Instapaper for Android

“Finally.”

I use a fairly cheap Android phone, because I don’t want to give ATT or Verizon any of my money, and I hate cell phone contracts. Instapaper was one of the apps I use everyday that was really hampered by the lack of a native client. Looks like that’s fixed, now.

The interesting thing here is that Marco Arment, Instapaper’s founder/developer, didn’t code the Android app himself. He hired an Android development house to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more iOS-only apps go this way if it works out for him.

The Huawei U8100 and Mac OS X, “Upgrade Failed”

If you have a Huawei U8100 phone and you use Mac OS X and you’d like to update the firmware, don’t bother. After a full day of fighting with the thing, I’ve found you have to use Windows to load an SD card with the necessary files, or it simply won’t work. I’ve created this post simply to help out those who might’ve been inclined to waste many hours, as I did.

I am not at all sure why the hell this is, but I assume it’s some strange way the ZIP file is packed.

Fighting The Wrong Fight

Excellent piece by Elia Freedman:

We have been distracted by ridiculous arguments and fabricated “wars” for too long. We have been distracted by thinking that Google is Microsoft and Apple is Apple in a doomed fight already fought 20 years ago.

But that is not the fight we should be caring about at all. The fight we should be talking about, but aren’t, is the fight between mobile device makers and the carriers. This is the only real fight that matters.

Another Look At Flash on Android

The actual article title is “Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad,” but I’m not exactly shocked by it. Anyone who has tried to use Flash on a machine with a < 2ghz processor knows exactly how well it performs.

Schadenfreude aside, look at what it does to the browser itself. One could argue that the web browser is the most important app on a mobile device and as Gruber notes, before the page even loads the Flash content is making it hard to scroll, hard to tap. If there is one cardinal rule of touch-based devices it is this: If at any point your app becomes unresponsive to taps or scrolls, your app is broken.

Motorola’s Android 2.2 Rollout

Proving that because you hand them a decent smartphone OS doesn’t mean they’ll know what to do with it:

After a leaked Android 2.2 ROM became available through unofficial sources, Motorola sent cease and desist letters to websites hosting the update, according to IntoMobile. The reasoning may be sound — after all, folks who jumped the gun on Froyo for Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G ran into bugs that had to be patched later — but it doesn’t look good when lawyers try to stop people from making their phones better.

Sometimes “open” means never being quite sure what the hell is going on.

All This And Less

Engadget on the $499 Android-powered “Edge” tablet:

Yes, the Edge is a combination e-reader and a Android tablet — it just doesn’t quite work well as either. For $499 there are just too many issues with it, including its chunky body, skimpy e-book selection, frustrating touchscreen, poor battery life and lack of Android apps.

I have little doubt there is a market out there for people who still hate Apple so much they’ll drop $499 on an utterly inferior product, but I also don’t think it’s a big enough market to run a company on.