Android Phones are awesome
Just before we got married last year (when we were badly in need of some distraction, I think), Tia and I dropped AT&T and signed up with Verizon to take advantage of their 2 for 1 Droid offer. It has been non-stop Droid fun since then. It was also due to this that I really learned what a delightful gadget geek my wife really is.
Shortly after getting married, I got my wonderful new job, in which one of my duties is the selections of phones for purchase. For a while, I just kept up with what the company had been doing, which was buying HTC Ozones. These are fairly cheap windows based phones. Finally one day I asked "why do I keep buying these?" and we agreed to work towards an android standard. Yay my awesome job!
Making use of the trickle-down method of equipment deployment (in which the IT guy gets the first of any new item, and if that was for you, you get his old one... there are perks to being the IT guy), I was able to acquire my Droid Incredible from work, which has been a fantastic phone. And this is how I am slated to get a Droid X in the next few weeks. My CEO also got an Incredible, and has gone a bit nuts with the customization. He drops in occasionally and tells me about it. And this is how I learned about rooting the phone, and installing custom operating systems.
Sadly, Tia is not on the upgrade path at my work (probably this has something to do with her not actually working there). So she still has her original Eris. The Eris is a pretty good phone, but it is approaching the end of its life as a "new" phone and isn't slated for the the latest Droid software version. The problem is that the last time Tia got an update on her phone, it actually degraded the performance noticeably. The soft buttons are less responsive, and overall it seems sluggish.
So, long story short, I followed in my CEO's footsteps and managed to install KaosFroyo on her phone last night, and it rocks! Fast, modern-looking, and much more responsive. For once, my after work attempt to fiddle with technology was successful!
Now that our phones have become so much more than phones, they are basically personal computers. I used to stay up late (repairing the damage) after trying to do something to make my computer faster, or (more often) to make it look "neater". In fact, this is how I learned most of my early skills with computers. Now I find myself doing much the same with my phones. I really enjoy having a phone that acknowledges that it really is a personal computer, and it runs an open source operating system that is hackable. There are a large number of custom installations out there that you can try, from the "no frills, make it run as fast as possible" variety up to the "everything but the kitchen sink" variety.
So, yay me for upgrading TIa's phone. Yay Tia for being the kind of girl who can appreciate why that is so cool. and yay Google for the whole Android OS thing.
Shortly after getting married, I got my wonderful new job, in which one of my duties is the selections of phones for purchase. For a while, I just kept up with what the company had been doing, which was buying HTC Ozones. These are fairly cheap windows based phones. Finally one day I asked "why do I keep buying these?" and we agreed to work towards an android standard. Yay my awesome job!
Making use of the trickle-down method of equipment deployment (in which the IT guy gets the first of any new item, and if that was for you, you get his old one... there are perks to being the IT guy), I was able to acquire my Droid Incredible from work, which has been a fantastic phone. And this is how I am slated to get a Droid X in the next few weeks. My CEO also got an Incredible, and has gone a bit nuts with the customization. He drops in occasionally and tells me about it. And this is how I learned about rooting the phone, and installing custom operating systems.
Sadly, Tia is not on the upgrade path at my work (probably this has something to do with her not actually working there). So she still has her original Eris. The Eris is a pretty good phone, but it is approaching the end of its life as a "new" phone and isn't slated for the the latest Droid software version. The problem is that the last time Tia got an update on her phone, it actually degraded the performance noticeably. The soft buttons are less responsive, and overall it seems sluggish.
So, long story short, I followed in my CEO's footsteps and managed to install KaosFroyo on her phone last night, and it rocks! Fast, modern-looking, and much more responsive. For once, my after work attempt to fiddle with technology was successful!
Now that our phones have become so much more than phones, they are basically personal computers. I used to stay up late (repairing the damage) after trying to do something to make my computer faster, or (more often) to make it look "neater". In fact, this is how I learned most of my early skills with computers. Now I find myself doing much the same with my phones. I really enjoy having a phone that acknowledges that it really is a personal computer, and it runs an open source operating system that is hackable. There are a large number of custom installations out there that you can try, from the "no frills, make it run as fast as possible" variety up to the "everything but the kitchen sink" variety.
So, yay me for upgrading TIa's phone. Yay Tia for being the kind of girl who can appreciate why that is so cool. and yay Google for the whole Android OS thing.