So I had to work outside today, and as usual I wanted to use my Verizon 4G Android (Thunderbolt) to connect my laptop using the Wi-Fi hotspot feature, as I’ve been doing since I got the phone, it’s been a real life saver many times.

This morning I saw that there was a firmware update, and I gladly accepted it, after that upgrade, now dear Verizon has decided to charge 4G users with $30 A MONTH to use the Hotspot feature that was free on my phone.

Really Verizon…?

So well, the outcome is that, NO, I’m never gonna pay you $30 a month to use my own Wi-Fi card to share my internet connection, but instead I’ve gone and signed up for Clear’s 4G hotspot, which allows me to connect up to 8 computers.

Verizon, I was happy with you until now, you suck balls, Android users are not stupid, this is pure evil. I guess my $250 a month on my line and my family’s lines are not enough for you.

So, if Clear ends up working well for me, what I think I’ll do at the end of the contract will be radical and I hope more and more people will do the same, I’m gonna get rid of my phone line, bye bye stupid 10 digit numbers, bye bye dynamic monthly bills, bye bye Verizon. I’ll just have it connected to my Wi-Fi hotspot, I’ll have faster internet access, and if I need to make a phone call, I’ll use either GTalk or Skype, fuck it. I don’t answer the phone anyway, I’ll send everyone straight to Google Voice.

                          

int x =  (int) ((PLANE_WIDTH/360.0) * (180 + lon));
int y =  (int) ((PLANE_HEIGHT/180.0) * (90 - lat));

                          

Very convenient way to send files back and forth to your Android Phone or Tablet.

Absolutely free at frostwire.com
All source code available on bitbucket.org

                          

Here’s a solution proven in tens of different android phones, seems to work 100%.

public static NetworkInterface getWifiNetworkInterface(WifiManager manager) {

    Enumeration<NetworkInterface> interfaces = null;
    try {
        //the WiFi network interface will be one of these.
        interfaces = NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces();
    } catch (SocketException e) {
        return null;
    }

    //We'll use the WiFiManager's ConnectionInfo IP address and compare it with
    //the ips of the enumerated NetworkInterfaces to find the WiFi NetworkInterface.

    //Wifi manager gets a ConnectionInfo object that has the ipAdress as an int
    //It's endianness could be different as the one on java.net.InetAddress
    //maybe this varies from device to device, the android API has no documentation on this method.
    int wifiIP = manager.getConnectionInfo().getIpAddress();

    //so I keep the same IP number with the reverse endianness
    int reverseWifiIP = Integer.reverseBytes(wifiIP); 		

    while (interfaces.hasMoreElements()) {

        NetworkInterface iface = interfaces.nextElement();

        //since each interface could have many InetAddresses...
        Enumeration<InetAddress> inetAddresses = iface.getInetAddresses();
        while (inetAddresses.hasMoreElements()) {
            InetAddress nextElement = inetAddresses.nextElement();
            int byteArrayToInt = byteArrayToInt(nextElement.getAddress(),0);

            //grab that IP in byte[] form and convert it to int, then compare it
            //to the IP given by the WifiManager's ConnectionInfo. We compare
            //in both endianness to make sure we get it.
            if (byteArrayToInt == wifiIP || byteArrayToInt == reverseWifiIP) {
                return iface;
            }
        }
    }

    return null;
}

public static final int byteArrayToInt(byte[] arr, int offset) {
    if (arr == null || arr.length - offset < 4)
        return -1;

    int r0 = (arr[offset] & 0xFF) << 24;
    int r1 = (arr[offset + 1] & 0xFF) << 16;
    int r2 = (arr[offset + 2] & 0xFF) << 8;
    int r3 = arr[offset + 3] & 0xFF;
    return r0 + r1 + r2 + r3;
}

                          

- Physical Keyboard feels great.

- Not sold on the stylus, I think I might loose it. However it comes in handy when clicking on tiny links.

- Web browsing experience is clumsy if you try to use your fingers and you’re used to Android or iPhone where dragging occurs on a light touch. With the N900 you have to Tap harder to begin to drag, probably like that intentionally. I must admit I find myself making mistakes on the Droid maybe because it’s too sensitive.

