Nexus One - disponible en mai en France - alors, l'acheter ou pas ?

Compte-tenu des nombreux échos négatifs dont le Nexus One a souffert, on peut se demander à l'occasion de la sortie du Nexus si c'est opportun d'en acheter un, ou s'il vaut mieux plutôt s'orienter vers un des autres modèles de même niveau : HTC Desire, HTC Incredible (lorsqu'il sera disponible), Sony Xperia 10, ...
Faites-vous votre opinion en lisant les commentaires de l'article Le Nexus One en mai chez SFR ! dans le Journal du Geek.

“Android in 2013” - Mark Murphy's six-party blog post series

Mark Murphy's six-party blog post series, “Android in 2013”, over on NetworkWorld.

1. Smartphones
2. Other devices
3. Core OS capabilities
4. Applications
5. The overall ecosystem
6. Open source

Nexus One - is Google starting to put an end to the whole "Nexus One experiment"

Recent moves on the Nexus One horizon makes one wonder if Google isn't starting to put an end to the whole « Nexus One Experiment » :

1) The 4/21/2010 Ry Guy post on the spotty 3G part 2 thread saying Google will no longer investigate the 3G issue

2) The 4/26/2010 news and updates designating the HTC Incredible as the next step after the Nexus One and announcing the Nexus One availability by april 30th in Europe when the HTC Desire — which doesn't seem to suffer from the same issues the Nexus One has — is already available from different mobile phone providers and resellers in Europe.

3) Is there another superphone Google wants to sell in it's online store after the Nexus One ?

Nexus One - a week after the CyanogenMod 5.0.6 upgrade

A week after the upgrade to CyanogenMod 5.0.6 just want to add that the result is quite good :

• the Nexus works well for me, and by that I just say that the CM 5.0.6 upgrade doesn't seem to broke anything ; the Nexus is still faster than before installing the CM5 ; others have been experiment some issues, so don't forget to have a look at CyanogenMod issues
• the « 3G issue » is still not solved, but the CM5 greatly improves the situation as the N1 jumps far more frequently from 3G to HSPDA with faster page downloads ; it's also a kind of solution : when the N1 stay for too long stuck on « 3G » with nothing else happening, it's time to activate Airplane mode just to reset the chip, then go back to connected mode (de-activate Airplane mode) and refresh the page the N1 stay stuck on before
• the « screen becoming crazy issue » is still not solved : perhaps it becomes less frequent, but I'm not confident at all in that as I still have the problem after playing with the N1 for some time
• I want to activate « tethering » with Mac OSX 10.6.3 but I haven't succeed : I certainly have missed something, as it seem's working for others, so more to come on that topic

Nexus One - how to upgrade to CyanogenMod-5 [stable 5.0.6 version of 04/15/2010] - detailled instructions

I just upgraded my Nexus One to CyanogenMod-5: Kang Central Station (STABLE) [04/15/2010 / 5.0.6].

As it is just a CyanogenMod-5 upgrade from 5.0.5.3-N1 to 5.0.6-N1, only the following steps are required :

1. download the Cyanogen 5.0.6-N1 (the latest stable CyanogenMod for the Nexus One) from Cyanogenmod For Nexus One V5.0.6 (04/15/2010) : update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip
2. check the MD5 sum :
   md5 update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip
   and check the checksum
   MD5 (update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip) = 43835d679958294befa16af78bf7311b
   against the one of the forum MD5Sum: 43835d679958294befa16af78bf7311b
3. connect the Nexus One to the computer and mount the Nexus One in the Mac
4. copy the Cyanogen 5.0.6-N1 (the update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip) file to the root of the Nexus One SD-card. Wait a few seconds in order to be sure everything is copied to the SDcard. Unmount the Nexus One on your computer.
5. Reboot the Nexus One in bootloader mode : hold down the trackball while you press the power button. Ensure to maintain the trackball hold down until the screens turns to a white screen with 3 green android skating at the bottom of the screen. Ensure that the Nexus One stay connected to the computer via the USB cable.
6. on the screen, the BOOTLOADER should be highlighted with blue. press power button
7. on the new screen, scroll down with the Volume down button to highlight the RECOVERY option. Press the power button.
8. the Nexus One reboots and after a few seconds, the screen title with "Android system recovery" appears, with the "Build : RA-nexus-v1.7.0" at the bottom of the screen. The screen should be in cyan instead of green if the Nexus One has already been rooted
9. scroll down with the trackball to the "Backup/Restore" menu and press the trackball
10. on the new screen "Choose backup/restore item" choose the option "Nand Backup" (the first one) by scrolling down the trackball and press the trackball to select it. The question "Create Nandroid backup?" appears at the bottom of the screen, so press the trackball to confirm as it is stated
11. The backup starts, it takes a few seconds to complete. At the end of the backup, the cyan screen is restored. Press Volume down button to return to the previous screen "Android system recovery".
12. FIRST INSTALL ONLY : scroll down to the "Wipe" item using the trackball and press the trackball to select the option
13. FIRST INSTALL ONLY : in the new screen "Choose wipe item", using the trackball, select every wipe item one after the other and perform the wipe pressing the trackball. When every wipe has been performed, return the the previous screen using Volume Down button.
14. back to the Android system recovery screen, scroll down to the Flash zip from sdcard item using the trackball. Press the trackball to select
15. on the new screen "Choose update ZIP file", use the trackball to select the right ZIP file to flash. Here, there should be only one zip file available to flash : update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip. then press the trackball to start the flashing. Press the trackball again to confirm flashing on the question "Install : update-cm-5.0.6-N1-signed.zip ?" that appears at the bottom of the screen. The ROM flashing starts and many messages appears on the screen.
16. after some time, the message "Install from sdcard complete" appears and you're back to the cyan screen "Android system recovery" with the item "Reboot system now" selected by default
17. just select the default option by pressing the trackball down. The Nexus One reboots.
18. after the Nexus One has boot the normal way, just to be sure, check the "Mod version" value in the "Setting" then "About Phone" : the value should be "CyanogenMod-5.0.6-N1"

