If you lose your phone (or have it stolen) you can also locate it remotely by sending a text to it from someone else's phone. You send your Avast pin with the word "locate" and you get a text message back saying exactly where the phone is.
The amount of functionality on this thing is amazing considering it's free.
That said, I installed it, played with it for half an hour and haven't gone back to it since (which is probably the way it should be with a security app).
If we're talking about alternatives to google's built in apps:
Check out QuickPic - the best gallery/picture viewer. Knocks the stuffing out of the slow (pointlessly 3D) stock google app. Gets android gallery browsing very close to iOS in terms of smoothness.
And it's free.
Might be too "simple" to necessitate a review though.
Well worth the money if you ask me. I've probably only ever bought about 3 apps, but this is one of them. Swiping the album art on the lockscreen to go forward and back is a fantastic feature (when you're driving a car, buttons are not always easy to press).
That said, I use a Rom called MIUI now, which has a fantastic Music player bundled as standard, so I don't actually have poweramp installed any more.
Got to admit i am a bit disappointed with this. I'm a massive Opera fan and was really looking forward to this, but its got a sort of flimsy feel to it. The rendering doesn't feel as solid as the webkit browsers.
It also doesn't seem to have that snappy, cached "back" functionality from Mini, where if you go back a page the last page renders instantly.
It feels a bit too much like Opera Mini, and where with Mini, it's forgivable because of the bandwidth savings, with Mobile it's less so.
As someone said above though, it is a beta.
As an alternative I found a fantastic browser the other day called "Charming" browser. It's part of the MIUI Rom (android re-skin) that some chinese blokes did. It's based on the android webkit browser, but the UI and tab handling are much, much better in my opinion. It also does have the "back" functionality where the last page is rendered instantly when you hit the back button.
Thanks. Was a bit confused by this story and how the hell html5 video could have overtaken flash so quickly, but then read your explanation and realised the story was, in fact, nonsense.
"Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers."
Is this really true? Sure, there's fragmentation in terms of what skin the manufacturer sticks on their phone, but for application development, it's not that different from iOS, and far, far better than what j2me ever was.
The market has changed since the j2me days, where the developer would jump through hoops to try to make their app compatible with as many handsets as possible. Now, apps are King and it's not in device makers' interests to make their handset incompatible with a whole host of existing apps. This tends to minimise fragmentation.
I've gotta say, the 3 contract at £30 per month seems like fantastic value. I'm no apple fanboi (au contraire), but that is a very, very tempting price for that hardware.
You can use internet radio on the go (and in a car!) if you can get internet on your phone. This is what I use to listen to 6 music and french stations (which are magnifique) on my daily commute.
Get yourself acquainted with moodio.fm and you don't even need 3g.
(btw before anyone starts moaning about data charges, i'm on a cheapo O2 simplicity and never once been charged extra)
If you don't like it, then just don't turn it on. If you don't want to do social, then don't.
I won't be doing the whole facebook thing, but then that's not the only way to add users (friends). All you have to know is their spotify username to add them:
"Opera Mini offers nothing new other than poor rendering and a loss of your browsing privacy to Opera."
Speed. It offers faster speeds than any other iPhone browser. Did you read the article? It's basically Opera's USP. It's right here, the first feature that's mentioned on the opera mini homepage:
The speed dial doesn't actually load all the pages whenever you view it. When you add a page to speed dial, it simply goes to the url to get and image of the website and then caches it. But it only does this when you add a new a page and never again.
I would add Handcent in there as the very first app that someone with an Android phone should download. It has incredible functionality for a free app. Pop-up alerts (even when screen is locked), missed text reminders, better UI layout, extremely customisable.
You'll be disappointed with Android's texting capabilities unless you download Handcent.
IMO, the Pre was very, very close to being a really good phone. I don't think this slight improvement will be enough to see it compete UNLESS they price it attractively (ie < iphone).
Also, why the bleeding hell don't they just stick a micro sd slot in this thing (I would have been tempted by the original pre, but 8gb was just too small)?
"Arriva tells us that the combination of a clock ticking away, along with animated Arriva symbols, would make the ticket hard to forge, and that drivers would be advised of that day's colour (orange in the example, top right) to make things harder for the would-be forger."
Java apps are trival to reverse engineer, so your ticking clock and and animated arriva symbols are absolutely not hard to forge. In fact, you wouldn't even have to forge them, just modify their app.
As for the colour... well, that just sound impossible to work around!
I mean, good god, a simple, low-tech solution doesn't mean it has to be full of gaping security holes.
They might as well just use a lie detector and ask the passenger if they've bought a ticket.
How about you break it down for us into those categories. Use the review to score each category (all the information should be there) and then come up with an overrall mark.
""This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product."
