Droid related stuff (problems/solutions tips, tricks, apps)

[daoist]

There's shitloads of free podcasts, they just aren't indexed by google listen.

I am trying out BeyondPod. It's free for 7 days. If it works about as well as itunes/ipod shuffle do, then I'll drop the exorbitant $7 to purchase it.

[Gretyl]

Any social features to the Android Marketplace?

[WrenchHead]

you can post reviews of apps, but that's about all I've seen. the marketplace is just somewhere to snag the apps. I use androlib.com to search for available apps via computer (faster than messing with the phone.)

[Gretyl]

And signing in to that site lets you do... what exactly?

[WrenchHead]

I just use the search for keyword hits on apps like "camera"

market.android.com doesn't have a search feature to the outside world for some stupid reason.

[Guerrilla X]

There's shitloads of free podcasts, they just aren't indexed by google listen.

I am trying out BeyondPod. It's free for 7 days. If it works about as well as itunes/ipod shuffle do, then I'll drop the exorbitant $7 to purchase it.

let us know how it turns out - Id be interested in dropping dollar for it if its better than google listen.

[Xopher]

There's shitloads of free podcasts, they just aren't indexed by google listen.

I am trying out BeyondPod. It's free for 7 days. If it works about as well as itunes/ipod shuffle do, then I'll drop the exorbitant $7 to purchase it.

let us know how it turns out - Id be interested in dropping dollar for it if its better than google listen.

that download procedure is the highlight of my day.

http://listen.googlelabs.com/download.html

[daoist]

lots of android app pages have the QR code on them to scan. It's really neat.

[Guerrilla X]

wow - i didn't know that. Just tested it out... thats awesome.

[MarcusAurelius]

so i played with one of these over the weekend, and it felt like a cheap piece of shit. shitty keyboard with flimsy slideout shit. it just felt like a shitty iphone knockoff (for good reason, i suppose).

why are you people creaming in your pants over this thing? iphone killer it is not.

[WrenchHead]

mine is still tight. It's made out of glass and metal and weighs more than an iphone, so why did it feel cheap? I think all the HTC phones feel cheap because they're light and made of plastic.

[daoist]

MA, did you play with an empty display shell?

[MarcusAurelius]

[Wargazm]

It's made out of glass and metal and weighs more than an iphone, so why did it feel cheap?

yeah, seriously. I can't really think of a similar device with sturdier construction. It felt like a brick...but in a good way.

[fiveSD]

Agreed on the feel. iphones feel cheap to me compared to the Droid. Sturdy... just don't drop it.

[WrenchHead]

I was courtesy called by Verizon yesterday to ask me if I knew how to use my droid properly and they invited me to attend a smartphone workshop in my area.

[Gretyl]

Congratulations, they have identified you as a dumbperson.

[WrenchHead]

I'm going to try to attend too just so see if I can make some new friends.

[fiveSD]

About a week ago, I started having some minor issues with my Droid. Mostly, after long periods of no use and not being plugged in (aka while I was sleeping), in the morning it wouldn't respond. I would take the battery out, reboot, and it was fine. Then at work, I picked it up to unlock and use it and it wouldn't come back to life. The screen would faintly illuminate when I pushed the 'on' key, but that was it. I tried taking the battery out, and still the same result. I went into Verizon and they "had never seen anything like this before!". At first they said they didn't have any in stock, but then they actually looked and did, so they set me up with a new one free of charge. Pretty awesome. Gotta love that Google backs everything up.

Then this weekend my plastic case broke... just a cheap thing from Verizon. I went in to look at other cases, but they went ahead and replaced this case for free. The little tabs holding it on had broken off... not sure if these are usual policies (both replacements happened about 45 days from phone/case purchase) but it's nice to not have to battle for once.

[WrenchHead]

Mine lives on that charging dock thing all night. I started putting more and more games on it to kill time during christmas events.. Sketch Online ate up a lot of my time. I like playing 'pictionary' against people from wherever. Also NESoid makes the droid playable as a nintendo. The emulator works really well. The buttons screw you sometimes. It'd have been nicer if the direction pad was on the left side like a nintendo controller...

