Yesterday a story about Apple’s unauthorised logging of timestamped location data on iPhones running iOS 4.x versions of the system software was published in several articles in technical and mainstream media worldwide. This is important, not only because of the ubiquity of location-based services available to consumers worldwide and the significance of location in safeguarding the privacy of individuals, but also because of the differences in legislation in different regions, the lack of transparency in the organisations that do gather data and the complete ignorance of those users whose data is being collected both with respect to the fact itself and the uses that they undergo.

When we first introduced AthensBook, in early 2009, we went through the ‘hassle’ of researching (with the assistance of a small legal team that advise us on legal issues) the whole topic of privacy and location in Greece and the European Union. We also observed what manufacturers, be it hardware or system software, do. To our surprise we realised the following:

• Manufacturers implicitly (and, in some cases, explicitly) ask for the users’ permission to use their location for one reason or another. Google, in its Android operating system, for example, asks for the user’s consent when he or she tries to enable Wifi/Cell-ID-based positioning. The message states that the service will anonymously gather data even when no applications make use of location services. This is Google’s way of maintaining and improving its cell triangulation and BSSID databases, important features of most modern smartphones that vastly accelerate the process positioning and, along with A-GPS, provide extremely accurate location data that would be impossible with off-line GPS devices of that size and power profile. There is no guarantee on what the company will do with the data, of course.
• People have no idea that this is happening, in most cases. We’ve had Android users ask us about the data AthensBook gathers from its users and seeming very concerned about their location being ‘sent’ to a remote server. Those same people were totally oblivious of the kind of data Google is gathering from their devices all the time, despite the fact that they agreed to it when they enabled location services on their phone.
• People are most likely to trust large corporations and be wary of smaller startups making use of location data, even if the latter have a published, clear and transparent privacy policy and terms of use.
• Even within the EU there are varying levels of legislative control over how location is classified and what can application service providers can do with it.

There seems to be widespread ignorance among the population about what their devices can do, what the companies that manufacture and sell them do with their data and what applications do. It is easy to agree to a long text titled ‘Terms of Use’ or ‘Privacy Policy’ without reading it, but most of the time people are totally clueless about their rights and whether they have voluntarily gave them up when they agreed to use Google’s or Apple’s latest and greatest gadget.
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Android 2.3 was announced a few days ago. The previous day, CyanogenMod 6.1, the most popular community mod was released, based on Froyo (2.2). And today, just a short two weeks after the announcement, the source code for the latest version of Android is being released!

The release marks the end of the 2.x era, with Google, most definitely, working hard on the 3.x series aimed for release in the first quarter of 2011 and — hopefully — taking the fight with iOS up a notch. Just an hour ago cyanogen posted this on twitter:

If you need me, I’ll be locked in my room for the next 3 days. #gingerbread

I feel that right now that’s precisely what makes Android sell, and by extension the popularity and characteristics of such projects give many clues on the demographics of those buying Android devices.

In other words, the ‘magic’ of the platform is its rapid evolution and by extension its community (a community that is largely technology oriented), something not to be found in HTC’s or Samsung’s wanna-be iPhone devices (or their mediocre software), Sony Ericsson’s lifestyle apps or Motorola’s ‘macho’ Droid phone and its seriously bad Motoblur. These are commercial parts of a nascent platform that — until now — enthuse few outside the technology community.

Stuff like CyanogenMod are exciting because they evolve extremely fast and at the same time let your imagination run wild with features that half-baked commercial Android ‘flavours’ couldn’t never have. A combination — and even the ‘controlled’, sterile in a way, yet amazingly polished environments like iOS lacks.

And this is, sadly, something that most major Android device manufacturers don’t get, judging by the effort they put in locking their products down, the amount of crapware they bundle with them and the restrictions they place to their customers.

By the way, if you’re using a supported device, like e.g. the HTC Desire, I recommend you get rid of Sense right now, get CyanogenMod, or another mod if so you prefer, and turn the damn thing into a usable gadget. You won’t regret it*.

*If you do, I won’t be held responsible for any damage you may cause to your device.

Το οτι το Android αποτελεί βασικό στόχο στην ανάπτυξη τόσο του AthensBook όσο και του GEO|ADS είναι κάτι που δεν έχουμε κρύψει, εδώ και αρκετούς μήνες. Ετσι, στις αρχές του περασμενου Απρίλη, επενδύσαμε σε ένα HTC Desire, μια συσκευή που βρίσκεται κοντά στην κορυφή της αγοράς γα τη συγκεκριμένη πλατφόρμα και παρέχει πλήθος δυνατοτήτων που λίγες άλλες συσκευές μπορούν να προσφέρουν σε αυτό το μέγεθος, ανεξαρτήτως πλατφόρμα. Σε αυτό το άρθρο θα περιγράψω τις εμπειρίες μου με τη συσκευή, αλλά και κατ’επέκτασή την πλατφόρμα, τόσο αυτή καθέ αυτή, όσο και στην μορφή που την εμπορεύεται η HTC, το περιβάλλον Sense, ως χρήστης και όχι ως μηχανικός λογισμικού.
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Having recently stepped up our efforts to provide an Android version of AthensBook before the end Summer 2010, I’ve acquired an HTC Desire, the flagship Android phone from HTC, featuring the latest Sense UI, impressive hardware specs and a gorgeous display.

