Android Rant 2: Ice Cream something

At long last the latest... almost most recent version of Android has been released for my phone.  I've mentioned this in passing before but the absolutely insane update path is one of the most frustrating aspects of owning and living with an Android device.  Because so many parties are involved in the dreary task of keeping an out-of-date piece of hardware current (subsidized hardware, at that) there is little to no incentive for it to get done in a timely fashion.  I can't exactly blame HTC or Sprint for their dragging of feet.  Time spent developing a new and custom build for a no-longer-manufactured phone is, at least in the short term, money wasted.  How this short term issue is handled can help retain customers, or even push long-termers away.

Android's update issues stem from how it must be custom built for each phone.  If Apple had these issues their bottom line would not be anywhere near what it is today.  Their control of hardware lets them streamline updates so that rollouts are faster and less fragmented (and, I say, *fractured*) than Android's absolutely haphazard and lag-filled update process.  Put it this way: if Microsoft had to custom build Windows for every single different computer on earth... Let's just say Ballmer would have popped a vein by now. 

So - on to some complaints about ICS.  These are just the things I've noticed within my first week of using the latest... I mean kind of recent version of Android.  I hate it.  I hate it worse than Gingerbread.  Let's start with the most basic functions: turning various things on and off.

With Gingerbread, turning on or off various functions was one swipe and two taps away.  GPS? swipe, tap, tap.  WiFi radio? swipe, tap, tap.  Let me give you a textual rundown of how to activate or deactivate the GPS now: swipe, tap, tap, swipe, tap.  WiFi?: swipe, tap, tap, tap.  WiFi also seems to disconnect whenever possible and reconnecting requires the same swipe, tap, tap, tap... wait... tap, wait, tap, tap.

GPS, if it doesn't connect right away, will NEVER find a location lock until I shut it off and turn it back on.  Swipe, tap, tap, tap, swipe, tap, wait, tap, swipe.  

Okay so maybe getting from an address search to navigation mode has improved?  Let's find out.  I'll start with the process AFTER I've done a home-screen based address search.  Nav: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.  Most of the places you have to click on are at wildly different parts of the screen.  I don't know about you but I think that it should take considerably less than six steps after an address search to get to the part where the thing helps you navigate to that address.  Oh and that is if the GPS is still on.  If it isn't there are several more steps to that process. 

Then there is the utter slowness of the interface.  I may post video because its really insane that a modern phone should lag like its running on a tape drive.  I just took a photo and I want to send it to Facebook.  In Gingerbread there was essentially no discernible delay.  Now there is, at least, several seconds between pressing "share" and any reaction at all from the phone.  This isn't the only point at which some kind of pause is present but it is the most obvious thus far.  The phone responds to everything with lag now. 

None of this is a deal-breaker by itself.  In aggregate and with all of the other frustrating limitations (Bluetooth and the batshit auto-play - I'm looking at you, and don't get me started on how Bluetooth has been further obfuscated) it is an absolute deal breaker.  I may revisit Android in the future.  For now and the near future - I'm ditching this mess of a an OS for something a little more reasonable.

Auli (part of a much larger work)

On the shores laid Auli. And in her lie dormant too, like her eyes, the remembering of seas left slumbering. Once was forgotten the places she had been. From storms of rain and fire and sticks she fled, not scared but savoring. Freedom, wind, and care.

Watched as they hung, fingertips straining, on the cliffs of desire. That when the thunder passed they might climb back into the soft arms of eden. Skies turning color, like leaves, like dreams.

In the fog of a frozen dawn she awoke. And heard what she thought she had left behind. The steady but soft pull to scream. As demons, they seemed. Not horns but spears, lances, swords. This earth was theirs but if only they could have more.

And then Auli knew. The cliffs had fallen. On this soft sand lay all that could have been but was ignored. That rain is water and desire its shore.

Boat anchor? Wearing a lump engine well.

Peter Egan mentions his Buell Ulysses quite often in the pages of Cycle World magazine.  I notice this perhaps because I own a Ulysses as well - an 08 XB12XT to be exact.  The "touring" version of the softroader.  Egan's writings often agree with my own take on the Uly and also Buell in general.

One thing I've noticed as well is, beyond the love for the bike, there is an overwhelming respect for what Buell had accomplished with the HD motor that rides in the fuel-filled frame of all XB's.  Torque is often mentioned but there is something else beyond the insane power upgrade of even a factory XB12.  An HD 1200cc Nightser, though Harley doesn't really list HP figures anywhere, is basically a 60-65HP beast.  This is the same EVO-based engine as the Buells were using.  But Buell managed 103 horses and even an improvement in torque and redline.  And, dare I say it, less vibration.

What of the HD engine is left?  Well the uneven idle, for one.  I'm not complaining - the sound in generates is bonkers-crazy.  It fits the personality of the rest of the bike as well.  The fact that the turn signals bounce and flop, the bike walks backwards by itself, and the windscreen (a Madstad setup on mine) shakes itself into a blur only adds to the sense that this isn't a normal ride.  You are in for a treat, it burbles.  Something different.

