- shuffle playback
- configurable button layout
- support for zip compressed modules)
http://peter.nxbone.net/MilkyPlay.zip
Not tried links recently.
Or maybe this link:
http://freewareppc.com/multimedia/pianonm.shtml
Or this other commercial one:
http://www.pocketpccity.com/software/pocketpc/Guitar-Fretboard-Addict-2005-12-16-ce-pocketpc.html
Sorry if I am barking up the wrong tree!
After recently coming across the open-source DGuitar project, I became interested in seeing if it was possible to port it to run on a win mobile JVM. As mjanek20 said earlier, the two major obstacles in doing this would be getting the Swing GUI components and the MIDI playback to work on these limited devices. The GUI components are actually not that big of an issue. On most WM devices, third-party JVM's (such as Creme) are available that support AWT and/or Swing components. The *really* difficult part is going to be the MIDI support. I've done a lot of research on this in the last few days, and I can't find any support (Java or otherwise) for low-level MIDI progamming. At best, there is support for playing back an entire MIDI file, but this is not appropriate for a Guitar-Pro viewer/player, where individual MIDI events need to be sent to the MIDI device in real-time. As I see it, there are three possibilties:
1) Substitute the MIDI events with simple tone events. This will give us basic sound, but we will be missing all the nifty effects like sliding, bending, hammer-on/off, fret noise, palm muting, etc.
2) Use a MIDI file exported from a GP file, and try to play this back in sync while displaying the tab in the GUI. Not sure how viable this is, just an idea at this point. I would hope it would solve some of the problems noted in solution 1, but syncronization and looping sections might be a problem here.
3) Program my own MIDI-to-PCM engine. I think some people have already done somethng like this (for instance, I am guessing the guys that came up with the Vibe MIDI sequencer midlet rolled their own), but unfortunately I havent found any open source, and frankly I'm too dumb and lazy to build something like this from scratch...so I'll probably start with solution 1 and then maybe see about implememnting solution 2.
I'll post my progress with the DGuitar port when I make a significant breakthru....if anybody else has any good ideas about a MIDI solution, let me know.
what is your progress with this? have you stop?
Hi,
So what is the actual progress?
I don`t really need the Midi playback, it would be perfect to just view the Tabs of a GP3, GP4 or GP5 File!!
Any other app around?
Regs
Sideburnt said:
Looking around the net I found a program called DGuitar which is supposed to be able to run on any platform with Java, I managed to get a .Jar file to play with but it doesn't install on my pocket PC (would have been a bit too easy eh)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DQuitar was written in Java indeed. But not in JavaME (ME stands for mobile edition) which is supported by most mobile phone. This is a huge different, and unfortunately DQuitar will not work on mobile devices.
Maybe it could be worth trying using JavaFX from Sun/Oracle while it's still available for our PPCs.
Jbed can run almost nothing where JavaFX behave correctly (except for on-the fly screen rotation). For instance, display is completely messed up using Jbed with Angry Birds, while the game is completely functional using JavaFX.
Quitar

Comparing Rooted Android against Jailbroken iPhone

Hi all,
In the past three years, we've witnessed greatly increased competition among smartphones. Android and iPhone are considered by some to be the two most serious contenders, and both have attracted many new users who migrated from the other platform. I myself was a devoted winmo user, and had used every generation of winmo phones/PDA since the late 90's. When iPhone was first released, I did not take it seriously at all, because there were so many limitations and the initial phone did not support third party applications. I made the change from winmo to iPhone only in 2009 after a rather detailed comparison exercise between winmo and iPhone. I've been more than happy with my decision and the jailbroken phone. However, technology does not stay still, and there has been lots of changes especially in the hardware end and the entry of Google into the smartphone business. Personally, I'm greately tempted by the potential of hugh screen size offered by handsets such as the HTC supersonic, and would like to understand if my smartphone experience could be enhanced even more by switching to Android. I also think that this topic area would appear on the forum for every single Android phone, and it might be good to centralise the discussion to get the maximum input possible. Hence this thread.
RULE FOR THID THREAD:
Rule 1: General Courtesy:
I would like to state that this is not a thread for any basher or haters of Google or Apple. If you're one of them, please leave and preach your anti-evil corporation philosophy elsewhere. This is also not meant to be a thread to try to convert any Google phone user to iPhone or vise versa, so while I recognise it's going to be hard, please try your best to stay objective and refrain from imposing your opinion as the only possible logical choice on others. I plead that all you all observe this, so as to get to the end of all the discussion and research as efficiently as possible.
Note: While it is not within my power to remove trouble makers, I will not be responding to any troll on this thread.
Rule 2: Discuss one area at a time, with suitable heading in the title of your post.
This thread may become very long, and people interested in finding out specific comparison should not be made to read through every word in every post. So, let's always describe in the title of your post what your points pertain to.
For now, the title descriptions to be used are: (If you feel the need to have additional topic area for comparision, please let me know so that it can be added here)
- Cut and paste design
- Multitasking design
- hardware button design
- multimedia capabilities
- Touchscreen technology
- Storage capability
- Processor and graphic capability
- Market place
- Application software
- Vendor support
- Firmware upgrade
- Battery life and design
- Camera and video
- Best GPS software (I feel that this is important enough to warrant distinct segregation)
- Theme and UI customization capabiilty
- User interface of applications
- User interface of desktop/sprinboard/program launcher/widget/task switcher
- Application defaults
- Notification handling
- Best web browsing application
- Global search
- Speech recognition
- Device management (backup, restore, syncing, etc)
- Side loading of applications
- File Management and Access
- Using it as a business phone
Rule 3: FULL potential of the phone. You can tweak, customize, as long as the procedure could reasonably be expected of an ordinary user.
Since this thread is mean to help END user choose the BEST phones in the market, the capability that you discuss must come from application programs that has already been made available to the public rather than something that can be done but requires programming knowledge to achieve it. Similar, it. A jailbroken/rooted phone's capability can be discussed as long as the jailbreak tool is available and could reasonably be performed by an average user without hacking skill to personally do the hacking themselves. Also, since my intention is mainly to find out which should be my next phone, we should base it on OS4.0 in iPhone, iPhone HD, and the best possible Android hardware likely to be available in the next few months, and I assume this is HTC Supersonic.
