Q&A Chat with the Dell Streak UI Developers Immiment!

[Guest huggsy]

I know this, but I want to be able to browse my list of people and tick who i want to send the nsg to. For instance, im having a bbq on sunday, i couldnt remember who i have in my phonebook, so i had to put my sim in my hd2 where i can create a new msg and look at my whole phone book and scroll down and go 'oh i want to invite her...oooo and him', you dig me big dog?

Aah I get's ya. Only workaround I can think of is if you have all your contacts mobile numbers beginning with 07... rather than +44 then type 07 in the "To" field to see all contacts that way... not ideal but a solution of sorts.

Huggsy

[Guest Warpedflash]

I know this, but I want to be able to browse my list of people and tick who i want to send the nsg to. For instance, im having a bbq on sunday, i couldnt remember who i have in my phonebook, so i had to put my sim in my hd2 where i can create a new msg and look at my whole phone book and scroll down and go 'oh i want to invite her...oooo and him', you dig me big dog?

I want this as well The only thing I'm missing from my symbian phones

[Guest fards]

I suggest you point them to this page..

and ask them to hurry up and get the source code out !

http://gpl-violations.org/faq/sourcecode-faq.html

[Guest GriZlore]

I think a key thing, which is essential for the Streak (as it is the device it is) is to set the Web browser "user agent" as a desktop... so the Streak can view web pages properly.

Yes, I know you can change it... but it doesnt stick!

[Guest yosemite-sam]

unlock using face/voice recognition, finger print and butt cheek scanning. Thermal imaging and night vision mode for the camera.

the slide down menu is nice but it could be made like a cylinder that could have rows in numbers of our own choosing, letting us spin thru all the apps.

[Guest vinokirk]

'Battery power left', shown as a percentage on the top bar.

[Guest marra2]

I want this as well The only thing I'm missing from my symbian phones

try handcent from the market i'm sure it lets you do this

[Guest popetodd]

Get rid of the 'join the dots to enter' lock screen. Any one can just tilt the screen and see the unlock pattern!

What are you talking about?

I setup a lock pattern on mine, turned it on and went looking for anything at all the might back up your assertions and found nothing.

If you are talking about the grease trail on the screen then your argument is just specious and I can only hope that you use this time with the developers to present ideas and fixes that are software/interface related and not based on user cleanliness issues. :)

Edited July 11, 2010 by popetodd

[Guest Shauneh]

I suggest you point them to this page..

and ask them to hurry up and get the source code out !

http://gpl-violations.org/faq/sourcecode-faq.html

I second this motion, they had yet to release their source-code for a Linux embedded device, clearly a violation if they do not make it available soon.

--

Shaun

[Guest Dunhamzzz]

Cool, I have made notes of some of these questions, it wqould be great if you could all make it tomorrow!

[Guest vinokirk]

What are you talking about?

I setup a lock pattern on mine, turned it on and went looking for anything at all the might back up your assertions and found nothing.

If you are talking about the grease trail on the screen then your argument is just specious and I can only hope that you use this time with the developers to present ideas and fixes that are software/interface related and not based on user cleanliness issues. :)

Oi you cheeky sod! If you must know i have very dry hands so use moisturiser a lot! The cheek of some people...i dont know :D

[Guest chrisms_cotland]

Yeah please ask about the device source code as I fear that without that we will wait a while for new development.

[Guest squidgyb]

Oi you cheeky sod! If you must know i have very dry hands so use moisturiser a lot! The cheek of some people...i dont know :D

*giggle*

Dunno if this is useless but I thought I'd recap on some of the ideas and add a couple of my own.

The suggestions are all good up to now - not too sure about removing the pattern lock entirely though - it's not as if you have to use it. An alternative would be nice though, like a standard PIN lock.

