Ubuntucat

I’ve been using Google Voice for about a week now, and I’m really impressed by it—the concept and the implementation. The implementation could still use a little polish, but Google Voice also isn’t officially released to the general public yet. Based on my limited experiences with it, I thought I’d clear up some confusion about Google Voice.

Is Google Voice a VoIP (voice over IP) application?
No, it isn’t. I’ve even seen some “news” outlets get this bit wrong. A VoIP application like Skype allows you to make a phone call for free (or for a low cost) over a high-speed internet connection. For VoIP to work, all you need is an internet connection—you don’t need a phone.

Google Voice doesn’t work that way. If you make a call with GV, you need an actual phone to make the call.

Google Voice allows you to have one phone number that can mask itself as being various real phones (sort of like how a www.somesite.com address masks the real four-number IP address behind it). It also allows you fine-tuned control over how things get redirected. One contact could ring three or four of your phones every time she calls your GV number. Another contact could ring only one phone. And still another contact may go straight to voicemail or even be blocked entirely. You can have customized voicemails for different types of people who call the same number.

In this way, it’s better to think of Google Voice as a gatekeeper for your phones than a replacement for them (as VoIP is, in a way).

If I know someone who has Google Voice, can I ask her for an invitation, since GV is currently invite-only?
Nope. When Google first launched GMail, it was on an invite-only basis, but you could get an invitation from anyone who had a GMail account. The rollout for GV seems to be different. You need an invitation directly from Google. If you have a GV account, you do not automatically get invitations to send out to other prospective GV users.

What does unchecking phone numbers do?
As far as I can tell, having a validated phone number and unchecking it does not mean the number cannot be used by GV but only that it won’t be used by default. For example, if you have a mobile number, a home number, and a work number, and only the mobile number is checked, you can still set it up so that one or two of your contacts will ring through to your home and/or work number when they call your GV number. It’s just that anyone else not specified to ring through to those will ring only the checked number(s).

What’s the difference between call screening and call presentation?
I find both options kind of annoying, actually. Call screening forces callers to say who they are before the call will be connected to you. If you don’t want to annoy people calling you, make sure your Contacts list is comprehensive and enable it only for blocked numbers and not unknown ones.

Call presentation is annoying for you, as opposed to the person calling you. It seems quite redundant for me, actually. If someone is in your Contacts list, she should already show up in caller ID if it’s your cell phone you use primarily (I guess it’d be handy if you mostly use a landline). When you answer the call, instead of immediately being connected to the calling party, you hear an announcement of who’s calling you, and then you get to decide if you want to take the call or not.

What’s the caller ID option?
This confused me at first. The little tooltip says

By default, Google Voice displays the caller ID of your caller. You can also choose to display your Google number as the caller ID, so you know you received the call on your Google number.

I thought this meant your GV number would display as your number to the person you’re calling, but it actually means it’ll display to you as the number of the person calling you.

In other words, let’s say your Google number is 212-555-1234 and the number of the person calling you is 212-555-5678. If you activate the caller ID option, any time anyone calls you, the number will appear as 212-555-1234—or that you’re calling yourself! If you deactivate the caller ID option, the number will appear as whatever the caller’s number is (212-555-5678, in this example).

There is a separate setting you can use in the Google Voice app to say you want the number to appear as coming from your GV number even if you’re dialing from your mobile phone (this app is available only for Android and Blackberry right now—sorry, iPhone users, but Apple isn’t playing nice here).

After reading Apple’s FCC Response Infuriates Google Voice App Developer, I’m getting deja vu. Kirby Dick, you listening? (This Film Is Not Yet Rated).

I guess with films people can at least view your movie without having to jailbreak their iPhones—though good luck trying to recup your production costs with an NC-17 or unrated movie…

If I were a phone app developer, I’d just go with Android. Even if Google rejects your app, people can still install it without having to root their phones.

When a commenter suggested I “root” Android on my MyTouch 3G phone, I was hesitant to go ahead with it, because it sounded as if it might be complicated and result in a bricked phone. Then I saw this story in Google News: Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone

More importantly, I came across the YouTube video How to root a T-Mobile myTouch 3G or G1 in 6 minutes and flash Cyanogen rom with Donut crumbs and the article Android Hacking For The Masses. Seeing how easy the process was made me more comfortable going ahead with it.

