It has been a while, since I wrote my last posting and I have to apologize. Right now I am sitting in a hotel in Beijing and enjoying a day off. So no work to do and no family, I have to pay attention to, taking the opportunity writing something I kept in mind already for weeks.
In February I finally bought a new phone, the level of frustration with Windows Mobile on my Samsung i780 was pretty high. I can’t recommend to buy a phone using Winodws Mobile, with a screen sized different than QVGA (320×240), this can be the source of plenty of problems. Emulators I would have loved to use, I’ve got never to work because of that. But I don’t want to talk to much about Windows Mobile and its numerous problems, lack of user friendliness and so on… For me it became clear, that I should get a new phone, serving better my needs of a mobile device putting more emphasis on internet related tasks. The iPhone was very tempting, but I had all the discussion in mind, about the so much controlled app store and the C64 emulator, which was “too risky” for Apple and finally banned. So most you might got it already, I went for an Android powered device. It was the Motorola Milestone. The big screen and the hardware keyboard really convinced me. So I started to dream of coding for fun on a C64 emulator using the Milestone.
For Google Android there are two different C64 emulators are available. One is Java based and his compatibility and speed limited. The other one is a port of Frodo from the developer Shagrath and called “Frodo 64”. Ist quite convincing, performs well and you can use it to play all this beloved games on your phone. But the hardware keyboard is not fully functioning. Numbers for example are not working. Most of the users are might be just interested in playing games, but I am missing options like displaying the border, the drive status, ability to use cartridges and/or expansions. Its a bit sad, the emulator wasn’t updated for the last 6 month. Maybe Vice will be ported from somebody and we get something with more features for the geek s like me :-).
But this is not the only program I want to suggest to the Android users being retro fans. Everybody who is a C64 fan loves the sound of the SID soundchip. There are so many tunes I love to hear ’til today. So what could be better, to be able to listen to them anytime, anywhere? With “SID Player” you can do exactly that. Its a quite accurate player for the original tunes and uses libsidaply which is the base for many players supporting SID tunes. The GUI is just nice and its doing a perfect job. A nice little program, I can really recommend.
Well and thats all from me, what I have found so far, after being 6 months on Android. I hope more will come and will also try my best, to port some interesting projects to Android.