I adapted the instructions from Step by Step Guide on How to Install Cyanogen Mod ROM on your Nexus One! to perform the upgrade.

Nexus One - CyanogenMod For Nexus One V5.0.5.3 (03/23/2010)

I have just installed CyanogenMod For Nexus One V5.0.5.3 (03/23/2010). It takes me quite some time because I missed some important points, the most important one being to root my Nexus using superboot.

Cyanogen's advise is to download everything that will be necessary and to check the md5 checksum.

Then, the first step is to unlock the bootloader using fastboot. fastboot can't be found in the android sdk but it can be found in the superboot archive contents.

During the whole process, I've found useful instructions in those locations :

• How to: Rooting your Nexus One - a definitive guide to what’s involved which contains a useful introduction to many terms and concepts I wasn't familiar with. I advice reading it first
• Cyanogen's Full Update Guide - Nexus One Firmware to CyanogenMod should be read in second, but it lacks some details that are needed to be able to complete the process. For example, after unlocking the bootloader, and before flashing the recovery image, the nexus should be rooted.
• How to Root Your Nexus One for detailed instructions on the whole process and on specific issues like how to deal with the recovery mode, how to wipe data, how to flash the radio image, ...
• detailed instructions on How to unlock the bootloader on your Nexus One
• detailed instructions on 22/Mar ERD79 -> EPE76 - Superboot - rooting the Nexus One
• detailed instructions on [Recovery] [21-Mar-2010] RA-nexus-v1.7.0
• and for french speaking people, passer en mode root son Nexus one

Everything seems to work well. More feedback soon.

Nexus One - review from a Finn developer - there still are some bugs

In the post A Month of Nexus One, Heikki Toivonen lists some the bugs he has encountered on the Nexus One : "I’ve encountered some annoying bugs as well. During my first week the phone got into a state where tapping the messaging icon always launched the browser. The only way I could recover was to reboot. This hasn’t happened since. Far more common problem is the soft keyboard not registering taps, or thinking I pressed one of the four buttons at the bottom (back, menu, home or search, with accompanied vibration feedback). Switching back and forth between apps fixes this eventually. I also seem to have situations when I don’t seem to get any GPS information. Some people have reported that this might require a reboot, but I haven’t been trying persistently enough to confirm if this is the only cure.".

I also encountered some problems with the four soft key at the bottom, where they don't seem to work at all, or when they seem to trigger the same action, or even when touching the screen in the middle triggers one of the four soft key button ... In those situations, the best thing has been to reboot the Nexus. It seems this happens more often when the phone has been up for some time, or when there has been some weakness in the network (I use the Nexus during my commuting time and there are a lot of places where there is no or poor quality network that make the Nexus to frequently switch between Edge and 3G).

And finally, it's Linus Torvalds - THE father of Linux uses a Nexus One

The post Linux founder Linus Torvalds is a BIG fan of Google’s Nexus One from EuroDroid reveals the incredible, that Linus Torvalds : "[...] broke down and bought a Nexus One last week". Read the whole story directly from Linus Torvalds's blog on it's blog post Happy camper.

Just to understand how a great news it is : Linus Torvalds is the man who wrotes the first Linux system as a student project, the system which is at the root of so many devices and production systems today, and at the root of Android too.

Nexus One - detailled instructions to install Cyanogen's alternative firmware from Mac OSX

The post Cyanogen ROM Beta 4 from GeekSage contains detailled instructions on how to install famous Cyanogen's alternative firmware on a Nexus One from Mac OSX.

As it is said : "INSTALLING A NON-GOOGLE ROM WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY.".

If you wonder why one may want rooting an Android phone, consider the following posts : Why (and How) to Root Your Android Phone, Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone and Why Root along with the following ones for the G1 : Rooting Android and Android – G1 – Root Access Why & How and the "root" tag on FrAndroid (in french).

Nexus One - Google announced the so awaited software update for Nexus One phones

Google announced on the Nexus One official blog the so awaited New Software Update for Nexus One phones that will solve the reported 3G connectivity problem.

The update will also bring some improvements on Google Maps, introduced the Pinch-to-zoom functionality and the Google Goggles app.

Here are Google's instructions to install the update that will be rolled out until the end of the week : "In order to access the update, you will receive a message on your phone's notification bar. Just download the update, wait for it to install, and you should be all set."