Sadly, while Android is a much more ‘open’ and an extremely fascinating platform (for enthousiasts, programmers and geeks alike) than the iPhoneOS, and despite the fact that I’ve been privileged enough to use the state of the art in that respect, it still feels rough in so many places that make it completely clear that what Apple have achieved with the Mac (and now the iPhone) is extremely admirable and that it has a long way to go until it provides a similarly trouble-free experience to its users.

Take for example localisation and multiple soft keyboard layout support (what Google calls IMEs). HTC ships with its own software ‘keyboard’, known as HTC IME with several layouts for a number of languages. It also includes support for Hellenic (Greek), but with a caveat: there is no way to change the keyboard layout to Hellenic once you choose to use an English locale for your phone. This means that if you like English, French or German menus you won’t be able to type Hellenic. At the same time choosing the Hellenic locale provides you with a togglable keyboard (English – Hellenic), leaving users that wish to have a localised phone in Hellenic and type in German helpless.

While this kind of anomaly, or more accurately, braindead design is not Google’s fault per se (in this case it is HTCs), Google shares some of the blame for not providing a more robust, comprehensive framework for supporting multiple locales AND at the same time supporting multiple, independent (from the locale) keyboard layouts on Android in a way that would allow someone to have, say, a Korean locale and a French keyboard, without depending on HTC (or any other manufacturer). If anything could be a good advice, “Copy Apple” is it in this case, as iPhoneOS 3.0 solved this problem admirably by completely decoupling keyboard layouts/languages from phone locale (menu, date, currency conventions etc.) and a large number of supported languages in both cases.

Scouring the various online fora and searching for the subject, I’ve come across two interesting aspects of this: first, that someone contacted HTC on the matter who just retorted that their phone was ‘locked’ to being used in certain countries, hence the lack of available keyboard ‘languages’ options. This is, to put it mildly, pathetic and very reminiscent of 1990s mobile phone standards. Second, that there is a ‘hack’ (or mod if you prefer) in the name of ‘HTC_IME mod‘ that provides this functionality along with many other features.

Which makes the situation even more pathetic and begs the question: why would HTC feel that in a generally open platform like Android they have to omit such basic, important, fundamental functionality forcing people that merely want to be those that decide the language of the menu of their phone and still at the same time be able to write in whatever language they feel like at any given point in time to spend time, energy and money, looking (let alone writing) hacks like ‘HTC_IME mod’ when they could have incorporated that functionality into their phones in the first place.

Android is a platform that has shown great promise and that already presents an amazing experience to its users. One of the problems it faces is fragmentation and botched implementations of basic functionality — such as keyboard layout switching — for no particular reason other than sheer stupidity on the part of the system developers/manufacturers and it’d be a shame if — in the long term — it would fail to lesser competitors because of them.

It should be no surprise that Verizon would invest in Android, given the onslaught that AT&T’s exclusivity with the iPhone has brought to everyone, despite the fact that Verizon’s network is superior to AT&T’s, the fact that it has a number of popular handsets and services etc.

And while Europe remains the place where mobile telephony reigns, it is the United States and Asia, with HTC, Apple and Google providing great next-generation devices and Nokia — the reigning king — becoming increasingly irrelevant where it matters: profits, mindshare and innovation.

The new Motorola Droid, a phone launched by Verizon and developed in collaboration with Motorola and Google as its own ‘iPhone killer’ is the first to feature Android 2.0 and a seemingly powerful device in terms of hardware features. Expected to be using the same CPU family as the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre, an ARM Cortex A8 processor and most probably the powerful OMAP3430 by Texas Instruments, the Droid features a high-resolution display and an assortment of features that puts its firmly in N900 territory and far exceed those of the iPhone 3GS. That’s as far as the hardware is concerned, because in the software realm things are so much better than Nokia’s half-baked, joke of an environment and network platform (Ovi). Even before launch, the Android platform is rapidly gaining ground in terms of application availability; with its modern APIs and evolving feature-set make it a great adversary; software matters as the iPhone has demonstrated, with its superior UI and the vast library of applications — more than 85,000 of them as of late September 2009, a massive number compared to 10,000 for the Android and only 2,000 for the BlackBerry.

So how is the Motorola Droid going to compare with the iPhone, the BlackBerry (especially the latest Storm 2) and the competing Android offerings by other manufacturers? I guess it’s going to do pretty well in the United States, especially if Verizon holds its on in terms of marketing and sales. To me ‘Droid’ looks retro. Typical of the stuff that I’m used to seeing from Motorola; this doesn’t necessarily mean that the device is bad and I would refrain from passing judgement about its appeal until actually using one.
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