Therefore, no "the phone is crippled out of the box" type of debates please.
Rule 4: Focus on describing the capability rather then merely state your opinion on your preference without backing it up. (For this reason, I'll only draw up a comparision chart after giving everyone the chance to state all the known facts.). Try to state the name of the program/utility that you would use to achieve that capability. I think this would be highly educational.
Enough rules for now. Let's see how it goes.
Thank you for participating on this thread.
Cheers.
Summary post (reserved)
Summary post (reserved for future use)
Summary post 2(reserved)
Reserved for future use.
Summary post 3
Reserved for future use
Cut and Paste design
Android
-------
Please correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is that the cut and paste design is a little inconsistent depending on the OEM. I've personally played with a Samsung Galaxy, and noted two different cut and paste design:
1) Press and hold. Unfortunately, there is no magnifying glass pop up to indicate the position of the cursor. You have then to use the joystick(not sure if this is what they call it) to position it.
2) I vaguely remember at other place, method 1 is not supported. You have to use the hardware button , and select an item there in order to do copy and paste.
Recently, I had a chance to look at a video showing the cut and paste in one of the HTC Android phones, and noted a third method, very similar to iPhone, but the magnifying glass is square rather than round.
I also got the impression that copy and paste is not supported on non-enterable field. I'm seeking users with expertise to correct/enhance this piece of information.
Edit: See post #71 for some more precise description on how cut and paste works in Android, described by dsymbol.
iPhone
------
Press and hold will provide the handle to select the text for copying. This pretty much work across all the places, including email, webpages, on both enterable and non-enterable fields.
Edit: However, there ARE also some rare exceptions where inconsistencies have been found, mainly arising from software created before iPhone introduced cut and paste in version 3.0 I think. An example that comes to my mind is an office document application called QuickOffice, which was around prior to OS3.0 I think. Here, to select text in the word document, instead of holding your finger down, you have to double tap to reveal the handle for text selection, you then press an icon at the bottom to copy or cut. This is quite different from the usual methods used by applications using the Apple's standard API. Most office documents applications including Office2 (It is actually Office square, with a little 2 at the top right of the word Office) and Document to Go are using the familiar cut and paste used everywhere else.
Multimedia capability
A. Using hardware button to start/pause/skip/repeat song and change volume without headset
- iPhone: Yes, using a Cydia application called VolumeButton Extender
- Android: hardware button can only control volume and not pause/play/skip/repeat.
B. Using supplied headset to start/pause/skip/repeat song and control volume
- iPhone: Yes.
- Android: It can start/pause/skip/repeat with the phone in the pocket, but any volume change must be done on the device itself.
C: Volume change increment:
- iPhone: 16 volume increment, allowing you have have the volume closest to your need, e.g, listening music while trying to get to sleep without being kept awake.
- Android: 8 only, therefore offering less precise volume level for the user. Not sure if this is device specific or generic across all Android phones.
D: Playlist combining audio and video files and playing video files with phone shut off.
- iPhone: Yes. In order to play video with screen completely shut off, switch off the phone, and on the lock screen start the music player, then switch off.
- Android: It is possible to play music video with the screen shut off, but you cannot combine video and audio in the playlist. In fact the default music player does not play video - only audio.
I invite Android users to help to beef up or correct information pertaining to rooted Android phone's capabilities.
Multitasking
A: Extend of multitasking for third party applications.
Android: All applications seems to be kept alive regardless of the situations.
iPhone: If you use the Backgrounder, all applications and processes could be kept alive. If you use the smart multitasking from Apple itself, only processes that needs to be kept alive are kept alive. Such processes include GPS function, audio streaming, file upload/download where the service must be completed without interuption. Apple believes that this smart multitasking is the key to battary life and performance, so have chosen this implementation instead of what Steve Job called an easy but wrong method of "full multitasking". Application's "state" is saved, so users need not exit an application when switching to another one.
B: Methods of task switching by showing active tasks and choosing it.
Android: Menu button to show the most recently used task, which could be different from active task. Hence a newly boot up Android might not show the phone application although it is already active. This is the only method for switching to other running application without going to the program launcher.
iPhone: Many options exist to show active tasks and choosing which to switch to. Method of invoking could be one of the 19 ways provided by the Activator(methods include single click of home key, double click of home key, press and hold the home key, shake the device, double press the sleep button quickly, press and hold the sleep button, slide into the screen from below, slide into the screen from bottom left, slide into the screen from bottom right, pinch the springboard, spread the springboard, double tap the status bar, tap and hold the status bar, swipe down the status bar, swipe left on the status bar, swipe right on the status bar, tap on volume heads up display, press volume down then up, press volume up then down.)
Kirikae: list the active task. You can kill the application or switch to it there.
Circuitous: List the icons of the active task. You can kill the application or switch to it there.
Multiflow: Display and switch to task Palm Pre style. You may close the application by swiping it off, among many available methods.
ProSwitcher: Display and switch to task Palm Pre style. You may close the application by swiping it off, among many available methods.
There are others doing more or less the same thing which I would not bother listing on. You just have to choose a method that suits your own preference and personality.
With OS4.0, double click of home button will show the most recent task on the dock and switch to the application there. You might close the application by holding the icon until it wobbles and press the deletion badge.
C: Going directly to the next and previous application without bringing up a list of task:
Android: You may use the back button to go the previous application. Going to the next application is not supported by one click/touch operation.
iPhone: Using Circuiutous, you may use any of the 19 methods mentioned above to go to the next and previous application. Some people find it extremely intuitive to swipe the taskbar left and right to go to next or previous application, similar to the way pictures are changed. You could of course also use hardware button if that's what you prefer.
