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

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

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