Test-driving GeOrg 1.1.7 on our new android phone

This week our new phone arrived. It’s a HTC Desire. For a long time now we’ve been looking for a phone to replace our trusty G1. Especially we were waiting for a device with a hardware keyboard. We were not happy with the Droid/Milestone though and finally – after being able to test a friends HTC Desire – we dumped the keyboard-requirement.

We thinkt the Desire is a great android smartphone (even if you buy the “brown” version 😉 ). Especially its speed is impressive. While we have yet to take measurements, it’s already pretty obvious that GPX-import is flying – compared to the G1. Overall responsiveness has also improved.

The display is pretty good, though we think that it tends to have a slight reddish tint. In GeOrgs new Day-Theme there are light-gray panels which look quite neutral on the G1 and on the emulator – but on the Desire there’s a hint of purple. Also, we haven’t tested the device in the field yet, so it will be interesting to see if the display is still readable in direct sunlight.

One thing that kept worrying us the whole week just got solved. When we connected the Desire to our computer (with new HTC-drivers installed) and started the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) it didn’t recognize the device and instead showed a growing list of offline-devices – all with the same serial number. In case any other Desire user encounters this behaviour … After long painful sessions un- and reinstalling drivers and software we finally found the culprit. It was Kaspersky Antivirus (again). As the HTC-documentation stated, we deactivated the scanner during driver-installation, but that was not enough. Only today, after completely uninstalling Kaspersky we were able to install the HTC-drivers (v.2.0.33) and get an ADB-connection. After reinstalling Kaspersky everything still works, hopefully the configuration stays intact now, else developing for Android would just become a few stars more difficult …