Hasta La Gadget!

HTC and Google are getting closer to perfection with the new Android G2, the HTC Magic. Nice finish, great form factor. Check out our video, including the obligatory comparison with Apple’s iPhone, and hands-on impressions:

The bad news first: Apart from my gripes about the user interface—which are still there—there is one but. A big BUT, bigger than Ramona’s, the planetary lady with accidental moustache who serves the bocadillos down at one of the fair’s restaurants: The software keyboard. On this first touch, the keyboard felt cramped, probably a result of the screen size, which is smaller than the iPhone’s—which is the obvious soft keyboard reference, since it was the first one to implement a finger-touch software keyboard.

In addition to that, there’s an additional user interface problem, this time having to do with perception: Instead of popping up above your finger—like in the iPhone so you can clearly see what you pressed—the keys appear on the sides. They flash quickly as you press them, and I found it extremely distracting. They said that they put them on the sides not to obstruct the view, but knowing the over-the-key implementation in the iPhone’s software keyboard, it doesn’t make much sense. Furthermore, when you are typing with one finger only—like I often do—you will be obstructing the view of the flashing key with your finger. The reason: When you type on the right side of the keyboard, the flashing keys appear on the left. When you click on the right, they pop out on the left.

Other than this, the rest is great. There’s a new Google Mail feature to delete or classify mail in bulk, as well as a faster camera, which now can take video—which obviously means you can play back video as well. The rest of the interface and features is what you already have in the Android G1. However, what really steals the show here is the hardware itself.

HTC has got a very smooth phone, which feels great on your hands and in your pants’ pockets. While it’s sightly thicker than the iPhone, the narrower, rounded body, and weight makes it feel the same size. For sure, a lot less bulky than the G1, which looks like a brick next to this. And as you have seen in the shots, the final HTC Magic is quite pretty. Have no doubt: This thing alone will make many consumers put up with the less-than-ideal software keyboard.

Overall, the first feeling is that we got a potential winner here. If they can manage to make the software keyboard better, Apple will definitely have a formidable enemy in the Android G2.

I got some quality time with a Garmin Nuviphone G60, riding around Barcelona in the back of a jet-black Mercedes limo. My hands-on impression: This smartphone-meets-GPS-meets-media-player feels like a winner.

I don’t know what it really is: A cellphone that is a GPS or a GPS that is a cellphone. Of course, the cellphone has everything you can expect from a such a device these days, including a 3-megapixel camera (with a real shutter button, like it should be) and a music player, everything tied to the GPS. This seems to be the main point of the Garmin G60: Everything revolves around geo-location.

Physically, the Garmin G60 has a good size: A good feeling on your hand, thicker than you-know-who, but light and comfortable. The thing is made to be integrated on your car dashboard—it comes with a cradle with a suction cup—but it works in your hand as a smartphone just fine.

The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of buttons, except for volume and camera shutter on the right side. On the front, there are no physical buttons whatsoever, just a nice, colorful 3.5-inch touchscreen.

As you can see in the video, the Linux-based operating system is quite agile and appeared solid, although the full HTML browser stalled forever trying to load a page-which is probably a fault of the 3G connection rather than the G60 itself, even while it is still a beta prototype.

The interface seems polished, it feels fast and responsive, very bright and clean, with colorful icons. It’s centered around three main icons, which I’m sure are the ones Garmin wants to emphasize: Call, Search, and View Map. Call and View Map are quite straightforward, with Search giving you several options, from consulting the six million points of interests—already pre-loaded with the North America or European maps built-in the G60—to the on-the-fly Google local search application. This section feels very much like one of their previous GPS, giving you access to Favorites, Contact, or Recently Found addresses, and allowing to visit or calling any place on one click.

On the side (or bottom, if you are in landscape mode-the Garmin G60 has an accelerator to know this, although it didn’t feel very sensitive while I was trying it) you can see a scrolling list of icons, which gives you access to the other features of the G60, from the camera to the web browser to the Ciao! geolocation based social service to widgets like weather. While the main three buttons can’t be changed for the ones in the side list, the whole user interface is well organized and easy to use.

My impression from the hands-on is that Garmin has made what they know to do best—a GPS—and they combined it with a 3G smartphone is a smooth way. The result is a nicely balanced unit that has the advantage of having everything you expect in a GPS and all the features you expect in a modern smartphone, all under an easy to use interface.

We will give you a more extensive verdict once we get a final unit, which is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2009.

If you read Gizmodo, the odds are good you’re carrying one of these two pieces-they’re among our favorite 3G smartphones right now. Today let’s learn how to tether ’em up to your laptop.

