Google Android

[nula]

In my opinion, this locking devices to only "proprietary" app store is road to hell. I'm pretty sure, customers gonna be utmost upset not being able to buy their favorite application, only because they are not allowed to. I know I would be.

Anyway, stupid question i know, but .. is there any (even very inaccurate) ETA for beta version? I have very old Windows Mobile, and i cant wait to change it for some android, but i cannot, because Plecodict is nr.1 used app on my pda. I would buy iPhone, but in my country its very very expensive, i'd rather buy the best android pda, since its around half the price of iPhone4.

 

[mikelove]

Anyway, stupid question i know, but .. is there any (even very inaccurate) ETA for beta version? I have very old Windows Mobile, and i cant wait to change it for some android, but i cannot, because Plecodict is nr.1 used app on my pda. I would buy iPhone, but in my country its very very expensive, i'd rather buy the best android pda, since its around half the price of iPhone4.

Not saying anything on that at this point - today's sort-of unveiling of Android 3.0 has only further complicated matters, since it looks to have a heavily revamped UI of that sort that, even though it's designed for tablets, is also likely to have a great many benefits on smartphones for apps like ours that are trying to cram a lot of content into a small screen.

If we really had to, we could probably have a rudimentary dictionary-only public beta out for current Android devices in a couple of weeks - the low-level stuff is already working and just needs to be stuck in a user interface designed for something other than debugging - but since anything we release on Android is likely to immediately pick up several thousand users (however many BOLDFACED AND CAPITALIZED WARNING MESSAGES we may surround it with), we'd really rather have something a bit more polished from the get-go. Also, while fullscreen handwriting is already working well (at least on any device not made by HTC), we'd really like to get live OCR into our first Android beta, and we're having some serious debugging issues with that that are taking a while to resolve (and requiring the involvement of other parties).

It's basically a question of deciding how much time in any given week to spend on Android versus iOS - the last few weeks it's been a lot of iOS as we've been working on a bunch of new OCR and other stuff for the 2.2.2 update, but even after that we've got the big 2.3 flashcard / UI streamlining / general-awesomeness-adding revamp competing for time with Android; we're seeing some very exciting numbers on iOS lately in a lot of areas (finally getting serious numbers of downloads from China, even though they're not buying much yet we'd rather they use our free app than someone else's) and we don't want to sacrifice any opportunities there for the sake of writing Android code if we're just going to have to throw it away / rewrite it from scratch as soon as 3.0 is out.

 

[westmeadboy]

You can see a sneak preview of Honeycomb here:

http://www.androidguys.com/2011/01/05/g ... y-tablets/

Is niiice

 

[mikelove]

And since it is 3.0 rather than "tablet edition" or somesuch, it's clear that long-term this is going to be the Android running on smartphones too. So the question is whether we target current-generation Android phones or the dual-core multi-pane AwesomePhones that everybody's going to be buying 6 months from now - I'm inclined to do the latter, especially given what we might be able to pull off with a dual-core processor (live OCR an entire frame of video at a time, merged multi-dictionary search results, silently recording / recognizing / transcribing all of the spoken Chinese heard over the course of an entire class...)

But at the same time there are an awful lot of people using those current phones, and if we could just have a little reassurance from Google that all of the work we do on those won't be totally useless on Android 3.0 we'd want to support as wide a range of devices as possible (however short the list of officially-supported devices might be) - we're not trying to be difficult, we just want to make the best products we can with the limited resources we have.

 

[mandu]

And since it is 3.0 rather than "tablet edition" or somesuch, it's clear that long-term this is going to be the Android running on smartphones too. So the question is whether we target current-generation Android phones or the dual-core multi-pane AwesomePhones that everybody's going to be buying 6 months from now - I'm inclined to do the latter, especially given what we might be able to pull off with a dual-core processor (live OCR an entire frame of video at a time, merged multi-dictionary search results, silently recording / recognizing / transcribing all of the spoken Chinese heard over the course of an entire class...)

But at the same time there are an awful lot of people using those current phones, and if we could just have a little reassurance from Google that all of the work we do on those won't be totally useless on Android 3.0 we'd want to support as wide a range of devices as possible (however short the list of officially-supported devices might be) - we're not trying to be difficult, we just want to make the best products we can with the limited resources we have.

Your explanation is very reasonable. I'm so torn! I really wish I could use your dictionary since it is miles ahead of anything I've seen on Android, but for me, dealing with Apple is too unpleasant (and expensive) to contemplate.