- need for sites to treat the browser as a desktop and not a mobile

- selecting multiple contacts for messaging

- addressbook searches with a refresh on each character entry - for messaging and phone (I guess it should be an addressbook default)

- more unobtrusive device volume control when watching media, or even an option to choose where and what is displayed as a volume slider - maybe just a slider on the left or right of the screen, or have an "invisible" slider on the left which pops up if you slide your finger there... that might conflict with other apps already running.

- enchanced background selection choices to select entire image, set all homescreens to one image, or a span of a single large image, and show a readout of the pixel size covered. (That said, having root allows us to replace the files directly, so this doesn't bother me so much)

- being able to choose whether the keyboard number pad is displayed or not. maybe a key on the keyboard to bring it up quickly...

- ordering photos/videos by name/size/type instead of just date.

- as someone mentioned, saved search entries should be editable after selection, as the most frequent use of quick search entries is to refine the search; very rarely will you want to do the exact same search again.

- portrait homescreen? Might be issues with placement of some of the Dell UI buttons, but I wouldn't imagine it to be an unsurmountable problem.

- colour customisation for the UI.

- unique tones for warning/mms/message alerts

- battery power as %age in the top bar.

and the less likely;

- manual focus on the camera app, as well as saving the image in different formats, preferably the choice of doing so with little or no compression. Widescreen photos?

- 720p recording? Other 5mp camera phones have this ability. I wonder if the Dell has the hardware...

- timeline/projected dates for updates?

- source code?

- more media codec support

- cheaper accessories?

I think that's covered everything. I'm going to try and make it to the IRC chat tomorrow, I'm genuinely interested see how responsive they will be to suggestions. :)

Edited July 11, 2010 by squidgyb

[Guest popetodd]

I think a key thing, which is essential for the Streak (as it is the device it is) is to set the Web browser "user agent" as a desktop... so the Streak can view web pages properly.

Yes, I know you can change it... but it doesnt stick!

YES!

That is a minor config issue that can easily be corrected in the next maintenance update of 1.6.

[Guest WilhelmsBrick]

how about being able to fast scroll to the top of the page in the browser, hate scrolling down reading articals and then a few swipes to get back up.

[Guest squidgyb]

how about being able to fast scroll to the top of the page in the browser, hate scrolling down reading articals and then a few swipes to get back up.

Yes! That's another I forgot in the list - the same type of scrolling as used in the contacts list would work well - a tab which pops out of the right hand side which can be swiped to move quickly up the page.

[Guest WilhelmsBrick]

Yes! That's another I forgot in the list - the same type of scrolling as used in the contacts list would work well - a tab which pops out of the right hand side which can be swiped to move quickly up the page.

Yes, coming from an Iphone as far as I can think it's the only convenience I can think of as not being there. The alphabet on the side of the ipod and contacts list, and tapping the grey bar at the top to jump to the top of whatever you're on - be it browser or app based.

I'd also like to see improvements in the music player - just listing for the artists by name, I don't really want a rows of five with an album cover on them.

Can the screen not be set to go dimmer? As late at night when going to sleep I listen to a few podcasts, surf web in bed or play games and it seems still quite bright in the dark.

Oh and I've got to agree with others - the photo storing is great by date, and the photo editor I quite enjoy, but seriously videos need to be filed differently - again by title, even kept in separate folders for TV Show then seasons/episodes and a films folder - as I use ASTRO mainly to get to a video I'm after watching rather than drift through dates of imports as even then, if you've put a season on there I have to count screens to get an idea of which episode I'm looking for.

Support for AVI's without rock player base?

Errrr - i'm just rehashing everyone elses ideas now, I'll be there tommorow.

Logged into the chat today not realizing it was Sunday, sat there playing Mass Effect with a dumbfound expressions for why nobody was joining the chat...idiot.

[Guest squidgyb]

Yes, coming from an Iphone as far as I can think it's the only convenience I can think of as not being there. The alphabet on the side of the ipod and contacts list, and tapping the grey bar at the top to jump to the top of whatever you're on - be it browser or app based.

I'd also like to see improvements in the music player - just listing for the artists by name, I don't really want a rows of five with an album cover on them.