Note: while data tethering is possible on each phone without any additional tethering plan, you’ll want to be careful that you’re not accidentally seeding a bunch of torrents or something when you’re connected via your cellphone. While we’re pretty sure you’ll be OK doing standard surfing, we can’t guarantee you won’t get slapped with some charge, somehow.

So let’s get started.

What You’ll Need
• For G1: USB cable, Tetherbot App, Android SDK, Firefox
• For iPhone: iPhoneModem app, Jailbroken phone

G1 Tether
This guide is based on the instructions and Android app written by Graham Stewart. Many huzzahs to Graham for figuring out this easy tether setup. This one, however, is a SOCKS proxy instead of a true modem tether, so it’s limited to Firefox browsing-you won’t be able to use any other apps unless you can configure them to connect via a proxy yourself. We’ve tested with Firefox though, and it works great.

1. Go here on your G1’s browser and install the Tetherbot app. If unknown sources are not enabled on your phone (under Settings -> Applications -> Unknown Sources) do that first.

2. Turn on USB Debugging under Settings -> Applications -> Development and connect your phone via USB.

3. Get your Android SDK set up. If you’re on Windows, you’ll need to download and install a driver.

4. On your phone, fire up the Tetherbot app and tap the “Start Socks” button.

5. Now, the SDK incantation. In a terminal window on Mac or a run window on Windows, navigate to the “tools” folder within your SDK directory and then type the following:

Mac:

./adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

Windows:

adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

6. Now, in Firefox, go to Options -> Advanced -> Network, and click to configure how Firefox connects to the Internet. In the window that pops up, choose “Manual proxy configuration” and clear out everything that might be there. Under SOCKS host, type “localhost” and change the port to 1080. Hit OK, and you should be in business. Easy right?

iPhone Tether
For this, you’ll need to jailbreak your phone. All you need to know to do that can be found in this post on the iPhone Dev Blog. If you’re running OS X, I STRONGLY recomment using Pwnage Tool instead of QuickPwn to manually create a jailbroken software image and install it via iTunes-I have yet to get QuickPwn to work with my phone, and I have no idea why.

One caveat: there are two iPhoneModem apps-one, found at iPhoneModem.de is free, and comes with a utility that makes tethering on a Mac easy. That’s the tutorial we’re following here. They claim it’s possible to use on Windows, but there is no companion app and, unfortunately, no Windows instructions.

The other iPhoneModem is nagware ($10 to get rid of the nags), and does include a Windows config app, which we have not tested. If you’re running windows, try that one, and let us know how it goes in the comments. There is also another method using an app called 3proxy that requires lots of manual configuration, but that one may also be worth a try. Update: Commenters are also recommending PDANet for Windows tethering, which is in Cydia as well.

1. Once you’re jailbroken, open up Cydia and install the package called “iPhone Modem zsrelay” – you can find it by searching “modem.” Also install OpenSSH – find it by searching “SSH.” BossPrefs is also recommended, so you can make sure SSH is running.

2. Download the iPhoneModem.de helper app and run it, and go to “Settings…” under the little iPhone icon that just appeared in the status bar.

3. Fill in the following fields:

IP-Address of Mac: Leave the default value (192.168.100.1)
Password of Mac: Your admin password
WLAN Name: The name of the ad-hoc network that will be created – your choice
WLAN Password: It must be 13 characters-your choice as long as it’s 13
SOCKS Port: Leave default (9999)
iPhone root Password: alpine (as long as you’re running 2.x firmware)
iPhone Mac Address: Found under Settings – General – About – make sure you use the wi-fi MAC address.

4. Once your config is saved, go to “start connection” and follow the prompts. Your Mac will create an ad-hoc network, which you will then join with your iPhone (make sure you get an IP address on your iPhone before continuing). Everything should go smoothly, and voila, you’re tethered!

Hope you enjoyed our how-to. For more on iPhone jailbreak apps, see yesterday’s essentials list, and more how-to guides here. Enjoy the weekend!

Since the Windows 7 beta launched, we’ve pretty much been having a love-in. But the truth is, it’s not all rainbows and Start buttons. There are 7 things about Windows 7 that we really hate.

1. Can’t Pin What We Want to Taskbar. Perhaps because we love the superbar so much, it drives us nuts that we can’t pin everything to it. Particularly, the Recycle Bin and some devices, like USB drives.