I don't have a case for mine. It still looks new with no scratches on the screen or on the painted casing.

[Guerrilla X]

it be nice if there was a case that went on the droid that would allow it to work with the dock.

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

I have to say again: wifi tether is amazing. I just moved into a new apartment and it'll be a week before I get internet setup and it's massively filling the withdrawal.

[fiveSD]

Is the wifi tethering pretty simple to set up? I may want to do it in several months..

[daoist]

Sure, just buy the app and go.

[fiveSD]

wait, it costs $30/mo?

[fiveSD]

oh, i think i'm reading about the official verizon tethering.

[WrenchHead]

Am giving Dolphin Browser a test run. You can use pinch zoom with it. Trying to see if it'll work easier than the stock browser. I can't get into my exchange server at work on it for some reason.

[Toilet of Sadness]

I really don't like the stock browser--UI takes up way too much space and doesn't remember zoom levels at all. Only big thing that bugs me about Dolphin is that there doesn't appear to be a zoom out multi-touch gesture.

[WrenchHead]

if you long press on the screen in dolphin you get a -/+ option for zoom as well as shortcut gestures. Sort of annoying to wait for a long press, but it's there.

[daoist]

I really don't like the stock browser--UI takes up way too much space and doesn't remember zoom levels at all. Only big thing that bugs me about Dolphin is that there doesn't appear to be a zoom out multi-touch gesture.

what in the UI is taking up space?

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

Sure, just buy the app and go.

It's free, but you need a rooted phone.

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

I just updated to the latest Cyanogen mod and it seems a lot faster. I wish they (Google) would stop changing the interface for the dialer...now all the buttons are smaller.

I might upgrade my SD card's filesystem to ext3 later tonight.

[daoist]

Sure, just buy the app and go.

It's free, but you need a rooted phone.

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

Right, but for your average user (of which fivesd is), the answer is to pay for pdanet.

Though, there's a free pdanet on the app store. I grabbed it and haven't tried it out. It doesn't allow https connections. That won't be a problem with me, since I'll just be using an ssh tunnel home anyhow.

edit: and I haven't really been following that closely. Do they have a kernel for the droid with iptables yet?

[fiveSD]

Right, but for your average user (of which fivesd is)...

Well, now I know how you really feel about me.

[WrenchHead]

Have any of you read of or used VNC apps on the droid that'll work with winXP?

I'd be willing to pay the 25.00 for one or whatever it costs if it actually worked well.

[daoist]

the only rdp apps I saw for the droid cost money :-/. There's a free vnc app, I have it installed, but since I don't have vnc installed on my desktop haven't bothered trying it out. Give it a shot.

[WrenchHead]

Xtralogic makes software that talks to windows remote desktop and it's like 18 bucks. I might get that. Would be handy if I am sipping fruity drinks on the beach and have compile some servlets at work on the local networked drive.

youtube vid of a guy using it:

[daoist]

If you use firefox, get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8613

It adds a little icon to your status bar you can use to get a QR code of the page you're looking at. This way you can easily browse to a page on your phone without typing the URL in.

[daoist]

for example:

[daoist]

Sign up for a beta of an android tethering app:

http://tether.com/android-beta

[Guerrilla X]

If you use firefox, get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8613

It adds a little icon to your status bar you can use to get a QR code of the page you're looking at. This way you can easily browse to a page on your phone without typing the URL in.

really useful extension.

[WrenchHead]

If you use firefox, get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8613

It adds a little icon to your status bar you can use to get a QR code of the page you're looking at. This way you can easily browse to a page on your phone without typing the URL in.

ShopSavvy (the other barcode app) added QR code support yesterday in an update I noticed

[Xopher]

Samsung Moment and HTC from Sprint getting direct upgrade to Android 2.1 in first half of this year.

[fiveSD]

Over the weekend, I started having all sorts of strange issues with my Contacts list.

I noticed first because when I programmed someone into my phone, they wouldn't show up in my Contacts list. However their info would show up on my call log.