I invite Android users to correct/beef up any unmentioned methods.
boi youre wastin your time,
pick up your iphone and go to hell with it...
steve,
It would be nice and easier to just have a comparison table like the one Sethos II made.
gogol said:
steve,
It would be nice and easier to just have a comparison table like the one Sethos II made.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion. My intention was to draw that up only after all the facts are known, rather than making biased conclusion without the benefit of complete information. It will be included later. That's why I've reserved a few empty posts to do just that.
Battery life and design
A. Removable battary - This is something that I cherish quite a lot during my winmo days. I liked the ability to carry along spare battaries before I board the plane for a long trip for example, where power source is an issue.
Android - YES!
iPhone - No. There are alternative portable power packs but they tend to make the phone bulkier. There are also portable chargers, but these solution is just not as good as having user replaceable battaries.
File Manager and Access
A. File Manager
iPhone:
Using an application like iFile from Cydia, users could see all the directories and subdirectories, and files in all directories. It also allows the files to be copied, deleted, moved. Clicking on a picture would display the picture, clicking on a music file will play the music file.
However, if you're trying to do a file attachment on a forum like here, it cannot be done.
Android: Same weakness due to not having a native file manager???
B. Ability for all applications to use the same directory?
iPhone:
Generally there is no such capability, although there are exception (e.g. The music player dTune could play music files downloaded with the Music Meow application). Therefore, if I have more than one spreadsheet programs in an iPhone, these different applications could not update the same spreadsheet file because the file has to be stored in the application's own directory. iFile of course could access any directory and display files in any directory.
Android:
Any such limitation? Which are some of the popular spreadsheet applications for example? Could you specify the location of the saved files to be anywhere?
Side loading of applications
Sideloading allows users to install programs which were not from the officially sactioned market place:
Android: - Yes.
iPhone - Yes. Non-programmer type users could install applications from the Cydia store. These are often program that Apple won't approve, but could also contain applications removed from the App Store such as porn applications.
Multimedia capabilities
A. Video playback test.
I invite anyone to provide links of videos for testing purposes to compare the two phone's playback capability.
For now, I would like to get you guys to refer to this thread and see if the video play by just clicking on the link. If not, are you able to download it and play smoothly, without pause or frame loss? Without the audio/video going out of sync? Details about this video is in post #7. The file is made for the screen resolution of HD2.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=645610
iPhone:
Yes. Without conversion, it plays smoothly although the video is not made for the iPhone screen resolution.
See youtube videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAGqKYlSnHA - this is playing after downloading the file
Here is the video test when played directly rather than downloded first.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C39CHtqOAso
Android:
Does it play?
Did I miss something or there's nothing about, say, business capabilities - Exchange and Office support? Don't know how to label the post, but here's the question:
On the iPhone, I know there are office package(s) available, but here's what I want to know - how do you transfer files there? Do you get a documents folder or do you need to look for a directory with one of those cryptic names? Also, how does it handle email attachments? Can I save a ppt I receive for later use in the office program?
With regard to Exchange - can I have full support that will include push for Tasks, Email, Calendar and Contacts? Not push for the latter three and manual sync for Tasks?
Best GPS software
iPhone:
Probably no single vendor can justifiably claim that they have the best GPS in every country. TomTom is the best in Australia (I'll justify that assessment later), but it is probably not as good in say Navigon in US, if we base it on sales statistics. The major choices are:
TomTom
Navigon
iGO
NDrive
Sygic
M6 (which I understand is the best in Asean)
Copilot
Each user may have a different idea of what constitute the best. Some value live traffics, some speed warning, some completeness of road speed information for speed monitoring, some warning upon approaching schools, some the ability to perform google search in addition to POI search, some 3D realistic view, some music control within the application, some intelligent routing that considers traffic congestions among other things, some text to speech, some multitouch user interface for map zooming in and out, some completeness of safety camera database, some map currency.
In Australia, my own preference is TomTom. It has extremely nice user interface, google search , very complete speed information for all roads, map is quite up to date for most places, it incorporates pinch and zoom, warn you when appraoching safety camera and when you overspeed, allows easy control of music without leaving the application, has 3D realistic view for major highway exits and intersections, decent text to speech option. After receiving phone calls, it automatically resume with the most up-to-seconds GPS coordinate and location without waiting for signal. If the call is terminated by the other party there is no need to touch the phone for the resume to be completed.
Sygic also uses the same map, but the UI is bad and reminds me of the winmo style, although the UI is still way better than winmo type of GPS.
Navigon, Copilot, iGo, NDrive all uses maps with rather incomplete speed information in Australia.
Android GPS ??
Which is the best in Australia and what can it do?
Note: I use Android, so if it sounds like I am biased, it's because I am (Although I tried to stay unbias). I removed some categories because I felt that either I did not know the answer (Rare) or that I didn't feel like taking the time to write one up. These are NOT definitive answers based on potential, this is purely from stock functionality (With touches on their equivalent of being rooted sometimes). Why did I do a stock comparison? This because 1) That's what most people will use and 2) The limits of both OS' when rooted/jailbroken are almost non-existent
- Cut and paste design
iPhone: Hold over text, magnifying glass comes up, release to get the two bars then drag them to copy. This is pretty straight-forward.
Android: Method 1- Hold on text entry place, then choose "Select All" or "select Text"
Method 2- If your device has a keyboard, hold the shift button and select text (Works in most places)
Method 3 (Limited to 2.1 sense Users)- Same as iPhone, but it has a few more options than cut, copy, paste.
- Multitasking design
iPhone; Currently not available for stock and I have no experience of it with a kailbroken iPhone
Android: Android multi-tasks without tweaking. It can hold as many app in memory as RAM allows (It will only kill processes when the processes kill themselves or when it runs out of memory, in which case it kills the oldest ones). To see a list of RECENTLY running processes, hold the home button. This will bring up a list of the last 6 used (Obviously it's not practical to show the 50 or so the Nexus can have running at the same time).
- hardware button design
iPhone: Home button which is multi-functional (Home, Double tap will have different functions depending on users choice/firmware), (Camera Button?), Volume Rocker, and Sleep/Wake Button.
Android: All Android phones MUST include at least a Home Button (also multi-functional, but not as much so), a Menu Button, a Back Button, and as far as I know an End Call Button. They also usually include a camera button and a volume rocker.