With the Recycle Bin, you can make it a folder within Windows Explorer on the taskbar, but you can’t pin the actual Recycle Bin to the taskbar, so you can drag and drop stuff into it or empty it. Instead, I get this single, lonely icon floating on my desktop, making my OCD crazy. Admittedly, adding the recycling bin to the taskbar with drag-and-drop garbage would make the new taskbar behavior inconsistent, but I drag stuff to the taskbar all the time wanting to chunk it. We want the option, even if it makes absolutely no sense.

When it comes to devices, it’s inconsistent about what you can and can’t pin, which really is annoying as hell. You can pin certified Device Stage products there, but not any other peripheral—even ones that are recognized as the same type, like a camera. I was able to pin my Downloads folder to the taskbar separately from the catch-all Windows Explorer icon, but every other folder I tried failed. If you’re going to rob full control from us, at least do so consistently.

2. No Upgrade Install From XP to Windows 7. You can do an upgrade install—an installation that’ll preserve your programs, files and folder structure—from Vista to Windows 7, but not from XP to Windows 7. We all admit, it’s really better to do a clean install anyway, and leapfrogging two generations of OSes is bound to cause all kinds of headaches. But a hefty chunk of people will upgrade from XP to 7, especially on netbooks. Upgrading XP to Vista was doable, and Windows 7 is structurally speaking, a lot like Vista. So what’s the deal, hmmmmm? Migration tools are nice, but they’re no match for a simple upgrade wizard.

3. Ejecting Devices Requires Too Many Clicks. Love Device Stage and all, but ejecting a plain old card reader requires two different menus and more clicks than I care to count as I shuffle from menu to menu. Just like it was in Vista, this is dumb. Sometimes it’s just easier to yank out the drive and deal with the angry alert message. Two clicks max, please. Update: Okay, looks like we’re doinitwrong. You can actually pop up a list of attached devices from the “safely remove hardware icon where you click the device, and it ejects, requiring a grand total of two clicks, which is what we wanted. If you actually click where it says “Safely Remove Hardware” it pops up the menu and you get to click more. This could be made more apparent to the user, I think.

4. Most Desktop Gadgets Suck More people will use gadgets now that they don’t start off in the Sidebar by default. (Yes, you can rip ’em off the Sidebar and scatter ’em around in Vista, but it’s still more of an ordeal.) But even if gadgets are more accessible than ever, there’s a problem: Most of them are pretty terrible, with nothing like the quality or polish of OS X’s Dashboard ecosystem or Yahoo’s Konfabulator, so we only use a few of ’em. Hopefully, this gets better by the time Windows 7 is all final.

5. Windows Media Player Blows. Yeah, it now natively supports more than three-and-a-half codecs, but try actually figuring out how to use its great new features. The interface is yucky and cluttered, a consequence of trying to simplify a program that’s gotten really unwieldy as its sprouted feature tentacles over the years. (Before you even start, I’m not a fan of iTunes’ feature bloat either, but its library UI is better.) Our attempts to play music off of a networked drive, for instance, went nowhere on one computer and produced ugly results on another, because it’s so unintuitive, with controls and features hidden like surprises. There’s really no argument for saving Media Player—it’s not like anyone actually likes it anyway. Windows Media Center and Zune’s software look and feel great, so how about letting those guys build a whole new one from scratch?

6. Sleep and Hibernation Are Still Crapshoots. This may sound like a beta complaint, but it’s been a real problem in Windows for a while. Sometimes your computer will come out of sleep or hibernation. (Sleep is much better than hibernation, though.) Sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’s as snappy as a wake up as if it had a triple shot of espresso. Sometimes it’s like it washed down three bottles of sleeping pills with a quart of drank. Make it work, please.

7. Control Panel Is a Mess. Look at this crap. No really, just look at it. The Simple layout literally hides what you’re looking for, while the All view masks it with the camouflage of multiplicity. Not only that, but with all the advancements, Control Panel is no longer really the single central hub for getting everything done, tinker-wise. With all the great UI work you’ve done in Windows 7, don’t tell us you really couldn’t do any better with this, guys.

We’ve got some other nagging issues that may become objects of hatred at some point, but we’re willing to wait for the final release to air more grievances. In the meantime, that’s what we absolutely hate. So FIX IT! Thanks for caring.

Amazon’s Kindle 2, announced on Monday, is the probably the best ebook reader you can buy. But neither it, nor any other reader out there, will be converting the masses anytime soon. Here’s why:

The Current State of Suck
Amazon will sell a lot of Kindle 2s. If they can keep up with demand this time, they’ll sell more than the original Kindle, supposedly now in the hands of 500,000 people. But it’s still not the breakthrough reader, the one that will dramatically overturn and recreate the literary market.