FroYo is >50% and 2.1 has 35% of the OS pie (Pie will be Android 6.0?)
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/0...till-strong-cupcake-and-donut-on-the-way-out/ shows the latest OS-version breakdown. At least 10 million of those 2.1 units have been publicly promised 2.2 by Samsung, so we will see even more of a shift from existing phones. New phones are no longer being released with <2.2

Sony's newest phone is demoed with Android 2.4, which is described as a performance-boost over 2.3, but "framework code has added some tools for video chat" which may mean better access to the video stream for Pleco...
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/0...-possibly-an-incremental-gingerbread-upgrade/
Others have speculated that 2.4 will bring some 3.0 goodies to single-core phones.

Tell me if this makes sense: release a dictionary-only Pleco for whichever version (2.1? 2.2? 2.3?) can handle your code smoothly, and charge for it. At $5 you would be a steal, and at $10 you'd destroy Collins weaksauce mobile dictionary. Be a premium product that gets your name into the Android community. As users upgrade OS or phone to a level that meets your requirements, your add-ons become available.

While I was running 1.6, apps requiring 2.0 were invisible. When I upgraded, new, better apps appeared in the market like magic. Users will only see the parts of Pleco that they can run. When it comes time to pay for an add-on, simply have users check a disclaimer about the tested platforms before they can complete the transaction.

This scenario sounds reasonable to this outsider, but may be unworkable given the resource constriction you face. My thought is that you can let the Android community prove its value to you. Maybe we will justify a division of labour from your already profitable iOS works. Churn out the dictionary and let us pay you!

 

[westmeadboy]

This video shows a lot more of Honeycomb:

http://www.slashgear.com/android-3-0-ho ... -06124000/

Mike - as you are someone who has expressed a dislike of Android (compared to iOS), I'd be interested to hear what impressions you have of this new version.

 

[mikelove]

Mike - as you are someone who has expressed a dislike of Android (compared to iOS), I'd be interested to hear what impressions you have of this new version.

It's tough to say since these are all first-party apps or games; doesn't really give a sense of how older apps or apps designed to work on both tablets and smartphones will work, or even of whether or not all of these new UI controls are going to be readily accessible to third-party apps. Fundamentally they don't seem to be doing anything that differently from iPad - few extra UI controls, nice to have tabs in the built-in browser rather than having to buy a third-party one as on iPad... the main addition is widgets, which have been long overdue on iOS and I'd wager a lot of money will be showing up in iOS 5 (after they added multitasking and made all of their UI controls thread-safe in OS 4).

I've never really liked the Android back button or collapsible menu bar - the latter is especially irritating since it was an equally flawed system way back in the Palm OS days - so I hope they're going to mostly abolish them on tablets; I imagine they'll keep the buttons around somewhere for the sake of legacy apps, but if Google doesn't use them in any first-party ones most developers will probably follow suit. If we eventually use the menu in Pleco (we don't use it at all in the current prototype) it'll be replacing the disappearing tab bar we have on iPhone, though part of me would rather do even that with an onscreen control - it's not even an obstinate forcing-iPhone-UI-on-everyone thing, it's that many of our customers are brand new to whatever platform they're running Pleco on and I don't want to spend hours and hours and hours of support time explaining to them how to find the menu button (especially when its position is different on every Android device). Our single most common support issue at the moment people complaining that the audio module doesn't work because they've turned on the mute switch on their device without realizing it - discoverability is everything.

One issue I haven't heard much about lately is battery life - on every Android phone I've owned it's been just plain dreadful and I don't think it's because of any major difference in the hardware; it seems to me like Google needs a) a bunch of programmers to go around rewriting code to improve power consumption, and b) people at every big OEM doing the same, perhaps even with financial support from Google. It may not seem like as big a deal on tablets, but I actually think it could be a huge issue - they've got giant screens, are running lots of very complicated / hardware-intensive apps, and yet at the moment they're a lot thicker / heavier than they need to be ergonomics-wise. If the iPad 3 is as thin and lightweight as a Kindle, you're going to see a bunch of Android tablets that are either a) extremely bulky in comparison or b) get the same 2-and-a-half-hours-if-you-stretch-it worth of battery life that Android phones do.

 

[mikelove]

Tell me if this makes sense: release a dictionary-only Pleco for whichever version (2.1? 2.2? 2.3?) can handle your code smoothly, and charge for it. At $5 you would be a steal, and at $10 you'd destroy Collins weaksauce mobile dictionary. Be a premium product that gets your name into the Android community. As users upgrade OS or phone to a level that meets your requirements, your add-ons become available.

