Having been an Android user for 10 months or so, I’ve decided to call it a day; quit; move on.

Here’s why:

As many carrier-provided Android users have found out, their handsets are hamstrung by a combination of carrier-provided ROM, woefully small internal memory and the inability to delete stuff you don’t want.

The first problem I had was with the apps, thoughtfully loaded on to the phone for me by my carrier, Orange.  Facebook, I concede, might be useful to one or two people, but not to me; in addition, there were demo versions of Monopoly and Uno. Seriously. Orange also thought it would be fun to to provide their own browser and own maps application, too. Quite what makes them think their branded apps would be better than the stock Android versions, is anyone’s guess. The thing is, I didn’t ask for, want or need any of these things, but because they’re burned into the ROM, I was unable to delete them. Imagine buying a PC with demo versions of software installed on it and you weren’t allowed to delete them. So much for open.

Although I could (and did) download alternative browsers, keyboards, SMS app from the Android Marketplace, I soon found I’d run out of space on my 4gb phone.  Of course, it’s not a 4gb phone, it’s actually a 148mb phone stuffed with bloatware I don’t need and can’t delete which happens to have a 4gb SD card installed in it. Even with the modest number of apps I’d installed, I was forever seeing the low-storage warning, clearing down temp files and generally having to babysit a phone!

Oh, and here’s a fun feature for a handset: when the internal storage does fall too low, it rejects SMS messages and for added hilarity, it doesn’t even display the phone number of the sender so you know who to get back to; it just refuses the message.

Then there was the Calendar app, which would frequently crash back to the home screen when I tried to scroll through my agenda  or do something out of the ordinary, like create a new appointment.

There were problems with GPS signal acquisition too, which, even outside, could take up to 15 minutes; 3g signal acquisition wasn’t much better and always seemed to be balanced on a knife-edge.  There were the random lock-ups, shutdowns and reboots. The camera app would helpfully Force Close when I hit the shutter button, and occasionally leave the LED flash lit up until I power-cycled the phone.

This was all before 2.2  had been released, so I was prepared to wait it out on the promise that Froyo provided the ability to move and install apps to the SD card, and offered all manner of stability and performance improvements.  The Orange-supplied version of Froyo did make the phone more stable – the shutdowns and reboots were much reduced (but not eliminated) – but the GPS and 3G problems persisted and it turns out not all many apps can be moved to the SD card so I still couldn’t move the preinstalled bloatware off the phone.

After further reading, I installed the Cyanogen Mod, which combined with App2SD, offered the ability to move any app to the SD card. The installation was remarkably straightforward and without a doubt, CM is vastly better than any ROM supplied by Orange. The phone was more stable still than the Orange Froyo and the screen much more responsive (pro tip: if you’ve bought an Android handset, then I’d recommend the first thing you do is wipe whatever your carrier has landed you with and install CM instead).

Good as CM is, though, it’s still over-encumbered with crap like Facebook, an FM radio and a default Twitter client, which wouldn’t be so bad, but because they’re deemed to be system files, still can’t be moved to the SD card. Once again, I was reduced to deleting the apps I wanted to run, while apps I don’t need are taking up valuable system space. Yet more further reading revealed that you can bake your own ROM, and remove the components you don’t want, but at that point, I thought, “Screw it; this is just too much work for a phone”. And I jumped into walled garden of the iPhone.

Sure, the notifications aren’t as good as Android; it’s not as customisable as Android, but all 16gb of storage is available for me to use how I want; there are no apps installed that I haven’t chose myself; there’s no lag on the camera; the calendar app actually lets me make appointments; calls are clearer; 3g signal appears to be stronger and the GPS works… indoors!

To me, the iPhone vs. Android argument isn’t about open vs. closed any more, it’s about what works and for me, the iPhone is what works.

All may not be lost.

I’ve got an iPod dock hooked up via the Apple component cable to an amp in my lounge so that I can play video back through my surround speakers and on the screen hanging on the wall. Since the connector for the component cable fits the iPad as well, I can play video back from that device, too.

The other day, I was charging the iPad using the component cable, looked up a video on YouTube and as it played back on my big screen, I started wondering what else would work and my first port of call was BBC’s iPlayer. What I found is that while the site itself shows up in Safari as normal, the video portion plays quite happily on my big screen!