- Using forms on the browser is inconvenient. There’s no way to move from form field to form field except using the stylus. Keyboard arrows won’t work to switch focus between form fields, and the lack of virtual keyboard (when you’re using the real one) implies that you won’t have a “Next” button to move through the form (or at least I couldn’t figure out a field hopping mechanism).

- Zooming in and out on a web page will be extremely unintuitive. Thanks to patents on multitouch gestures you’ll have to either double tap, or do a ridiculous tap+hold and twirl clockwise zoom in (in a controlled way), or tap+hold and twirl counter-clockwise to zoom out… wtf.
Nokia has to put up a fight on this, natural multi-touch gestures are a must on today’s smartphones.

- I still don’t know how to select, copy and paste text from a website. Very hard to quote text and twitter it.

- Default timeout for screen auto lock is way too short.

- It has a stand on the back, which as a developer I appreciate. It’s a pain to debug apps on the nexus one, you always kind of need to pick it up or create some sort of desktop apparatus to have the phone facing you while you test hands free.

Multimedia
- Video and audio playback were perfect. Droid and Nexus One have nothing to envy, so it’s not a selling point. Watch the 3 phones playing the same video.

- Navigation is convenient with top left corner control. It took me a few seconds to figure it out being used to Android’s back and Home Button and of the one physical button on the iPhone.

- The Media player comes with pre-installed internet radio streaming app. On Android I had to download one from the Market.

- Didn’t have to install Flickr photo uploading app, already comes with OS.

- OVI Store experience frustrated me. Should be an app, not a web page. I got asked for an HTTPS certificate while trying to install a Twitter plugin, it was basically the same exception you get on a web browser. The regular user would get lost adding the certificate and the security exception. Then after that I got asked to signup for the OVI store, and I gave up. Installing apps should be a breeze. Setting up your OVI Store account should be done as part of the phone setup process on an App.

The more I use the phone the more I think, Nokia’s hardware is hot, but they’re wasting their time with competing on software. Nokia running Android would kill everybody else, let’s hope it will happen sooner than I think, they just need to test with one cool device and feel the market.

Unboxing Pictures

Playing with it as a Software Developer
- No SDK for Mac environment, or at least not a very accessible or official version of it. The only solution seemed to be installing the SDK on a Virtualized Linux (e.g. VirtualBox).

- Maemo SDK not compatible with Ubuntu 10.4 64bit, it seems it’s only 32bit.

The project page confirms this:
“The development environment for Maemo running on the desktop is called Maemo SDK. You can only install Maemo SDK on a Linux operating system. Maemo SDK currently supports the following Linux distributions: Debian, Ubuntu”

Tried installing Scratchbox on my Mac with no luck.

- It was a little surprising to see the Nokia documentation for developers talking about GTK+ in all their examples and not Qt, given the acquisition of Trolltech by Nokia in 2008. However you go to the Qt page and it says that it’s the defacto SDK for Maemo devices.

In the end I decided to install it on a 32bit Ubuntu VirtualBox image on my Mac and deal with the performance hit, I couldn’t just return the phone without compiling something, otherwise I’d be speaking out of my ass right?

Hello World in GTK

Hello World in Qt4, exactly the same code I would’ve used for a desktop Qt4 app.

compilation is the same thing as if developing a regular Qt4 app on linux

/scratchbox/login
fakeroot apt-get install libqt4-dev

create your helloworld.cpp… then make your project

qmake -project
qmake
make
run-standalone.sh ./qt_helloworld

If you’re used to Linux development with GTK or Qt4 you will feel right at home, and you probably know right off what’s the most comfortable set of tools to code. If you’re not, it seems like Nokia has left the whole thing way too much on the hands of the Maemo community.

Documentation seems a little all over the place, unfinished Wikis, not very welcoming for non-linux developers, I’m talking about companies that come from actually making money on iPhone OS or Android, looking to port their apps to Maemo. The first impression won’t be the best and you’ll think that things aren’t as well prepared as for iPhone with X-Code or Android with the Eclipse extension which let’s you deploy a signed installer in just a few clicks.

It seems that Nokia is relying way too much on the Linux community for all of this, I’m not sure if this is going to get very far with mobile shops, specially after seeing how many hurdles a user has to go through sometimes to get an app from the OVI market (in comparison to iPhone or Android’s markets simple purchasing processes).

