Digitalwerks

Just a follow up to my previous post on video on the Android, as has been reported a few places, Qik is now available for the G1. It has a lot of limitations, based on the T-Mobile network and the camera hardware, but it does work, and it opens up some very cool possibilities. The ability to live-stream from such a small device will allow for video coverage of places that previously would have been impractical if not impossible.

I’m really looking forward to doing some field testing with Qik on the G1 at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con, which should be a lot of fun, at least as long as I can keep a 3G connection, and the battery holds out.

After a few delays, the 1.5 (Cupcake) update for the Android G1 phone from T-Mobile has arrived.  Impatient as I am, I followed the instructions from the AndroidGuys and forced my phone to update, although I think I only gained about 12 hours ultimately.  In any case, it’s a big step forward for the phone and the Android platform, with some great UI improvements, including the much discussed virtual keyboard.

For me, however, the most exciting new development is the implementation of video recording on the G1.  After the phone is updated a new app appears, “Camcorder.”  The use is fairly simple, just point and shoot.  There are two quality settings, “Low” and “High,” with the Low setting designated for “MMS” usage.  One nice feature is that video recording is integrated into the Camera app, and the user can switch from video recording to still photography with the click of one button.

The captured video uses the .3gp container format for the h.263 video codec.  Audio is labeled as “samr” and is the standard 3gp audo codec of AMR-Narrowband.  Using the “High” setting the video resolution is 352×288 and the bitrate looks to be around 350-400 kbps.  ”Low” has a resolution of 176×144 and bitrate around 200 kbps.

The Camcorder app allows for very easy video sharing with one-touch email, MMS, and YouTube integration.  The YouTube integration works very well, at least with the relatively small size video files I have tested with so far.

How does the video look?  Well, not great.  The camera on the G1 is not particularly good, and turning it into a video camcorder has not magically improved it.  That said, the video recording on mobile devices is generally not very good from a visual quality standpoint generally, at least with the current generation of in-device cameras.  Motion is pretty jerky, the colors are not great, and the audio quality, while in stereo which is nice, leaves a lot to be desired.  Still, the ability to capture video on the fly and get it uploaded to YouTube very, very easily has a lot of promise for the G1 and future Android phones.  The killer app may be, though, live streaming.  I am very hopeful that Qik can get implemented on the G1 sooner rather than later.  Broadcasting live has a number of great potential uses that rely far more on immediacy a mobile allows rather than the quality it cannot currently provide.

I have written a couple of previous posts about my experiences using the T-Mobile HTC G1 Android Google phone, including an in-depth look at how it handles video playback.  As a way to help other G1 users get video on to their phones, I put together this step-by-step guide to using the MeGUI application to encode video into a format that the G1 can play, while retaining as much quality as possible.  Because of the relatively low resolution of G1 compatible video, I have not focused as much on making the files as small in size as possible, but once you’ve mastered the basic steps outlined here, you should not have too much trouble tweaking the process to get smaller sizes if that is of importance to you.  With microSD cards getting cheaper and cheaper, I frankly have not found much need to really optimize encoding for size, but your needs may differ.

As a follow up to my previous posts about the G1 Android phone from T-Mobile (and Google!), and from a personal interest, I wanted to gather as much information about the phone’s video capabilities as I could.  In general, there has not been much information available about the detailed video specifications of the G1, which has proven somewhat frustrating to those people interested in using it as a portable viewing device.

As reported by MG Singler over at VentureBeat, there is evidence to believe Apple successfully pressured Google to keep the multi-touch feature off of the first Android phone, the G1 from HTC, even though the phone has the capability to implement it.  

If this is true, or if Google just feared what Apple would do if they implemented multi-touch, I have to say, it would severely disappoint this G1 owner.  I fully realize that Android has compromises in regards to openness and hackability (the key features that drew me to it in the first place), but if Google of all people is so easily bullied away from innovation, that raises real questions about the value of the Android platform over the long haul. Hopefully this was a minor misstep that Google will learn from and never repeat, but it certainly bears very close scrutiny in the future.

At my last job I had a company phone, a Blackberry Pearl, which I enjoyed using quite a bit.  It was small, well laid out, had a decent screen and the keyboard was suprisingly useful, even though it was not a full sized QWERTY like the larger Blackberries.  Just getting email on to your phone is a killer app, and the massive success of Blackberry attests to that rather clearly.  Heck, look at how tenaciously Obama is clinging to his “Crack”berry.

Alas, I am no longer with my old company, so I had to rush out and get a new phone.  

The Pearl had limitations of course.  Its relatively tiny screen was not really designed for multimedia, nor was the software for video and/or audio very effective.  Third party software in general was lacking, and what stuff there was often cost far too much, imo.  Ultimately the software I found myself using the most was the Opera mini-browser and Viigo, an RSS feed reader.

The fact that my most used apps were about web surfing really speaks to how having a smart phone, even the Pearl, changed my habits.  I really, really like having access to the web no matter where I am.  Sick?  Addicted?  Maybe, but once you have that instant always-on experience, the prospect of going without it is rather horrifying.  So needless to say, as the reality of handing over the phone back to the company sunk in, I rapidly began to consider my options to replace it.

iPhone?  Nah, I’m too much of an Apple skeptic to jump on that bandwagon at this point, no matter how good it is.  Plus it’s pretty expensive and I’m trying to economize.

Another Blackberry?  Possible, but the really interesting Blackberrys right now are the Storm and the Bold, and they are still pretty damn expensive.

My mind very quickly went to the G1 Android phone from T-Mobile.  I was a pretty easy mark for this, as the openness and intense focus on the web, plus a QWERTY keyboard and a decent screen for video was all very compelling.  Not to mention I found a deal for it at a very good price, $149 with a monthly charge of around $60.

So, how’s it been?  Generally it’s been very good.  Certainly far from perfect, and I cannot compare it to the iPhone (or the soon to be released Palm Pre), but I’ve enjoyed it a lot.  3G is spotty where I am in San Diego, wifi has also proven to be sporadic, the build is probably not super great, and the fact that it can’t actually edit Google Docs is maddening.  But the interface is slick, I’m loving the apps I’ve found on the Android Market, and it really does provide a far better web experience than the Pearl did, which is the real key decisive factor for me.  And the tight connection to the Google apps is very, very effective.

I had great plans to blog with it from the show floor at CES.  It proved capable of it, which is a pretty amazing fact when you think about it.  The ability to take pictures (of low quality to be sure), create text and upload it all to one’s blog all on the move is very, very cool to me.

Overall, I’m definitely a convert and am excited to see how the Android platform develops in the future.  And it will develop, as the openness at the heart of Android is precisely the approach more consumer electronics will have to take in the future.