There are a whole lot of licensing and business reasons why we want to keep the basic app free; Android users can prove themselves by ponying up for paid dictionaries and other add-ons. (pretty much all of the dictionaries should be available from the very first test version) I do think releasing something to test the waters might make sense, it's just a question of when the best time would be to do that and how much functionality we need to include to really get people interested.

 

[mandu]

...snip...

One issue I haven't heard much about lately is battery life - on every Android phone I've owned it's been just plain dreadful and I don't think it's because of any major difference in the hardware; it seems to me like Google needs a) a bunch of programmers to go around rewriting code to improve power consumption, and b) people at every big OEM doing the same, perhaps even with financial support from Google. It may not seem like as big a deal on tablets, but I actually think it could be a huge issue - they've got giant screens, are running lots of very complicated / hardware-intensive apps, and yet at the moment they're a lot thicker / heavier than they need to be ergonomics-wise. If the iPad 3 is as thin and lightweight as a Kindle, you're going to see a bunch of Android tablets that are either a) extremely bulky in comparison or b) get the same 2-and-a-half-hours-if-you-stretch-it worth of battery life that Android phones do.

For all the complaints that my forever stunted (now official: no support past 2.1) Sony X10 has inspired, battery life has never been an issue. I don't know what is normal for iphone users, but I charge overnight and never run out of juice on this 1Ghz + 4" screen. Supposedly later versions of Android improve efficiency, so there should be no problem achieving all-day usage if the manufacturers supply appropriate batteries, and code with care.

Thanks for addressing my question, I look forward to seeing more of Pleco!

 

[westmeadboy]

I think Google are designing the NDK especially for you, Mike!

"you can now build an entire Android application without writing a single line of Java"

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/ ... eness.html

 

[micahboland]

Hi Mike

I've been following this thread with great interest over the last few months. I was very excited when the email came around announcing a public beta version of Pleco for Android.

I have purchased about 10 licences of Pleco for my family's and my various devices (yes we all either live in China or study mandarin), and am reminded on a daily basis of how indispensable a tool it is.
Up until now I have been using Windows Mobile, but as it is now dead I am looking to move to Android, and would never consider apple as an option (my parents have the apple version of Pleco).
I have purchased a Galaxy Tab, and am very happy/impressed with Android as an OS, and therefore looking at moving all my devices to Android.

Just a quick point about android versions and compatibility.

At CES there were many android tablets introduced, some promising v2.2 and some v3.0.
Of the phones shown which will be released over the next few months most are running v2.2, with only a couple promising v2.3, and a SE phone running a very early beta build of v2.4.

Based on this information, it seems tablets will get 3.0 in around 3 months, but the roadmap for phones (v2.3,v2.4) seems to indicate at least six months if not longer before they will start to benefit from/will be upgraded to v3.0 code. Also, it seems that all the UI changes in v3.0 are intended to make the extra room provided on tablets more usable, so the actual impact a v3.0 upgrade will have on phones seems like it will be minimal.

At present, samsung is boasting 10 million Galaxy S phone sales, while android now has a bigger market share than apple in the US.
Most phones released here in China are running android, including the new Meizu which is hugely popular.

Seeing even phones to be released over the next 3 to 6 months will be running v2.2 (see motorola atrix), and because of the already massive android user base, it would seem prudent if not advantageous to spend 2 weeks to get a basic dictionary only public beta out and gauge public response.
Even if this version of pleco didn't have flashcards/OCR or any other bells and whistles I would still buy several copies.
As an English teacher, I show Pleco to my students and many say they would purchase it if available for android. These students are all preparing to study abroad, so they definitely aren't short of a bob or three.

Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.

Love your software, and I appreciate the hard work and time you put into this amazing tool.

Regards,
Micah

 

[mikelove]

"you can now build an entire Android application without writing a single line of Java"

If only... unfortunately we still need the non-NDK-accessible UI frameworks in order to get this out sometime before 2013

Seeing even phones to be released over the next 3 to 6 months will be running v2.2 (see motorola atrix), and because of the already massive android user base, it would seem prudent if not advantageous to spend 2 weeks to get a basic dictionary only public beta out and gauge public response.
Even if this version of pleco didn't have flashcards/OCR or any other bells and whistles I would still buy several copies.
As an English teacher, I show Pleco to my students and many say they would purchase it if available for android. These students are all preparing to study abroad, so they definitely aren't short of a bob or three.

