Switched from Blackberry to Optimus Boston (Andoid)

Since I have this blog that I write here about each cellphone swap I do, even if this is the first time I'm writing about it only after the switch has been made. Part of the reason for that is that I wasn't really planing to swap phones: I've been really happy with my Blackberry Pearl, even if the 2 years old telephone was starting to ask for an update: GPS for the occasional walk in the city in places where I need Google Maps (I need that a lot more than you might think: I don't drive, and I don't have any kind of orientation skills - I lived 6 years or so in Coimbra, and with an effort I still can get lost in that city; curiously, now that I have a GPS on the phone, I didn't tried it yet) and HDSPA are welcomed. Yet, it was this phone appearing that made me change it - that and the fact that Paula was craving the Blackberry for herself (spoiler here: she now wants another one like mine). For comparison, here are two movies of both the phones:

Blackberry Pearl


Optimus Boston

But's not what you want to know, right? Is it worthy? Well, the summary is: Boston kicks ass. Two possible disadvantages, and my worries, are:

• I'm switching to a cellphone without physical keyboard, and I am used to type a lot on my cellphone;
• It was impossible for me, whatever I did to try it, to use up all the Pearl's battery in less than 24 hours. I'm not asking for 24 hours, but I would expect a phone to manage to stay on for the duration of a day - minimum 16 hours. I still didn't have one "usual day" with my phone to make sure of how much does it take to discharge to the point of shutting down, but I'm starting to think that possibly it won't stand on that long, for the kind of use I expect to do with it.

More stuff: migrating was totally easy - there a Google App called "Google Sync", available for lots of cellphones including Blackberries, that send your stuff (in my case contacts and calendar) to Google.

I just installed it, run it on my Blackberry (via EDGE, so I left my SIM card on Blackberry and started playing with Boston without SIM), and it just started uploading contacts on one side, and they were appearing on the other side. How? Well, one of the first questions the cellphone made me was something like "do you want google stuff?", so I said yes, inserted my credentials, et voilá - contacts, calendar, mail, all on the phone at once. Oh, of course it needed connectivity, so when it said to me "do you want to use wireless?" I said yes, configured the AP (because it isn't open WiFi), and I was online. What about exchange or other "corporate-stuff" Blackberries are so known for? Well, painless is the word. Boston comes already with Roadsync applications installed by default, with their icons and widget on one of the three virtual desktops. The name of the apps "roadwhatever" made me not to touch them, but touching on the widget it just told me "do you want to configure your exchange account?" Now, setting up an exchange account usually sucks, right? Not this time, it was just next-next-next-done. There, calendar and mail on the phone.

I am planing on writting a more interesting blogpost on the future (including pros and cons of this phone, Android, why isn't running Debian yet ;-) and stuff like that, but that will have to be for another time :-) If you don't want to wait, well, I sometimes kind of talk about it on my friendfeed...

XVI FEIRA LAICA

XVI FEIRA LAICA
Dias 26 e 27 de Junho
14H-20H
Bedeteca de Lisboa | Olivais | Portugal

Now with sixteen editions, the biggest Portuguese independent fair returns to its most regular place, for two days of cultural fair trade, networking and music. Highlighs in this edition for the concerts going on during the event, activities for kids with Mini-Laica (opportunity for kids to trade things they don’t want anymore) and story telling; the traditional second-hand stall (books and records); the “Science Is My Mother” wall in the expositions space in Bedeteca and a typography workshop by Oficina do Cego.

Poster by José Cardoso

I'm going to be there during all the event, in Noori Records' stall, and invite you to also come and say hi. More information (in Portuguese) can be found at Feira Laica’s website. See you there!

Piracy talking? Hush! (Or how Google doesn't like what I have to say)

Last month I wrote about "piracy" - you know, the non-authorized download of copyrighted content - in this blog post. For it, I made a poll, using blogger tools (that uses a Google service to create polls), where I was asking questions about "what would you do if you couldn't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content". The options were something like this:

• I don't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy everything I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy some things I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I wouldn' buy anything I now download anyway

I now came to my blog to see something else (don't ask me what, I can't remember), and I just noticed the big 404 you probably see on it:

I don't know why the poll was deleted, I heard nothing from Google regarding it, but I'm surely not going to quit doing this just because Google doesn't like my polls. No, I'm creating another poll. For the record, and I have nothing but my word on this, last time I've checked more than 40 votes where in it, and 0 of them were in the "I would pay for everything I download if I couldn't download it" option.

So, here's the poll, again. If you had voted previously, please vote again, and help spread the word... Thank you.

[UPDATE:] And then, the Google poll is back online. Just to be sure, please vote on both...