Android and Motorola Milestone (Droid) bummers
What pisses me off about Android / Motorola Milestone (European version of the Droid).
DISCLAIMER: I do like Android and the Milestone. Except for some very pesky issues below it’s a great match and I’d definitely buy it again.
RANT: also, there’s little choice: Windows Mobile and BlackBerry have half the features (except for e-mail on BB, obviously) and while stock S60 actually can do more than stock Android, you have to fight the UI rather than just using it. The iPhone is, uh, the iPhone (i.e. well polished but limited software on extremely crappy hardware).
On to the issues:
0. the basic notion is that European users are ignored by both Motorola and Google. The Milestone does _not_ have the “with Google” logo on the back while the Droid… um, does (see what I did there?). OTA updates are not available for Milestone users and since most of the Milestones sold in Europe by Expansys are carrier-free, this problem cannot be blamed on anybody but Motorola and Google.
1. paid apps from the Market are not available in Poland. This problem has been known for almost a year and Google did nothing to rectify it. How is my Visa card different from a US, UK or Italian Visa card? Paid apps are already circulating via P2P, so I guess the developers are losing quite a lot of moolah.
2. the Android bug list is quite horrifying, not because there’s a lot of them, but Google do nothing with those tickets, critical issues with hundreds of “stars” (votes/scoring) are left unhandled for months. Users are encouraged to “star” the issues, but what’s the point if none get any attention from the Android team?
3. it’s impossible to enter Polish characters on the virtual keyboard, while they’re available via the HW keyboard. Yes, there’s a “Polish programmer’s keyboard V2″ on the Market, but it’s not designed for Android 2.0 and high-res screens. It looks really crappy and pixelated. See http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2750 – open since May 2009. Just great.
4. it’s impossible to enter Polish chars in ConnectBot. Also, it doesn’t support charset conversion like Putty for S60. And that’s not the end of it – you can’t enter square brackets nor the dollar sign either on the Milestone! See http://code.google.com/p/connectbot/issues/detail?id=12
ConnectBot is a fine example of a poorly thought out GUI design – on high-res devices such as the Milestone, fonts in the terminal are so badly pixelated it’s an utter joke. Come on, even on S60 it’s possible to design a high-res terminal (once again, see Putty for S60).
5. the 24-ish day cycle camera autofocus bug – gimme a break. It’s supposedly fixed in 2.0.1, but…
6. 2.0.1 update – when it comes out (if it comes out OTA), it’s better not to install it, because it KILLS browser scrolling performance (the browser is blazingly fast on 2.0) – and that applies to all applications rendering HTML. It’s been a few weeks since the update was pushed OTA to Droid users in the US, it is a known critical issue and yet Google does nothing about it. See http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5286 – 220+ stars, no reaction from Google.
7. E-mail: don’t even get me started on the built-in e-mail (not gmail) client.
Here’s the list of what you CANNOT do:
- add a signature http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4588 (340+ stars, lots of RMAs in the US and no reaction from Google)
- move messages between IMAP folders
- use IMAP idle
- display inline images
- download and save attachments other than images
- have the notifications disappear if you mark a message as read from another IMAP client (your laptop, etc.)
There’s an alternative e-mail client available (k9mail), but currently it turns all sent messages into multipart base64 encoded mush, triggering spam filters.
http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/issues/detail?id=21
http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/issues/detail?id=669
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8. A GAPING SECURITY HOLE LARGER THAN GOATSE:
It’s NOT POSSIBLE to import self-signed SSL certificates. For example, if you use the e-mail client you have two options: accept only trusted certs or accept all certs.
If you use self-signed certs for your mail server, you are OPEN to a MITM attack (an attacker will just act as your server, present his own self-signed cert and get your IMAP/SMTP username and password – the e-mail client will silently accept the new cert).
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9. no notes app by default. Hello, it’s supposed to be a smartphone! WTF?
10. silent mode does not make the phone silent (see http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1027)
11. no Bluetooth and USB tethering without rooting the phone or installing an $30 app. Wait, what? I understand that in the US the all powerful carriers disable tethering to protect their flaky 3G networks, but again, the Milestone’s carrier-free. I could tether my 1996 Panasonic phone, yet I can’t tether my 2009 Motorola. Great.
12. You can’t backup data, period. There are no backup apps supplied with the phone by Motorola nor Google. There’s a paid app called MyBackup Pro that is supposed to backup everything (unlike the free version), but you can’t purchase it – see issue #1 above.
Themocracy
As for issue #1, we should get used to it already. None of the major online software/multimedia stores is available in Poland. What we should do is to push our government (probably the Ministry of Culture should be the right address) to simplify Polish copyright law and adjust it to match European standards, so that the retailers can make their stores available to the Polish, as soon as they open their other European branches.
I’ve been waiting for Milestone since the time it was announced. My current contract ends next September and I wonder if the issues you described are going to be fixed by that time. Is there any decent alternative to Milestone?
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