- multimedia capabilities
Not quite sure what we want here, but if it is how the experience is, the iPhone wins pretty heavily. Android can do the same exact things, but it looks ugly while doing it. Sense Users have the best form of Music app in Htc Music, but I'll try to stick to stock for now.
- Storage capability
iPhone: Whichever size you buy is what you're stuck with for life (16 or 32gb in 3GS)
Android: Normally have limited internal memory (Action of phone manufacturer) which means many apps may not be installed (Not a problem as most Android apps are under 1mb). Sdcards are used, give an "unlimited" amount of external storage.
- Processor and graphic capability
iPhone: Pretty sure it's 600 mhz, correct me if wrong
Android: So far we're at 1ghz, need I say more?
- Market place
iPhone: Don't own one so someone else will need to cover this
Android: Mention what you need to know and one of us Android users will tell you.
- Application software
Not quite sure what we mean by this.
- Vendor support
Both operating systems is for as long as the hardware capabilities don't force them to stop supporting it.
- Firmware upgrade
iPhone: Upgrade through iTunes, you may not get all features in the firmware update.
Android: OTA updates, if you're getting the update you usually get everything in it.
- Battery life and design
iPhone: No removable battery, and from what I've heard, battery life sucks.
Android: Removable Batteries, from what I've heard, the Nexus can go a day and a half no problem. The Nexus is thinner than iPhone, has a bigger screen, looks sexy but the iPhone would win in this department (But the plastic backs kind of kill it on the iPhone for me)
- Best GPS software (I feel that this is important enough to warrant distinct segregation)
iPhone: Third-Party apps, not sure which is best
Android: The Google Navigation is by far the best I have ever used
- Theme and UI customization capabiilty
iPhone: Out of the box, you can change the lockscreen wallpaper and move icons around.
Android: Wallpaper, Homescreens, can replace anything if you don't like it (Most apps will allow you to use that instead of the stock app equivalent).
- User interface of applications:
iPhone: In my opinion, they are all a little stale because they use the SAME exact interface (But that's the point of a user interface).They use the bar at top, bar at bottom for navigation, it's all equivalent to the stock apps
Android: They vary a little more in UI but they all are the same on thie inside. Press Menu to view options, they all have the grey bar (Mostly because this is integrated into the Android framework)
- User interface of desktop/sprinboard/program launcher/widget/task switcher
iPhone:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Android:
- Notification handling
iPhone: Annoying popups, 'nuf said
Android: Status bar, pull down to see all notifications
- Best web browsing application
Not really a fair comparison as iPhone has two (Opera or Safari)
- Global search
iPhone: Can search all device files from homescreen
Android: Same as iPhone but the web search is also integrated
- Speech recognition
iPhone: Voice Over, For Music and...? purposes
Android: Voice Search by holding the search button, Voice Dialer by holding send button, voice keyboard in all text entry fields
- Side loading of applications
Clarification?
- File Management and Access
iPhone: Not sure
Android: Have full access to the all partitions other than the system partition (AFAIK) without root.
Ok so here is my verdict on iPhone Vs ANDROID
When iPhone was release i was an Apple fanboy form that very time, i paid heavily for iPhones, they were like life to me, i have every iPhone to date and the first android i got was the G1, on using it i could only say one thing, it is the future and it is proved itself day by day
Experiences
1. Jailbroken iPhone
I love how u can do almost anything but nothing in the iPhone, only thing an iPhone drools over is apps and apps and nothing else. iPhone has an edge over android in just apps. For everything else u are crippled and for anything u want to do u ought to have a computer. Battery life is not what i would love and it has a boring interface good enough for 50 year old person who can just understand to dialer and dial
Android
Android is still immature, one thing u would hate about android is that it updates acc. to devices, it will add a feature only when a device is made to have the feature. other things Android is the most customizable OS ever made in the history of smartphones and mobiles. It has a clean interface if u understand it and by far the most efficient in everything it does. You shouldnt be surprised when it updates itself to become more efficient. iPhone revolutionized the designing but android revolutionized software. Android what i say is a complete OS, it just like a mini computer, to use it u dont need to have a computer, u can do everything on the phone itself, u want to add some music, videos anything do it on the phone itself, u want to update, download do it on the phone itself and it is robust enough to even create websites, i created my website using my android phone and nothing else, Android has endless possibilities.
Multimedia-
u dont have to be tied to computer to do anything on android. U can use anything 3rd party if u dont like stock, 3rd party has the ability to add more stuff which is not in stock. onlu con is that u have no equalizer.
It can play more formats than iPhone, u dont need to convert and sync music, u r not tied to use the default music player. The gallery is the best one around.
Android has the most user friendly interface, what u need most is on the desktop others in the drawer. In iPhone u have to arrange every app u install, u can just move in one way, what u have on front is the same old apps icons, android u have icons, widgets and more.
iPhone has one prop and that is app android has one con that is less apps thats it. everything is editable if u r rooted, u can edit anything u want, u have the source to the platform, u can build one urself, if u know coding u can add everything and anything to it
So Android is gonna have more apps in some time and iPhone will age sooner than intended. Comparing Rooted Android to iPhone is like comparing Gold to Brick. As i already told with ur android being rooted u can add any feature urself by editing directly in the source code, and iPhone u r stuck with Cydia developers who can change how the iPhone OS functions but can only add features
vangrieg said:
Did I miss something or there's nothing about, say, business capabilities - Exchange and Office support? Don't know how to label the post, but here's the question:
On the iPhone, I know there are office package(s) available, but here's what I want to know - how do you transfer files there? Do you get a documents folder or do you need to look for a directory with one of those cryptic names? Also, how does it handle email attachments? Can I save a ppt I receive for later use in the office program?
With regard to Exchange - can I have full support that will include push for Tasks, Email, Calendar and Contacts? Not push for the latter three and manual sync for Tasks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, good point. It must be considered.
What are "business capabilities" though? I think we need to have a good list of what these are. Let start with what you already got and add some to it myself:
- Exchange support (perhaps even MULTIPLE exchange support) for address, calendar, tasks, and email.
