The script is as follows:

• Load 10 predetermined websites (the same websites were used for every phone).  We will load each website 5 times each.
• Watch a YouTube video at least 30 min in length (same video used for all phones)
• Listen to a playlist of music that is stored on the phone.  Music is played at max volume through the attached speaker.  Playlist was allowed to play for 30 minutes and the same playlist was used by all phones.
• Make 10 phone calls, each 1 minute in length.  The calls used the speakerphone with the phone placed face up on the desk.  The same number was called for each of the 10 calls.
• Play video game for 10 minutes (vary by phone)
• Take 10 pictures at the highest resolution in common on all phones
• Take a 20 minute video at 720p resolution
• Use the GPS to navigate a short road trip.  The trip was just a few miles and we used the same trip for all phones.  Note that we were not doing turn by turn as some of the phones doesn’t support that natively.  During this trip we will be bluetooth streaming some music to our truck radio.
• And our last test is to load each of the 10 websites we used in test #1 twice using our 3G connection (non-wifi)

Now don’t let the twitter excitement fool you. Much of it comes either from Microsoft fanboys or people who are desperate to try something else. Don’t get me wrong. I happen to like WP7. It’s a refreshing take on the concept of a mobile OS and I think still stands a very good shot at running a competitive third. However, Microsoft has to make some changes in 2012 for that to happen.

Licensing

The first is licensing. Google recently announced they were activating 700,000 devices *every day*. That number is hard to get your mind around. But let’s look at it from the perspective of the user and the OEM. From the user’s perspective, they want inexpensive phones. The fact that iPhones are never on sale and WP7 phones are simply not there, that leaves Android. And during my walk through my local Best Buy I saw no less than 4 very current, very capable Android phones that were completely free. In fact the phone I currently carry is a Samsung Galaxy S2 that I got free from Wal-Mart. People get free even if it’s not the best experience for them.

From the OEM side, free also comes into play. Android is licensed for free from Google. Now we can discuss patent indemnity all day but the fact that nearly all phones currently for sale are Android tells me that OEM partners have made up their mind. Android being open source means they can customize the way they want to (TouchWiz being an example of what not to do).

Microsoft really needs to license WP7 for free and work on building up the ecosystem.

Customization

One of the great things about Android is the way you can customize it. You can use your own lock screen, have different launchers, have nice background pictures that span desktops, widgets to keep you updated, etc.  With WP7 you can’t change the lock screen and third party apps can’t write any information there.  It really cracks me up when I hear being talking about customizing their phone and what they mean is changing the tile color from baby blue to hot pink.  Yeah, that’s it.

Video in websites

I tried to like my Focus, really I did.  One of the things that always bothered me was finding a url in a tweet to a video only to have it not play in IE9.  Plays fine in iOS and on my Android.  Now I know why this happens.  Websites detect the iOS user agent string and send down HTML5 video and Android can handle the Flash.  So this isn’t a problem with WP7 so much as a problem with websites not sending HTML5 down for WP7.  Guys, let’s fix this!

Fix the Multitasking

I really like the multitasking concepts in iOS and WP7.  It’s comforting to have some belief that when I switch away from an app, it’s no longer running and eating up my CPU.  However I’ve seen two main problems with multitasking in WP7.  Holding down the back arrow brings up the list of “running” apps however often I have an app that I know I started up that is not in the list.  Heck, I’ve even had an app like a music app that was currently playing not be in the list.  The other problem is being able to force close apps that are misbehaving. And, yes, this can be an issue.  I recently installed a free ringtone app and tried to download a ringtone. It hung up on the downloading screen.  Switching away and then back to it had no effect as it just picked up where it left off, hung up.  It seems that the only way to dump an app in that state is to either uninstall the app or reboot the phone.

Fix Tap-N-Turn Directions

Everyone needs to stop with the WP7 has turn by turn directions.  No it does not. If I have to constantly tap my screen to have the device remind me where I am or how far to the next turn, I’ll just refuse to use the feature.  A platform doesn’t have to have TBT to be successful (iPhone) but if you are going to say you have it, then have it.

There are several other issues that I can think of but let me know what you think.  Drop me a comment here is shoot me a message on twitter (see my twitter link at the top of my home page).

