Enthusiasts discuss all things Android | Bangkok Post: tech

Duocore.tv and Blognone recently hosted an Android Talk event where enthusiasts were invited to come and talk about how they loved their Android phones.

Samsung’s Galaxy S Super AMOLED screen still is stunning.

Blognone webmaster Isriya Paireepairit presented a paper by Vision Mobile which explained how the IT industry swings between vertical integration and specialisation. Today, we have a certain company that does everything from making chips to selling songs (Apple). IBM in the 1980s used to do everything before it outsourced and spun-off its various departments.

But vertical integration is reaching a plateau. The question is what next, and can that lead to greater profit?

The mobile software ecosystem is also evolving chiefly along two axes. Software can be a means to sell the phone part of a cloud service (iTunes / Ovi). On the other axis, it can be pre-loaded from the factory or installed later.

Perhaps surprisingly, the most popular program is the predictive text input program T9. There are almost three billion licences sold, so pre-loading software on the handset does make sense, despite the long time to market and monetisation.

Then there is the rise and rise of the app store. Today there are five major stores - iTunes, Android Market, Ovi, Handango and GetJar. Apple alone has over a quarter of a million apps on it. By 2012, there will be an estimated 150 app stores. Many sell direct, while others will be wholesalers selling to operator-specific app stores.

Coexistence will be a key feature. Today we see Samsung phones with both Samsung's own app store alongside the Android Market, for instance.

The web will be the one common denominator. Ever vendor except Microsoft is now moving to Webkit for its on-phone browser.

Open is the new closed. But there are many different degrees of openness when it comes to development. Chrome and Android may be open source but are tightly controlled by Google. Membership of the Open Handset Alliance is by invite-only.

Symbian is now open source and it is flouting that fact very loudly. Nokia will have a key role to play.

Today there is a huge disparity between devices and applications. The most prevalent device is JavaME, with an installed base of over 3 billion, while the iPhone has just 60 million.

But when it comes to developers, Android is number one, followed by iPhone, JavaME and Symbian.

"Palm you can forget about," he said.

Getting up to speed for developers, Android is fastest, with programmers feeling proficient in just four to five months. This is followed by mobile wed, Flash, iPhone, Java ME, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and finally Symbian, which takes 15 months to train a developer.

Jirayut Nimsaeng (@WingGundamTH), a postgraduate student, presented some preliminary findings on his quest to develop a better Thai input method for Android. Today, the industry has over 20 types of Thai entry. Some, such as LG, offer a keyboard starting from Kor-Kai to Hor Nok Hook (the equivalent of A to Z). This does not work well, as not many people can recite the whole Thai alphabet. Others have a modified Pattachote standard keyboard.

Thai text prediction was also impossible due to high processing requirements, but the latest generation of 1GHz phones could change that. Thai language also lacks a standardised English phonetic input system such as Chinese Pinyin or Japanese Romaji.

Jirayut lamented the lack of local research interest in the Thai language, with most of the research he uncovered being done by western researchers.

Sugree Phattanapherom spoke of his legal woes for developing on Android. He wrote a beer-drinking program and ended up with threats of a lawsuit.

The beer program was downloaded 8,000 times in a matter of weeks before he had to remove it. His next best program, the Jibjib Twitter client, took two years to rack up 3,000 downloads.

He said he was presented with a patent for anything liquid on a phone and was given a choice to pay 3 million baht to licence it or could sign a letter promising never to write a program in violation of this patent ever again.

Sugree noted that monetisation of localised Android applications is a problem, as Android Market does not allow paid apps in Thailand because of taxation concerns.

Jakrapong Kongmalai, Marketing Manager of Samsung Mobile in Thailand, said that today's phones are more than just for talking on, but are a statement. Samsung sees Android as being very big but in Thailand, the challenge is to grow the market and make Android enter the mainstream. Screen size is now what everyone is talking about and no, his lips were sealed when faced with a barrage of questions regarding the Galaxy tab.

Nattachai Ungsriwong, Managing Director of software house Crie, has done a lot of work on Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android and, of course, iPhone.

His company does a lot of software customisation for local markets. However, while everyone is talking about Android, people are still baulking at paying for professional software development. He has developed apps for Dtac and AIS and engages with revenue-share with the telcos.

As a developer, he said that Android is much, much easier to develop on than Symbian. Android is based on Java and is much easier than JavaME. The developer tools are also much better, making it much easier to test. Despite that, he has had to buy many phones to test his software on, as emulators are often slow and not as predictable as one could have hoped. Every Android phone, for instance, has a different interface for its camera control, unlike Apple's single platform.

He also noted that Isriya's presentation lacked one more channel for loading applications on to the phone. Many people in Thailand still load pirated software on to their phones.

One member of Blognone spoke of how Android just felt too difficult to use at first and suffers a lot from people turning away in the first few minutes. He was on his third Android phone now, a Samsung Galaxy S, yet his girlfriend refused to use it and wanted to buy a Nokia 5800 instead.

Another spoke of the bugs that Android had with Windows Live Hotmail: "How many of you here use Hotmail?" he asked. The room fell silent and the sole Hotmail user was left to consider how the mighty had fallen.

A representative from Acer said that the company was working on many more Android devices such as media tablets that are a "lot of fun". Acer is looking into interfacing phones with a car's electronic control unit via Bluetooth so that everything from gauges, speed, fuel consumption and faults can be sent to the phone to enable many exciting apps. In the future, even a rice cooker might be Android-powered.