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Moving to WM or Android - need some apps

I'm thinking of changing my handset in the near future and currently I have a Nokia N95. I'm a little undecided on either Android or Windows Mobile. Android looks very promising but the HTC Touch HD2 is looking very good. If I was to go Android, I'm probably looking at the Hero or maybe if I can wait for the X10.
However my main concern is actually getting some apps which will replicate what I can currently do with my aging N95. I suppose if there is no available app then it'll make my choice between Android and WM a whole lot easier.
If it's not too much trouble, if some experienced WM/Android users could give me the names of some apps that I require it'd be much appreciated.
Call recorder - Needs to automatically record calls in the background with no beep if possible. Would be nice for it to be able to manually record clips with hotkeys from main screen.
Network client to access network shares, mainly windows shares but sometimes linux (NFS) (guess this is no problem for WM, but for Android?)
Weather application - I've seen this in action already on the HD2, not sure about Android.
Convertor application - Converts currencies (able to retrieve latest rates) and measurements, volumes, etc.
VNC/Remote desktop client - Again, should be easy for WM, but for Android?
SSH client - Needs to be able to tunnel so I can have access to secure connections when using free wifi. (I think I saw ConnectBot for Android, no idea for WM)
Application that can automatically switch profiles (silent, ring, etc.) based on a set of rules such as time or (even better) by location
Media player application (think this is built into WM - but what codecs can it play?)
Many thanks

kai_ said:
I'm thinking of changing my handset in the near future and currently I have a Nokia N95. I'm a little undecided on either Android or Windows Mobile. Android looks very promising but the HTC Touch HD2 is looking very good. If I was to go Android, I'm probably looking at the Hero or maybe if I can wait for the X10.
However my main concern is actually getting some apps which will replicate what I can currently do with my aging N95. I suppose if there is no available app then it'll make my choice between Android and WM a whole lot easier.
If it's not too much trouble, if some experienced WM/Android users could give me the names of some apps that I require it'd be much appreciated.
Call recorder - Needs to automatically record calls in the background with no beep if possible. Would be nice for it to be able to manually record clips with hotkeys from main screen.
Network client to access network shares, mainly windows shares but sometimes linux (NFS) (guess this is no problem for WM, but for Android?)
Weather application - I've seen this in action already on the HD2, not sure about Android.
Convertor application - Converts currencies (able to retrieve latest rates) and measurements, volumes, etc.
VNC/Remote desktop client - Again, should be easy for WM, but for Android?
SSH client - Needs to be able to tunnel so I can have access to secure connections when using free wifi. (I think I saw ConnectBot for Android, no idea for WM)
Application that can automatically switch profiles (silent, ring, etc.) based on a set of rules such as time or (even better) by location
Media player application (think this is built into WM - but what codecs can it play?)
Many thanks
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Click to collapse
Hi, I've been using android for the past six month (never touched WinMo) so hopefully I can help out
1) Call Recorder - No idea, I really don't think this is possible on Android at the moment
2) Next work shares - There are apps in the market for accessing files, but I'm not sure if they will suit your needs
3) Weather - If you get a Hero, you will have HTC's very nice forecast app, very similar to the one present in TouchFlo on WinMo phones. Which has widgets of several sizes. There are also apps in the market which offer more functionalitybut aren't quite so sexy.
4) Currency conversion - Haven't installed one because I haven't needed it, but I'm sure there will be one in the market.
5) VNC - There are a couple of free VNC apps in the market which are both very good.
6) SSH - No idea, sorry.
7) Profiles - There's an app in the market called "Locale" which I'm fairly sure does everything you asked for
8) Media Player - This is where android falls short. Mp4 or 3gp are the only natively supported codecs, and I've yet to see an app which supports any more.

SSH with COnnectBot

Android installation compared to WM

I have some specific questions about Android compared to WM or WP7, whatever. I have been a WM user for quite a long time until WM 6.5 bur never had experience with Android.
I have the following questions:
1) Does Android maintain registry like Windows? In other words, will install/uninstall of test software cause the device to become slower over time or unstable and require hard reset and start from clean?
2) Being a systems engineer, I was able to install several tools including network diagnostic ools on WM. Will I be able to do the same with Android? Better or worse?
3) Can I find similar applications for GPS like those I had on WM? In specific, can I use for example, MLS destinator with Android?
4) Generally, which device is more flexible with applications? (I know that WP7 doesn't have any yet but over time, it will) so, based on that concept, will both devices have the asme capability of handling the same applications or maybe one will be more for games applications and the other for business apps?

