Android!

[Draegan]

Grats on the phone!

Just out of curiosity, can you see if you can find Mario Live or Digital Rain wallpapers on your DroidX in the market? I couldn't on my Droid with Android 2.1 and am wondering if it is a Motorola issue or something else. They work now but getting them on my phone and working was a pain compared to how easy it normally is.

For apps, I know within the last few pages there were suggestions on apps, so just dig through the last few pages. Though, here are some I remember off the top of my head:

TasKiller
Dolphin HD
MountUSB
Barcode Scanner
Adobe Reader
AndroZip
DroidLight (uses flash from camera as a flashlight)
Ringdroid
Stopwatch


For Live Wallpapers, I keep Galaxy, Digital Rain, Fireworks, Mario Live, and Water

I didn't look for mario, I should have, but I have Digital Rain.  First one I downloaded.

Whats mountUSB do?

[bhodi]

I believe it's one-touch mounting of the hard drives instead of having to go into settings and changing the usb connection type (mine is just in my task list so it's basically 3 uh.. touches? clicks?

[Segoris]

Yeah, that's all it is, but for whatever reason I just prefer this app.

[Quinton]

YAAAAY.  I have wanted this since we launched 1.0.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9538/access-releases-graffiti-for-android/


EDIT: GODDAMN it works great.  They could stand to add a little word completion bar, but the fact that the basic implementation is just dead on accurate and fast is awesome.  <3 <3 <3

[bhodi]

Heh, you're obviously a palm guy.

Here's a question, how can I make space not auto-fix a word while I'm typing? If I hit space to move to the next word, it just assumes that I want to select the best guess fix. I don't like that at all! Is there a configuration option somewhere to adjust this?

[Quinton]

Heh, you're obviously a palm guy.

Here's a question, how can I make space not auto-fix a word while I'm typing? If I hit space to move to the next word, it just assumes that I want to select the best guess fix. I don't like that at all! Is there a configuration option somewhere to adjust this?

If you're using the standard Android Keyboard (some phones ship different IMEs):

Home / Settings / Language & Keyboard Settings / Android Keyboard

scroll down and uncheck "Auto-complete"

[bhodi]

Boo. No option on my incredible. It's a sense ui thing I guess. Only two options: Prediction and Spell Correction. One turns the entire thing on/off and one has just the word you're typing in as a dictionary addon option. No big deal.

[Segoris]

Finally, a use for Wii equipment! It connects a Wii remote to your Android phone (Why hello there, NES emulators).   

[Jherad]

Boo. No option on my incredible. It's a sense ui thing I guess. Only two options: Prediction and Spell Correction. One turns the entire thing on/off and one has just the word you're typing in as a dictionary addon option. No big deal.

'Better Keyboard' is a pretty good keyboard replacement ($3). Skinnable and has all the options you need:




I'm really happy using Swype (beta). Incredibly fast.

[Ghambit]

Just got my Galaxy/Captivate today... finally.
This is pretty much my first true "smart phone" (I've been waiting for the right buy).  So I'm all like:


I've played with a few other phones and this one seems pretty fast by comparison (definitely quicker than Iphone 3GS or Crackberry).  Nice and slim, 4" display is about as big as I'd go for a phone.  Love the autobrightness feature, which seems to work well.  No complaints so far.  We shall see if their claims on battery life are true though.  Oh, and the keyboard in landscape is just fine imo.

[Nerf]

Boo. No option on my incredible. It's a sense ui thing I guess. Only two options: Prediction and Spell Correction. One turns the entire thing on/off and one has just the word you're typing in as a dictionary addon option. No big deal.

'Better Keyboard' is a pretty good keyboard replacement ($3). Skinnable and has all the options you need:




I'm really happy using Swype (beta). Incredibly fast.

Got a qr code for swype? Market searches are coming up empty.

[Ozzu]

Got a qr code for swype? Market searches are coming up empty.

It's still in beta and I think the signups are closed again. They've had a couple of times where anyone who wanted in could get in, but they always close it pretty fast. Also, I don't think they're planning on making it a normal market app either. I think they're going the signing deals with manufacturers route.

SlideIT is a pretty good alternative though. It's actually in the market.

[Jherad]

Beta application is here - no idea if it'll open again though. I seriously hope they put it on the market, I'd pay a few dollars for it.

http://beta.swype.com/

[Draegan]

So my new droid x's battery drained in about 5 hours today.  I have no idea what was draining it's power.  Unless leaving Adobe PDF running did it (screen not on though).

Fuck.

I don't know which app would of done that.  GPS was off. Wifi off.  But I did notice that the 3G was very active.  I had killed all the tasks. The only widgets I was running was the NY Times, Weather, ESPN Score Tracker.

Same set up as I had all weekend and this hadn't happened at all.  Don't know why it did this.  Only email I had running was the standard GMail account.

It was running "hot" all morning too.  I wonder what it was.  It's really irritating me.  It was running hot even after killing all apps.  I wonder if it was motorola's bloat shit.

The only app I installed last night was Adobe Reader.

Sigh.  I don't even have my charger with me at work.

[KallDrexx]

There's a battery bug that should be in the next update.  The droid X is mis-reading the battery from what I have seen (i.e. if you plug it in and unplug it your battery will jump from 50% to 80%).

[Draegan]

But this was going from a full charge from last night.

Anyway my 3G icon on my notification bar is going crazy today and task killer shows something big working in the background and I have no idea what it is.

After killing all tasks it still shows 209 MB in use.  And 3G is going crazy.  I can't find what is using data.

Can anyone give me a good app that will tell me whats using what? NetMeter doesn't seem to want to tell me what app is using data, just that it's being used and how much.