Battery Life

Charlie writes that battery life was unacceptable on his Galaxy.  I had completely the opposite experience.  My first gen Focus was always near dead when I went to bed at night whereas my Galaxy has terrific battery life.  I run with wifi on all the time and GPS on nearly all the time.  I charge it every night and it comes off the charger at 7am.  I usually have between 30-40% battery left when I go to bed around 10.  Now,it is possible to install certain apps that kill battery life.  I installed a Craigslist app that sucked the life out of my phone.  That’s when I installed Advanced Task Killer.  That took care of those issues.

Task Manager

Yes, the freeze drying multitasking of iOS and WP7 does solve the issues of rogue apps killing battery life but true multi-tasking is also very cool in many cases and after using the phone for nearly 3 weeks, I have absolutely no issues with ATK running in the background.  Every so often a graphic appears on the screen listing how many apps it killed.

Email client being slow

Charlie points out that his email clients were very slow.  It’s possible that Charlie has much more email than I do.  I have a very large corporate email box (uses IMAP and not Exchange) and my GMail account has 1796 emails in the inbox (I know, I know). My email clients are very snappy.  However, I can’t help but discuss the positives of email on Android.  On Android I can set emails from certain senders to always show inline images.  I can set my email client to notify me with sound during the day but to not notify with sound at night when presumably I’m sleeping.  Android also has linked inboxes just like WP7.  I also have a choice of email clients.

Home Screen Flexibility

Here Charlie almost sounds like an Apple fan boy explaining to his readers that they don’t really need the flexibility.  Of course I assume he finds an nearly endlessly scrolling list of apps on WP7 better.  Hmm.  Yes, the Live Tiles on WP7 is interesting (so long as you can actually find apps that do live tiles. Looking at your Facebook).  But with Android you don’t have to use widgets.  You can if you want, but don’t have to.  If you want all your games on screen 1, all your utilities on screen 2, all your media apps on screen 3, you can do that.  That’s the point, it’s up to you.  With WP7 you *might* be able to find an app to create folders for your apps but really it just lumps all the apps into a single list.  Nice.

Cohesion in UI

Charlie claims there is no cohesion in the UI.  Well, that’s simply an opinion. Is the UI on Android as nice as iOS? Nope.  I would say it’s not as good in some places as WP7.  But it’s entirely subjective how important that is to you.  It is clearly very important to Charlie.

Apps Crashing Phone

I’m certainly not going to doubt that Charlie saw what he saw.  I haven’t installed the apps that he did because I have had no crashes.  Now I’ve never seen a WP7 app crash the phone but I regularly see the apps crash.  Netflix, Flixter, several others.  You start them, they come up, boom and they are gone.  Now that isn’t Microsoft’s fault but it does speak to overall app quality which does reflect on the platform.

Email and Calendar Info on Lock Screen

Charlie talks about having email and calendar info on lock screen.  That is a nice touch.  Of course, what he didn’t tell you is that there are several lock screen replacements that do exactly that for Android.  Oh wait!  You can replace the lock screen on Android?  Yup!  You want an iPhone slider?  Done!  You want a round wheel that you have to spin to unlock?  Yup, got that too!  You want to draw some pattern to unlock?  No problem! You want any of that on WP7?  No, the users don’t really need that.  Yeah…

Notification Pulldown

Charlie really likes the notification pulldown in Android and he’s right to like it.  I really enjoy coming back to my WP7 phone (yes I carried my Focus for several weeks) and not seeing anything on my tiles and missing something important.  It’s real fun to see on my tile that I have 4 unread emails, click it to go to the mail app, read one of the mails and then get distracted only to come back and find that the live tile shows nothing new.  I guess I have to remember that I had 3 more unread mails to read.

Bad Name

He says ‘Samsung Galaxy S II from AT&T’ is the worst name ever.  Really?  He’s really reaching here.  How does that compare to ‘Samsung Focus Flash from AT&T’.  By my count it’s exactly the same number of letters.  Of course, the second is _so_ much better.  Like I said you have to consider the source.

Calendar Defaulting and Pin Contact To Home Screen

Well, it is the “default”. Change it if you want.  I agree with Charlie that it would be nice to be able to pin a contact to the home screen.