1) Uninstall removes everything. You can also selectively wipe data associated to individual apps.
2,3) Maybe you should figure out what you need and ask specific questions Android comes with online maps/navigation and offline apps are for sale on the market.
4) As all first-generation Microsoft products, WP7 will flop. In a few years after pouring countless millions from the OS monopoly it'll be usable...

Moved to General.

Completely agree with Volker. I've used both WinMo and Android, and I'm not going back. I personally feel that Android is much more flexible, especially so because of the open architecture. For the most part, the apps you see in the market will work with most of the modern Android phones. The market itself is a great feature and it's a shame that WinMo didn't really have it. It makes searching for apps really easy, rather than having them floating all over the place and really requiring some searching every now and then for what you might want.
I'm sure you can find equivalent apps to the ones you're looking for, but if you could be a little more specific I'm sure people here would be better able to help you.
And I think WP7 has already been declared a flop in many circles. That's the way it is with their mobile platform, they were too little too late with just not enough put into it to outshine either iOS or Android.

Thanks, I have another concern.
I am a heavy Microsoft Office user. I want all my Outlook calendar, contacts, emails to be in Sync with my phone all the time.
Also, I use Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents a lot on the phone. Will I be able to sync between phone and PC and also compose/modify on the phone? In other words can I have MS Office mobile on Android?
If yes, have you used it? is it reliable/user-friendly?

andreasy said:
Thanks, I have another concern.
I am a heavy Microsoft Office user. I want all my Outlook calendar, contacts, emails to be in Sync with my phone all the time.
Also, I use Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents a lot on the phone. Will I be able to sync between phone and PC and also compose/modify on the phone? In other words can I have MS Office mobile on Android?
If yes, have you used it? is it reliable/user-friendly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The default mail program in Froyo will sync mail and contacts with exchange (dun't know 'bout calendar), though I prefer Touchdown from the market (all 3). And OfficeSuite will handle your office needs. Both work fantastic IMHO.

Anyway ,I like WM,may be I have used..

Android apps on windows phone

Hi guys,
I'm currently using an iPhone as my primary phone and android as a secondary one. I want to shift to windows phone (mango) but there are a few apps on the android not available on winmo which I can't live without. Is there any way to run android apps on the windows mobile the same way(or ANY way) its done on the blackberry play book?
Thanks

I don't think there's any. But there are alternate apps.

Android apps on WP7 would be incredibly difficult, though theoretically it could be done with enough effort.
Most Android apps use Dalvik (a dialect of Java). This is totally incompatible with the Silverlight/C# that WP7 apps use, but there are enough similarities between them that it might be possible to build a tool that either translates the Dalvik instructions to MSIL (the binary that compiling C# produces) at launch, or dynamically interprets it (the latter would be very slow, though).
However, even with purely Dalvik apps, there are other problems. WP7 apps are limited to a very restrictive sandbox, with no access to the vast majority of the filesystem (for example). Android apps, by comparison, have a great deal of access to the device they run on, so even a very simple app may expect to have permissions that wouldn't be available on WP7. Instead, attempts to access restricted parts of the filesystem would have to be "virtually" redirected within the sandbox. This is possible in many cases, but a *lot* of work to code and has all kinds of weird edge cases.
Additionally, Android apps have a very different runtime model from WP7 apps. The biggest change is in how they handle leaving the foreground; WP7 apps are either suspended or dehydrated, while Android apps often just keep running (they can elect to suspend, but aren't required to). WP7 does support background tasks (with strict limitations, at least if you stick to the official APIs), but moving the Android app runtime into those background tasks would be quite difficult.
Finally, there's the issue of hybrid apps (apps that use native code in addition to managed runtimes like Sliverlight or Dalvik). These are much more common on Android than on WP7 (at least, than on WP7 outside this webite). Android runs on a Linux kernel, using POSIX system calls and APIs. WP7 runs on a CE kernel, using win32 system calls and APIs. There's a very loose mapping from one to the other (see the Wine project for running Win32 apps on desktop Linux) but it adds a lot of overhead and would be another layer, at least as tricky as the managed part, to the difficulty of this project.
Short version: nope, sorry.

