Friday, April 30, 2010

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

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

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 ?

Saturday, April 24, 2010

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

Sunday, April 18, 2010

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.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

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 :
Everything seems to work well. More feedback soon.