Can the screen not be set to go dimmer? As late at night when going to sleep I listen to a few podcasts, surf web in bed or play games and it seems still quite bright in the dark.

Oh and I've got to agree with others - the photo storing is great by date, and the photo editor I quite enjoy, but seriously videos need to be filed differently - again by title, even kept in separate folders for TV Show then seasons/episodes and a films folder - as I use ASTRO mainly to get to a video I'm after watching rather than drift through dates of imports as even then, if you've put a season on there I have to count screens to get an idea of which episode I'm looking for.

Support for AVI's without rock player base?

Errrr - i'm just rehashing everyone elses ideas now, I'll be there tommorow.

Logged into the chat today not realizing it was Sunday, sat there playing Mass Effect with a dumbfound expressions for why nobody was joining the chat...idiot.

yeah, I did the rehashing bit for the sake of having one big list - and don't worry about logging on to irc one day early, another poster thought it was last week :)

fake edit; how'd you get the little Welsh flag next to your username? I'm not English damn it! Time to scour the profile page methinks...

real edit; that's better :D

Edited July 11, 2010 by squidgyb

[Guest Dogmann55]

@h9k

Whilst you may find some of those apps to be essential apps i most certainly don't and don't want any more useless apps being installed in the Rom then I need and then having to remove them, you are of course free to add what ever you feel is necessary or best for you and customise your device to your taste as that's the beauty of Android we are all free to add and remove what we want and need and no two devices have to be exactly the same.

But i have not used a Task Killer at all since I've had my Streak from launch and feel i have no need for one either same goes for Juice Defender to as to me that would be a totally useless and unnecessary app and not one i want on my Streak at all. I also find the battery indicator from pulling down the menu to be more then enough as well as i don't find the need to obsess over the battery percentage either as usually after 16hrs use i have at minimum 28% and up to 48% battery left. That's not to say anyone that wants a better battery indicator shouldn't be free to install any of the many options available but i wouldn't want one included in the Rom. Really when it comes to the Rom less really is more it's not like it's hard to find what you want or need or to install it for that matter but why add loads of things not everyone is going to want or need let those that want these things just add them is fine by and preferred by me.

Also not sure why for some of changing the UA string to desktop in the Browser only needs to be done once and for others they need to keep on doing it that's a bit strange IMO.

Marc

Edited July 12, 2010 by Dogmann55

[Guest Dunhamzzz]

The chat takes place in 6 hours time people!

[Guest squidgyb]

I really would like to know the likeliness of Dell adding more codec support to the Streak - I'm quite torn at the moment as to returning the Streak and getting a Samsung Galaxy S, purely because of hardware decoding of so many formats. The screen (size) is a downgrade, but TV Out with a £3-5 cable? Out of the box - MP4/DivX/WMV/H.264/H.263 - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC support? 720p recording?

I'm bloody tempted...

Edited July 12, 2010 by squidgyb

[Guest fracmo2000]

Not long to go...I hope I remember closer to the time haha!

[Guest mobiholic]

I'd like to see users of the Streak have the option of either stock Android as soon as updates are available (or as soon as is reasonably possible) or a delayed version of Android with all the Dell customizations rather than being forced to take the latter.

In either case I think adding extras to the Android build such as Swype, no matter how useful people find them (myself included) is a terrible idea.

Give us the hardware, the OS and the necessary drivers etc. Everything else we should be able to add for ourselves as part of our own customization process, I don't want to be forced to use someone else's version of the perfect UI I want to take android and make it my own and that process must start with things as streamlined as possible.

Edited July 12, 2010 by mobiholic

[Guest WilhelmsBrick]

Just tried to log into the chat to check, having problems with that, anyone else wanna give it a go see if its just me?

[Guest T_r_i_s]

I'd like to see users of the Streak have the option of either stock Android as soon as updates are available (or as soon as is reasonably possible) or a delayed version of Android with all the Dell customizations rather than being forced to take the latter.

+1 :)