Before you begin

1. Even though this process is often called “rooting,” you aren’t actually gaining root access to an existing Android installation. You are replacing an unrooted old Android installation with a rooted new Android installation.
2. This means everything on your phone will be erased, so make proper backups. For me, that meant taking notes on my email settings, compiling a list of applications I had installed, and (just to be extra safe, though it didn’t end up being necessary) jotting down all the T-Mobile account information in the phone.
3. I considered this process easy, but ease is relative. What may be easy for someone else I may consider difficult. What may be easy for me may be difficult for you. Read the aforementioned links and, most importantly, watch the YouTube video in full (do not fast-forward, no matter how boring parts of it are) to see if that’s the kind of process that will seem easy for you.
4. Everything you read about this process will have heavy disclaimers of the “It may brick your phone. Don’t hold us responsible for what happens” variety. I think you should take those disclaimers to heart (if you don’t follow the directions well, you may very well render your phone useless). At the same time, it is a simple procedure. If you are careful with the steps, the likelihood of bricking your phone is pretty low.

Step 1: Back up important stuff

• If you have contacts, make sure they’re synced to your GMail account or backed up somewhere else. Same deal with your calendar.
• If you have pictures, back them up to your hard drive or to your Picasa web album. These should not be erased during the process, since they live on your Micro SD card and not the phone itself. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to back them up just to be safe.
• If you aren’t familiar with configuring email accounts, go into each email account and copy to a piece of paper or an electronic text document all the information you’d need to replicate the set-ups there.
• Make a comprehensive list of all the Android Market applications you have installed so you can reinstall them after the rooting process.

Step 2: Download the appropriate files
You need two files. One allows you to backup existing Android roms and image new ones on to your phone. The other is the rom itself (the rooted Android to replace the unrooted Android that came with your phone).

1. The rom I used was the Cyanogen mod version 4.0.1 (stable). You can find it here as a .zip file. Download that (through your computer and not your phone) to your Micro SD card.
2. Then download (through your computer and not your phone) the Recovery Flasher application from one of these locations:
   http://g1files.webs.com/Zinx/flashrec-20090815.apk
   http://zenthought.org/system/files/asset/2/flashrec-20090815.apk

   Put that on your phone’s Micro SD card as well.

3. Then in your application settings on the phone, allow non-Market applications to be installed. (Settings > Applications > Unknown sources > Check the box.)

   

   

4. Use a file browser application (I like OI File Manager) to navigate to the Recovery Flasher .apk file on your Micro SD card and install it.
5. After it’s installed, run it. First, click Back up recovery image and then click Flash Cyanogen Recovery 1.4
6. Turn off your phone.

Step 3: Flash the rom

1. Hold down the Home button while you press the Power button to turn the phone back on. This will boot your phone into recovery mode, and you’ll see several menu options.

   

2. Select nandroid v2.2 backup
3. Once that’s completed, select wipe data/factory reset. This will erase everything on your phone!
4. Click on apply sdcard:update.zip and select the .zip file you downloaded earlier.
5. Finally, select reboot system now (it may take slightly longer than a normal reboot.)

That’s it! You’re done! You now have a rooted Android installed.
If you used the version I used, you should now have multi-touch on your web browser (that pinching and parting to zoom in and out on web pages), five parts to your desktop instead of three, the ability to install and use a wifi tethering application, and a lot of other little improvements taken from the next build of Android.

Disclaimers
I can’t offer support for this. I just know what worked for me. This is supposed to work on the G1 as well (also known as the HTC Dream), but I did it only on the MyTouch 3G (also known as the HTC Magic).

One of the links I listed before said it makes Android faster and that there is a better keyboard. I never found Android to be slow to begin with, but the new rooted version doesn’t seem to be any faster. I also have not been able to enable the “better” keyboard (had no problems with the original keyboard—still, always up for trying something new if it’s easy).

If you are a Linux user (or a Windows/Mac user with a GParted live CD), you can optionally create an Ext3 or Ext4 partition on your Micro SD card. Then reboot your phone and it should automatically move your installed applications to the SD card and install new applications there as well. This will allow you to install a lot more applications by saving the space used on the phone itself.

Just need to vent a little here:

1. Bipartisanship is overrated. If you believe in something, pass it. It’s nice if Republicans and Democrats can all hold hands and smile, but that can’t always happen. Sometimes you have to choose your battles. If health care reform really matters to you, pass it.

2. No health care bill close to being passed has proposed anything like what the UK has in NHS. If we had something like NHS in the US, that’d be great, but that’s not what’s being proposed.

3. Highlighting health care horror stories in other countries makes no sense. Of course in countries with millions of people, you can find a handful of horror stories. In the US, there are tens of millions of horror stories. What is it—47 million Americans uninsured? And the rest of us who are insured are in danger of losing that insurance if we lose our jobs (especially if we have “pre-existing conditions”).

