I updated recently my Android developer phone to Android version 1.5. The images and instructions were available from HTC. The update was very easy to do and took less than 30 minutes. There were lots of improvements. Video recording is a notable feature. Camera starts much faster. I like the changes in call log. Earlier I managed to make an unintentional call from the call log almost every other day. Now they have clearly added a call icon to the left and the actual contact to the right. This alone saves me a lot of head ache. The on-screen keyboard is some times useful when you want to type text using one hand. But I found it much harder to type without mistakes. The keys are too small for my finger. A stylus is needed to accurately press the keys. It is always much easier to use the keyboard.

The battery meter seems to be broken. When the phone is being charged it seems to take forever to get to 100%. Before the update it took less than 2 hours to get to 100%. I tried disabling various features like wifi and GPS without any effect on the charging speed. I finally turned off the phone when it was around 70%. When I turned the phone back on immediately it showed 100%. I need to find a solution to this problem. I am also not sure whether the charge is lasting longer. But many people at XDA developers forum who have noticed the same problem claim to have longer lasting charge in 1.5.

I wish the music player app had a way to create your own playlist. I can’t seem to find a way. The players found in the market seem to have lots of features. But all I need is a simple player where I can define my own playlist.

If there was a face off with some one with another smart phone, I could claim earlier that I had super user access on the phone with the Terminal client. Now with 1.5 that is gone. You can get it only with USB connection as a security precaution. Still I like to have a phone were I control almost everything. You do not want to buy a house where the seller controls the door and decides who gets in.

Some menu choices seem to be slightly different for the browser. Other than that I do not see any visual difference. I do not have a data plan. So I have not yet tried GPS services, the new home screen widgets or speech recognition. I also loved the way the phone worked with web. I got a phone number in yahoo email. When reading the mail in the browser the phone number was highlighted. When I touched it the dialer opened and from there I could add the number as a new contact. I was actually looking for a pencil to write down the phone number and then add it to the contacts by opening it separately. Interfaces are supposed to work like that. This feature was probably there in Android 1.0 itself. I wish Android came with built-in Exchange push support like I-Phone.

You can check out the full Release features for 1.5 at http://source.android.com/release-features.

Calling cards must be a cut throat business. I have been using them for a long time to call India from USA. The rates are now nearly 10 times lower since I came to USA. I did use Reliance India call when it first started. I think it was around 10c per minute when it started. Then I switched to pingo which offered around 6c per minute. Currently this is 4.5c/minute. I also briefly used linq when the rate was around 5c. Now I switched to Pinless where the rate is 2.2c for mobile and 2.5c for landlines. The quality is good and the lines are available most of the time.

Recently some one pointed to me to Airtel Call Home which advertised 1c per minute. When I looked at the page their idea of the price calculation of 1c looks ridiculous. It goes roughly like this. You charge $x amount. Then you subtract an arbitrary $y from that. Then you calculate the rate per minute using ($x-$y)/total minutes. They call $y as the rental fee. You can make this any amount so that your final rate comes out as 1c per minute. Why do I care how much is $y? This is bad business practice. If their service is good they should be able to put $x/total minutes which is the real rate I am getting for the money I pay. Reliance India Call also seem to be following this practice and has put in a 1c per minute feature. Reliance calls their $y as administrative fee.

It may be just a marketing tactic and did made me notice their site. But I got back with a bad impression and I will think twice before buying anything from Airtel or Reliance. Who knows what other hidden charges might be there in their fine print.