GoodDayToDie said:
Android apps on WP7 would be incredibly difficult, though theoretically it could be done with enough effort.
Most Android apps use Dalvik (a dialect of Java). This is totally incompatible with the Silverlight/C# that WP7 apps use, but there are enough similarities between them that it might be possible to build a tool that either translates the Dalvik instructions to MSIL (the binary that compiling C# produces) at launch, or dynamically interprets it (the latter would be very slow, though).
However, even with purely Dalvik apps, there are other problems. WP7 apps are limited to a very restrictive sandbox, with no access to the vast majority of the filesystem (for example). Android apps, by comparison, have a great deal of access to the device they run on, so even a very simple app may expect to have permissions that wouldn't be available on WP7. Instead, attempts to access restricted parts of the filesystem would have to be "virtually" redirected within the sandbox. This is possible in many cases, but a *lot* of work to code and has all kinds of weird edge cases.
Additionally, Android apps have a very different runtime model from WP7 apps. The biggest change is in how they handle leaving the foreground; WP7 apps are either suspended or dehydrated, while Android apps often just keep running (they can elect to suspend, but aren't required to). WP7 does support background tasks (with strict limitations, at least if you stick to the official APIs), but moving the Android app runtime into those background tasks would be quite difficult.
Finally, there's the issue of hybrid apps (apps that use native code in addition to managed runtimes like Sliverlight or Dalvik). These are much more common on Android than on WP7 (at least, than on WP7 outside this webite). Android runs on a Linux kernel, using POSIX system calls and APIs. WP7 runs on a CE kernel, using win32 system calls and APIs. There's a very loose mapping from one to the other (see the Wine project for running Win32 apps on desktop Linux) but it adds a lot of overhead and would be another layer, at least as tricky as the managed part, to the difficulty of this project.
Short version: nope, sorry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was quite disheartening for the OP
But I liked the thorough explanation.

for curiosity, which apps are you looking for?

Thanks a million for the detailed reply. I can give up on this now otherwise would have gone crazy searching. As for the apps I wanted to use Rako which basically controls the lighting in my house and creston media which controls my theatre. These I can't live without.
Additional ones would be anonymous email and sms bomb.( to bug my friends)

as for the lighting you got me..
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..

What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!

buffalosolja42 said:
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..
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Crestron controls my theater as a whole i.e lights, projector, blu ray etc. I just need to press 1 button and lights dim, screen comes down, blurry starts playing and so on. For the xbox controller its only for the xbox

buffalosolja42 said:
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
drupad2drupad said:
What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay im a noob and i have noooo idea what that is

drupad2drupad said:
What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!
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Click to collapse
That is just for developers who want to port their app.

jessenic said:
That is just for developers who want to port their app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly! So yes, Android app can come to WP, only if developers are hard working to port it.
However, I haven't done more than making ROMs for WM, Themes for Android, but I am currently porting 2 apps from Android to WP. Honestly, all porting is made so dead easy that a little bit of English and Bing at hand, and you are off to a great start! It's slow process but anyone can port if they want to.

[Q] Mathstudio (Space Time) for Windows Phone 7

Hi everybody, I am an engineer and I think that windows phone is perfect for my needs..so fast and efficient, office integrated, easy to use and many other qualities..the only thing that I can't find for this OS is Mathstudio.
For those who don't know what's this, it's like having a graphic calculator always in your poket. This program doesn't make everything, of course, but many of the most common things can be done with mathstudio.
I was wondering if somebody could port this program from android/iOS to windows phone 7. Otherwise I must always go around with my mobile and with an ipod touch only for this program. I remember that the previous version of mathstudio (called spacetime) exsists for windows mobile 6.5, an other way could be a porting from windows mobile. I wrote to the official developer but he said he won't realse a windows phone 7 version of his program.
Thank you for listening

Porting WinMo apps is technically possible (though hard unless they were written initially in .NET). Making an unmodified WinMo app run on WP7 is very hard and usually requires a custom ROM to run it (the stock ROMs have very restrictive permissions policies that most WinMo apps can't work with). Porting iOS or Android apps pretty much requires re-writing them, which is an expense that some app authors don't find worth doing.
There are a number of graphing calculator apps available for WP7, and the built-in calculator works pretty well for non-graphing functions, but I can understand wanting access to a specific tool. Unfortunately, since I've never used the app you describe, I can't tell you how well any of the WP7 alternatives compare.

