How to block a phone number in Android?

Occasionally, there is some situation that you do not want to answer calls from a particular person. So, many cellphones provide "blacklist" function -- you put a phone number into this blacklist, and your phone will ignore calls from this number.

It seems that my Android phone does not directly support this function. But, you can get pretty much the same result by using the following trick: open your phonebook, edit the contact you want to block, choose "Send calls directly to voicemail", done!

I heard the latest Android (Android 2.2?) has the blacklist function. It will be a useful function to many users.

How to improve the battery life of your Android phone?

I bought a new Android phone, mainly because I’m not quite happy with the battery life of my old phone. After searching in the market for a while, I noticed Ericsson Xperia X10. The ads says that its battery is rated at up to 8 hours of talk time, and up to 415 hours (17+ days) of standby time. So I bought it.

It is a very cool cellphone. But I noticed that I had to charge the battery almost every day, without any heavy use. It is far from the advertised “415 hours (17+ days) of standby time”. So I did some research and tried to improve the battery life of my new phone. After some tune-up, my phone now can stand by for almost 5 days without heavy use. It is a great improvement, isn’t it? Although it is still far from its ads.

So, what did I do? I did the following things:

1. Turn off its wi-fi, bluebooth and gps service when you do not use them. It seems that this is the most critical part. From the “battery usage” provided by Android, I noticed that wi-fi really used a lot of battery.

2. Download and install “Startup Auditor” application from Android Market. You can use this application to prevent some applications from running when you turn on the cellphone. Your cellphone usually will start up a lot of creepy (and useless) applications when you turn it on.

3. Turn of the Synchronization function of your gmail and facebook applications. Frequent synchronization uses too much battery.

4. Download and install “Andvanced Task Killer” application from Android Market. You can run this application from time to time and kill some applications. When you open an application and then return to the “homepage” of Android, this application is usually still alive and running in the background.

If you are not happy with the battery life of your Android phone, you should try those tricks out!

from semi-smart phone to smart phone -- my two-year experience with AT&T

My current cellphone is an LG Vu from AT&T. I bought it at year 2008, just before the first iphone was shipped. I am quite happy with this phone -- it has all necessary functions I need (bluetooth, internet browsing, big screen, friendly user interface, etc). But after two years, the battery deteriorates a lot and I have to charge it almost every two days. Last week I decided that it was time to get a new phone, so I ordered a SonyEricsson Xperia X10. This is a very powerful Android phone.

A lot of things happened in the last two years, especially in the IT industry. From LG Vu phone to Xperia Android phone, I clearly see the changes. Two of them are especially interesting:

1. My old LG phone has an application called “AT&T Mall”. You can browse and buy music, pictures, games and applications from AT&T through it. Sounds familiar? It is very similar with Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android market. But it did not get success as big as those two. In my new Xperia Android phone, this “AT&T Mall” is gone and now it is Android market.

2. My old LG phone has an application called “MySpace Mobile”, which allows you to access your MySpace account easily. Remember MySpace? Now everybody is talking about Facebook. Accordingly, I can not find MySpace application in our Xperia X10 now (of course, you should be able to install a MySpace application through Android market). Instead, Xperia has a Facebook application supporting your addiction to Facebook.

What do those tell us? A good idea does not necessarily lead to good business, and the roaring wave of internet business is so unpredictable.

I’ll post a review on my Xperia phone when I get more experience with it. So, stay tuned :-)

What is the difference between Nexus One and Droid?

Today, Google introduced Nexus One, which generated a lot of excitement. I like to see the competition in smart phone market, which speeds up smart phone innovation and benefits consumers.

On October 30, 2009, Verizon released Droid. There is still a lot of commercial to promote Droid, even when I watched NFL game this past weekend. Droid is probably the most discussed Android OS-based cell phone before the release of Nexus One and is still hot in the market. Thus it is natural to ask what is the difference between between Droid and the newly released Nexus One. Here is some difference.

1) Branding: Nexus One is designed by Google directly (manufactured by HTC); Droid is designed by Motorola.

2) CPU: Nexus One uses 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor; Droid uses Texas Instruments' TI OMAP 3430 processor, which runs at 600MHz .

3) Keyboard and Trackball: Nexus One does not have physical keyboard. It has touch-screen soft keyboard; Droid has one physical slide-out keyboard and touch-screen soft keyboard. Nexus One has a trackball; Droid does not. Instead Droid has panel to move around.

5) Software: Nexus One runs on Android 2.1 version; Droid runs on 2.0.1 version. There are some difference, but not significant. Both OSes can be upgraded continuously.

6) Carrier: Nexus One is unlocked. You can use whatever network you like. Currently it has only GSM version. So it can be run on T-mobile or ATT network. A CDMA version Nexus One will be released this spring, which can be run on Verizon and Sprint network; Droid is the locked phone and is exclusively run on Verizon network.

It is exciting to see the release of Nexus One. It's interesting to see how consumers react to Nexus One. Overall, I think 2010 is the key year for Android-base cell phone.

BTW, if you want to buy Nexus One, you can buy from Google website directly.

How to make a shortcut of a webpage on Android home screen

I have a friend who bought a Verizon Google Droid phone recently. He is not tech-savvy, but wants to experience smart phone. One day I communicated with him about Android phone usage for more than an hour. He had many good questions and many of them are something like since Windows OS has this functionality, how I can have the similar function on Android. I answered many questions or demoed the solution for him. But one question I could not answer immediately, i.e., how to make a shortcut for his bookmark web page such as nytimes.com on Android desktop.

Today I consulted a friend and he told me the answer.

1) On the desktop, press home screen for a while until a context menu pops up.

2) Select Shortcut menu item. Another menu pops up.

3) Select Bookmark menu item. Your bookmarks pops up.

4) Select your target bookmark webpage and it will show up on the home screen.

Similarly, we can create shortcuts for many stuff on home screen such as applications, direct dial, contact, music playlist, and gmail labels.

On Android market, there are some apps to help users create shortcut on home screen, e.g., AnyCut(free), and BetterCut($1.99). But I think it is a pretty straight forward to create shortcut directly.

Android OS is a pretty powerful OS, making people often compare it with Windows OS on desktop. Probably iphone users has no such thinking given simple, but restrictive UI.

Update on Jan 19, 2010: Add some description about AnyCut and BetterCut.

Why did Apple have NDA for iPhone application developers?

On October 1, Venture Beat reported that Apple dropped NDA(Non-Disclosure Agreement) for iPhone application developers, which was rejoiced by application developers. Before that, iPhone application developers have to agree not to talk about Apple development kit or the work they did with it before they can download the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit), which looks very restrictive (more restrictive than Microsoft Windows API?). I do not think it was a good decision, which hinders the healthy growth of iPhone as a platform. Making it open, iPhone should see a more healthy growth. Anyway, what is Apple afraid of? Same reason as they did for Macintosh?

Maybe the drop is related with the upcoming G1. Android, the operating system of G1, offers an open alternative to iPhone. I think an open platform will foster innovation and benefit cell phone users.