Thanks for the feedback.

The problem with this plan is that we'd spend 2 weeks coding it and a month after that dealing with the fallout - as my constant presence on these forums should indicate, we're not big enough to have a whole dedicated support team ready to swing into action the second we release a big new attention-getting product, so all of the PR / requests for review copies / license transfer issues / feedback / bug reports / etc are ultimately eating up time that could go to programming / design / debugging / negotiating dictionary licenses / etc.

The Android version certainly doesn't need to be a finished product in its first release, but I do think we want to at least have fullscreen handwriting and OCR working from day one, particularly as they're both mostly working already - handwriting seems to be very solid on pretty much any device not made by HTC, and OCR's only major failing so far relative to iOS is that it has to be done in landscape orientation - the engine at least is actually about 20% faster on the Galaxy S than the iPhone 4 owing to the higher-clocked processor on the former (though I'd gladly give up that performance if the Galaxy could match the iPhone's battery life). And stroke order and audio involve lots of data but very little code so it's logical to make those available from the get-go on Android as well.

What we're aiming for is still much less than what we launched with on iOS, both because it doesn't need to be as thoroughly debugged and because there are a lot of things that people can do for themselves in the short term - no need for us to include our own built-in file manager or a system for automatically downloading database files in the first public Android release, we can use manually-installed databases and license "keyfiles" just like we did on Palm/WM and tell anyone who's uncomfortable with those to wait for the finished version. But it has to be more than a quick-and-dirty thrown-together-in-2-weeks type thing or it won't be worth all the hubbub.

 

[JPBarringer]

Mike,

Like many of the other users here, I am so excited for Pleco on Android. I bought a palm specifically for Pleco when I was studying in China, and I still mourn it's loss to this day, only because of Pleco. Thanks for the great product and please put me on the Android beta list.

I'm not a dev but I follow the tech scene very closely. I also own a Motorola Droid and have been keeping up to date on Android since its inception. Android 2.1 was released around this time last year, and 2.2 last summer. The chart which can be found here shows the current breakdown, which is quickly becoming more 2.2-heavy. Given the amount of time certain manufacturers took to get to 2.1, it is likely that the next 6 months will see this ratio hit 85% or more 2.2+ devices. From reading comments made by devs on the Market pages for their apps, I've read that there have been major API improvements post 2.0... Many of the newer apps on the Android Market only support 2.0 or later, and a few only support 2.1 or 2.2.

Anyway, it seems to me that 2.2 would be an ideal target minimum (API Level 8+) due to the growing number of devices which support it and the inclusion of many of the beneficial API hooks. Many of your previous comments have been along the lines of 'wait until we see what 3.0 brings', and now that we've seen that it's mostly a tablet release (for now) I'm curious about how your thoughts on minimum version requirements have changed (or not changed).

Thanks again, can't wait till release
JP

 

[mikelove]

Anyway, it seems to me that 2.2 would be an ideal target minimum (API Level 8+) due to the growing number of devices which support it and the inclusion of many of the beneficial API hooks. Many of your previous comments have been along the lines of 'wait until we see what 3.0 brings', and now that we've seen that it's mostly a tablet release (for now) I'm curious about how your thoughts on minimum version requirements have changed (or not changed).

It's tough to say since it's been constantly evolving as we go along - the more stuff we get implemented / debugged on a particular OS (right now we're working with 2.2 and nothing earlier) the more likely it is that we'll end up settling on that OS as a baseline.

The basic development situation now is that as soon as we get Pleco 2.2.2 finished on iOS (been stuck in "going to beta testers any day now" mode for about a week) most of our programming time for at least for a month or two after that will probably go to Android; we're hiring an actual design firm to do a lot of our big new iOS interface redesign - the number of emails we received after our OCR release from new users who loved everything about our app except its UI convinced us we need outside help - and we're holding off on a lot of the programming work for the next big iPhone update until that firm gets back to us with the new designs. Just yesterday we finally took delivery of a finished version of the OCR library we're using on Android, so the pieces are all in place at last and we can really only blame ourselves for any further delay in getting an Android version out.

So the question is whether at the end of that time we'll have something that we can / should actually release on Android - if we do and if it works well on 2.2 then we'd probably support 2.2, if 2.3 fixes a lot of bugs and is starting to be widespread enough that we can feasibly support it then we might only target 2.3, if we're still a ways away from having something that's awesome enough to justify all the attention then we'll keep working and maybe end up only targeting 3.0 depending on how the situation looks when that something is ready.