It's funny that the anit-Apple crowd accuses Apple of being a cult and Mac users to be mindless fanatics -- yet it is the anti-Apple crowd who seems to base their diatribes on irrational concepts"
Naughty boy. I have many reasons for not buying certain apple products and none of them are irrational.
Thanks for the review. I so wanted the Pre to be good and for it to kick the iphone's a$$, but I can't argue with your conclusions.
Not only is no other phone company beating iphone's current offering, they aren't even beating what the iphone brought to the table two and a half years ago (in terms of hardware, and to a lesser extent, software).
This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product.
If they want to compete and have an inferior device, for god sake at least make it cheaper than the iphone!
The only way to compete with the iPhone at this stage is to undercut its price. For most intents and purposes, the iphone at least matches the Pre (well for about 80% of people anyway), that's even discounting the iphone "cool" factor that makes it a draw for many.
How can they expect to get any sort of foothold on the market?
When the Pre first came out, I really wanted one as I am looking for any excuse not to get an iPhone (can't stand them, or Apple). Then I discovered it didn't have expandable memory and that made me think twice. And now the price. Seriously guys? Seriously?
"The phone is slow to switch between landscape and portrait and sometimes needs a joggle to make it change.
You loose the wifi signal if you hold it in your left hand in landscape."
I definitely don't have either of these problems. I think your handset might be defective.
"A simple example is that there is no simple way that I can see of setting a reminder a week in advance in Calender"
As for the calendar, there is a view where you can all the days of the entire month. Just click on the date and create a meeting with alarm or a to-do note with alarm.
Got this as a replacement for my mp3 player (stolen) and my mobile phone (very old). For the price, I'd say it's hard to get better value.
Delivers very nice sound, nice screen (tho as the review mentions, it doesn't perform well outside), and a fairly good interface. I'd say there will be firmware updates too, which improve things even further.
Regarding the battery life - I definitely get more than 6 hours music out of it, so I wouldn't let that part of the review put you off.
Small gripes - micro usb port but no micro usb charging. W.T.F nokia!
Ovi maps - can't seem to put any maps on the 5530 to make ovi maps work in offline mode.
The may be a touch naive, but is android not free for the manufacturers to stick on their phones? Even if it isn't, it has to be relatively cheap, no? Why the hell then, is this so expensive?
O2 have lost their marbles.
I was actually waiting for this, as all I basically want is a phone which takes microsd cards and has a 3.5mm jack to replace my mp3 player. There actually aren't that many out there that fit the bill.
Got tired of waiting for this, and had heard in advance about the horrific tariffs. In the end, I went for a nokia 5530 to keep me going for a while until more Android phones come out that don't cost the earth.
Nokia 5530 is a very nice little phone btw. No GPS or 3g, but I can just about live with that. And it's cheap - £130.
Register
65 posts • joined Friday 25th July 2008 14:04 GMT
Page:
Three thumbs up
This is a fantastic app.
If you lose your phone (or have it stolen) you can also locate it remotely by sending a text to it from someone else's phone. You send your Avast pin with the word "locate" and you get a text message back saying exactly where the phone is.
The amount of functionality on this thing is amazing considering it's free.
That said, I installed it, played with it for half an hour and haven't gone back to it since (which is probably the way it should be with a security app).
Don't understand
Don't understand all the Fry-bashing on the Reg. Seems like an alright bloke to me.
USB Host is not unique to Thrive
USB host functionality comes with Honeycomb 3.1.
Thanks
I've been an android user for a good while now and was not aware of this application, so thanks for the review.
Check out QuickPic
If we're talking about alternatives to google's built in apps:
Check out QuickPic - the best gallery/picture viewer. Knocks the stuffing out of the slow (pointlessly 3D) stock google app. Gets android gallery browsing very close to iOS in terms of smoothness.
And it's free.
Might be too "simple" to necessitate a review though.
One of the few apps I've paid for
Well worth the money if you ask me. I've probably only ever bought about 3 apps, but this is one of them. Swiping the album art on the lockscreen to go forward and back is a fantastic feature (when you're driving a car, buttons are not always easy to press).
That said, I use a Rom called MIUI now, which has a fantastic Music player bundled as standard, so I don't actually have poweramp installed any more.
Market
Have you tried android market?
Not so slender
It actually takes up more than 20 megs on your phone once installed
Slightly disappointed
Got to admit i am a bit disappointed with this. I'm a massive Opera fan and was really looking forward to this, but its got a sort of flimsy feel to it. The rendering doesn't feel as solid as the webkit browsers.
It also doesn't seem to have that snappy, cached "back" functionality from Mini, where if you go back a page the last page renders instantly.
It feels a bit too much like Opera Mini, and where with Mini, it's forgivable because of the bandwidth savings, with Mobile it's less so.
As someone said above though, it is a beta.
