Took quite a bit of time dithering between Iphone and Droid, but it came down to the Droid as I was a loyal verizon customer for years and Iphone would have meant lots of headaches to change providers.

Had it only for a week but love it.

So Far, here is what I like about this.

*very good google translate (voice recognition
for some langauges)
*good camera on the Droid has about a 5 meg camera (interesting spy camera app)
*love google maps of course
*google calendar has a function that alerts you to various holidays in Asia and all over
*many good currency convertor apps
*soooo many applications, many good ones are free.

THE BAD SO FAR

*cramped Qwerty on the motorola

*uses lots of batteries

*can tell malware may be a problem.

*overwhelming number of apps

Any other recommendations on apps or uses would be appreciated.

The only issue I know of with the Droid is that is a CDMA phone, so when you travel you have to pay outrageous roaming charges. For me, I like to have a GSM phone when I travel.

Motorola does make a GSM version of the Droid called the Motorola Milestone.

But my next phone will probably be the Google Nexus One.

http://google.com/phone

The only thing it doesn't have is the tactile keyboard of the Droid. Nexus One only has touch.

But the Nexus One was the first phone to ever defeat the iPhone 3Gs on CNET's Prizefight.

http://reviews.cnet.com/2722-6452_7-473.html?tag=mncol

Here are some Android apps to get your started:

http://mashable.com/2010/02/28/android-apps-drop-iphone/

http://mashable.com/2010/02/21/free-android-apps/

http://101bestandroidapps.com/

I have a Nokia N97. After a firmware update, I can safely say it is the best phone I've ever owned. 5MP camera (that's actually good), 32 GB hard drive with expanded micro SD slot, great battery life, nice slide out qwerty keyboard and it's a GSM phone.

On the downside, there's not a ton of apps for it (a la iPhone) and the Symbian software is not as flashy as some of the newer Windows mobile software or Iphone software and you need to convert movie to real player format to view them. Other than that, I REALLY like it.

Of course, not being a slave to Apple or ATT (or my case in Mexico Telcel) - priceless.

I highly recommend it.

EA

ps. All the Google apps run on Symbian as well.

Android is clearly the wave of the future. I-Phone is polished and perdy but in the long term it will never compete with open source Android.

As for the Motorola Droid, I just rooted a guys Droid for him at work so I had some time to play with it. Rooting it is easy but it is still a little tricky getting it to run WiFi tethering and such. wifi tethering is surely THE most useful feature.

I have the google phone and it's great. It doesn't automatically adjust to provide instant internet capabilities like the nokias, you'll have to enter all sorts of parameters, then it'll work. I think ias posted a link with all the specs needed, other than that, it's great. I'll have to root it to get tethering though, already has multitouch!

Sprint 9630 BB is both a CDMA phone + GSM phone.

MM

When I monger I use an old Nokia 1600. It's so beat up and out of date, muggers and pickpockets ignore it. When I call and text garotas, it works just fine. Basically, it doesn't draw crime but it works great to draw hookers, and that's all a monger needs in a phone.

Here is my recommended list of Android Apps

Wifi Analyzer (The geek in me, not needed for the average user)
VuDroid (PDF Viewer)
Baseball Superstars (Game)
Notes (For taking notes)
Labyrinth Lite (Game)
Handcent SMS (Good SMS Client)
RealCalc Scientific Calulator
iheartradio (listen to US clearchannel radio stations)
Pandora (Build your own internet radio station based on likes/dislikes)
Paper Toss (Game)
Shazam (will identify music playing on the radio/etc)
Flashlight
Air Control (Game)
Unit Converter
GPS Status
Nesoid (Original Nintendo emulator app)
My Tracks (GPS Program)
Open GPS Tracker
Pinball
Frozen Bubble (Game)
World War (Game)
Xe Currency Converter
Bluetooth File Transfer
Voice Recorder
Opera Mini
Google Translate
Urbanspoon (Shake phone for random restaurant close by or based on criteria you specify)
Ringdroid (edit a piece of music on your phone to get the specific part you want for a ringtone)
Compass
Google Maps

the problem with google maps is that it requires you to have cel ph data plan. there was an app that allowed you to dl the map, so you could use the gps without having cel ph data service. google map is awesome but is useless if there is no data service, and most of the time, gps is really needed right off the bat when you exit the airport.

same goes with google translate. you'll need internet connection. There are translators where you can selectively dl languages you're interested in, but the selection is limited.

if you find a good map or translator program that can function without internet services, please let me know!

