Of Marshmallow and Fi

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A confession.  I am a full-blown mobile phone techno-geek.  Over the years I have unlocked, rooted, side-loaded, overclocked, flashed, and nearly bricked many a mobile phone.  If that last sentence doesn’t make sense, rest assured, you are not alone.  We can be an odd bunch, and many others sharing my hobby/passion/addiction are likely 20-30 years my junior!

I liken it to the days of old when the 8-10 year old me would “tinker” with the mechanical things of my youth.  Like bikes.  It was not uncommon to take a few “junk” bikes and pull handlebars from this one, the banana seat (remember those?) from that one, forks from this frame, tires of two sizes…….and create a one-of-a-kind ‘Franken-bike.”

Tied closely to this penchant to tinker/modify/create is (at least for me) the proclivity of being an early adopter.  And so it is with my Mobile phone.

For the past many months my phone has been the Google Nexus 6P set up with phone service on Google Project Fi (more on Project Fi in a moment).

The Nexus 6P and its operating system were quite the duo when this early adopter acquired the phone.

The operating system, Android Marshmallow, was then running on a small fraction of less than 1% of all android phones (today a whopping 4.6% of Android phones run Marshmallow–still a small group.)  The phone hardware itself is one of the few yet today with dual-front speakers, and finally had a camera that matched (maybe rivaled?) the iPhone.  Still, the best feature is it being a Google Nexus phone.  Google Nexus phones receive Android OS updates before all the rest–before Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, and the rest.  Did I mention I have this early adopter fixation?  heh, heh.

About Project Fi….it is a phone service operated by Google and (until last month) required an invite to join.  The service uses public WiFi, supplemented by T-Mobile and Sprint carrier service.  The main goal with Project Fi is to utilize bandwidth via WiFi as much as possible so the fees paid for non-WiFi bandwidth remain low.  With a very simple billing process, a clean administrative interface, and great coverage for my needs, the Project Fi service is a winner for me.

Back to the early adopter side of me.  There is a developer version of the “next” Android Operating system out there. Right now it is called “Android N” (Android software is named in alphabetical order after a sweet–hence past names like Froyo, Honeycomb, and Marshmallow).  Will “N” be New York Cheesecake, or Nougat?

Either way, this Developer version is calling my name to install and put it through its paces.  It’s not quite as exciting as the custom ROM’s of old, but it may be too much for the techno-geek side of me to resist!