woensdag 13 januari 2010

Android/Samsung horror list

I bought a Samsung Galaxy Spica running Android 1.5 last week, and had my share of problems with it. Not sure the problems are more important than switching to another OS in general, but anyway.

* Missed two times my wake up alarm in the morning. Seems to be a known problem on android. This can have several causes: closing some process on the phone (which I didn't) or something like adapting the volume while you are creating the alarm... Big frustration.
* Prediction library is only in the language of the locale of the phone. Since I want to have Dutch locale, but write a lot of messages in English, this is a big one for me.
Some paying apps seem to fix this problem: TouchPal and BetterKeyboard. Too bad they don't have that by default on the OS.
* Paying apps are only available in some countries, but not in Belgium. To get them anyway, some unofficial page explains that you can get paying apps if put a SIM card from a country that is actually supported. I tried that with an italian vodaphone card, and it actually worked.
* Tethering is not working out of the box, but you can use PdaNet (paying app, but free version has only minor limitations). Usb tethering works fine that way, but for Bluetooth tethering, you need at least Android 2.0, and my phone currently only has 1.5. Still better than iPhone though...
* When listening to music using headphones, incoming calls still go through the external speaker. Quite annoying.
* Too much unwanted notification sounds that are hard/impossible to turn down: plug in charger: BEEP, remove headphone: BEEP, ... The trick is to put the phone to silent mode, and I discovered the alarms still ring if the phone is on silent mode.
* Locking the screen doesn't lock the buttons. So, you can actually put the phone in flight or silent modus, or even totally off while the screen is locked! This caused some missing alarm for me, and missing phone calls. I think I might need some sleeve of some kind to solve this problem...