I've got an HD7 and I've made on my own an Y-cable to downgrade it, so now I use the DFT's Deepshining ROM..I didn't know it was even possible to run some old WM6 apps on WP7, such a grat news I'll try to find out more about it Can you give me a list of alternative graphic calculators for windws phone 7? I wasn't able to find anywhere Thank's a lot!!!

I just did a search on the Marketplace for "graphing calculator" and got a number of hits.
If you look at the Opera apps for WP7 custom ROMs, those are actually wrappers around the WinMo Opera apps - the wrappers just put the files in the right places and then launch EXEs.

Thank you so much for the help , I had a look on the marketplace and I found different graphic calculators (Graphing calculator, PoketPi, Eval Graph, Grapher Calculator), but none of them can replace mathstudio for the following reasons: they are only in 2D, they don't support the CAS (computer algebra system, the same present in Matlab), you can't write and save scripts or even one algorythm. I will find out more about wrapping for the moment, but I hope it will come a better solution

Unfortunately, MathStudio will never ported on WP7 platform (according to this: http://www.mathstudio.net/forums/discussion/164/platform-requests , check the last post)
The only hope is upcoming Apollo. WinRT (Win8 API) will have C++ compiler and (probably) will support native code, so MathStudio developers can (also - possible, it's not too easy) port their app to Win8.

Android phone powered Desktop

Android devices are so powerful today, and the hardware is becoming so powerful that I don't think that the software is utilising that.
We already have much of the technology in devices of today to enable a desktop environment to be streamed from our phones.
Display output: Chromecast (wireless display), MHL (Wired display & charger), etc.
Input methods: Bluetooth Keyboard & mouse, Accelerometer (to emulate mouse input), etc.
UI: Separate Launcher for the desktop UI.
With Microsoft bringing Windows 10 later this year as one OS for both the Phone & Desktop, surely that will allow them to work better in sync with one another, but that will still require a separate desktop computer and phone to create this kind of experience.
But Google now has the chance to simply output a separate UI from the same device that can display a phone UI all at the same time.
If we look at past launches of major Android builds then this coming Google I/O would be the perfect time to announce something like this, since they say that they usually deliver one major build that focuses on UI, and then one that focuses on major feature integration.
And not only would this allow for us to take our desktop with us everywhere in our pocket and connect wirelessly to any compatible display but also it could enable people in poorer economies to buy one device which could give them better access to the internet with a portable display integrated into the device, and also they could connect to the larger displays to browse the web or work on office documents with apps such as 'Google Docs'.
This could really be useful for people who wish to use their device in the work place too.
With Android mobile now offering multiple user profiles on their phones, surely they could create one profile for work, with all of their work apps available in both their phone and desktop UI's, but also a personal profile with all of their media applications & games available when out of work.
The desktop tower may still be useful for a few years to enable support for legacy applications whilst we are waiting for those applications to be ported over to Android/Android Desktop, but that shouldn't take too long considering how quickly we are see'ing apps becoming available to Android offering the kind of services that many of us desire, and if the developers only need to create one application back end for both the Desktop mode & phone mode, then it will be much quicker to bring apps to market with a small bit of time required to make a UI which can be scaled between the phone & desktop mode well.
There are multiple projects trying to create this very experience, but if it was a major part of the Android OS then finally people will get the experience that many people are waiting for, you only have to look at the comments on the developer pages of these projects to see that many people want this kind of experience.
With 64-bit now supported in Android too there is less of a reason to hold back this kind of experience.

I agree totally. Is this the only thread on this subject? Was going to setup Chromecast for video and Bluetooth for keyboard, mouse and audio. Doing this on a Jiayu S3A which is very powerful. Would like one place to discuss what works and what doesn't. Launcher options also need to be discussed.