Yes it’s true, samsung (I think – don’t quote me) have decided to release a 1ghz smartphone (running wm6.1).

What a waste. It really is truely astonishing that such a small device should need such a processor. Until recently I happily ran wm6.1 on my hermes (~200mhz but I can’t remember actually, no quotes), so what would you be running requiring 5x that power?

Interestly, that 1ghz processor (ARM) is also the one that is going in the new arm netbooks… could make for an interesting netbook-pda ‘whats the difference?’ Moment.

Sam

Ok guys, most of you will have been redirected here from the old hAndroid wiki.

I’m sorry to report my Hermes dead (explained here). This puts the hAndroid project in a tight spot.

After talking to a disappointed hAndroid hopeful, I realised it would be foolish and irresponsible just to let this die due to an accident involving a wall…

I also had a look at the hAndroid usage statistics yesterday and realised that over the last 14 days, 5400 people accessed the hAndroid wiki. This pushed my thinking even further. So heres the deal.

If we can find people to fill the following positions in the project…

- Wiki master (x1)
- Document writers (1/2)
- Experienced linux programmers/porters (3-5)
- Project manager (with experience of a similar role) (x1)
- Testers (3 to 10 – not necessarily required)

…. I will…

- Re-open the wiki.
- Host forum/mailing list and other internal communications stuffs.
- Host all files etc.
- Help manage if required.
- Generally help out as much as I can, where necessary (without a device)

I know the team list looks large, but with those people I’m fairly confident we can make hAndroid succeed.

To offer your assistance, please just write a comment here and leave an email address and the position you wish to fill.

Don’t feel you have to be of a great standard to take part, as long as you have a brain and some sticking power I’m sure you’d be a valuable asset to the team.

One last point I’d like to make is that if you do apply, you really must be willing to help (as 10 testers that ‘can’t be bothered’ is utterly useless, the team may as well have none).

Thanks for your time, I hope the above seems ok by everyone.

Best wishes,
Sam

P.S

Let’s get the ball rolling!!

Basicly, there was a ‘accident’ with my hermes that led to me being PDA’less for awhile. So what I ended up replacing the hermes with was the G1!

I’ve had it about 2 weeks now, no major gripes (apart from not fully functional c&p!) And it seems to be a nice OS.

I’ll write some more here as I get chance to do so. There is a lot to tell….

The Hermes android project awakes!

I will report back here soon, eg today, with more news once handriod.inthebinaryrefinery.co.uk wiki is set up.

/out

Ok, firstly abit of news;

Android has, quite simply, the best bug ever.

Every key stroke you ever press on the machine after boot up is interpretted on an invisible console as super user.

I need not say any more.

In other news (more blog related), the reason I haven’t posted for awhile is because my life outside of computing has become extremely busy. So busy I haven’t had time to write on a wall nobody will ever read. Shame. Well i’m back mr Wall, and I have plans.

Sam

Ok so, as I sat infront of my wonderful 17″ CRT running at 65 hertz (yes it killed my eyes – vista seems to reset all my gfx setting every time I change user – very annoying, ideas anyone?) stairing blankly at ebay, it seemed my search for the ‘smart PDA’ was going to be impossible to conclude.

I was looking for a smartphone to replace my Ipaq rx1950 that recently passed away and my phone (probably about 10 years old now). It needed wireless, 3G and decent performance. Oh and one of those slide out keyboards. My price limit was ~£160 to, which knocked out most of the options.

I had a look at blackberries first, but they all seemed abit… sub-PDA-standard in that they didn’t even have a touchscreen, something I think has got to be a must on a device which is supposed to be ‘quick and easy’ to use.

Then I had a look at Palm’s latest offerings, not too bad quite nice looking but they had one fatal floor; no wifi. This took them completely out of the running as I needed something I could easily download cabs and the like to as I find syncing with a computer pretty mundane and didn’t fancy ultra-high data transfer bills (although orange have a ‘£1 a day unlimited net access’ deal which seems pretty good).

Then i eventually started to look at win mobile devices as I figured these were really the closest you could get to a PC replacement in your hand. I wanted a windows mobile 6.1 device though, simply because I like to keep up to date with OS’s (sad but true). The problem then was that all the good 6.1 devices were +£200′ish and so out of my price range. Then I found the Hermes…

It’s a wm5 native device (which put me off at first) but then I found something very interesting… the rom community at XDA developers! Basicly, the idea is abit like slipstreaming on normal windows (from what I can tell), but the main draw to it I see is that there are roms for wm5, wm6 and wm6.1!

This completely changed my view of it; I saw doors opening everywhere (in a very geeky way) and subsequently I ordered a model off ebay (in the form of the ‘orange SPV M3100′ – same hardware different name).

However, the one thing I’m not so keen on about this device is that it doesn’t have a decent linux port at the moment. So I made this my aim…. the ultimate outcome being a running version of familiar linux and android (particulary want android) . I have seen people running linux on the same processor before, but not that model. My plan is to send some emails round to the old runners of the Ipaq rx1950 (yes, my old PDA has the same processor type as my new one) and see if they have any advice. Also, I’m going to ask around on the XDA forum for any help.

So… wish me luck (not that anyone will ever read the above 500 words), but hey thats the way it goes.

I’ll post a review of the Hermes aswell when it appears.

/Out_Sam