S/W Update for T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant Galaxy S

This morning, T-Mobile pushed a software update to my Samsung Vibrant Galaxy S - however, the phone would not install it as the battery level was lower than 75%!

After the install, here are the major changes that I noticed:

1. HD Camcorder is now available in the list of applications
2. Media Hub now works but the previews work only on Wi-Fi :(  This should have been allowed on 3G - I would sure like to watch the preview while traveling on the bus/train!
3. Task Manager app is provided, however, I did not find it very useful as it did not show many of the running applications which the Advanced Task Killer free app shows.

Here are the current version numbers:

• Firmware version: 2.1-update1
• Baseband version: T959UVJI6
• Kernel version: 2.6.29
• Build number: ECLAIR.UVJI6

Now let's see when Froyo gets pushed - waiting for Android 2.2 for a lot of kool features to be enabled!

Created a simple TTS app with App Inventor

With my Samsung Vibrant phone, even though I am still struggling with connectivity to Ubuntu 9.04, I was able to connect very smoothly to Windows7!!!

So to test it out, I created a simple app that has a text box and a button. On pressing the button, the text that was entered in the text box is spoken out aloud by the app. If there is no text in the box, then a default message is read out.

To create this first app, it took only 2 minutes!!!
This shows that the App Inventor is pretty good and quite promising.

However, there are a few cons as well - the created software when installed on the phone, takes a huge amount of space; 3.55Mb to be precise for this simple app! Also, I cannot share this app with others or upload it to the Android Marketplace - it can only be shared with others who have an App Inventor account. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too!

Unable to connect Samsung Vibrant to App Inventor on Ubuntu9.04

The good news is that almost 2.5 months after I applied for access to Google Android App Inventor, I got the access on 1st October.

Now the bad news is that I am unable to connect my Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant to App Inventor on my machine running Ubuntu 9.04. Here is what I have tried till now after installing App Inventor Extras software for Linux:

I ensured the below settings were done before connecting the phone:

1. Settings > Applications > Unknown sources is checked
2. Settings > Applications > Development > USB debugging is checked
3. Settings > Applications > Development > Stay awake is checked
4. Settings > Sound and display > Orientation is un-checked

On connecting the phone, I see the USB Icon which mentions that USB is connected and also a Red exclamation alert icon mentioning that USB debugging is connected. I also ensured that OpenJDK is also not installed on my machine as that is known to cause clashes with Android SDK.

Then I opened a shell, logged in as root (using sudo -s) and then did the following:

# lsusb | grep 'Sam'
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04e8:681c Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd 
# vi /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="681c", MODE="0666"

Now rebooted the machine and again with sudo -s, ran the following commands:

# /etc/init.d/udev restart
 * Stopping kernel event manager...                                      [ OK ]
 * Starting kernel event manager...                                      [ OK ]
# cd /usr/google/appinventor-extras/commands-for-Appinventor
# ./adb kill-server
# ./adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached

# ./adb usb
error: device not found

I tried the above sequence of steps with these versions of UDEV rules as well, but to no avail:

# vi /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="04e8", MODE="0666"

and

# vi /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="04e8", MODE="0666"

Here is the log from the Java console:

Creating the REPL controller
Changing the REPL communication button text to Communicating...
Disabling REPL communication button.
********* Actually invoking CreateAndSend
Restarting repl controller (true)
ReplController sending (begin (require com.google.youngandroid.runtime)  (setup-repl-environment "<<" ":" "@@" "Success" "Failure" "=="">>" '((">>""&2")("<<""&1")("&""&0"))))
**** devicesPluggedIn: 0 isPluggedIn: false connectionHappy: false
************************** commIndicator was unexpectedly
connected!!!! COMMUNICATING
Changing REPL communication button to Connect.
Re-enabling REPL communication button.
Communication with REPL failed: java.io.IOException: App Inventor
cannot find any phones.
Please plug in a phone and try again.

I am at a loss as to what else to check as all these steps are a compilation of the knowledge in the google groups as well as other blogs on the topic. If anyone has any ideas/pointers/suggestions, please let me know - Thanks.