- Ability to edit and create office documents with reasonably complete functions in say excel spreadsheet.
- Saving attachments in email, editing them, and resending them out.
- Presence of client applications that works together with enterprise software such as SAP.
- Ability to remote wipe data from lost phones
- Ability to install corporate applications over the air
- Conference call or even video conferencing to substitute face to face meetings
- Printing of documents (e.g. customers require receipts, written quotation, etc)
- Ability to prevent data from physically removed from the phone via MicroSDHC card or alternatively ability to enforce highly reliable data encryption on data stored there.
- Ability to enforce use of password on phone?
- Ability to PREVENT it from becoming so much fun that employees spend all their time on facebook, chats, and games??? (Hence they would prefer RIM phones??)
Anyone else can think of what the corporate IT people might look for in choosing a corporate phone? Or is it more of matter of "the boss loves his iPhone, so we have no choice but to allow it?"
Thanks for this.
charnsingh_online said:
I love how u can do almost anything but nothing in the iPhone, only thing an iPhone drools over is apps and apps and nothing else. iPhone has an edge over android in just apps. For everything else u are crippled
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you comprehensively list in which areas iPhone is crippled? Sometimes people think that a phone can't do certainly thing, but it could be due to lack of awareness and knowledge of the capability. Thats' one of the reason for having this thread - to learn from each other. To get maximum benefit from each other's experience, let's keep our mind open to new information.
charnsingh_online said:
and for anything u want to do u ought to have a computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? This is new to me. I would like to offer a different perspective on this.
I know iPhone lets you install new programs and updates , buy music/video/movies, edit photo taken, compile musics, and make songs of your own, send files to another phone without going through a computer.
There are only three things that strictly requires computer:
a. Install new firmware and perform restore, which is once in a while event that I would rather use my PC anyway in view of how large the file is and how expensive my 3G data quota would cost me.
b. Performing backup and restore. This would also include backing up application data such as that for eWallet, GolfCard, PocketMoney, etc.
c. Syncing to outlook
You may see the need for a computer to do this as a negative, but I personally see that as a positive. Because with this I have the ability to backup my entire device and if my phone requires a restore/hard reset/or replacement, I can recover every applications including the data quickly. It is not practical to do backup of such large amount of data over the air. It is also not assuring from security viewpoint to keep any of your phone data in the cloud. The only place to keep them is your own PC.
charnsingh_online said:
Battery life is not what i would love
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In terms of length of a single battery, I really do not have any complaint against iPhone. It is more or less the same situation with the other HTC phones which I owned. It varies depending on usage pattern, brightness level, how tempted you are to look at the beautiful screen every 5 minutes, whether you leave location service/bluetooth/3G/wifi running, the strength of the cell signal, etc. Frankly, I think it's hard to say which battery is better due to the difficulties in measurement, different age of the batteries being compared, etc.
The only complain I had was the fact that it's non-replaceable.
charnsingh_online said:
it has a boring interface
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you're talking about the home page here?
Have you used home page replacement products such as Overboard or Pogoplank? Or themes.
charnsingh_online said:
Android is still immature, one thing u would hate about android is that it updates acc. to devices, it will add a feature only when a device is made to have the feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't quite understand what you mean by "it updates acc. to devices" or "will add a feature only when a device to made to have a feature"- would you mind clarify this point please? Has this got anything to do with the "fragmentation" problem that they talked about?
charnsingh_online said:
other things Android is the most customizable OS ever made in the history of smartphones and mobiles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would you mind explain in a little more details on what sorts of customization are possible?
charnsingh_online said:
It has a clean interface if u understand it and by far the most efficient in everything it does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How so?
charnsingh_online said:
is a complete OS, it just like a mini computer, to use it u dont need to have a computer, u can do everything on the phone itself, u want to add some music, videos anything do it on the phone itself, u want to update, download do it on the phone itself and it is robust enough to even create websites, i created my website using my android phone and nothing else, Android has endless possibilities.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you of the impression that adding music, videos, updates, download are not possible on iPhone and that everything has to be done on the PC first?
charnsingh_online said:
u dont have to be tied to computer to do anything on android. U can use anything 3rd party if u dont like stock, 3rd party has the ability to add more stuff which is not in stock. onlu con is that u have no equalizer.
It can play more formats than iPhone, u dont need to convert and sync music, u r not tied to use the default music player. The gallery is the best one around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is this different from iPhone again?
charnsingh_online said:
Android has the most user friendly interface, what u need most is on the desktop others in the drawer. In iPhone u have to arrange every app u install, u can just move in one way, what u have on front is the same old apps icons, android u have icons, widgets and more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain in what way it has the most user friendly interface? Here you're talking about the desktop/program launcher. So you said that the frequently used programs can be kept on the desktop along with widgets, etc, and then you can have "drawer" to contain the other programs, right?
Please tell me when you're in the middle of a program and wish to start a new program inside one of the drawers, what is the procedure to start that program. Is it 1)Menu to go to desktop 2) Swipe to the place where drawer is located 3) click on the drawer 4) touch the icon of the drawer?
charnsingh_online said:
iPhone has one prop and that is app android has one con that is less apps thats it. everything is editable if u r rooted, u can edit anything u want, u have the source to the platform, u can build one urself, if u know coding u can add everything and anything to it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
charnsingh_online said:
As i already told with ur android being rooted u can add any feature urself by editing directly in the source code, and iPhone u r stuck with Cydia developers who can change how the iPhone OS functions but can only add features
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may or may not be right here. I don't know the technical aspect of the two platform to judge. However, for the purpose of this thread, as mentioned in post 1, we're only looking at the capability of the phone from the viewpoint of the masses of ordinary users out there, not the OS programmer. So, if you don't mind, I'd skip this. But just for curiosity, do you yourself modify the Android OS now by editing in the source code of Android OS?
charnsingh_online said:
So Android is gonna have more apps in some time and iPhone will age sooner than intended.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope so. I hope to see TomTom for Android ASAP.

[Q] Office Mobile fully functional?