Tilt To Zoom

Since you can dismiss the instructions after you see them once it’s very hard to call them a problem.  And he is right that it is very slick.

Buttons (and Camera button)

I actually prefer the single mechanical button of iPhone.  It’s very easy for me to pick up my iPhone 4 with one hand, wake it and unlock it with my thumb, and begin to use it.  With the Galaxy (and the Focus for that matter), it’s much harder.  The wake button is up near the top of the phone on the right.  With the phones being bigger it’s hard to “one-hand” it.    Charlie says that the search button is inconsistent in some cases and he’s right about that.  However, there were many times I heard my Focus declaring from my pocket that it couldn’t hear what I was saying.  With the Focus it was very important that you put the phone to sleep before putting it in your pocket.  That has never happened with my Galaxy.  The menu button is nice because it provides a very consistent place to get settings for where you are at.  It helps to keep the UI from being cluttered.  Yes there are different approaches like swiping to a screen to your right or having small dots in the lower right that bring up a menu.  They all work reasonably well.

Charlie misses his physical camera button from WP7 and I agree that is nice.  That’s one of the reasons I flashed a custom ROM to my phone.  Most of the custom ROMS now use one of the volume buttons as a camera button.  Works just like the iPhone with iOS5!

Navigation

Charlie says that navigation on the Galaxy is as good as or better than WP7?  Please.  WP7 tap-n-turn navigation is a joke.  I haven’t tried out the $4.99 app for navigation but the built-in one requires you to tap the phone screen to hear where you are or your next turn. Really?  That’s broken.  Yes, it was a licensing issue.  Yes, I expect that the next major release will fix it.  I tried to use it. Really I did. My Galaxy did a perfect job wherever I went.  My Focus was very silent unless I kept tapping it.  Oh, and on my Galaxy I was streaming Pandora in the background and my daughter was reading a book and texting a friend in the foreground.  Does the WP7 nav app talk to you if you tap the screen and its’ in the background? I didn’t check that.

Apps

I don’t know WP7 for Apps.  They are coming.  In fact, I have several app ideas I want to work on (I told you I was interested in the platform succeeding).  However, there is a difference between a platform you want to succeed and one you want to use every day.  With Android I can make it do almost anything.  Even my Cisco VPN at work.  No problem.  It’s darling when people say on WP7 they don’t need an Amazon Cloud player app because they have Zune.  Folks, Zune is $10-$15 per month and my Amazon Cloud player on my Galaxy streams my own music for free.

Now, I’ve touched on most every point Charlie made.  Here’s some points he didn’t make.

Storage expansion

The current crop of WP7 devices generally come with 16GB of storage with no option to expand.  My Galaxy came with the same 16GB on board but then I popped in a 32GB class 10 microsd card for a total of 48GB storage.  Hmm, an iPhone with that much space would cost me nearly $400 and you can’t even get it with WP7. Ouch!

No Need For A Computer

Everything is done over the air.  Everything.  I can even download and burn a new ROM without ever connecting to a computer.

Voice Control and Dictation

Both phones have speech to text capabilities except with Android it’s part of the keyboard.  With WP7 it’s clearly something the app dev can enable but it’s not part of the keyboard.  This means that with Android everywhere you can enter text you can speak it. With WP7 that is not the case.

Skype and Swype (sorry had to do that)

Both are available on Android but neither is available on WP7.  Enuf said.

NFC, 1080P recording, dual core CPU, Gyro sensor

Just a few of the things that WP7 phones do not have.  Well, a few of them might have a gyro but most do not.

I guess I’ve written enough.  I didn’t work on WP7 or work for Microsoft so my write up here is truly unbiased.  I own and have used all 3 devices. WP7 is a good first start and when WP8 hits it may very well be ready for prime time.  Having Charlie review an Android device would be like having Steve Jobs (RIP, Steve) review Android.  I can pretty much guess what he would say.  