As an alternative I found a fantastic browser the other day called "Charming" browser. It's part of the MIUI Rom (android re-skin) that some chinese blokes did. It's based on the android webkit browser, but the UI and tab handling are much, much better in my opinion. It also does have the "back" functionality where the last page is rendered instantly when you hit the back button.
Thanks
Thanks. Was a bit confused by this story and how the hell html5 video could have overtaken flash so quickly, but then read your explanation and realised the story was, in fact, nonsense.
Archos 43
That Archos 43 sure is nice looking. If they crammed a phone in there I'd be all over it!
Gotcha
I think you're right.
Fragmented
Gosling says:
"Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers."
Is this really true? Sure, there's fragmentation in terms of what skin the manufacturer sticks on their phone, but for application development, it's not that different from iOS, and far, far better than what j2me ever was.
The market has changed since the j2me days, where the developer would jump through hoops to try to make their app compatible with as many handsets as possible. Now, apps are King and it's not in device makers' interests to make their handset incompatible with a whole host of existing apps. This tends to minimise fragmentation.
Tempting switch to 3
I've gotta say, the 3 contract at £30 per month seems like fantastic value. I'm no apple fanboi (au contraire), but that is a very, very tempting price for that hardware.
Internet radio on the go
DAB's dead baby, DAB's dead.
You can use internet radio on the go (and in a car!) if you can get internet on your phone. This is what I use to listen to 6 music and french stations (which are magnifique) on my daily commute.
Get yourself acquainted with moodio.fm and you don't even need 3g.
(btw before anyone starts moaning about data charges, i'm on a cheapo O2 simplicity and never once been charged extra)
@Pulse Owner
In the settings there is an option to force video.
That said, this seems to use the camera on the back, even though android is one of the only phones to have a front-facing camera!
Geekfailgasm
Is everyone clear that Spotify does not force you to use facebook, nor does it force you to import all your local MP3s?
Everyone clear?
Good. So can people stop yapping with this "nail in the coffin for spotify", "facefail", "farcebook" nonsense?
Sample shots
The detail in those sample shots does actually look pretty impressive.
Re "Oh bollocks..."
If you don't like it, then just don't turn it on. If you don't want to do social, then don't.
I won't be doing the whole facebook thing, but then that's not the only way to add users (friends). All you have to know is their spotify username to add them:
http://www.spotify.com/uk/help/faq/social/can-i-add-any-spotify-user-to-my-people-list/
RE: "Did you read mine?"
Do a side-by-side comparison of opera mini and ical with google site compression.
Load up news.bbc.co.uk.
Tell me which browser loads it faster, which browser loads it better (as compared to a desktop browser) and which combines both best.
@AC 12.59
"Opera Mini offers nothing new other than poor rendering and a loss of your browsing privacy to Opera."
Speed. It offers faster speeds than any other iPhone browser. Did you read the article? It's basically Opera's USP. It's right here, the first feature that's mentioned on the opera mini homepage:
http://www.opera.com/mobile/
Speed Dial
The speed dial doesn't actually load all the pages whenever you view it. When you add a page to speed dial, it simply goes to the url to get and image of the website and then caches it. But it only does this when you add a new a page and never again.
Handcent
I would add Handcent in there as the very first app that someone with an Android phone should download. It has incredible functionality for a free app. Pop-up alerts (even when screen is locked), missed text reminders, better UI layout, extremely customisable.
You'll be disappointed with Android's texting capabilities unless you download Handcent.
Desire
Is there any reason at all not to just wait for the HTC Desire?
@richard 69
@richard 69
You just woken up yourself, have you?
Opera mini doesn't support flash.
OVI
All the OVI stuff is horrifically bloated and makes me cry when I use it.
Also there's no excuse really for not charging through usb (in this day and age!).
Missing that point
Kallen: "You own the highway."
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
...
Kallen: "But you still own the highway."
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
Kallen: "But that's not addressing the point I just made."
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
Kallen: "Why do you keep saying that?"
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."
Finally
This is the first sensible strategic move i've seen from Nokia in a long time.
Nearly there
IMO, the Pre was very, very close to being a really good phone. I don't think this slight improvement will be enough to see it compete UNLESS they price it attractively (ie < iphone).
Also, why the bleeding hell don't they just stick a micro sd slot in this thing (I would have been tempted by the original pre, but 8gb was just too small)?
@Gary F 1
"Nerdcore"?
Wow.
Fair Play
Fair play to you for referring (and linking) to the article with your horrifically wrong prediction about the iphone!
Hard to forge?
"Arriva tells us that the combination of a clock ticking away, along with animated Arriva symbols, would make the ticket hard to forge, and that drivers would be advised of that day's colour (orange in the example, top right) to make things harder for the would-be forger."
Java apps are trival to reverse engineer, so your ticking clock and and animated arriva symbols are absolutely not hard to forge. In fact, you wouldn't even have to forge them, just modify their app.