Hi guys,
I've searched this forum and haven't found an answer to my question, so I'm gonna post it here. (Hopefully I did the search right and didn't commit the felony of a double post. )
I'm planning on buying a new phone, mainly because my old HTC Charmer (WM 6.1) doesn't support SDHC cards and the maximum of 4GB of the cards I can use with it is just not enough any more.
So far, I've read quite some disappointing details about Windows Phone 7:
- No more "free" apps (by which I mean apps programmed by someone and offered somewhere, now it's the same sh** as with an iPhone or an Android phone)
- No direct USB-sync, which means you have to send your private information to the cloud in order to sync
- No "real" support for SD-Cards (and getting more storage space is the whole da** point here, otherwise I'm quite happy with my Charmer)
So, basically I thought about getting a second hand HTC Touch Pro II running WM 6.5 AND supporting NORMAL SDHC cards (meaning ALL cards which comply with the standard, not just the ones "certified by Microsoft").
But there might be one killer feature which could make me, well, not really forget, but maybe turn a blind eye to WP7's SHAMEFUL flaws: The new Microsoft Office Mobile. Often, I have some Excel spreadsheets which I need for work at different places. This is the only reason I have to take a laptop computer with me, apart from that my phone would be fine.
Office Mobile in WM 6.1 (or 6.5) couldn't display / make use of all the features the Desktop-Version offered (like extremely complicated formulae or spreadsheets and of course macros), and, moreover, after having worked on and saved an Office document on a phone, the features would even have been removed from the file in the conversion process, so the file was useless on the desktop as well.
Thus, I'm asking the following questions (which surprisingly haven't been answered on the net so far, or am I just too stupid to google it right?):
- Is the Office in WM 7 fully functional, meaning you can work on Excel sheets with the most complicated formulae and macros, or, asked more simple, can you do everything you can do with the Desktop version on your phone as well?
- If it doesn't offer everything the desktop versions offers, does it at least keep everything that was there in the original file after you change and save it on your phone? I mean, even if I can't use macros on the Windows Phone, it might still be helpful to open an .xls file on the phone, make a few changes (which don't require macros), save the file on the phone and after putting it back on a desktop computer having the file "unharmed" (meaning except for the small change I made on the phone everything else is as it was)?
Hopefully, I made my point clear enough, if not, I'm happy to answer questions on what it is exactly that I want to know. I think many users here already having a Windows phone will have tried working on Office documents on their phones and I hope those will share their experiences with me.
Many thanks for reading my post and even more thanks for answering.
Peter
Firstly,in terms of the functionalities of the excel,I don't think WP7 is suitable for you.
Furthermore,personally I prefer USB drag and drop the documents to my device,maybe you can call me old school.I just find the office useless for me since I don't have sharepoint,I don't want create a dropbox account just to upload my file to cloud and download it to my device again and I don't have a data plan.Therefore,until now, I still didn't use the office app once.
In your situation,I think you need an android phone to handle your job this moment,you can just purchase quick office,docs to go,depends on your personal preference.In addition,the only office app available is just microsoft office,no other choices.furthermore,as you said,you want transfer it back to your desktop unharm,therefore it is good to have drag and drop file transfer function rather than rely on dropbox,upload to the cloud and download on your desktop again.
On the other hand,there is no clear information about the mango updates which add more features to the office.So,I'll would suggest you to go with Android or iOS for this moment.
Thank you for the answer.
No more "free" apps (by which I mean apps programmed by someone and offered somewhere, now it's the same sh** as with an iPhone or an Android phone)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Free, in cost, there are plenty. Free as in not first checked by MS, kinda but no. You can developer unlock your device and sideload apps. However, that being said, MS are pretty good, they're only blocking apps which don't meet quality control standards (which I think is a good thing) or, somewhat contentiously, are "adult". They're not playing the same game as Apple.
I'm confused by you saying Android though. You can easily download and install programs (apk) on your device from any source (you just have to choose that option in the settings).
Office in Mango is improving - specifically:
1. Better support for formulae
2. Skydrive sync
So, yes, formulae can be created and manipulated in Excel, though I wouldn't say it's a replacement for the real Excel. It certainly can't run macros.
Skydrive is still "in the cloud" however, you're automatically registered to the free account by the virtue of having a live id. I still believe we should have USB file transfer but at least this is better than nothing.
Casey

[APP][2.3+] SDR Touch - Live radio on your Android device

Listen to live FM broadcasts on devices that don't have a built-in FM radio!
Description
SDR Touch turns your mobile phone or tablet into a cheap and portable software defined radio scanner. Allows you to listen to live on air FM radio stations, weather reports, police, fire department and emergency stations, taxi traffic, airplane communications, audio of analogue TV broadcasts, audio amateurs, digital broadcasts and many more! Depending on the hardware used, its radio frequency coverage could span between 50 MHz and 2.2 GHz. It currently demodulates WFM, AM, NFM, USB, LSB, DSB, CWU and CLW signals.
You can get a compatible USB receiver for under $20 online from eBay. Just plug in your rtl-sdr compatible USB DVB-T tuner into your Android device using a USB OTG Cable and turn on SDR Touch. For list of supported Realtek RTL2832U based dongles, please see the end of the description.
Compatible USB DVB-T tuners
- Generic RTL2832U (e.g. hama nano)
- ezcap USB 2.0 DVB-T/DAB/FM dongle
- Terratec Cinergy T Stick Black (rev 1)
- Terratec NOXON DAB/DAB+ USB dongle (rev 1)
- Terratec Cinergy T Stick RC (Rev.3)
- Terratec T Stick PLUS
- Terratec NOXON DAB/DAB+ USB dongle (rev 2)
- PixelView PV-DT235U(RN)
- Compro Videomate U620F
- Compro Videomate U650F
- Compro Videomate U680F
- Sweex DVB-T USB
- GTek T803
- Lifeview LV5TDeluxe
- MyGica TD312
- PROlectrix DV107669
- Zaapa ZT-MINDVBZP
- Twintech UT-40
- Dexatek DK DVB-T Dongle (Logilink VG0002A)
- Dexatek DK DVB-T Dongle (MSI DigiVox mini II V3.0)
- Dexatek Technology Ltd. DK 5217 DVB-T Dongle
- MSI DigiVox Micro HD
- Genius TVGo DVB-T03 USB dongle (Ver. B)
- GIGABYTE GT-U7300
- DIKOM USB-DVBT HD
- Peak 102569AGPK
- SVEON STV20 DVB-T USB & FM
Interaction with battery savers
It turns out some manufacturers such as Huawei and Samsung have very aggressive power saving policies and force close background apps without notice. If the system decides to kill the RTL-SDR (or SdrPlay) driver while SDR Touch is running, the app will stop playing and become unresponsive eventually showing a "Disconnected unexpectedly" error message.
