My fascination with the Meizu M8 is no secret. I've been a huge fan of this device since it was first spotted as a kirf and has evolved into one of the biggest cult devices available. The new UI seems to take ques from almost every smart phone out there. I can see a little Android, WebOs, Sense UI, and of course, the iPhone. But don't take my word for it, check out the video.
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Mobile Defense for Android
"In Chicago, more than 85,000 phones were found in taxis--about four for every taxi in the Windy City"
-PC World
Almost everyone has lost a phone at some point in time, whether it only temporarily lost, or never to be found again. A recent video was circulated around the tech blogs from CBSNews showing CNET reporter Natali Del Conte tossing her phone in the back of a cab, in hopes that Microsoft's MyPhone service will help her find it. In the end, her phone is returned to her by an honest citizen. The service was touted as something new for phones, but hardcore users know this type of application has been around for a bit, this is just the first time it was available directly from the phones OS.
Android users have had several applications become available since the launch of the G1 over a year ago that allow the phone to be tracked by gps. One of the earliest was GPS Tracker. I used the application from the day it was released, but in the last few months decided to make my phone secure with Mobile Defense(the quote above is form their front page). The application is free on the Android Market right now and currently in Beta form, but it's a pretty good Beta version. We'll take a look at the application itself to see how it works and what the features are. Hit the read more link to continue.
You can find Mobile Defense in the market, I did a search for the title and pulled it up pretty easily. As you can see, it's about average size for an android application so you don't have to worry about it taking up too much space on your phone. It's pretty straight forward to set up, and you'll be greeted by the following screens which are pretty easy to see what is needed. It's basically the obligatory account needed for most applications that require some type of access via web. I use my gmail account so I'm able to activate it solely from the device. This also helps out if you ever have your device replaced or upgrade, and you are allowed to have more than one device tied to your Mobile Defense account, but more on that in a bit. After setting everything up, be sure to restart your device so that it will hide the application from the launcher. I'm not sure if this also hides it on the Nexus One since I don't own one and haven't heard any reports of anyone using this app on it. 
Once you are all set up on your device, you'll be able to log in to the website on another phone or computer, and see what has been going on with your phone. You can actually see when a new sim card has been placed into your phone and still locate and disable the phone. The main screen you see is the Activities screen, but clicking on the Maps button will show the following screen, notice I have two device currently set up on Mobile Defense. All you need to do is hit connect to phone and you'll be able to get connected within a matter of minutes, assuming your GPS is turn on. This has been long debated on whether it was better to leave gps off unless needed or just leave it on. GPS on Android doesn't actively search for a signal like bluetooth or Wifi will, so having it turned on should not drain your battery. I have not noticed any difference in battery life leaving it on, and it actually helps locate you quicker when you need it since you don't have to enable it every time you want to use something.
The location is pretty accurate, although right now it is showing my phone next door instead of at my house, that could be due to where in my house the phone is. This is where applications like GPS Tracker come in handy as it has shown to be slightly more accurate in the past. On the above shot you can see the different options available. You can use streetview to load up a what the location looks like, as long as it's available where your phone is. Details allows you to send the details of the track to your email or another email.
It will even show your battery status bar so you can view your battery status and current network connection. As you can also see, there is an option to lock the phone, this will enable to pattern lock on the device, but there is a catch. Currently you already have to have a pattern saved, otherwise once locked, any patten will unlock it. Sending an alert to the device plays an annoying high pitched alarm, and even allows you to type a custom message that will display. You also have the option of having to enter a pin in order to stop the noise, of course doing so may prompt the person that has the device to quickly pull the battery so it may be best to use this option only once you have located the device but can't actually see it.
So far I haven't had to use the application to find my lost phone, but it is nice to know that should something ever happen to my phone, I'll be able to easily locate it as long as the phone is powered on. The downside to the application is that when locating the phone a message is sent to the phone in the form of a text. It only displays on the status bar and disappears rather quickly so someone may be able to see it for the split second it's on the screen. Of course, users of Chomp SMS and Handcent SMS have a way around this, add the address to your contacts and then from the messaging app add it to your blacklist. The message is still received, but the person having your phone will not be able to see it.