And in the realm of "different" is the chassis.  It should be noted that Buell intended the XB to be turbo-charged.  The frame was designed with this in mind and signs of it exist in all XB frames.  The XB9 retains a large cutout in the frame where the piping would have been routed to the intake.  It is interesting to consider how different things would have been with a factory turbocharged American sportbike out in the wild.  HD still would have offed the brand, but Buells would have been challenging liter metric bikes on the straights as well as decimating them in the curves.

And curves, I think, are where my Ulysses really lets me know what it was meant for.  I can bomb down any street anywhere without a problem and in great comfort.  But when a corner comes up something happens.  My bike knows I'm about to throw it into a sweeping right hander, or lean it over further for a quick left hand turn.  It knows, it leans with aplomb and bravado, it takes that corner like nothing else on earth.  This chassis, then, was meant to take those guys on metric bikes of any size to school.

There are rumors that HD is realizing they need to attract the sportbike crowd.  The irony is that since they let the Buell brand go, they have nothing to offer in this range.  Erik Buell now operates EBR, a brand all his own that CAN offer the bikes he had always intended (perhaps not a turbocharged air-cooled HD motor...).  And HD is left to a fading demographic that prefers chrome and pirate outfits over capability and engineering brilliance.

I start up my Ulysses again.  In that exhaust note is the sound of HD crashing and burning.  Buells are gaining respect again and the more people know about what they were supposed to be, and more to the point how much Erik Buell crammed into them, the more HD loses potential customers of the younger generation.  I eagerly await EBR's next creations.  And perhaps part of me wants there to be a lumpy HD engine in the frame.  But only if a turbine sits near it.

Android and the infinite sadness.

I've been surrounded by technology my entire life.  It started, as far as I can recall, with a VIC-20 and escalated rapidly from there.  Now, if you were to walk into my "man cave", you would be surrounded by a rather dense panoply of outdated but impressive gadgets.  Everything from ancient tube amplifiers, oscilloscopes, Jensen Alnico speakers, a random 16mm projector, older camera equipment, microphones that were probably born before my parents, and so on.  Its all here, together, and much of it in use.

I rather enjoy technology.  I enjoy watching it advance and change.  But there is something about the latest batch of "current" tech that bothers the hell out of me.  None of it works.


A brief description of what I'm referring to may be in order.

I travel in my car quite a bit during the week.  Currently its about 14-15 hours per week, and usually 7 hours at a time.  As you can imagine this leads to a need for entertainment while driving.  Pandora is a fantastic source but lately I've been expanding into TED and other such educational lectures.  My car connects to my phone via a bluetooth interface.

For reference I'm running an HTC Evo3D.  Latest Android on it - so right now we are talking Gingerbread.

Now the trouble begins.

Okay so I'm connected!  And my phone clearly knows that the bluetooth connection is a "media" connection - just speakers and no mic.  Oh.  Oh why is it automatically playing music?  I don't want it to do that.  I just want it to connect.  Just.  Connect.  Do NOT autoplay.  How do I shut that off?  Oh I can't?  Like literally no way to stop it from autoplaying?

I've searched.  So far the solution is: root and put a different ROM on the phone, or remove your SD card and erase all other audio files so it doesn't have anything to play.

Those are the solutions.  That's it.

Now that is merely annoying.  But wait it gets better.  You might think that since the phone knows the device its connected to doesn't have a mic it *may* use the phone's mic when placing a call or otherwise trying to do some type of voice command.  Not so.  When I'm connected to my car's media device my phone mutes the mic input - in other words I have to plug in a headset if I want to make or take a call.

But wait - there's more.

I thought that if I got a bluetooth headset it would all work itself out.  My phone would use the headset for voice commands and phone calls, and route everything else to the media connection of my car.  Oh if only!  And why should it do that?  Why should it work in such a way that makes sense?  Oh i don't know.  Call it hopeless optimism.  My Palm equipment worked.  It just *worked*.  This android?  It doesn't work.  Ever.

No.  When i connect my headset and my car.. all hell breaks loose.  It DOESN'T take voice commands from my headset.  In fact phone calls are the only thing that gets routed to it, that I can tell.  Unless I'm *on* a phone call and then my navigation gets routed to the earpiece as well.  Trying to have a conversation and my phone is screaming GPS commands into my ear so loudly I have to throw the earpiece on the floor.  What gives?

And then the kicker - when I hang up the phone does not reroute Pandora or any other audio back to the car media connection.  Nope.  In fact I have to RESET MY PHONE to get it to route sound back out.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  I've only been talking about bluetooth issues.  And as frustrating and distracting as that issue is there are other "features" that are equally maddening.  The inconsistent landscape modes (some apps have no landscape modes, others are one or the other depending on if I'm selecting a video or watching one... try selecting something written sideways in a tiny font while driving a car.), the inability to easily close or select between open programs, the fact that sometimes it simply will not charge until I reset.

I could go on for hours about this.  Here's another thing - there is a minimum of 7 steps, that is 7 different things to click on, to get from a search for an address to actually having it navigate you there.

The sheer uselessness of this phone is staggering.  It simply, plainly, and against all logic, doesn't function.  It is a barrier to function in fact.  A thick line of red tape ala the DMV.  I long for the days when things worked.