Try downloading "Mapdroyd" from Marketplace. I have not tried it overseas yet but I believe it should work in the field without data access since you can download all your maps to your SD card in advance.

Nokia has opened up the Ovi Maps program for free now. You can download maps to your phone for most countries in the world. It's the reason I do not use Google Maps on my phone.

EA

Another killer Android app coming out within a month is Slingbox for Android phones, meaning you can buy a $179 Slingbox, connect it to your cable TV and internet at home, and stream live cable TV to your phone for free any place in the world you have 3G or WiFi data access.

Slingbox has been available on most other smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows crap) for some time.

Just give me good text, long battery life, and small and that's what I travel with. I don't begrudge you phone geeks your toys tho...

For me it is not just about the phone and text messaging once I get in country. If it were, I agree a smartphone would be a huge waste and overkill. But there is LOT of downtime when traveling. Trans-pacific or otherwise.

A device like the Nexus One or Droid gives me something to do on the plane, while waiting for the plane, transferring, when traveling in a taxi, etc. I can catchup on news, listen to music, watch movies, play some games, communicate with friends and ladies, look up directions and addresses to places I want to visit, save those locations, store notes from my experiences, etc...

Oh yeah, I can take pics as well so I don't have to carry a camera.

Agreed and certainly nothing wrong with that. My take though after being wired 24/7 to a phone is as follows:

- I look forward to flights as a refuge where I can unplug and actually read a few books/clear the mind.
- I usually already know all relevant addresses/contacts as they are already in my phone
- just about every phone has a serviceable camera these days (even my 5 year old Sony E 750i, which is tiny)
- I lug my real camera around with me everywhere
- watching movies on a phone? No thanks.
- less flashy phone = less potential drama depending on what mud puddle I'm in.

Question- when you pop in your SIM overseas, does that give you data access for browsing or does it just count against the load/minutes on the SIM? Or are you just connecting via WIFI when available?

In PI, prepaid Globe 3G is cheap. Get a "Tattoo" prepaid SIM. I think they even have hardware USB dongles for a laptop for 1000 Piso only. Haven't tried that.

I agree with DM "I look forward to flights as a refuge where I can unplug and actually read a few books/clear the mind." Flight day is always very stressful for me. I attempt to maximize time in the field by taking flights leaving in the afternoon, coming in to work that day in the early AM and leaving before noon to rush to the airport. Murphy's Law dictates many unexpected crises' of biblical proportions will will unfold as I am trying to head out of the office and my phone will ring several times on the way to the airport. A HUGE wave of relief always settles over me when I take my seat in a plane and turn off my phone knowing the entire western world could collapse and I won't hear about it and there is nothing I could possibly have done to stop it for at least the next 15 hours.

In Indonesia with Indosat/Mentari, you just use the APN settings and there is a per KB charge, which must be insanely cheap. I have surfed, loaded Google maps, downloaded songs, etc and never seen the load go down much.

I have read with SMART 3G in PI, you can register for unlimited data transfer for P50 per day by sending a text message to a certain number.

In some bars in Indo, they have free Wifi, where you can connect your smartphone and get data if you need it.

Since I am a gadget whore I needed to get a new phone before my next trip.

I decided on the T-Mobile G2X from LG.

Pretty cool and I am very happy with it so far.

One of my criteria in selecting a phone now is being able to root it and put a custom ROM on it.

The features the Cyanogenmod folks add to Android I just can't live without now. So when the nightly Cyanogenmod 7 builds started coming out for the G2X, I got it.

Good news is the process of rooting and flashing a custom ROM also unlocks it. And Cyanogenmod detects the network and automatically programs the APN settings for your data network. The 2100 MHz frequency the G2X supports for 3G is also supported in Philippines and Indonesia.

BTW, Google Translate has a conversation mode that is way cool. You can speak into the phone in English and it translates to any specified language Google Translate supports in real time. Then you flip the other way and can have someone speak in Spanish or Indonesian (the two I tested via voice recognition) and it translates back to English. A very handy tool for our hobby if you ask me. The G2X has a noise canceling microphone so it works pretty well when there is a lot of ambient noise, such as a noisy bar. As long as someone speaks clearly and at a steady pace, it works really well. I tested English, Spanish and Indonesian and it picked up all the languages and translated them when I spoke in that language.

Google Translate doesn't accept voice for Thai or Tagalog though. Only text input.

Here is the CNET review of the G2X.

http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/t-mobile-g2x/4505-6452_7-34550510.html

That's almost worth getting an Android device for, since there's no translate.google iPhone app (yet).

