Google Sync 0.5.9 for BlackBerry: Not So Fast

Saw the news about the fact that the Sync now supports GMail contact synchronization, rejoiced and immediately installed the update - I've been waiting for this feature for quite a while.

And regretted it five minutes later. It breaks the phone and renders it next to unusable.

Some incoming calls that used to be identified just fine don't get identified anymore.

Custom ringtones for some incoming calls are borked.

Best of all, attempt to invoke the call log causes java.lang.NullPointerException dialog box to be displayed prominently. Sometimes this happens after the call is terminated.

Sometimes the dialog box goes away and the phone falls back to the home screen by itself, sometimes hard reset is required to make the phone operable again.

And of course, there's no going back to the old version of the Sync. I'm hoping that system restore will help, and will be furious if it doesn't.

It appears that the numbers affected are those that were originally stored on the SIM card.

UPDATE: Wiping out the contacts from the SIM card (pray that you have a backup phone) does fix the problem with misidentified calls and custom ringtones, but the null pointer exception dialog box persists.

UPDATE: Providing telephone numbers for all email-only contacts in BlackBerry address book, and disabling the sync seems to take care of the problem. Not what I would want, but better than a half-dead phone.

Lots of people complain about this problem, Google is still mum on the subject. No apologies forthcoming.

Android: Unforeseen Consequences

Unforeseen by some, of course. I'm sure Google had exactly this in mind from the beginning.

Take a look at the flurry of announcements - major mobile hardware providers are now "looking" into the platform. The word "commodization" comes to mind right away.

Basic mobile phones are already commodized all the way - there's fierce competition, they cost dime a dozen and offer just about the same functionality.

There's still some diversity and competition between high end phones - notable examples would be BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone, and less known in North America, but more known in Europe Nokia Communicator series. They are vastly different and mostly occupy different segments of market.

Android, with some development effort, can occupy both the niches that the business phones (BlackBerry, Treo, Communicator) and fashion phone (iPhone) currently have the stranglehold on. Net result: some of those phones will go the way of the Dodo, the rest will have to drop prices. Commodity market is not fun.

There is one interesting specimen in this game: Sony Ericsson. Yes, the same Sony that pulled the rootkit on us and cheated on BluRay compatibility. They are currently "testing" Android. Seeing how Sony likes to have the market to itself and not let anyone in, and consistently fails to coexist in the same market segment with competition, I'm making my bet that either Sony will completely refuse to participate in Android game, or come up with something ridiculously vendor locked, which will not survive in the context of open API. Let's see how this prediction holds.