it's finally happened: minxdroid

[Dreadnaught]

No idea, doesn't look legit. I think closing apps that are defaulted to be open is the way to go. There's been some talk in the Dev community that the new Android SDK will have a term in the TOS requiring that any application can be uninstalled by the user.

But long term, phones like the Samsung Galaxy seem to be killing it -- the Android interface has gotten good enough that the handset manufacturers aren't making their own skins. Hopefully HTC will wake up on that.

[Aimless]

can't get my head around how restrictive the mobile OS that represents the "free world" can be

btw, dialling *#*#4636#*#* gets you a more detailed description of battery usage and also network usage. turns out the facebook app has been using the network extensively even though I barely ever use it, generally make sure it's shut down properly, have disabled syncing/polling, etc. pfff

[Aimless]

from what i've gathered, the calibration is just so the phone's battery sensor gets accurate readings

[Dreadnaught]

can't get my head around how restrictive the mobile OS that represents the "free world" can be

btw, dialling *#*#4636#*#* gets you a more detailed description of battery usage and also network usage. turns out the facebook app has been using the network extensively even though I barely ever use it, generally make sure it's shut down properly, have disabled syncing/polling, etc. pfff

The "freedom" means the company who actually made the phone can still screw with it and ruin the experience. Double edged freedom.

But apps usually kill things. Facebook is pretty bad, I make a point of actually quitting the program with the back button (which quits things more than the home button).

[earthJoker]

I don't see the point in the Facebook app anyway. Whenever I use it, it see absolutely no advantage over just using the browser of my choice to surf the touch version of their homepage.

[Kazuha Vinland]

The article you posted sure as hell got nothing to do with electro chemistry and the charging of lithium-ion batteries.

So you get more than 100 hours uptime? There's no way I get that, even if I have the screen locked with a black display.

Guess I'll have to look a bit more into program managing. Multitasking can be a drag in that respect, and I totally see why Apple did not implement it in their first generation(s) of the iPhone.

... But I really don't want to lose my Sense. It's gorgeous!

[Dreadnaught]

I don't see the point in the Facebook app anyway. Whenever I use it, it see absolutely no advantage over just using the browser of my choice to surf the touch version of their homepage.

I used to think that too. But Facebook actually seems to screw with the updating in the news feed on the browser version. The updates are highly condensed and randomly spread out over the past 24 hours, instead of being chronological like the regular news feed. The Facebook apps don't have this and have a normal news feed.

I can't figure out why they would want to push people into their platform-dependent apps, though presumably it has much to do with their places/commerce/e-mail integrations being planned. Even though all of that can be done via browser, Facebook just seems unwilling to pursue browser-only mobile solutions.

The article you posted sure as hell got nothing to do with electro chemistry and the charging of lithium-ion batteries.

So you get more than 100 hours uptime? There's no way I get that, even if I have the screen locked with a black display.

Guess I'll have to look a bit more into program managing. Multitasking can be a drag in that respect, and I totally see why Apple did not implement it in their first generation(s) of the iPhone.

... But I really don't want to lose my Sense. It's gorgeous!

You think so? I'm not a fan of the Sense UI. But I've certainly gotten used to the 2.2 stock Android UI.

[Flixy]

I don't see the point in the Facebook app anyway. Whenever I use it, it see absolutely no advantage over just using the browser of my choice to surf the touch version of their homepage.

I use the Facebook App, but it has some oddities for sure. When I click some links in the app it still opens the facebook website, which makes the app a bit useless.

I used to think that too. But Facebook actually seems to screw with the updating in the news feed on the browser version. The updates are highly condensed and randomly spread out over the past 24 hours, instead of being chronological like the regular news feed. The Facebook apps don't have this and have a normal news feed.

At the top of the news feed, switch from Most Important News to Most Recent News.

[Dreadnaught]

That link exists on the desktop site, not on the iphone/android Facebook site.

[earthJoker]

Yeah unfortunately, because the "Most Important News" algorithm of Facebooks sucks. It does the opposite of what I want

[Kazuha Vinland]

You think so? I'm not a fan of the Sense UI. But I've certainly gotten used to the 2.2 stock Android UI.

The looks is definitely more appealing to me. Not so sure about the functionality - I've heard they bring some smoothness to the navigation, but I guess I should've opted out testing my friends' Nexus before he sold it. If Sense really is the energy zap, it'll likely get riddened for the sake of practicality at one point. Often find myself having to borrow a phone lately, due to my own being out of charge. Slightly humiliating when you got such a fancy phone, ha.

[Dreadnaught]

In my opinion Android 2.2 really closed the gap on the smoothness issues —*it has some really great motions/animations.

[Flixy]

So i updated my phone to froyo, but the standard email (not gmail) app is EXTREMELY slow! Anyone know how to fix it, out a decent replacement email app? It's on my galaxy s.