You could still use the webpage from the iPhone.

http://translate.google.com

If just won't have the voice recognition or conversation mode, but should still work for text input.

There are also tons of translation apps for IOS devices.

Two programs I use on my iPad are called Translator Free by NibruTech Limited and myLanguage Free Translator. They are probably just front ends that tap into Google Translate anyway.

Translator by Nibrutech has a $2.99 version called Translator with voice that supposedly does voice recognition.

I also use the "Talk to Me" app, cloud version that does what Xen describes. on my Android phone It's pretty awesome and great here in China. I need to root my damn phone and flash me some ROM but I am kind of a techie grandpa. Anyone have a link for a super newbie guide?

Here are some links to the phone models Cyanogenmod supports.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

The Wiki has instructions based on phone model to root and install a custom ROM, but sometimes they leave out some details and sometimes they are very good.

Phones can also be bricked if things are not done correctly. When I unlocked my G2X I had to modify one of their Linux copy commands as the one they used didn't work. So I would not recommend for anyone who is not willing to lose their phone investment or pay someone to fix it for them.

The XDA Developers forum is also a great source of information.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/


(Message edited by xenono on May 15, 2011)

Google translate recently upgraded Mandarin bigtime. It now very seamlessly does spoken English to proper audio and written Mandarin. don't think it does spoken Mandarin to English yet but haven't checked lately.

Zen? Are you saying it does spoken Indonesian to English???? What version of Google translate is that? Mine does Spoken English to audio Indonesian but NOT spoken Indonesian to English.

Also, OF COURSE be sure to go into settings and uncheck "block offensive words"

There is a Mexican guy at work who totally got major attitude big time when I was playing with Google Translate offensive words so I can safely say that Google has got offensiveness dialed in good. In fact I think they even upgrade offensiveness.

Other KILLER APP of the century. T-Mobile wifi calling. Leave your US T-Mobile SIM in. Have wifi. NO cellular roaming at all, in fact no cellular network needed or desired. Voila, phone works indistinguishably from if you were at home in the USA. In all seriousness, if I'm on T-Mobile in the USA or on a hotel WIFI in Asia, I cannot tell the difference and you can not tell the difference and all I have to do is tap the "on" button in T-Mobile WiFi calling.

It does spoken Indonesian to English. I can't wait to test it out in a live environment. Ironically enough, it does spoken English to only text Indonesian. It won't speak Indonesian back like yours. Strange.

It is Translate 2.1.

I am also running gapps-gb-20110503-signed.zip, which I think is a new version of the Google Marketplace apps.

Holy shit! I just tested Chinese and it does spoken Chinese to English!

I tried about three times to say thank you.

The results on those attempts were:

mood
stars
psychology

So yeah, I can't speak Chinese worth shit!

Haha!

I just tried again and got:

application.

To MX's point, looks like Talk to Me does speech recognition for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese. It will also do output languages, but I think you have to buy them separately.

Scanning through Google translate, looks like it does speech recognition for English, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French, Malay, Russian, and Turkish.

There may be more, but I got tired of looking. I could only test English, Indonesian and Spanish. But it easily picked up my Indonesian.

Interesting. I'm on Google Translate 2.1 (build 46) but not seeing Indo speech to English. Only text to English. What speech engine is it using? E-Speak, Pico? ??. I'll sort this out in the next day or so. I know Google Translate gives different results on different devices. One thing for sure. Google has mega-bux, smart people, and is dead serious about making all the voice/translate stuff work. I have seen HUGE changes in how accurate it gets English in just the last year. I'm close to 95% now with it picking up my English. When Spanish voice first came out I got it to work OK with a Mexican college educated native Mexican Spanish speaking guy but it failed miserably with my Spanish and the Spanish of more "day laborer" type native Mexican Spanish speakers. Lately Google translate can even understand my Spanish. It's really exciting because hardly a week goes by without me noticing some substantive improvement in some aspect of Google Translate. IMO they got a Gazillion dollars, a good idea, smart people and they are working on it hard, every day. Google translate is going places. I predict one language after another will rapidly fall in line going forward based on economic importance.

Okay, I'm still trying to figure out how to get my Nokia N85 to do auto-complete on my rare SMS messages (also I haven't yet learned how to capitalize letters, although I guess that goes in the category of RTFM). So, if Monger X is a techie grandpa, I guess I'm a techie dinosaur, at least insofar as cell phones are concerned.

