decoherence
July 14th, 2009, 02:13 AM
A few years back I got myself an HTC Touch cell phone. What's that? Did I hear someone say "why? oh, god, why!?" Yep, well that's how I felt after I used it for a while. If you really want to know, Bell was offering an "unlimited" internet bundle with that phone at the time (now available on any of their phones, of course!)
The HTC Touch was the original Windows Mobile answer to the iPhone and let me tell you... WinMo is NOT meant for a touchscreen-only device. You really need the included stylus to tap those tiny little close boxes, or that pathetic little on-screen keyboard.
Of course, HTC's customizations to WinMo (supposedly to make it more touchscreen friendly) allowed it to reach astonishing new levels of unresponsiveness. They were the first things to go.
More than a year ago I found this project by a guy at Massey University in NZ. He was similarly unhappy with his Touch and decided to port Android to it. Less than a year later, it was a very usable little device. Best of all, that damn stylus NEVER had to come out! Sure the on-screen keyboard still sucks (as they all do, including iPhone's, imho) but it can be used with fingers, at least. The main thing is that the web browser is 1000 times better, and of course integration with Google apps, which I make fair use of, is a big seller.
For this geek, being able to install an update every couple of months and see massive improvements is another huge selling point. I just like that sorta stuff.
So I did an update a couple of days ago bringing the phone up to Android 1.5 (previously 1.1.) Pretty much the only thing that doesn't work is GPS, and that is being worked on. An experimental driver is already in place but I haven't had luck with it.
So, if you happen to have one of these phone and you're still running WinMo on it, do yourself a huge favour and check out his Google Code project (http://code.google.com/p/vogue-android/).
I think it's so cool that I can do this. Thanks, Google, for doing the open source thing and enabling this to happen!
The HTC Touch was the original Windows Mobile answer to the iPhone and let me tell you... WinMo is NOT meant for a touchscreen-only device. You really need the included stylus to tap those tiny little close boxes, or that pathetic little on-screen keyboard.
Of course, HTC's customizations to WinMo (supposedly to make it more touchscreen friendly) allowed it to reach astonishing new levels of unresponsiveness. They were the first things to go.
More than a year ago I found this project by a guy at Massey University in NZ. He was similarly unhappy with his Touch and decided to port Android to it. Less than a year later, it was a very usable little device. Best of all, that damn stylus NEVER had to come out! Sure the on-screen keyboard still sucks (as they all do, including iPhone's, imho) but it can be used with fingers, at least. The main thing is that the web browser is 1000 times better, and of course integration with Google apps, which I make fair use of, is a big seller.
For this geek, being able to install an update every couple of months and see massive improvements is another huge selling point. I just like that sorta stuff.
So I did an update a couple of days ago bringing the phone up to Android 1.5 (previously 1.1.) Pretty much the only thing that doesn't work is GPS, and that is being worked on. An experimental driver is already in place but I haven't had luck with it.
So, if you happen to have one of these phone and you're still running WinMo on it, do yourself a huge favour and check out his Google Code project (http://code.google.com/p/vogue-android/).
I think it's so cool that I can do this. Thanks, Google, for doing the open source thing and enabling this to happen!