SDK experience Screenshots

Conclusions

First of all thanks to Nokia for sending the N900. My final conclusions which are mostly thinking from the consumer perspective might not be one you’ll like much (you=Nokia), but you probably need to hear this (I’m guessing this is why you sent the device in the first place).

In my case after being a faithful Nokia consumer I felt dissapointed with the software side when I chose the N95 over the iPhone, newer Nokia phones came, but the same shitty platform was running on them, I thought Maemo would change that but now I know it’s nowhere near what smartphone users today expect. Then Android came along to truly compete with the iPhone.

Now as an Android user when the time comes for me to upgrade my phone I’ll be looking for another Android device.

Let’s imagine what’s going to happen when my Droid is too old, by that time there will be even more Android phones to choose from also a richer Application ecosystem, if I were the kind of person that installs paid apps I’d probably like to keep my “investment” for my next phone, however even if there’s a myriad of Android phones out there, the only brands I’ll consider are Motorola, HTC, LG and SonyEricsson, I’m not too fond of any of them so I’ll have to research what each of the phones they’ll be offering will suit my needs.

An Android based Nokia smartphone would certainly make my decision a lot easier. As of now you’re entirely out of the picture, there’s no way I’m switching to Maemo, and Moblin is way too new to tell if it’s going anywhere.

Nokia, Stop playing outside the garden, don’t get cocky with your current numbers and admit you’re slowly decaying, if you don’t do something about it once Android is on every cheap phone you’re gonna die. Android could use some Nokia.

Follow the geek.

                          

Serial Number: ??????????
AVD Name: N/A
Target: unknown
State: ??

Here’s the solution:

1. Create a script to fix this next time it happens, let’s call it “android_device_reset” and save it on a folder contained on your $PATH environment variable.

#!/bin/bash
# android_device_reset script
sudo adb kill-server
sudo service udev stop
sudo adb start-server
sudo adb devices

Save it and make it executable

chmod +x android_device_reset

2. Open this file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Make sure it looks something like this

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE=="0666"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="22b8", MODE=="0666"

Each line represents a different android device. If you have just one, the file should be one line long.

On that example I’ve configured the rules for a Motorola Droid and a Nexus One.
If you need to know the idVendor numbers for your Android device go here
developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html#VendorIds

3. Whenever the problem happens, just open a terminal and type

android_device_reset

It’ll ask you for your password, only administrative users will be able to execute the script.

Hope this helps.

                          

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                      files          blank        comment           code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
XML                            4130          26919          62996        3044624
C                              7191         494387         685731        2826741
Java                          16473         423278         986294        2084883
C++                            5623         349754         385625        1754053
C/C++ Header                  12278         300773         653608        1153456
HTML                           2325          13539          14681         348935
Bourne Shell                    501          45684          46947         317410
Javascript                     1717          41901          76306         208012
Assembly                       1704          18732          51392          96700
D                              2181          16936             24          59142
m4                              116           6026           1813          49502
Perl                            221           8189           8246          40058
Python                          236           9805          14225          38852
make                            381           6844           3837          37059
IDL                             421           3128              0          24181
Objective C                      93           2804           3371          10032
yacc                             15           1300            742           9660
CSS                              42           1760            617           8566
Teamcenter def                   41            631             95           5430
C#                               93            863            537           5283
Bourne Again Shell               99            569           1643           3784
lex                              21            776            754           3492
Expect                           20            105            168           2170
Ada                              10            599            560           1681
Ruby                             14            393            228           1433
XSLT                              8            105            110           1328
XSD                               7            182            359           1048
Pascal                            4            218            200            985
DOS Batch                        34            252            399            911
awk                              14             92            198            899
DTD                               9             66             42            289
sed                               9             32            143            277
Korn Shell                        1             39             46            223
Lisp                              2             32              5            144
MSBuild scripts                   1              1              0            140
NAnt scripts                      2             10              0             89
ASP.Net                           3              5              0             76
YAML                              6             27             42             66
SQL                               1              5              0             21
PHP                               1              0              0              3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                          56048        1776761        3001984       12141638
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update

It seems like this post got some attention on Reddit, YCombinator news and other sites on monday. I hadn’t noticed until today, so here are some answers to many of the FAQs about the post.

Yes it was done using cloc. Don’t shoot me I’m just the messenger.