However, having had to play deaf and mute in sessions the last few weeks owing to my inability to say more than maybe 15 words in Bahasa Indonesia, I'm intrigued by the notion of using a cell phone as an interpreter/translator. But I need some really basic information to get started down this path.

I have no idea WTF rooting and installing a custom ROM means, for example. And I'm also wondering whether the translator programs get disrupted when one swaps SIM chips when going from country to country. Do they depend on an active internet connection to work, an active phone connection, or do they work based on information stored in the phone's memory. Also, do they leave traces of the conversations in memory so Immigration and Customs can listen to what transpired during your sessions, etc.?

Anything that would help me get started would be appreciated whether answers to the questions above, links to websites that allow phone techie dinosaurs to enter this millenium, or both.

Google Translate relies on Google servers so some kind of data connection must exist for it to work. Wifi or local cellular data service. Other than the phone must be connected to the internet somehow, it is not SIM or carrier dependent. You can turn off session logging but of course all data still passes through the internet and through Google's omnipotent all seeing eye so you can assume it is all in some evil black database somewhere but presumably not just open to perusal by anyone. It is pretty easy to back up a phone, wipe it clean, and then restore its configuration when you get back.

As for custom ROM's, rooting and such, that does add allot of usability but you can put Google translate on most Android phones out of the box.

As for SMS, you can of course just talk to it in English and it will write the SMS for you eliminating all that pesky keyboard action. Not to mention it can translate the outgoing SMS or incoming SMS as well.

I was getting pretty excited about this until I read IAS last comment...
Internet connection sure, but to clarify: if i am in some bar in Madagascar with no wifi, then the phone would access my local sim card to connect to the translator service...presumably at some international calling rate?

Sorry but I am kind of not so good with tech..

Thank you,

If you are sitting in a bar in Madagascar and have a local prepaid SIM card with data access enabled. (I assume such service exists in Madagascar) Then Google Translate will function fine and the cost will be what ever the terms of the data access plan are for the amount of data involved. Generally quite inexpensive these days with most prepaid SIM data plans but terms vary wildly in different countries and different companies. Could be insanely expensive if you used an American SIM and international data roaming so you would definitely want a local SIM card. You also want 3G access. I still works with EDGE but is painfully slow unless you have 3G or WiFi.

Google translate is available as a free app for the Iphone.

Thanks for the links. Actually, I use the Talk to Me cloud version. So you don't have to download the dictionaries or some of the text to voice modules. For some reason I can't get the chinese voice to install on my phone, but have no problem with the workd version.. I believe, that regular Talk to Me will downlaod dictionaries and then you don't have to rely upon internet connections. But as IAS mentioned, and even a techie grandpa like me knows, even in bumfuck third worldandia you get data access with your sim cards.

LA guy, go for it and get a smart phone. You will love it! I thought I would never utter these words, "but fuck nokia and symbian!"

Oh yeah, I agree with IAS; Google translate has made a HUGE upgrade on its simplified Chinese Translations. Now if you could only convince the Chinese to hold the US reserves in Google Stock rather than Microsoft, then I could finally actually use this shit in China without headaches.. I swear every fucking webpage in China you want to do any kind of e-commerce with only works with explorer..

(Message edited by mongerx on May 16, 2011)

IAS, many thanks for the info.

Does anyone know if there are stand alone (no internet or sim needed) translating programs that can be downloaded to the smartphone?

Thanks,

The best part about Google Translate is it seamlessly and accurately translates the most vial profanity you can think up.

When I speak "Where can I find a whore in this town" a polite female Spanish voice instantly translates "¿dónde puedo encontrar una puta en esta ciudad" or a mechanical male Indonesian computer voice translates, "mana saya dapat menemukan pelacur di kota ini". Filipinas think the Tagalog profanity is HILARIOUS. Vietnamese at work have confirmed the Vietnamese text is accurate and very rude but alas state the Vietnamese voice is incomprehensible gibberish. I'd love to know what the Chinese think of the polite soft spoken female voice translation of profanity and the Japanese female voice sounds unimaginably polite no mater what disgusting vulgarity you feed to it.

Spanish I notice it often even upgrades the offensiveness of the profanity, for instance, if you say "fuck you bitch", the polite female Spanish voice reads back "vete a la mierda puta" which I thought was hilarious but the Mexicans at work got pissed off and didn't think it was funny.

I'll get to try Thai in the field next week. The Lao ladies at work say the Thai (text) is accurate but I have to be a gentleman at work so I haven't tried any bar girl phrases yet.

