Saturday, July 09, 2011

Android on the O2 Joggler

A while back I purchased an O2 Joggler off eBay (I missed it in the shops when O2 discontinued it and dropped the price down to £50 - fortunately that was around the going rate for one on eBay when I got mine, so I didn't loose out much).  While out of the box it is still fundamentally flawed, it has long since been hacked into something potentially useful.

For awhile I was running Ubuntu on it, and while it worked it still felt like you really needed to connect a keyboard and mouse to make the most out of it. Recently a build of Android x86 Froyo has come out for it, so I decided to give it a spin. I have to say that after installing Froyo, you realize how the Joggler should have been an Android device from the start.

I'm hoping to get Android running on the internal 1Gb flash (I've got it booting off a 1Gb USB pen drive, so I'm hopeful) and then using a low profile USB drive (something like this) as the "SD Card" (in the worst case, I could just use the low profile drive for both the OS and the SD card).

It's not perfect - videos seems a bit iffy, apparently there are some issues with external speakers and not every app works or works well - but as a small computer for the kitchen it looks like it finally fits the bill.

Monday, March 07, 2011

Google Giveth, Google Taketh Away

Google Giveth

My Nexus One got the Gingerbread update the other week. One of the new features is built in SIP support (which you can find at the bottom of Settings -> Call Settings). It was reasonably straightforward to get it talking to the IP-01 (note to self: remember to click on the "Apply Changes" button in the top right corner after making changes). Sound quality needs a bit of work (I have a feeling some reconfiguration is in order).

I think I'm going to have to look into Locale scripting for turning "Receive incoming calls" on and off (if I'm not at home then there's not much point wasting battery while trying to keep in contact with a server it can't ever see).

One thing worth noting - if you normally don't bother with passwords on your SIP accounts, you'll need to have one on the account you want to use with Android as you currently can't set up a SIP account on the phone without one.

Google Taketh Away

I got an email at the weekend - Gizmo is getting shutdown. Apparently Google think Google Voice in GMail is a more than adequate replacement. I disagree on two counts.

One - the lack of SIP support. My hope is that SIP support for GVoice is coming soon (though you would think they would have gotten that up and running before shutting down Gizmo). After all, it's now built in to Android. It's probably best not to hold your breath though.

Two - US-centricity. Both Gizmo and Grandcentral were international. Google Voice is not. I had to go through hoops to keep my GrandCentral number working with Google Voice while in the UK that I did not have to go through with GrandCentral. Gizmo helped on the international front as it meant I did not need a second US telephone number to use GC and even after the move to GVoice it made things a lot easier. Now I'm going to have to go through even more hoops to keep using the service. I really don't get why Google so often fails when it comes to looking beyond America's borders (it's not just Google Voice where they often fail, but Voice is the poster child for Google's failures in this regard).