Given the quality of this phone and the price I paid it really got me thinking about the current state of mobile phones in the market.  Back in 2007 when the iPhone was first released, we didn’t really have the post-PC market we have today.  Most of the “smart phones” were not all that smart and we really did just think of the phone as a phone.  (Those who think WM6 devices were smart need to really reconsider that position).  Because of those dynamics you didn’t see the aggressive pricing you see today from the major players.  Today, manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, LG, and others are fighting daily for your business.

The other factor here is that the market has finally caught up with Apple.  Check back tomorrow for a piece on that topic.  You don’t have to buy an iPhone to get a very good smartphone experience.  While Apple suffers from the law of diminishing returns, greater competition drives features and quality up while pushing prices even lower. (Now if we could just get that at the gas pump)

Today we have so many great choices.  Yes, the iPhone 4/4S is a great device but so are the Windows Phone 7 devices and the multitude of great Android phones.  I also own a 2010 Samsung Focus (WP7) that I plan to use for development purposes.

We used to think of “free” phones as old inventory and last years product.  Well, here’s a quick rundown of the features on the Galaxy S II:

• Dual core 1.2Ghz CPU (this thing is crazy fast)
• 4.3″ Super AMOLED screen
• All the sensors you could want including a gyro and compass
• Expandable memory (I’m looking at your WP7)
• 8meg camera, 2meg front camera
• 1080p video camera
• HSDPA (4G speeds).  not LTE but really who cares
• Flash support.  You don’t really get it till you see it work.  oh yeah!
• Great battery life.  With light to medium use I can get nearly 2 full days!
• The customization of Android

Last year’s tech?  Hardly.  This thing frankly rocks hard!

Given that Black Friday comes around every year and there is quite often other special days during the year when retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon “sell” their current devices for either free or $0.01, I ask you again, do you really need to pay for a phone again?  I’m not sure you do.

Version 6.4.4 is intended for use with versions of MySQL from 5.0 – 5.5

It is now available in source and binary form from here and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

The release is also available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) and will be available from Oracle eDelivery.

This release includes several bug fixes including a fix to using Windows authentication.  Please review the change log and documentation for a review of what changed.

Enjoy and thanks for the support!

You can access the new forum here.

So, go forth and post!

So, the new MySQL Installer is born.  It’s a Windows application that comes delivered in a bundle along with a version of the database server, applications like Workbench, connectors, samples, and documentation.  It includes some customized configuration screens that help with setting up the proper configuration files.

One of the great benefits of using the new MySQL Installer is that it comes with all the products very tightly integrated such as automatically creating connection entries in Workbench for the freshly installed server.  Our goal with MySQL is to have you up and running in 15 minutes.  With the new MySQL Installer, we’ve got that down to 3 minutes!

The best way to see all the greatness that is MySQL Installer is to download it yourself.  You can grab a copy here.

You can also see the Oracle press release on it here.

Thank you for trying out our new MySQL Installer and please let us know what you think!

Version 6.4.3 is intended for use with versions of MySQL from 5.0 – 5.5

It is now available in source and binary form from [http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.4.html] and mirror
sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time
- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)
The release is also available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) and will be available from Oracle eDelivery.

** New features found in 6.4 include (please see release notes for more information) **

* Windows Authentication*
This release includes our new support for Windows authentication when connecting to MySQL Server 5.5.

* Table Caching *
We are also introducing a new feature called table caching.  This feature makes it possible to cache the rows of slow changing tables on the client side.

* Simple connection fail-over support *

We are also including some SQL generation improvements related to our entity framework provider.   Please review the change log that ships with the product for a complete list of changes and enhancements.

Enjoy and thanks for the support!

Version 6.2.5 is intended for use with versions of MySQL from 4.1 – 5.1.  It is not suitable for use with MySQL 5.5 or later.

It is now available in source and binary form from [http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/] and mirror
sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time
- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

This update includes more than 45 fixes from 6.2.4.  Please review the change log that is included with the product to determine the exact nature of the changes.

Enjoy and thanks for the support!

Version 6.1.6 is intended for use with versions of MySQL from 4.1 – 5.1.  It is not suitable for use with MySQL 5.5 or later.

It is now available in source and binary form from here and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time
- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

This update includes more than 35 fixes from 6.1.5.  Please review the change log that is included with the product to determine the exact nature of the changes.

Enjoy and thanks for the support!