Android

Yes, I’m still alive. Just in case you were wondering.

With that out of the way, I’ve been enjoying my Sprint Galaxy S2 variant immensely. It feels orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than my old Android Eris. And really, the stats reflect about a 4x multiplier over every attribute of the Eris. It took some getting time to mentally transition from a 3.2" screen to a 4.5" screen, but I did it. Now when I look at my old phone, sitting idly on a nearby end table, it looks like a Chiclet in comparison.

The Samsung Galaxy S II is currently the top selling phone in the world. And it’s not a popularity thing, the device is genuinely exceptional. Reviews across the web have effectively hailed it as, “… the best smartphone, period.” What’s notable about this, is that various US carrier shenanigans have guaranteed we get it dead last, right after India and Mexico. And Verizon? Won’t be carrying it at all.

I just installed Android Gingerbread (2.3) on my HTC Droid Eris. To understand the significance of this little achievement, we need to examine the wonderful world of smartphones, and why the market insists on doing a half-assed job.

The Eris was released November 6th, 2009. In the phone world, especially now that the smartphone market is heating up, this is somewhat ancient. It’s second-generation in a fifth and sixth generation world. It will never “officially” have anything higher than Android Eclaire (2.1). I’ve already been running Froyo (2.2) for months. It fixed a ton of bugs plaguing the official release, and improved the overall experience drastically.

For the past couple of months, I’ve tapped a universe very much unlike the one I’m accustomed to experiencing. I did this by purchasing my first Android phone, in this case, a Droid Eris. My Samsung Rogue suffered a mishap in the washing machine back in June, and I wasn’t eligible for a new phone until March 2011.