BTW, Zen. I got Indonesian voice input working. I had previously tinkered with the settings to much and inadvertently broke it because I didn't even realize it was now enabled by Google. It readily switches from Indonesian voice input to audio English and English voice input to audio Indonesian but doesn't do it in true conversation mode like it does with Spanish. To do Indonesian voice output you have to switch the text to speech engine from PICO to E Speak but I think the Indonesian voice output is still pretty rough and may not be usable although the text certainly is. But.... Chinese voice output came out in January as very rough, probably useless jabbering but they followed up in April with a very proper soothing female voice so hopefully the fact that they now have Indonesian voice output enabled, albeit rough, means it is on the short list for serious development like they did with Chinese.

Tech follow up for Zen and thank you for giving me the lead to figure out some anomalies in Google Translate across various Android devices that have perplexed me recently. It is indeed the gapps that is the difference. The 20110503 gapps has a new version of Talk2.apk that Google has chosen to release compiled only for Nexus S and newer devices. There is no hardware reason it can't work on any Android device but Google hasn't compiled it that way yet and until they do, anyone with older Android devices are waiting for Google to release it compiled for older devices. I encountered these kind of anomolies with a couple of brand new phones people at work brought me to root for them and was scratching my head trying to figure out how the new phones were different running exactly the same program as older phones. I followed up on your gapps tip and now I know. Guess I'll live with it for now. It's not a major problem and presumably Google will soon release a new Talk2.apk that works with older Android devices as well.

I think the iPhone app needs an internet connection to work, so you need to be plugged into the local broadband network one way or the other. I'd hate to find the international data roaming charges on my phone. I inadvertently got a couple of expensive calls on my iPhone last trip to Colombia, I have no idea how. Anyway, the app won't speak if you have more than a few words, it's of limited use for that. But it does transcribe spoken English

Don't know if the Android versions need internet--I suspect that they do.

Yep, most of the cool smart phone features need data access

I just called up T-Mobile and had them disable international data roaming on my account to avoid any inadvertent roaming charges. You can also disable data roaming in the phones settings.

You really NEED a local SIM card these days anyway and it's getting easier and easier to get data access on most prepaid SIM's.

The biggest problem I still haven't solved is the whole issue of walking around with a phone in my pocket worth 6 months wages for a local unskilled laborer. It seems a tempting target for something "bad"® to happen. I still carry a $20 ghetto phone in some localities where a smart phone would otherwise be most useful.

Well, having just upgraded to a chipless iPhone 4 on Verizon, I now have two older expendable iPhones that I can put a local chip into. That's my solution.

But I know at least in Rio (and probably other places), the "bad" guys will snatch the phones out of your hands while you're making a call, so it doesn't entirely get me out of the woods. And I still want to have the new phone with me for the in-the-US portions of my trips, so hopefully I'm in a room with a safe.

The Chicas in Medellin love them too! Yep I lost one during a very "weak moment"! I hate when that happens. - Hemp

Google Maps has added official offline map support. In the latest version released just today you can auto cache entire areas in advance to your SD card while you have data access and then use it offline when you don't have data access.

To get it...... Update Google Maps from Android Market if you haven't already. This feature is in the update released today.

To enable it..... In Google Maps, tap your settings button, select "More", select "Labs", Select "Download map area".

To use it..... In the main map screen find your area of interest. Do a long press in the center of the area you want to cache. A bubble should come up with an address or description of the point. Tap the bubble and you should get an info screen. Select "Download map area" and you should get a download dialog and then go back to the main map where it will show a square of the 10 miles around the point you selected.

Voila. Now you can use Google Maps in that area with no data access.

Downloading three "areas" representing Metro Manila, Angeles City and the area around the highway in between consumed ~7 megs on my SD Card and only took a minute or so to select and download.

They also updated the transit feature this week for over 400 cities and it looks awesome.

Is there a mobile version of CH that works on droids? When I try to use the site on my Evo, the right hand side of posts gets chopped off, and it wont let me scroll over to read the rest. Also wont allow me to zoom in or out to make the text larger or smaller. Havent had this problem consistently with any other site besides CH.

Also, is there a way to stop the phone from storing history of web browsing, or to hide results? Ive already had the embarassing experience of asking a more tech savvy work colleague for assistance with an issue, and he saw history of my having browsed this and some porn sites.

If you can afford to wait, then I would wait. The quad core and Android 4 will be out by January. I dont have any details on it but I imagine it would be faster/better/smoother.