People call it the “iPod of books,” and in some senses that’s true. The first iPods didn’t overturn any market. They were just marginally better than their competitors, but they were limited to Mac users only, had mechanical scroll wheels and were easily damaged.

Desire for the original iPod is like desire for the Kindles—it reveals that there is a very real mass of people who do want this kind of device. But getting from the original iPod to the hottest new models may prove to be an easier journey than going from these original Kindles (and Sony Readers) to the perfect reading device, primarily because of display technology—readers are, after all, designed for the singular purpose of displaying content that’s easy on the eyes. As of now, there are two display camps—electronic paper and LCD—and both have far too many compromises at the moment to be adequate for a reading revolution.

E-Ink vs LCD
Most readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader, use a type of electronic paper called E-Ink. These displays are known scientifically as electrophoretic, and involve the arrangement of pixels on a screen like you would draw on an Etch-a-Sketch. That is, energy is used to sketch, but once the pixels are in place, they stay in place without demanding power.

E-Ink differs from the LCD screen you’re likely reading this on (unless you subscribe to Giz’s new Kindle feed) in that it’s not backlit. Like legitimate paper, it must be held under a light source, but proponents say that’s easier on the eyes. You’re not staring at any rapidly flickering light bulb, just calm black pixels on a grayish background.

And because E-Ink only uses power to change pages or images, but not to display a given page, E-Ink-based electronics can run for days without recharging. The problem with that E-Ink is expensive, slow (you can’t have moving cursors or any kind of video) and boring. No color, crummy contrast, crappy resolution. Though reading actual text in good light is pleasant, the limitations of E-Ink are painfully obvious to even the least-techie of users.

Standard LCDs on your computer or an ebook-friendly smartphone aren’t any better. They could be too small, and if they’re not too small, they require too much power to run for any prolonged length of time. (E-Ink can go for days—getting a single day out of any LCD device would be a coup.) Above all, it’s just not a comfortable display to read on—sure you might stare at a monitor eight hours a day, but no one wants to read a novel on a glowing, constantly refreshing screen when they’re lying in bed, trying to relax. It’s doable, sure, but make no mistake, it’s a harsher experience.

The Dimly Lit Future
So what’s next? Plastic Logic presents the rosiest picture of the future of electronic paper displays, a perfectly-sized flexible plastic touchscreen that’s basically all E-Ink display, plus Wi-Fi.

I talked to Time Magazine’s Josh Quittner, who’s been intently researching readers, and he loves the device. The problem, he says, is that it’s both too innovative and too slow—it’s made entirely of plastic, even the transistors, requiring brand new fabs to produce it. So not only will the initial version will be expensive as hell, with a 10.7″ screen, but it’ll be standard black on gray. Color, which E-Ink has developed in the lab, won’t be coming out until 2011—possibly too late. Not even God knows what the market will be like in 2011—try to imagine what you thought cellphones would be like in 2008 from back in 2006.

Mary Lou Jepsen—who designed the XO Laptop’s breakthrough reflective LCD screen and her new company, Pixel Qi, are reinventing the LCD again, and their display, if it lives up to its promises, could be the other way forward. In fact, she told me that she predicts that “in 2010, LCDs designed for reading will overtake the electrophoretic display technology in the ereader market.”

She says that Pixel Qi‘s displays are actually more readable than e-paper, with “excellent reflectance, high resolution for text, sunlight readability”—just as easy on the eyes when the backlighting is turned off, but with the key advantages of full color and fast refresh, for pages that update as fast as video. Jepsen says it’s even possible to get a week of battery life from LCD tech, of course depending on the device the screens are embedded in. Infrastructurally and perhaps historically speaking, the odds are in LCD’s favor. Even new versions will be incredibly cheap and quick to manufacture because they can be made entirely in existing factories without requiring new, specialized equipment.

What’s Really Gonna Happen?
Which display tech will win out is may prove to be more economic than aesthetic, but ebook readers are here to stay. The presumption that everyone will eventually read books on an electronic display of some sort in the future is so fundamental I haven’t bothered to question it, mostly because nobody else does either. (Even if you love books, ebook reading makes sense.)

If you believe there’s a future for a dedicated device that exists solely to display books and newspapers and whatever other forms of the printed word you want to read, then E-Ink and similar tech makes sense, as long as it eventually can cost less and refresh faster. The battery-life advantage is huge. But if you think that a reader will be just one function of, say, a multitouch tablet that’s also your netbook, PDA and video display—and it’s a device you charge every night—it’s pretty clear that a multi-talented LCD display is the future.

As Quittner told us, someone’s going to figure this out. It’s just a question of who and when.

Old book image: ēst smiltis no ausīm/Flickr