As I've said here several times, though, the fact that a phone runs a particular OS is no guarantee that Pleco will actually work well or even at all on it - hardware compatibility is still a huge concern, it's entirely possible that we'll leave some manufacturers out of our compatibility list altogether because rewriting our software to fix the bugs in their particular Android implementations is simply too much work.

 

[mandu]

Mike,

Like many of the other users here, I am so excited for Pleco on Android. I bought a palm specifically for Pleco when I was studying in China, and I still mourn it's loss to this day, only because of Pleco. Thanks for the great product and please put me on the Android beta list.

I'm not a dev but I follow the tech scene very closely. I also own a Motorola Droid and have been keeping up to date on Android since its inception. Android 2.1 was released around this time last year, and 2.2 last summer. The chart which can be found here shows the current breakdown, which is quickly becoming more 2.2-heavy. Given the amount of time certain manufacturers took to get to 2.1, it is likely that the next 6 months will see this ratio hit 85% or more 2.2+ devices. From reading comments made by devs on the Market pages for their apps, I've read that there have been major API improvements post 2.0... Many of the newer apps on the Android Market only support 2.0 or later, and a few only support 2.1 or 2.2.

Anyway, it seems to me that 2.2 would be an ideal target minimum (API Level 8+) due to the growing number of devices which support it and the inclusion of many of the beneficial API hooks. Many of your previous comments have been along the lines of 'wait until we see what 3.0 brings', and now that we've seen that it's mostly a tablet release (for now) I'm curious about how your thoughts on minimum version requirements have changed (or not changed).

Thanks again, can't wait till release
JP

I have to agree about the numbers, it appears 2.2 is racing past 50% and will be the majority of the platform until the end of next year when the Fall-refresh devices have begun to sell, and updates to 2.3/2.4 start to drop.

There is a project that has gotten 2.2 onto the X10, and I will install it as soon as Pleco's beta hits.

I checked out another dictionary that I thought might compare, but what I got for my $5 pales next to what I've seen of Pleco.

 

[ogami_ito]

Hi Mike

I have purchased about 10 licences of Pleco for my family's and my various devices (yes we all either live in China or study mandarin), and am reminded on a daily basis of how indispensable a tool it is.

[off-topic... are you related / affiliated to the Boland English and Chinese school, in Suzhou, as well as the "What's On Suzhou" calendar?]

the engine at least is actually about 20% faster on the Galaxy S than the iPhone 4 owing to the higher-clocked processor on the former (though I'd gladly give up that performance if the Galaxy could match the iPhone's battery life).

I too wish that I could have an iphone 4... it is so much less fuss than the Galaxy S. Unfortunatly, in China, it is still over 5000RMB (and requires jail-breaking unless more expensive Hong Kong version) while the Galaxy S costs around 3000RMB. And also the Galaxy S can connect to the free public ChinaMobile wifi networks that are sprouting up everywhere (iPhone's cannot due to browser technology). I may be wrong, but I believe the target market for your application are Chinese language students, not Chinese people, no? Anecdotally speaking, I believe that most foreigners studying in China have either blackberries (if they are expad managers from US), Nokia E series phones (if they are expats from Europe), iPhones, or dumb-phones. I rarely see expats with Android phones here. This will probably change because Android phones are picking up in popularity among the less status-oriented middle-class consumers in China. and so Androids will become more of a "standard" option for expats who study Chinese.

As for battery, I would recommend re-flashing your Galaxy with a custom ROM, such as Darkys ROM, or a custom Kernel, such as the SpeedMod or Voodoo kernals. Its safe, find them on the XDA forums, and they will add about 25% to your battery life. Its silly how the modding community can quickly optimize the ROMs while Samsung's own engineers cannot.

I'm so eagerly awaiting Pleco for my Samsung Galaxy S. I used in on my iPhone2G (which had horrible speed, reception, and battery life)... and I loved it. I'm currently using the Hanping dictionary (on Android) with SCUT gPen for fingure-writing input. Free CCDICT is not very good, but it sometimes does the trick. SCUT is not friendly for foreign Chinese-as-second-language writers who may not be good at stroke-order.

 

[mikelove]

I too wish that I could have an iphone 4... it is so much less fuss than the Galaxy S. Unfortunatly, in China, it is still over 5000RMB (and requires jail-breaking unless more expensive Hong Kong version) while the Galaxy S costs around 3000RMB. And also the Galaxy S can connect to the free public ChinaMobile wifi networks that are sprouting up everywhere (iPhone's cannot due to browser technology). I may be wrong, but I believe the target market for your application are Chinese language students, not Chinese people, no? Anecdotally speaking, I believe that most foreigners studying in China have either blackberries (if they are expad managers from US), Nokia E series phones (if they are expats from Europe), iPhones, or dumb-phones. I rarely see expats with Android phones here. This will probably change because Android phones are picking up in popularity among the less status-oriented middle-class consumers in China. and so Androids will become more of a "standard" option for expats who study Chinese.

I don't think that price gap is going to be allowed to continue for very long, though - I'd venture to guess that post-iPhone-5-launch you'll be able to get an iPhone 4 in China for something in that same 3000 RMB range, and while it's very hard to sell someone on a 3GS when they look at the design / screen resolution of a 4, the most exciting new features in the iPhone 5 are likely to be primarily under-the-hood things like 4G and a dual-core processor - exciting for techies but not actually likely to make the iPhone 4 look outdated. Apple has to see the opportunity there... they could move 20 million iPhones in China this year if they can just find a way to meet demand and lower the price a bit.

But in the meantime I still think the iPod Touch is a very sensible option for a lot of China expats - couple it with a cheap domestic featurephone that does WiFi tethering and you get almost all of the benefits of an iPhone for a lot less money and without having to worry that you won't be able to keep using it when you go home. (a big concern for Americans since in many areas the only good cell network uses CDMA)

As for battery, I would recommend re-flashing your Galaxy with a custom ROM, such as Darkys ROM, or a custom Kernel, such as the SpeedMod or Voodoo kernals. Its safe, find them on the XDA forums, and they will add about 25% to your battery life. Its silly how the modding community can quickly optimize the ROMs while Samsung's own engineers cannot.

Already using Darkys, actually, but the battery life is unfortunately still pretty awful; with live OCR it may not even be possible to get through a whole chapter of a novel without having to plug in again

 

[numble]

And also the Galaxy S can connect to the free public ChinaMobile wifi networks that are sprouting up everywhere (iPhone's cannot due to browser technology).

What is wrong with the browser technology? I connected to China Unicom wifi networks just fine, and always saw China Mobile networks (but did not connect since I wasn't on their network, except one time when I was with a China Mobile user and was able to snag a user/password from that person).

 

[ogami_ito]

And also the Galaxy S can connect to the free public ChinaMobile wifi networks that are sprouting up everywhere (iPhone's cannot due to browser technology).

What is wrong with the browser technology? I connected to China Unicom wifi networks just fine, and always saw China Mobile networks (but did not connect since I wasn't on their network, except one time when I was with a China Mobile user and was able to snag a user/password from that person).

<FYI... all off topic here...sorry>
I'm not sure about iOS 4.0+. It seems the same. When I try to log onto the PUBLIC, FREE China Mobile access points (which are in every Starbucks, and must everywhere else in the Suzhou area), you need to enter phone number and key. When the page loads, it adds a security certificate to the phone. As that certificate is different everytime, on my old iPhone, I needed to forget and then reconnect to the Wifi in order to refresh this. Then China Mobile will send you an SMS with a username and password (why can't they just set it up so that you have the same username everytime, and SMS the password...or just have a static username and password...I don't know). After you enter these into the new form, a page with a java-script, or something activates... that pages has a count-down timer which shows how long the session will last. Somehow, this page never worked in my previous iPhone.</off-topic>

 

[JPBarringer]

And also the Galaxy S can connect to the free public ChinaMobile wifi networks that are sprouting up everywhere (iPhone's cannot due to browser technology).

What is wrong with the browser technology? I connected to China Unicom wifi networks just fine, and always saw China Mobile networks (but did not connect since I wasn't on their network, except one time when I was with a China Mobile user and was able to snag a user/password from that person).

The problem is that China's mobile regulator has mandated the use of WAPI (Wikipedia link) which is incompatible with a lot of hardware out there. Even foreign places like Starbucks use the standard at their locations in China, and mobile devices need compatible firmware to get on the network. There are also security concerns with WAPI as it the authentication server is centralized and (I believe) run by the Chinese Government.

Anyway, Mike, thanks for the response -- it's great of you to take the time and walk us through your thought process on this. Above and beyond, really.

Cheers,
JP