If you've had a success story with using this app, be sure to sound off in the comments.
Mainstream Media = Epic Fail
FANBOY
1. A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture
That's what most people will probably say about me when it comes to Android. Since it's debut I've been preaching about how great Android is, how much of a game changer it is to the mobile market place. I preordered the G1 as soon as it was announced and I've followed Android development since then. It's not all I follow though. I follow Blackberry development, iPhone development, very rarely Palm development, so I try to get a scope of what everyone is doing out there. I've been in mobile telecom for almost 10 years now and I've seen innovation after innovation. I remember the first Palm Pilot phone, when the first mp3 capable phone came to the US, the first color screen phone. My day usually starts with coffee in the morning while I browse through the tech blogs to see if anything new and exciting is out and I look forward to seeing reports from CES every year.
Recently, Google announced and started selling the Nexus One, it's the flagship Android 2.1 phone. It's not an iPhone killer, I really hate that term because not even a new iPhone will be an iPhone killer. It's a step in the right direction though for mobile evolution. One of my daily blog readings, the great guys over at Android and Me, posted a story this morning about mainstream media and their view of the Nexus One. It comes from a site called Newsy, where they basically take reports from all the mainstream news outlets and give you the Cliff's notes on what's going on. If you'd like to take a look at what's being said, and sound off on the media's inability to report on a tech product, hit me up after the break...
The video is posted below for your viewing pleasure, but lets just look at a few highlights from it. One of the analysts from CNBC says the Nexus can't compete with the iPhone because of the Apple App Store. Seriously, here's word for word what he said,
“People aren’t buying a phone because it has a cool screen. The reason why people are buying an iPhone or any device for that matter is these apps. And the numbers that Pete was going through, that’s 10 million apps a day are being downloaded for the iPhone. So Google can come out with whatever they want, they have 20,000 apps in their store, Apple has about 125,000. People are doing great things with their phone, and this just doesn’t change the landscape.”I'm not sure who this analyst is, but maybe he should put things in perspective. Android has been out a little over a year, that's 20,000 apps in a year. The iPhone was launched in June of 2007, so a little over 2 years. iPhone has abeen on the market longer so of course they will have more apps. Apple is on 3.0 of their OS while Android is now on 2.1, more developers will start to see what can be done on Android and development will pick up now the phone is becoming more mainstream. It took a year before another carrier besides T-Mobile picked up Android in the US, and yes I know the iPhone has only one official carrier in the US, but it's AT&T, they were number one in subscribers at the time.
Now, regarding people buying phones for apps, a lot of users will buy a phone because of the apps that can be used on them, but there are still people out there that will buy it for what it is and could care less about the apps. Just like I see people with Blackberries every day who never use email on their device because they don't know how, I'm sure there are people who don't use apps on the iPhone. Why? Because they want the status symbol. They buy the device because they want people to see their phone and assume they must be cool or important based on the device they carry.
Mainstream media needs to step up and start reporting on devices for what they can do, not what they can't do. Every story so far I've seen that hasn't come from an enthusiast web site compares the phone to the iPhone but only talks about the snap dragon processor and voice search. I have a G1, running android 1.6, and I can do voice search, how long has 1.6 been out? Hey news media! Lets mention the NEW features in this phone. How about the new home screen, we went from having 3 in stock android to having 5, or the living wallpapers, that's a cool feature. Especially when the iPhone doesn't even have wallpapers. How about Googles new Genie Widget that combines news and weather into one widget and works off your location? Google Maps with Navigation that was available on the Droid with Android 2.0. Where are all those reports?
So enough with my rant, take a look at the video below for the story that started this rant, and while we are at it, maybe we should contact the news media outlets and tell them we actually want tech geeks and fanboys to start doing the stories on new things.