As for the colour... well, that just sound impossible to work around!
I mean, good god, a simple, low-tech solution doesn't mean it has to be full of gaping security holes.
They might as well just use a lie detector and ask the passenger if they've bought a ticket.
@pedrodude
@pedrodude
How about you break it down for us into those categories. Use the review to score each category (all the information should be there) and then come up with an overrall mark.
Be sure to post back.
Strong software?
"We were unable to continue to release strong software."
Sorry what? Strong software? It hasn't had strong software since it was released, and even then it was only one or two games.
I wonder how many people who bought the Wii now use it as a dust collector.
@AC 16.04
Are you serious? The news is turn by turn directions.
Did you read the article? Or even the title of the article?
@TeeCee
@TeeCee
Whether they bundle it or not, it will still be free.
So i'd say the big boys (Garmin et al) will have a hard time keeping up either way.
@Anonymous Coward 09:52
I wouldn't base too much on your assumptions
@Joe Ragosta
@Joe Ragosta
""This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product."
It's funny that the anit-Apple crowd accuses Apple of being a cult and Mac users to be mindless fanatics -- yet it is the anti-Apple crowd who seems to base their diatribes on irrational concepts"
Naughty boy. I have many reasons for not buying certain apple products and none of them are irrational.
@ Simon D
@Simon D
"Saying that the iPhone is the only real competitor is demeaning"
Where does the review say this?
Great review
Thanks for the review. I so wanted the Pre to be good and for it to kick the iphone's a$$, but I can't argue with your conclusions.
Not only is no other phone company beating iphone's current offering, they aren't even beating what the iphone brought to the table two and a half years ago (in terms of hardware, and to a lesser extent, software).
This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product.
If they want to compete and have an inferior device, for god sake at least make it cheaper than the iphone!
DUDE!
Dude, her eybrows are bigger than her pelvis!
Too late
They should have stuck a microSD slot in that thing. 8gb isn't really enough.
This is too late and much too expensive to excited about.
*FacePalm*
Surely Palm can't be happy about this?
The only way to compete with the iPhone at this stage is to undercut its price. For most intents and purposes, the iphone at least matches the Pre (well for about 80% of people anyway), that's even discounting the iphone "cool" factor that makes it a draw for many.
How can they expect to get any sort of foothold on the market?
When the Pre first came out, I really wanted one as I am looking for any excuse not to get an iPhone (can't stand them, or Apple). Then I discovered it didn't have expandable memory and that made me think twice. And now the price. Seriously guys? Seriously?
@AC
Is the whole idea not that it is silent?
@Chris
"The phone is slow to switch between landscape and portrait and sometimes needs a joggle to make it change.
You loose the wifi signal if you hold it in your left hand in landscape."
I definitely don't have either of these problems. I think your handset might be defective.
"A simple example is that there is no simple way that I can see of setting a reminder a week in advance in Calender"
As for the calendar, there is a view where you can all the days of the entire month. Just click on the date and create a meeting with alarm or a to-do note with alarm.
Update to gripe above
As an update to one of my gripes above. The latest version of ovi suite enabled me to get maps on to my phone. Fantastic.
Not bad at all
Got this as a replacement for my mp3 player (stolen) and my mobile phone (very old). For the price, I'd say it's hard to get better value.
Delivers very nice sound, nice screen (tho as the review mentions, it doesn't perform well outside), and a fairly good interface. I'd say there will be firmware updates too, which improve things even further.
Regarding the battery life - I definitely get more than 6 hours music out of it, so I wouldn't let that part of the review put you off.
Small gripes - micro usb port but no micro usb charging. W.T.F nokia!
Ovi maps - can't seem to put any maps on the 5530 to make ovi maps work in offline mode.
Hold on a sec...
The may be a touch naive, but is android not free for the manufacturers to stick on their phones? Even if it isn't, it has to be relatively cheap, no? Why the hell then, is this so expensive?
O2 have lost their marbles.
I was actually waiting for this, as all I basically want is a phone which takes microsd cards and has a 3.5mm jack to replace my mp3 player. There actually aren't that many out there that fit the bill.
Got tired of waiting for this, and had heard in advance about the horrific tariffs. In the end, I went for a nokia 5530 to keep me going for a while until more Android phones come out that don't cost the earth.
Nokia 5530 is a very nice little phone btw. No GPS or 3g, but I can just about live with that. And it's cheap - £130.
Tagline
"Orange repeals..."
Awesome work Reg.
Tagline
C'mon Reg, surely "The Unforeseeable Fire" would have made a better tagline.
More coffee needed!
Zune
I think the HD is also because it outputs video to HD (to a HD screen).
I saw a demo of this zune and I have to say, apart from the app market, ipod touch has absolutely nothing on this.
Page: