Android vs. iPhone, Part II

We're roman on this thread. Like the Super Bowl, this review is just too important to count the posts with ordinary numerals.

First, a quick update on the HTC Desire situation. The phone is having a better night tonight than it had last night. It still drops the connection, but not as often. I was actually able to use it to send a tweet to Al Jazeera Stream (@AJStream -- http://www.stream.aljazeera.com) and get it read on the air, which was quite a thrill and lucky too because the phone dropped the signal right after.

I'm almost completely certain this is not strictly speaking an Android problem. Part of the reason I say that is that I own two other Android devices and neither of them have this issue. The devices in question are a Samsung Galaxy Pad running Froyo Kernel 2.6.32.9 and a Motorola Xoom (yes, someone actually did buy one of those) running Honeycomb. (The Desire HD is running 2.3.3 Kernel 2.6.35.something-almost-as-long-as-pi, BTW). Neither of those have any issues notwithstanding the BTOpenZone thing I blogged last night and notwithstanding the somewhat embarrassing fact that I have a three year old router supplied to me by BT themselves, which means I have a three year old router that was a piece of crap three years ago and is now something below a piece of crap.

Back to the matter at hand. The Xoom has occasionally dropps signal from the back of my garden which is the point on my property that is farthest from the crap wifi router. But when I say occasionally, I mean exactly that. In warm weather that garden is my office (when it's not raining). I run a wired connection out there for my laptop because my main dev box is in the basement and the crap wifi can't deal with the kind of throughput you need for remote dekstop. But I also have the Xoom handy at all times and it is damn reliable. As is my iPad.

So this looks to be a hardware issue. Possibly it is a faulty handset. I am waiting for the BTOpenZone to drop off my router to see what happens. I will also see how the phone performs tomorrow when I will be at the Web Directions @media conference here in London (http://atmedia11.webdirections.org/program/). I plan to blog and tweet that. The phone will be my first line, but... let's just say I'm keeping the Xoom charged and ready.