It was run at the base folder of the entire Android OS source checkout, so yes it will include sample and tests I suppose.

C#, Ada, Objective-C? I also thought the same… It’s probably worth the try doing a few finds and greps to see if this is true, again I just posted the output of cloc, I didn’t intend to make this a scientific paper, just a fun and curious post to get a rough number on the lines of code, that breakdown was just icing on the cake for me (as inaccurate as it maybe)

Update
This post is now being referenced in Wikipedia! on the “Android (operating system)” article.

About Gubatron & Android
Ever since the iPhone OS handicapped millions of smartphone devices with its draconian laws, I started looking more and more seriously at Android as THE platform for every non-iPhone device coming to the mobile and TV space. Now I’m part of the developer team of FrostWire for Android, an application that exploits all the power of the device and the freedoms of the platform to allow people to connect and share.

                          

Nexus One

                          

Let’s see what the story will be with Android 2.2 (Froyo)

                          

Grabbed the demo video that comes with the N900 to delight you and put it on the 3 phones.

The screen on the Nexus One is the most impressive.

The Droid has a 1/2 sec. lag when you try to jump to another part of the video.

If you don’t care about the screen being so vibrant N900 is just as good doing video playback comparing it with the Nexus One.

                          

17 files get their MD5 calculated on the Droid

and 17 files get their MD5 hash calculated on the Nexus 1

Nexus 1 pwns.

Here’s the code in case you’re curious.

	public void onClick(View v) {
                                _logTextView.setText("MD5 Benchmark on " + Build.DEVICE + "\n\n");
				if (GlobalVariables.APP_CONTEXT == null)
					GlobalVariables.APP_CONTEXT = getApplicationContext();

				List<FileDescriptor> sharedAudioFiles = Engine.INSTANCE.LIBRARIAN.getSharedAudioFiles(0, 17);
				for (FileDescriptor fs: sharedAudioFiles) {
					long start = 0;
					String md5 = null;
					long length = 0;
					try {
						start = System.currentTimeMillis();
						File f = new File(fs.path);
						length = f.length();
						md5 = FrostWireUtils.getMD5(f);

					} catch (Exception e) { }
					long time = System.currentTimeMillis() - start;
					_logTextView.append(FrostWireUtils.getBytesInHuman(length) + " in " + time + " ms @ " + (length/(double) time)*1000 + " b/s\n");
				}
			}

And here’s how we do the MD5

	public final static String getMD5(File f) throws Exception {
		MessageDigest m = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");

		byte[] buf = new byte[65536];
		int num_read;

		InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(f));

		while ((num_read = in.read(buf)) != -1) {
			m.update(buf, 0, num_read);
		}

		String result = new BigInteger(1, m.digest()).toString(16);

		// pad with zeros if until it's 32 chars long.
		if (result.length() < 32) {
			StringBuffer padding = new StringBuffer();
			int paddingSize = 32 - result.length();
			for (int i = 0; i < paddingSize; i++)
				padding.append("0");

			result = padding.toString() + result;
		}

		return result;
	}

                          

The video demo covers how to create and run Unit Test classes for regular Java classes on Android, and also how to create and run Unit Test classes that test classes that depend on Android “Context” or “Activity” objects.

If your Android unit tests are not running because of frustrating error messages, the time spent watching this video will save you a lot of reading and headaches.

Check the screencast after the break

How to Unit Test on Android [SCREENCAST]
Uploaded by wedoit4you. – Explore more science and tech videos.

Download the Eclipse Project sources

                          

What I did:
Add a ScrollView (with android:fillViewport=”true” and android:layout_weight=”1″), then add a LinearLayout (yup…), and then add the TextView to fill all of that up (android:layout_weight=”1″ too)

Here’s the only thing that worked for me:

	<ScrollView android:layout_width="fill_parent"
                              android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                              android:layout_weight="1" android:fillViewport="true">
		<LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent">
		<TextView android:text="@+id/TextView01"
			android:id="@+id/logTextView"
			android:layout_width="fill_parent"
			android:layout_height="fill_parent"
			android:textColor="#000"
			android:background="#fff"
			android:layout_weight="1"></TextView>
		</LinearLayout>
	</ScrollView>

Then on your Activity, do this:

_logTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.logTextView);
_logTextView.setText("");

//and here comes the magic
_logTextView.setMovementMethod(ScrollingMovementMethod.getInstance());

                          

The SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark was run several times on both phones and results were consistent.