4. 1 trillion dollars over ten years sounds like a lot of money, but divided by year and by person, that’s $329 per year per person or about $0.90 a day per person. Meanwhile, we’ve spent about 900 billion dollars (almost a trillion) on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past eight years, and that cost doesn’t matter somehow (let alone the deaths of our soldiers and the civilians in those countries)? I’d rather go into debt to keep people healthy than to get people killed.

I’d love to see better health care in this country. Let’s see what happens.

Second impressions
I’ve had a few more days to use this phone, and I’ve found out a few more things:

1. Initially, it seemed the volume for the rings was too soft. Then I realized there was a plastic (dust-repellent?) cover over the camera and speaker that needed to be removed. I removed it, and it’s much louder now. A bit confused as to why the speaker is on the back of the phone, though.
2. If you hold down the Home key, a list of recently opened applications will appear.
3. There doesn’t appear to be a way in the browser to force links to open in the same window. I don’t really like having to wait for a new window to open for externally launched links or for links coded by websites to open in a new window. The default browser doesn’t have tabs—only windows.
4. There is a little light next to the hearing part of the phone that indicates if the battery is low, if the battery is charging, or if the battery is full. Also, if you are charging the phone and it locks, when you press the menu key, it’ll tell you what percentage the battery is charged. The battery charges very quickly. I didn’t do an actual timing on it, but it seemed to take only about ten minutes to charge from about 50%.
5. The Android Market reviews are totally useless. Basically if you want to know if an app is worth your time or not, you have to install it yourself and try it out. (I’ll probably do a separate post on Android apps I think are actually worth installing.)
6. Even though you can make shortcuts on the desktop to your favorite applications, the applications tab itself is not customizable. It’d be neat to be able to rearrange the apps so that the most frequently used are at the top (less scrolling needed).

Thanks to the folks who commented on my MyTouch first impressions post. I’ve have some responses for a lot of the comments:

Mounting/unmounting the SD card

You don’t actually need to manually mount the SD card on the phone once you unmount it. They way you’re saying it gives the impression it’s really complicated (and it’s not). Click once on the phone to mount. Once you’re done, do it again to unmount. The phone should mount the SD automatically.

This is what happens with your T-Mobile MyTouch? That’s not what happens with mine. After I plug it into my computer, it will not automatically mount until I manually unmount it through the phone. And once I eject it from my computer, I have to again manually remount it through the phone in order for the phone to acknowledge the SD card data as accessible.

Modding

i have a G1 and there are modded releases of firmware you can install on your phone, at least for the g1. It gives you root access, tethering so you can hook up your wireless devices to use your 3g internet off your phone, and allows for multitouch zoom in the browser (no map though due to a locked down api). just be careful you don’t brick your phone. Do a search for jesusfreke.

I’m probably the only Linux user who isn’t into modding, and I have absolutely no interest in doing anything that may brick my phone. Thanks, though.

Flash

Most if not all blackberry’s have flash in the browser. They are not alone in this ability.

I didn’t know that. Since I don’t see any Blackberries with Android, I don’t really regret my purchase.

Default applications

I would add to the gripe-list that you cannot remove some of the apps that came with the phone (ie. Amazon MP3). These things are minor to me, however.

That’s a minor gripe I have now, too, after a few more days of using it. I can understand apps that are essential to the functioning of the phone (the Android operating system, the settings manager), but Amazon MP3? Really?

Flash again

The main reason that flash is largely unsupported is that nobody seems to have an ARM based version of flash on any OS platform right at the moment, save Nokia with their N770/N8×0 web tablets- and it’s pretty old in what it supports (Flash 7…)

Thanks for the explanation. It’s not a really big deal. I don’t even like Flash. It’s just that a lot of websites these days do use Flash heavily.

Turning off keyboard

To get rid of the onscreen keyboard you need merely press the ‘back’ key once.

That’s a great tip. I’m now using that instead of holding down the Menu key. Thanks.

iPhone v. other phones

In my opinion the iPod touch/iPhone unlock is superior to the method on MyTouch simply because the screen for iPod or iPhones are only sensitive to human touch (along with a few other things, but, its a very limited field).

In theory, yes, but in practice I haven’t really experienced any accidentally double-pressings of the Menu key in the past few days. Only time will tell if it’s a real issue or not.

Any touch screen phones are usually bad knock offs of the iPhone.

Fully agree.