In the photo above, you can see I’ve got the iPad plugged in via the component cable, and an episode of Top Gear is on the screen…! Actually, that might have been far more effective if I’d put up a video clip instead.

Convinced this was nothing new, I Googled around but couldn’t find any “Hey, guess what?” posts describing the same behaviour, so perhaps I’ve stumbled into a minor victory that will allow content from other Flash-based sites to be watched via the iPad, and it’ll only cost you the price of Apple’s component cable!

Of course, there was no way I could afford one of these mythical things, so I opted for the next best thing: the Amstrad PenPad. In January 1995, when an Apple Newton was weighing in at around £700 (a lot of money for an underpaid IT Manager!) the Amstrad PenPad could be had for less than £100. You get what you pay for, and for reasons that will become clear, it was consigned to the bottom of my work bag within a month of purchase.

The spec on this thing was amazing. For a handheld device. Of the time. Boasting 40 hours battery life, handwriting recognition for calendar, contacts, tasks, meeting notes and Other Things, the PenPad had a capacity of 330 full pages of addresses (“Full” pages, mind you!) or 6000 diary entries.

You could expand the storage (to a whopping 2mb) via a PCMCIA slot on the underside; but you were only able to write to the internal storage or the PCMCIA card; there was no dual usage. There was no wifi, so sharing was done manually – in other words: you printed stuff via the serial cable interface on the top.

The first time I turned up to a meeting packing my PenPad, my colleagues were green with envy… until, that is,  I actually tried to take notes. The handwriting recognition system still didn’t recognise my handwriting, despite hours of supposed training to get it to do just that. I’d input all of my contacts and thought the crappy recognition was all part of the device’s learning process!

After retraining the thing twice more, and even going as far as to adapt my handwriting in an effort to suit, it just wasn’t working and my Penpad’s days were numbered.

Despite it’s failings, I’ve kept it, boxed with manual and handy multi-language help stickers since then! (What can I tell you? I’m a pack rat – which is why I’ve still got a boxed copy of Windows v1.03, too!)

OK, I’ve shared my “dodgy gadget purchase” story; it’s time for you to ‘fess up and share yours – even if you bought the Sega 32x.

(thanks to China Guccio for the Newton photo, used under Creative Commons)

gdgt is the new project from Peter Rojas and Ryan Block – the founder and the former Chief Editor of the mighty Engadget, respectively – and something that has been hotly antipicated (at least within the gadget news world, which I like to inhabit) for a year now, so the launch was big news.

The site is great and is going to attract a ton of traffic, but what struck me most, was this article on Engadget, which closes with:

Look, we’ve found the best way in life to learn about something is to scuttle the user manual and dive right in — we highly suggest you do the same and take gdgt out for a spin. We think you’ll like what you find.

Congrats Peter and Ryan!

I know there’s a lot of history between Ryan, Peter and Engadget, but the hard fact is that Engadget and gdgt operate within the same crowded and very competitive market. Yet here we have Joshua Topolsky saying to his readers, “go and check out the competition; we think you’ll like it“.

OK; it’s not all rosy in the new media garden, but I can’t imagine, for example, the Telegraph newspaper saying to it’s readers, “The Guardian have launched a new tech news site, with content from some awesome writers; go check it out!”, can you?

Not only will Apple’s future updates turn a working handset into a brick, users who suffer this because they chose to unlock their iPhone, won’t be covered by Apple’s warranty, either.

Read the full statement here.

[Update:] the iPhone Dev team, who released the only usable unlock software, have released a statement of their own.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, unlocked, software, firmware, update, brick

Today, after the early adopters, who were prepared to pay a stupid amount of money for the kudos of owning a locked-down, locked-in cellphone-cum-music-player, voiced their unhappiness, the thought of all those torch and, presumably, iPhone-wielding villagers descending on Cupertino was sufficiently scary to prompt Steve Jobs to do an about turn and offer them a $100 olive branch.

While everyone accepts that the price of any consumer electronic device will fall, no-one – especially not the crucial early-adopters who are prepared to pay a premium for, essentially, beta-testing the thing – expects to see it fall by that much, that soon.

In the end, this will cost Apple a few tens of millions to put right, but with the huge margins on the iPhone, it won’t really hurt them financially. The fact that Steve Jobs has acted so quickly speaks volumes about how good Apple are at responding to the mood of their customers, so unless they decide to rebate only those people activated their phones with AT&T, their reputation won’t be damaged by this either.