[Quinton]

But this was going from a full charge from last night.

Anyway my 3G icon on my notification bar is going crazy today and task killer shows something big working in the background and I have no idea what it is.

After killing all tasks it still shows 209 MB in use.  And 3G is going crazy.  I can't find what is using data.

Can anyone give me a good app that will tell me whats using what? NetMeter doesn't seem to want to tell me what app is using data, just that it's being used and how much.

If you install the sdk and do an adb bugreport, the battery log information should show you this.  See a couple replies from me upthread explaining how to parse it.

[Draegan]

Unfortunately I have no idea what installing sdk means.  I went here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html but it failed to install.

[KallDrexx]

Go into settings -> About Phone -> Battery Use

[Draegan]

I've done that, says 98% Display.  Time Uses 1m 9s.

The phone is running hot though.  This is after killing all tasks all afternoon.  I have no idea what's running.  

I turn of syncing via the widget and my 3G usage drops a decent amount, but still goes.  I don't have any social apps installed at all.  I have no idea what could be syncing so much.

Meh.

[MahrinSkel]

I've sworn off Motorola devices completely.  I've had design-created problems with every one of them I've had, going back to the 1st gen RAZR, and I'm tired of them delivering products with fantastic feature sets but horrible reliability.  I'm certainly not breaking the boycott for a $400-500 purchase.

--Dave

[Jherad]

Curiously, my wife's Droid X is getting MUCH better battery life than my Incredible - I don't think it is necessarily a preinstalled app, or Blur that is doing this.

Perhaps the NYT app? I do have this on my Incredible, which shares your Droid's miserable battery life.

Edit: Part of my logs:

[bhodi]

If you install the sdk and do an adb bugreport, the battery log information should show you this.  See a couple replies from me upthread explaining how to parse it.

Are there any apps or plans for programs that let you view that information on the phone itself? Trying to install the SDK is insanely annoying on windows and it didn't really work properly for me.

[Draegan]

Things seem to be better today.

[Salamok]

So been awhile since I fired up PDANet to tether my droid, today I give it a shot and my https is disabled.  I realize they always said you need the paid version for ssl but last time I tried it and every time before that it still let me hit secure sites.

So is there a free app out there that will let me tether my droid (and allow ssl) w/o rooting the phone?  Kind of hate to buy something when the froyo wifi hotspot is right around the corner...

[Yegolev]

So my new droid x's battery drained in about 5 hours today.  I have no idea what was draining it's power.  Unless leaving Adobe PDF running did it (screen not on though).

I solved this exact problem by disabling all autosync.

[Quinton]

If you install the sdk and do an adb bugreport, the battery log information should show you this.  See a couple replies from me upthread explaining how to parse it.

Are there any apps or plans for programs that let you view that information on the phone itself? Trying to install the SDK is insanely annoying on windows and it didn't really work properly for me.

Unfortunately I haven't seen anything that displays the level of detail that's in the low level logs.  I agree that using adb bugreport to get this is nonoptimal.  The frameworks team works to make the battery info ui more useful in every release -- they certainly know that everyone wants to be able to identify things that are making battery life suck.

[Ghambit]

So my new droid x's battery drained in about 5 hours today.  I have no idea what was draining it's power.  Unless leaving Adobe PDF running did it (screen not on though).

I solved this exact problem by disabling all autosync.

It's draining in 5 hours w/o talking, browsing, or using media??
I'm getting about 1 day out of my Captivate with sporadic usage and nothing shut off.

[Engels]

Remember the issues with the HTC EVO I was having? Turned out that Sprint had a bunch of crapware running in the background, such as ESPN Sports Update, which she never installed. We also changed the email sync timer to once every few hours rather than every 10 minutes or some such. Battery life went from 60% a day to 20% a day of regular use.

[bhodi]

It's stuff like that which is negatively impacting the brand. I hope the integration team takes a closer look at all the pre-installed crap in future releases from all these carriers to make sure that they don't pre-install some vampire app.

Fortunately, my own problems mysterious disappeared when I cleared settings and turned off a bunch of the syncs. I think it was having the weather app widget constantly updating my weather, coupled with several other things for my own battery woes.

[fuser]

Perhaps thats something to include in the battery status (or write an app for), number of pushes/syncs and list the apps doing it.

[Ghambit]

You should have specific apps already listed which are running including all syncs/pushes (at least mine does), along with the ability to select and shut them down from said lists.  It can be tough to find the info., but it's all there consolidated. 

[bhodi]

Cube solver w/ lego and an android phone/app as the capture/solver device

[MahrinSkel]

Having determined that there was no Android set planned that met my full feature set wishlist, I'm probably going to go with the LG Ally.  I've had good experiences with LG's stuff, and the Ally is essentially a Fathom with Android 2.1 instead of Windows Mobile (IOW, a palm-top that makes phone calls, rather than a media device that does a little computing on the side).  SD Micro slot for storage and Bluetooth for anything else I need to tack onto it, it will do until my All-In-One wonder-widget shows up.

Not that there aren't better phones out there, but it's the best Verizon Android for my purposes, Verizon is the only decent network for my new house, and no other phone is *enough* better to be worth the expense of buying outright and unlocking it.  

--Dave

[Jherad]

It's stuff like that which is negatively impacting the brand. I hope the integration team takes a closer look at all the pre-installed crap in future releases from all these carriers to make sure that they don't pre-install some vampire app.

City ID on my Incredible.

I get that providers want to load my phone with nagware shite, in order to make a few more bucks. Making it a system app so I can't remove it without rooting my phone (which I eventually did) is inexcusable though.