If you are experiencing this issue, the only solution that currently exists is to manually whitelist *both* the SDR driver app and SDR Touch in your phone's power saving settings to prevent the operating system from unexpectedly stopping the apps. More information and instructions on how to do this based on your particular phone make and model can be found on this website: dontkillmyapp.com
Feedback
An article about SDR Touch - Android Meets the RTL2832U from HamRadioScience
A user submitted video showing off advanced features of SDR Touch running on a mobile phone:
Any additional feature suggestions, comments or feedback will be much appreciated!
looking good sir looking good
Fantastic work. I am excited to see squelch on the list of improvements. Is there any chance that you will ever support a plugin architecture or P25 decoding? There is a decoder called DSD which can decode P25. Squelch+P25 would make it replace my scanner entirely. I would pay additional $$ for each of these features and it would still be more affordable and interesting than carrying around a scanner.
daniel_reetz said:
Fantastic work. I am excited to see squelch on the list of improvements. Is there any chance that you will ever support a plugin architecture or P25 decoding? There is a decoder called DSD which can decode P25. Squelch+P25 would make it replace my scanner entirely. I would pay additional $$ for each of these features and it would still be more affordable and interesting than carrying around a scanner.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the support! Squelch is coming soon! I will look into P25 but we might need to work together on this - you may need to provide me some I/Q recorded samples - but I would say this would be a bit later since I just started my second semester and have some studying to do as well
P.S. Squelch is now on top of my TODO list
Although this seems to be a great app, I couldn't make it to work with Xperia Ray... ("no tuner found" error)
Anyone here had success with making it work on a Xperia phone?
martintzvetomirov said:
Thanks for the support! Squelch is coming soon! I will look into P25 but we might need to work together on this - you may need to provide me some I/Q recorded samples - but I would say this would be a bit later since I just started my second semester and have some studying to do as well
P.S. Squelch is now on top of my TODO list
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fanastic, thank you. I can't wait for squelch!
I'll supply whatever data/info you need to implement P25. I/Q samples are no problem. I understand completely that your time is limited and there is a larger audience to serve, but if you need resources, please let me know what you need and I'll see how I can help.
My account here is new, so I can't post links, but "DSD" and "radioreference wiki" will get you to the DSD source.
Amazing work! Well worth the $9.99USD pricetag. Gave you a nice review on the Google Market/Play Store as well.
FYI: Works wonderfully on an Acer A500 w/ Android 4.2.1.
SDR Touch has been removed by Google from Google Play! I will investigate the issue and will report back as soon as I have more information!!!
If somebody needs the latest version of SDR Touch, please download it from the attachment. Keep in mind that as soon as SDR Touch goes back to Android market you might need to reinstall it in order to get the latest updates!
Ok, just to make it clear for everybody that is concerned.
SDR Touch DOES NOT violate the GPL license!
SDR Touch is merely a client for - https://github.com/martinmarinov/rtl_tcp_andro-. rtl_tcp_andro is released under GPL2+. SDR Touch and rtl_tcp_andro are separate works in the sense of GPL. They are neither statically or dynamically linked and they are two separate executables that communicate over a TCP connection. rtl_tcp_andro is bundled with SDR Touch merely to help the user and with accordance to point 2. of GPL Terms and Conditions. You can think of SDR Tocuh as an "installer" of rtl_tcp_andro. It just launches rtl_tcp_andro with Runtime.exec("");. Furthermore SDR Touch could happily work without the bundled rtl_tcp_andro in network mode by connecting to a remote computer running either rtl_tcp_andro or the original rtl_tcp.
Therefore GPL is not violated. Saying that GPL is violated would be like saying that you can't listen to online radio with your proprietary music player because the radio is being streamed with a GPL based software.
A quote from GPL-3.0:
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you read that quote ?
... and which are NOT combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A single .APK _is_ a single distribution medium ... and they definitely _ARE_ combined to form a larger program. The "SDR Touch" .APK is the larger program, containing both your own code and the rtl_tcp_andro binary. That clause is meant for when you ship a CDRom with different stuff on it for example where they have no special relation ship. Here the relation ship and dependency is clear (even says so in the damn description of the app)
The problem is not with SDR Touch or the way it's a client for a rtl_tcp version, that's the right way to do it.
The problem is that both are distributed bundled.
SDR Touch and rtl_tcp_andro need to be two separate packages to be installed independently by the user.
There is also the requirement to make a written offer and include the full license terms when distributing rtl_tcp_andro, usual way is to include both the license in the .APK and also accessible to the user in the UI (menu often).
Cheers,
Sylvain
smunaut said:
Did you read that quote ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But rtl_tcp_andro is a separate binary and the apk is just a container like a CD Rom. That's precisely the point. The binary classes of SDR Touch are separate entities in the apk file and are not linked to rtl_tcp_andro!. The GPL allows using an "installer" to install proprietary software as well as GPLed software in one go. The Android apk installer grabs the contents of the archive (which is like a rar archive) and unrars it ("installs") it onto the device. When the user is using the program, the two entities are still different and separate!
The license is linked in the Help section of SDR Touch. The thing that I haven't done is to put the license physically on the apk as well.
