Shocking G1 bug found!

Chalk this one up in the history of classic OS bugs.

Everyone has been very excited about the fact that Android is based on Linux, however no one anticipated this would lead to the greatest bug ever found in a mobile OS.

Apparently, the G1's version of Android has been running a phantom command-line shell underneath the GUI, which has super-admin root access and receives a copy of all keystrokes entered.
What does that mean?
Well, in a nutshell, it means anything you type into the phone is ALSO being entered into an invisible linux command line- so you could be entering commands and messing with the system without even realizing!

In fact, this is how the bug was originally found, by user jdhorvat on Google's code board:

I was in the middle of a text conversation with my girl when she asked why I hadn’t responded. I had just rebooted my phone and the first thing I typed was a response to her text which simply stated “Reboot” - which, to my surprise, rebooted my phone.

Wow. Imagine what would happen if someone texted you, asking you for a reminder of some hardcore Linux commands!

Epic Fail.

Luckily, since Android is open source, the problem was found rather quickly and an update fix was pushed out over the air to users before this bug had a chance to be publicized.
Still, if you're running firmware version 1.0 TC4-RC29 and earlier, try typing these 8 keystrokes: -r-e-b-o-o-t-.

That's a pretty serious bug if you ask me, and this makes me wonder about Dan Hesse's comments about Android not ready for Sprint yet...

More on this here.

Sprint Touch Pro - Sluggish from the get-go?

Well, its been a very exciting week- The Sprint Touch Pro was available in third party retailers (read: Best Buy) since last Sunday, and is available in Sprint stores across the country as of yesterday.

I'll be honest, I've been looking forward to the Touch Pro ever since I found that the Sprint Mogul (HTC Titan / 6800) suffered from a lack of RAM. 64MB may have been enough for the days of WM5, however HTC's other WM6 devices all came with at least double that (AT&T Tilt, Sprint Touch/Vogue, Touch Dual, etc). The latest versions of Windows Mobile demand more resources, so its been sort of baffling to Titan users that we are stuck with a measly 64MB on this device (The "memory leak" due to OS and system caching has created a familiar outcry by Titan owners in the PPC world).

That alone would be enough of a reason to upgrade to the Touch Pro. However, initial reports by prominent users in the PPC Development community are NOT entirely positive.


If you've been following my blog, you may recall a post in which I held an early version of the HTC Diamond, and had mixed feelings about it:

However my personal opinion is that the HTC Diamond seemed to lag a bit in its responsiveness. Sure, it was pretty and full of eye candy, but it wasn't as smooth and quick as I would have hoped, in fact the Sprint HTC Touch next to it seemed to be faster despite being previous-generation hardware.

Now, many early adopters assured me that the later Sprint production models were better and not laggy at all, which was somewhat uplifting to hear. However, for the brief moments I've actually seen a Sprint Diamond/Touch Pro in action, I still felt the same way.

While some random users are claiming this is the best WM device in history, some respected members of the development community are agreeing with what I noticed:
User GGuruUSA of PPCKitchen.org fame mentioned that "it's not super laggy on mine, but it is a little".
NueRom creator and Windows Mobile virtuoso no2chem of PPCGeeks fame also confirmed my impressions in a chat:

[16:40] even with some standard optimizations, etc.. this thing is still slow as molasses..
[16:40] there are some stupid htc apis for mutex that slow things down
[16:40] but.. shouldn't be that slow
[16:40] yet there is lag doing basic tasks like opening start menu

So very disappointing to hear. I was very much looking forward to this device to fix the performance problems of the HTC Titan/Mogul, however it looks like this device isn't the savior we hoped it out be.

I'd like to point out that since I don't own a Touch Pro for myself (yet)*, I can't verify this first hand. Its only an impression that I got which has been confirmed by people who's opinion I trust. Any Touch Pro users out there want to chime in? Anyone up for some comparison videos?

*I tried twice to buy a Touch Pro, however Sprint seems to be having a hard time selling me one. Not sure why they're being so difficult, but hopefully we'll get the ball moving soon so I can give you my full review on this highly anticipated device.