[Dreadnaught]

Is it slow to the point of not working at all? IE is it downloading mail or is it actually laggy?

I've actually used it on my Nexus and haven't experienced that at all, but the app is embarrassingly bare bones and there are lots of complaints:

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dro...tml#post725953

I've heard good things about the K9 App, which was basically designed to kick the Android developers in the pants on this-

http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/

[Flixy]

Refreshing email takes 2 minutes, opening one minute. Switching folders also a minute or so. I'll check out k9, thanks.

Overall I have the feeling that froyo made my phone slower, killed the email, and keeps starting up apps I don't want to start up.

[Dreadnaught]

Try K9 —*I personally found Froyo to be a massive improvement overall. In particular, the battery life seemed to get much better after Froyo. BUT I did disable Flash reading in my browser to get there.

[Kazuha Vinland]

Do you know if the native YouTube app uses HTML5 or Flash to power the videos? The latter would be a huge leech on battery life, so I would hope not.

On Macs, Flash alone halves the battery life while browsing. It's even worse on PCs.

[Dreadnaught]

I think neither. The app is a standalone streaming video player that uses its own codec made for the device, not Flash.

That said, clicking on YouTube links on iPhone or Android now loads a mobile HTML5 player which is sweet.

[Khendraja'aro]

The article you posted sure as hell got nothing to do with electro chemistry and the charging of lithium-ion batteries.

So you get more than 100 hours uptime? There's no way I get that, even if I have the screen locked with a black display.

Guess I'll have to look a bit more into program managing. Multitasking can be a drag in that respect, and I totally see why Apple did not implement it in their first generation(s) of the iPhone.

... But I really don't want to lose my Sense. It's gorgeous!

Don't use task managers, though. They break more than they fix.

[Flixy]

It appears that resetting to factory settings fixed the lag, it works pretty smooth now. Sucks I have to restore everything by hand now, though

[Dreadnaught]

That does seem really odd -- but just to clarify, was the issue just with the Mail app or with the whole OS?

Met with someone else last night who also got a Froyo upgrade while at a party, she had no idea what had happened. Interestingly, it seems to turn off some of the animations for slower phones.

[Flixy]

Everything turned a bit slower, but only the email was completely fucked. But even normal actions took longer than they did before the update.

Now everything seems to work again, and froyo does have a bunch of improvements I already noticed.

[Aimless]

this phone's ability to function as a wireless hotspot has in a very important way saved this week and its general connectivity is saving this trip right now. greetings from mcdonald's and a very weary minxie

[Dreadnaught]

Are you in Amerika? I guess McDonalds exists elsewhere too, cultural culinary imperialism and all that. But a man can hope...

[Flixy]

this phone's ability to function as a wireless hotspot has in a very important way saved this week and its general connectivity is saving this trip right now. greetings from mcdonald's and a very weary minxie

Yeah, I like that function too Weird thing is you can't upload a video to youtube on 3G, you have to be on wifi for smoe strange reason. So if you have two phones, one can be the hotspot for the other and upload that way

[Aimless]

dolphin browser mini currently my fave browser. only thing i'm missing right now is the excellent reflowing skillz of the stock browser... in most other respects it's almost exactly what i've been looking for

[Aimless]

So I prettified my android greatly and wanted to share the results with you by posting a screenshot. Turns out there are two ways to take screenshots from an android device.

The easy way requires rooting. The other way requires a couple of hundred megs' worth of downloads and installations (JDK, SDK, drivers ). Fine, I don't want to void my warranty so I decide to try the second method only to find myself forced to surrender after a couple of hours. Failure can't take a goddamned screenshot. I am stunned by the crazy the problem seems to be with XP, but the only reason XP is able to mess with me is because I can't use a simple screenshot app on an unrooted phone. Ridiculous.

[GGT]

I mean, damn those crazy tech guys.

[Dreadnaught]

The reason I love my Nexus One is that it's the stock Android. No need to root. I really hate how the cellphone industry is doing it's thing on these devices, but I think in the long run that trend will die down.

[Aimless]

I only care about the short term in which my usage of the phone for which I paid is severely restricted I mean, the sense UI isn't painful or anything but it doesn't do what I want it to do, takes up resources, misbehaves on occasion, slows down bootup and shutdown times considerably etc etc grr.

Anyway, this is the direction my customisation is taking:




I prefer text over pics, and prefer simple over complex and colorful. So there will be text icons, text widgets, maybe a quote somewhere (couldn't find a quote app that'd just present simple text without backgrounds and icons etc). The weather widget is only there because I liked the blackboard style

The dock is a part of Launcher Pro, which gives me some relief from Sense. The icons have associated swipe gestures and thus perform two functions each (eg. the camera can be used as a camera or swiped for the barcode scanner).