This is simply because of cheapness of the cell phone business. The touch screens are never multi touch screens. Most of the touch screens need recalibration after a week or two of use, which is awful because I have a DS which never requires calibration.

I don’t know what recalibration is, but doesn’t the Palm Pre have multi-touch? I don’t have it on my MyTouch phone, but I don’t really miss it. Pinching photos and webpages is definitely one of those “Isn’t this cool?” but not very useful features of the iPhone. I’ve actually found the Android default web browser to be pretty good at fitting webpages to the width of the screen so that zooming in and out isn’t that necessary. And if you double-click the rolly ball, you get a little zoom box you can quickly move up and down the page to a particular section. Not elegant. Very practical, though.

The software on the MyTouch sounds like it definitely needs improvement. USB mount by phone software? Yuck.

In some ways, that’s a good thing. If my main gripes with the phone were hardware-related, there wouldn’t be much I could do besides get a new phone. With Donut and Eclair (the newer versions of Android) around the corner, maybe some of the usability problems in Android will be addressed in future updates.

One more thing: If you wanted an iPhone, why not virtualize Windows XP, install iTunes, and make a USB filter for your iPhone? It’s the way I do it with my iPod Touch. I put my iTunes music library in a shared folder between host and client so Banshee can play anything I purchased and so the VM hdd size does not balloon. Genius? :)

Maybe you didn’t read carefully, but I don’t want Windows. That means no virtualized XP for functionality. No dual-booted XP. No XP. No Vista. No Windows 7. Until iTunes is native in Linux, I’m not going to use a product that relies on iTunes to work.

Unlocking

Not many people seem to care on how easy to unlock an iPhone is. Easy as in “insecure”. To me, swipping a finger left to right and having access to the data stored in a device like this is simply unacceptable (although I think there’s an option to use a numeric pad, too).

Actually, the swiping for the iPhone is not for security. It’s just to prevent you from accidentally dialing a number while it’s in your pocket. You can set up an unlocking pin if you would like. Really, though, I think if your iPhone is stolen, it’s stolen, and a clever thief can get to your data anyway (and is probably mainly after the hardware and not your personal info). I’m a fan of the “Don’t let your phone get stolen” philosophy and not the “Leave my phone around and hope no one takes it since I have a password to guard it” approach.

Smart phones v. dumb phones

So from someone who doesn’t own a smart phone, and isn’t likely to get one for his birthday, what is it about one of any make that makes ownership so great? Is it the fascination of a new toy, being able to impress your friends, or is there something that they do which makes your life significantly better? I would find the answers to those questions really helpful in any future reviews.

Well, first of all, I’ve had a dumb phone for many years. A dumb cell phone can certainly suit all your needs. In fact, some people might even argue you don’t need a cell phone at all… or a phone. With technology it’s usually more about convenience and fun than it is about need. Do I need a car? Actually, I’m fine without it. I take public transportation, and every now and then I rent a car through ZipCar. Do I need a TV? There were about four years I didn’t watch any TV, and I got along in life just fine for those years. Now I watch TV a lot and enjoy many quality (and not-so-quality) shows.

It’s really the same with a smart phone. You don’t need anything the phone has to offer, but sometimes it’s nice. Here are a few things that my wife and I have found handy with her iPhone (and which I will probably find handy with my new MyTouch):

• Sometimes when you’re out (away from your computer), something will come up in conversation that you’re just curious to look up. It’s not life or death, but if you wait until you get home to look it up, you probably will have forgotten about it completely by then. “Oh, yeah. What movie was that guy in?” “What’s an aprium? Is that like a pluot?”
• If you’re in a rental car (which those of us who are not car owners sometimes are in), the GPS and turn-by-turn directions you can get on your phone come in handy, especially if you’re driving to some place you’ve never been before.
• Likewise, if you’re in an unfamiliar area and really want to find a gas station or a place to eat (and read reviews of the restaurant), a smart phone comes in handy.
• If you’re out at a bus stop, you can check online to see how long you have to wait for the next bus to come.
• When you’re on vacation, you often bring a camera with you. But when you’re just out on your own or with your friends at some non-event, you don’t always have a camera on you. A smart phone is handy for taken impromptu low-res photos to capture a moment.
• Visual voicemail is way better than calling up a voicemail service and going through menus to skip, repeat, delete, or save messages.
• If you’re traveling and don’t want to lug your laptop around or have to find an internet cafe, a smart phone can be handy for checking your email.

There are probably other neat things. Again, nothing pressing or necessary. Just convenience and fun—like most gadgets.