It’d be great to compare with the iPhone 3Gs, If someone has an iPhone 3Gs, please run the test and send me the results to update this post.

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total:                 34157.4ms +/- 2.8%
--------------------------------------------

  3d:                   4277.6ms +/- 3.3%
    cube:               1212.4ms +/- 9.6%
    morph:              1680.0ms +/- 12.5%
    raytrace:           1385.2ms +/- 5.2%

  access:               4350.8ms +/- 7.1%
    binary-trees:        473.2ms +/- 7.6%
    fannkuch:           1959.4ms +/- 9.7%
    nbody:               985.2ms +/- 9.6%
    nsieve:              933.0ms +/- 39.8%

  bitops:               2921.4ms +/- 3.4%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   545.4ms +/- 4.1%
    bits-in-byte:        735.6ms +/- 16.3%
    bitwise-and:         539.8ms +/- 9.9%
    nsieve-bits:        1100.6ms +/- 3.0%

  controlflow:           414.2ms +/- 8.5%
    recursive:           414.2ms +/- 8.5%

  crypto:               2064.4ms +/- 4.5%
    aes:                 859.8ms +/- 3.4%
    md5:                 638.8ms +/- 4.6%
    sha1:                565.8ms +/- 8.1%

  date:                 4434.2ms +/- 9.0%
    format-tofte:       1663.6ms +/- 6.7%
    format-xparb:       2770.6ms +/- 12.7%

  math:                 3223.6ms +/- 3.0%
    cordic:             1110.8ms +/- 6.2%
    partial-sums:       1264.0ms +/- 3.4%
    spectral-norm:       848.8ms +/- 3.2%

  regexp:               3980.0ms +/- 1.3%
    dna:                3980.0ms +/- 1.3%

  string:               8491.2ms +/- 3.8%
    base64:             1108.4ms +/- 7.0%
    fasta:              1683.4ms +/- 1.6%
    tagcloud:           1500.2ms +/- 9.5%
    unpack-code:        2456.2ms +/- 8.7%
    validate-input:     1743.0ms +/- 4.5%

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total:                 14706.8ms +/- 4.8%
--------------------------------------------

  3d:                   1593.6ms +/- 6.0%
    cube:                474.8ms +/- 17.2%
    morph:               566.2ms +/- 2.6%
    raytrace:            552.6ms +/- 1.0%

  access:               1885.0ms +/- 10.3%
    binary-trees:        202.8ms +/- 25.7%
    fannkuch:            819.4ms +/- 1.1%
    nbody:               406.2ms +/- 20.7%
    nsieve:              456.6ms +/- 28.1%

  bitops:               1640.8ms +/- 29.2%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   300.8ms +/- 30.9%
    bits-in-byte:        390.0ms +/- 44.9%
    bitwise-and:         372.0ms +/- 55.7%
    nsieve-bits:         578.0ms +/- 36.8%

  controlflow:           200.8ms +/- 4.5%
    recursive:           200.8ms +/- 4.5%

  crypto:                880.8ms +/- 2.1%
    aes:                 385.6ms +/- 4.6%
    md5:                 254.4ms +/- 5.3%
    sha1:                240.8ms +/- 9.0%

  date:                 1843.6ms +/- 20.6%
    format-tofte:        840.0ms +/- 45.9%
    format-xparb:       1003.6ms +/- 1.3%

  math:                 1250.8ms +/- 1.6%
    cordic:              464.0ms +/- 1.1%
    partial-sums:        450.2ms +/- 3.0%
    spectral-norm:       336.6ms +/- 3.6%

  regexp:               2003.4ms +/- 15.2%
    dna:                2003.4ms +/- 15.2%

  string:               3408.0ms +/- 7.7%
    base64:              387.6ms +/- 2.4%
    fasta:               729.8ms +/- 3.7%
    tagcloud:            605.8ms +/- 4.2%
    unpack-code:        1019.8ms +/- 29.1%
    validate-input:      665.0ms +/- 1.1%

                          

Unboxing and comparing the Nexus One to the Motorola Droid. Audio is in spanish but you’ll be able to see and tell a lot from my video even if you are an english speaker (use this opportunity to practice your spanish)