But that's a good point,
Thanks,
Martin
martintzvetomirov said:
But rtl_tcp_andro is a separate binary and the apk is just a container like a CD Rom. That's precisely the point. The binary classes of SDR Touch are separate entities in the apk file and are not linked to rtl_tcp_andro!. The GPL allows using an "installer" to install proprietary software as well as GPLed software in one go. The Android apk installer grabs the contents of the archive (which is like a rar archive) and unrars it ("installs") it onto the device. When the user is using the program, the two entities are still different and separate!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mmm, first, I'm not sure the APK is uncompressed on the flash.
But you're missing the point that in this case it's a single "application", no matter what binaries it's composed of. It's not pulled independently (as a dependency or not) and via that "installer" you can't get it independently, it's just a single package, even presented as a single application to the user (aren't they both under the same 'title' in the "Application" tab of android ?)
So really, I don't see how you could consider this as not being a "whole" without, like I said, distribute it as two different packages (which would also allow other "users" to use the rtl_tcp_andro for eg) and give a undeniable separation between the two.
smunaut said:
Mmm, first, I'm not sure the APK is uncompressed on the flash.
But you're missing the point that in this case it's a single "application", no matter what binaries it's composed of. It's not pulled independently (as a dependency or not) and via that "installer" you can't get it independently, it's just a single package, even presented as a single application to the user (aren't they both under the same 'title' in the "Application" tab of android ?)
So really, I don't see how you could consider this as not being a "whole" without, like I said, distribute it as two different packages (which would also allow other "users" to use the rtl_tcp_andro for eg) and give a undeniable separation between the two.
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Ok, I see your point and this looks like an option. I still can argue that they are separate but in order to prove that, as you say, I might split them into two packages.
Will see how things go, will keep you posted!
Like smunaut said, this definitely counts as a derivative work as they are being presented to the user as one cohesive application via the Play Store.
This is the same problem that SDR# had some time back, where they tried to distribute the GPL RTL-SDR with their proprietary UI. They thought that, since the UI only communicated with RTL-SDR and wasn't technically part of SDR#, they could include it; but that's not the case. (http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/08/05/confusion-over-sdr-vs-opensdrsharp/)
The solution in this case will be the same as it was for SDR#: Either make the entire application GPL, or break rtl_tcp_andro into a completely separate package. Make sure that the description for the rtl_tcp_andro package clearly states its license, and make sure you link to the GitHub page for it so the source is clearly available. That should cover all the bases.
MS3FGX said:
Like smunaut said, this definitely counts as a derivative work as they are being presented to the user as one cohesive application via the Play Store.
This is the same problem that SDR# had some time back, where they tried to distribute the GPL RTL-SDR with their proprietary UI. They thought that, since the UI only communicated with RTL-SDR and wasn't technically part of SDR#, they could include it; but that's not the case. (http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/08/05/confusion-over-sdr-vs-opensdrsharp/)
The solution in this case will be the same as it was for SDR#: Either make the entire application GPL, or break rtl_tcp_andro into a completely separate package. Make sure that the description for the rtl_tcp_andro package clearly states its license, and make sure you link to the GitHub page for it so the source is clearly available. That should cover all the bases.
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Ok, this makes sense.
Actually this won't be a bad idea after all, I mean if there is a separate app "rtl_tcp_andro" that can do I/Q samples, this might help other developers write their own SDR based applications so therefore help the community.
I don't want to release the processing bit under GPL since it took me quite some time to optimize the algorithms to run on Android so I want to keep my work with this private and this is what Pro users are paying for but rtl_tcp_andro is in the public domain anyways, I will just wrap it around with an apk and release it under GPL.
Please add NetSDR support for RFSpare radios like NetSDR or SDR-IP.
I would pay 10x the Pro price for this! http://sourceforge.net/projects/cutesdr/ and http://cutesdr.svn.sourceforge.net/...face/sdrinterface.cpp?revision=36&view=markup will probably reveal how NetSDR format works.
stejc said:
Please add NetSDR support for RFSpare radios like NetSDR or SDR-IP.
I would pay 10x the Pro price for this! http://sourceforge.net/projects/cutesdr/ and http://cutesdr.svn.sourceforge.net/...face/sdrinterface.cpp?revision=36&view=markup will probably reveal how NetSDR format works.
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I already have sever requests about this. I will keep this idea in the record. I will first need to make sure SDR Touch is working properly and implement the list of features in the first post.
Also, I was able to rapidly prototype so far but now I'm back in University and I am forced to slow down the development speed. So it may take some time.
Any chance to make the whole app Open Source? This would be a nice recognition of the hard work done by the rtl-sdr folks, and solve your packaging problem.
I have licensed APRSdroid (which btw. can modulate and demodulate Packet Radio using audio in/out) under the GPL, and I can not complain about people not getting the paid version from Google Play.
To the contrary, 80% of my users actually bought the app, and all without evil nag screens!
martintzvetomirov said:
Actually this won't be a bad idea after all, I mean if there is a separate app "rtl_tcp_andro" that can do I/Q samples, this might help other developers write their own SDR based applications so therefore help the community.
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Absolutely. That is the idea behind the GPL in the first place, that other developers can benefit from improvements made to the code. Having a separate download for rtl_tcp_andro would definitely be a positive for the community, I could personally think of a couple interesting projects with it.
martintzvetomirov said:
I don't want to release the processing bit under GPL since it took me quite some time to optimize the algorithms to run on Android so I want to keep my work with this private and this is what Pro users are paying for but rtl_tcp_andro is in the public domain anyways, I will just wrap it around with an apk and release it under GPL.
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Of course, it's your right to keep your own software closed source. I don't personally believe in keeping this kind of software closed, but it's your decision.
Though I would like to point out that this type of software is going to get paid downloads either way. The type of users you will attract with this kind of software are the same kinds of users who have no problem donating to open source projects. We aren't talking about some casual game here that just anyone will be downloading, this is an application developed for more technical users who have a pretty good idea of the amount of effort that goes into a project like this.
In any event, I'm glad to see you taking the proper steps to make sure your software is GPL compliant.
FUNcube Pro & FUNcube Pro Plus Support
Any chance FUNcube Pro & FUNcube Pro Plus Dongles Support can be added in the future.

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