vB Easy Archive - My impressions of OTA 2.3...

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My impressions of OTA 2.3...
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Posted by: SpiralSlash

Well, I received the update after powercycling 10-12 time a few days ago, and now that I've played with it for a bit I thought I'd post my impressions of it.

JavaScript is pretty unimportant to me. Doesn't enable much functionality on sites I visit. Plus, you can get an out of memory error if the site you're processing is too big, apparently. Only got that once though. You can flick it on and off in the browser settings menu.

Website rendering: Whoa there! What are all these colors I see here? There's colored fonts, background colors, and variable fonts and sizes. The first two are fine - the last (variable fonts and sizes) is possibly one of the more idiotic things to enable on a small screen device in my opinion. Some control over how they rendered would be nice. Here's some examples of what I mean. Load the links up on an OTA'd Sidekick and see all the different types of text!

If images are turned off, the browser will now display blank images where the images are supposed to be. Very useful if you're browsing with images off and a page has decided to put make their images links.

Bookmarks will now display the title of the bookmark if you are manually typing in an already bookmarked item. For example, if I type in "osn" into the Go To box, the bookmark will now popup as "OSNews (www.osnews.com)". Useful in my opinion.

You can also now Find within webpages. That should save time on large pages.

AIM Icons are now be visible. It's kinda nifty. It seems to only show up for users you add to your buddy list. It'll be on the upper right corner of the IM window, and will pop up if you highlight the user on the main buddy list. You may also Send Conversations via email or text from the menu within an IM. Much easier than the previous Edit Text>Copy>Paste method. Additionally, it will display user status on the main buddy list screen. I can't remember if that's new or not.

Notification bubbles at the top of the screen have been improved! They'll tell you the name of the page that has loaded now. They sometimes acted a bit sketchy in regards to size and whatnot in 2.0, so I'm glad to see they're fixed.

Text messages. They now can be saved to drafts, have smileys, and there's now autotext replies if you want to brush off someone with a canned message. Drafts are nice, I couldn't acre about the other two. I've noticed that sometimes it will display the number of the sender rather than the name stored in the phone book when you have a new text waiting and you've got the Text app highlighted on the jump screen. Odd.

The icon for the Phone app has been changed on the jump screen, for reasons unfathomable to me. It also doesn't sense the flip status any more - it will stay an icon of a closed SK whether the screen is flipped up or not. An odd change. I don't like the new icon either. =P

Links are in emails now! This makes my life so much easier. eBay auction emails aren't nearly the pain they once were now.

Under the Settings on the Menu on the jump screen there are two new items: SIM Center and Sound Profiles. You can view SIM card contacts and set locks under the SIM Center. Sound Profiles lets you play with the sound profiles (duh) and let you specify what you want them to do when. You can even schedule profiles like a Nokia now! That part's useful.

You can copy contacts to the SIM now in the Address Book. Not sure if you could do that before. I guess it would be useful if you swapped your SIM into other phones. AFAIK your contacts are backed up on Danger's servers any way...

The Network Status screen now takes up the entire screen with a white background. Like the Phone app icon change, this change puzzles me. Don't think I care for it too much, but it's not a big deal.

Also, my browser's performance (loading and rendering speed) seems to be improved. I have no scientific data to prove this, it may just be my perception, so please don't take it to mean that Danger has significantly boosted the speed in 2.3. It's like a second or two difference for me.

Any way, that's all for now. I'll post more stuff as I notice it. I'm sure I'll find more, but aside from the stupidity with the variable font sizes, I think 2.3 is good overall. I've had only one weird thing happen (text sender's name not showing up on jump screen) and it's not a showstopper. Kudos to Danger for not screwing up!

P.S.: 1000th post!

Posted by: tstarkz123

I too seemed to notice a faster browser

Posted by: Data1025

Great review Spiral!!

The only think I dont like is not seeing the SYSLOG anymore, and the network screen taking up the entire screen, otherwise its great.

Posted by: theoneplaya139

i cant wait to get it

Posted by: acurrie

One browser feature I'm hoping for is support for phone number links -- that is, if you search a business in Google local and get the phone number, you click on the number and the phone app takes over with that number already entered.

Has anyone tested this?

Thanks

Posted by: mpapple10

Quote:

Originally Posted by tstarkz123

I too seemed to notice a faster browser

I noticed this too. It seems ALOT faster now.

Posted by: beezil

i got the update a couple of days ago and i honestly like the old one better, i cant get on some of the site i used to get on.