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[tlug] The Android Has Landed (was: First Android Phone in Japan release date announced)



TLUG,

Got my Android phone this afternoon, and it is sweeeeeet. Lots of cool things, but I won't go all fan-boy on this list.

Initial notes:

When responding to Nikolay, I said the 30,000 difference between the total cost of the phone and what they are selling it for was "baked into" the monthly service plans. Well, it's actually more overt than that. The salesman showed me a graph showing that if I leave any time over the next 2 years, I will have to pay the remainder of the cost of the phone. They increment it to the month. So while the total real cost of the phone is buried in the service plan so that you don't see it named on your bill, the reality that you are paying will be made clear if you try and get out sooner.

That was to be expected, as it's standard operating behaviour for mobile companies to try and lock you in for two years in all sorts of ways. Apparently my monthly service plan has an additional 9,000 yen penalty for leaving early as well.

Anyway, I'm still working out how to use the phone. But I thought a couple points might be of interest to others:

It comes with a 2GB miniSD card. I wanted to upgrade to an 8GB card, but the sales guy told me it only supports up to 4GB. I opted to pass on the 4GB for now until I do more research and see what the deal really is. What I have read on the web is that it does 8GB, so I'm not sure if I believe the sales guy.

It does not come with a power adaptor. Without it, you'd have to power it via USB from your computer, I guess. I bought a power adaptor so I can plug it directly into the wall for an additional 1,000 yen. It did, however, come with an additional battery. Kind of odd, but I'm glad to take it.

I got the white model, and the headphone adaptor (necessary, because it does not have a regular mini-phono jack) is black. Kind of a miss, but a minor one.

Plugged it in to the USB, and getting Jaunty to mount it was not obvious. At first, nothing. Then after looking on the Ubuntu forums, I discovered one has to drag down a menu from the top status bar on the Android device, and select to mount the device as a hard drive storage. I'm hoping I can figure out how to get this to happen automatically when USB is plugged in.

However, once mounted, it seems to work like a regular external HD.

Lastly, email push works fine. Mail to my Gmail address goes straight to my phone like a regular keitai mail address.

I guess I'll leave it at that, as I'm probably more interested in this stuff than anyone else.

But if anyone wants me to check something out with the phone, let me know. I'd be happy to learn how to use it together!


--
Dave M G
http://tlug.jp/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Dave_M_G


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