After three years of being an iPhone owner and wanting to avoid the Apple iPhone 4 and its “antennagate”, I finally made the switch to an Google Android based phone. For the uninitiated, the Samsung Captivate is part of the Samsung Galaxy S series that typically include their somewhat trademark 4 inch Super AMOLED screen, the Samsung Hummingbird processor and the TouchWiz UI enhancements. The Samsung Captivate has these features and a bit more:

• 4 inch WVGA Super AMOLED display
• 1GHz Hummingbird processor with PowerVR SGX540 GPU
• Android 2.1
• 16GB of internal memory
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, A-GPS
• 5MP camera with HD video recording
• 3.5mm headset jack
• MicroSD card support

And in typical geek fashion, the first thing I did was to root the phone, then start removing the AT&T applications which cannot be uninstalled the direct way. I am not too happy with how AT&T has locked down portions of the Android Market – for instance, Where is a free app that AT&T wants you to pay for its usage. I’ve had it on the Apple iPhone and if I emulate a T-Mobile SIM, I can have it again for free.

I’m still getting used to the Android workflow – having e-mail and Gmail and they both sync can get confusing. Android 2.1 also will not allow for multiple calendars, it will only synchronize to the first one you input on your accounts/sync portion. That somewhat bothersome; however all one needs to do is share your calendars between your multiple Gmail accounts and they’ll all sync up with the Calendar app.

There are other weird things that will take time in my transition; however it’s not all weird. The phone is faster than my iPhone 3GS and even seems faster to me than even the iPhone 4. It’s also a world class screen that’s real readable in direct sunlight. I mean, totally readable. And so far, I’ve found most of the “must have” apps – Where excluded – in the Android Market. GOGII textPlus, WordPress, Seesmic, Paypal, Google Voice, Evernote, Nimbuzz… and I’ve only started to look.

So three years later, have I finally jumped from a walled garden to a semi-walled garden without incident? This was a still rather locked down phone and I’ve had to add the ability to load my own *.apk files, but so far, I can recommend Android to a wide group of folks whereas the Apple iPhone was more for people that wanted a media phone. Android 2.1 offers a great experience and 2.2 (Froyo) is right around the corner (September is the rumor).

Good riddance 2009. It was not the best of years for certain things.

2009 brought only the marginally better Apple iPhone 3GS – whoa, it looks the same, but has a faster processor than the iPhone 3G, big whoop-de-doo. AT&T continued to drop so many phone calls that they finally made an app for that. Crunchpad The Joojoo finally came out to a hailstorm of litigation and a Paypal pre-purchase that totally violated their terms and conditions for accepting money on unreleased items. 2009 brought out the Nokia N900… and not many applications for it – nor utilize the darn forward facing camera in Skype… before let’s say Apple does it perhaps?

2009 became the year where a rumor inflated the stock prices of a company… somehow. And FINALLY I got my 17,000 song music library in order.

But… 2009 showed where the #4 wireless telecom start to get some traction by offering cellphones and wireless/internet packages at a price that was a step or two below the other wireless telecoms. 2009 saw a maturity in Google Android, a shot in the dark by Google that had finally gone from a 1.0 version to 2.1 in real quick steps by actually listening to their customer and vendor needs. 2009 saw Barnes & Noble finally bring out their Google Android based Nook and saw the Amazon Kindle become the highest selling “gadget” at Amazon.com. 2009 saw Motorola come out with a phone that people actually wanted… the Droid.

2009 saw that the Sony PlayStation 3 finally step down from that high price pedestal and figure out that you know… some people would love to be able to afford the hardware to play the killer games like Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, Tekken 6 among many others. 2009 saw the release of Square Enix Final Fantasy XIII which sold over 1.5 million units in under a week… yes, one week. 2009 saw that Microsoft was willing to admit that the XBOX 360 might still fail, but they stood behind it and continued to grow their XBOX Live Network to a point where if you’re a gamer that loves being online, you owned a 360. Nintendo continued to do whatever Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to do. And sell whatever it was by the boatloads.

2009 saw Barack Obama sworn in, a global economy crisis, a underwear bomb, Lindsay Lohan set loose on the world, less drama surrounding Britney Spears, more drama around Google Voice, and above all… 2009 brought forward growth, reviews, fun… and some other craziness to Remove The Labels.

From me to you… Happy New Year. 2010 will be fun with the January announcements by Google and Apple with many more things, such as the CES in Las Vegas, in tow. Have a good one and please do not drink and drive. Hire a taxi… or get a designated driver. And don’t light an entire bag of fireworks on fire (see above).

AOL continues an interesting trip that took them from one of the largest and most powerful ISPs on the Internet, to a fractured and financially-troubled company with dreams of becoming an advertising giant. Of course most of their problems were caused by their inability to adapt to (or really in some cases even recognize) the broadband market – something that was at least in part caused by former executive Lisa Hook, who went on to do amazing things with VoIP carrier SunRocket as well. With its spin off from Time Warner, the company this fall has undergone its latest in an endless line of evolution efforts, but has announced those changes will come with pink slips for about one third of AOL’s employees, or about 2,300 workers.

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