I read a few forums online and attempted to resync my phone, but that did no good and I somehow managed to get duplicates of all my contacts. I went into VZW, and they hard reset the data, but insisted on loading my contacts from my memory card (why? isn't that what google is for?). Same problem - contact wouldn't be saved. They called their phone tech support, which was not helpful, and recommended I call a specific VZW droid support hotline on Monday when they were open again (bad sign- they have a support line just for this one phone??).

Anyhow, Saturday night I hard reset it myself and re-synced with google. I still have a few random things where old numbers I programmed only show up in my call log and not the contacts list, but now at least when I add a new contact it shows up. Other people seem to be having this issue from my online research... anyone here?

[Guerrilla X]

If you use firefox, get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8613

It adds a little icon to your status bar you can use to get a QR code of the page you're looking at. This way you can easily browse to a page on your phone without typing the URL in.

ShopSavvy (the other barcode app) added QR code support yesterday in an update I noticed

ever since I did the update - my shop savvy app does a force close everytime I start on it.

[Xopher]

Over the weekend, I started having all sorts of strange issues with my Contacts list.

I noticed first because when I programmed someone into my phone, they wouldn't show up in my Contacts list. However their info would show up on my call log.

I read a few forums online and attempted to resync my phone, but that did no good and I somehow managed to get duplicates of all my contacts. I went into VZW, and they hard reset the data, but insisted on loading my contacts from my memory card (why? isn't that what google is for?). Same problem - contact wouldn't be saved. They called their phone tech support, which was not helpful, and recommended I call a specific VZW droid support hotline on Monday when they were open again (bad sign- they have a support line just for this one phone??).

Anyhow, Saturday night I hard reset it myself and re-synced with google. I still have a few random things where old numbers I programmed only show up in my call log and not the contacts list, but now at least when I add a new contact it shows up. Other people seem to be having this issue from my online research... anyone here?

this was my problem because it merged all my gmail and phone to the point where I never checked a box to do it, it just happened when I activated my gmail account, and using gmail as the contact editor is ingenious. but sprint built all that into it specifically for their androids if you are having such trouble.

[fiveSD]

wait, what? What happened with you activated your gmail account- you couldn't add contacts? What did Sprint build into their Androids?

[Xopher]

no, by signing into the gmail app on my phone, it automatically appended my transfer numbers to the gmail contact list. the only obvious way to edit them without some stupid shareware half-hack POS is to use gmail, which is amazingly efficient and 503% awesome as the manager. i just had no reason to try and merge those two lists before.

the Moment has the "with Google TM" stamp on the back, which basically means we have the joint-venture android, and why we have to wait so god-damned long for an upgrade. its like how Ubuntu makes their own Firefox.

[daoist]

The "with Google" phones are less messed-with than the non "with Google" phones, so you've got it backwards. Truth is, they all take forever to drop ROM updates. It's the carriers' fault. One thing I hoped android would do is separate upgrades from the carriers, and it hasn't done that.

[Xopher]

well I had Moxier Mail installed and ready, for free, so we are getting something extra from Sprint put into the code.

[daoist]

wtf are you babbling about? What does installing an app mean for sprint adding crap? It's like saying that...well i don't know what it's like, because you aren't making any sense.

[daoist]

Look, there's two main types of android phones.

Google Experience - Identified by "with Google" - These are largely untouched by the carriers, with minimal fuckery. They have the full suite of google apps preinstalled.

Branded / Skinned - Identified by not having "with Google" - These are skinned up with carrier or oem-specific apps and UI. Examples include HTC's SenseUI and Motorola's Blur.

[Gretyl]

That right there is great branding.

[daoist]

The problem is that google has nothing to gain via unified branding, and it shows in the product.

[MarcusAurelius]

The problem is that google has nothing to gain via unified branding, and it shows in the product.

nothing to gain besides people clamoring for "a google phone", you mean?

[daoist]

The problem is that google has nothing to gain via unified branding, and it shows in the product.

nothing to gain besides people clamoring for "a google phone", you mean?

Nah, that doesn't even get them much. Their whole thing is to get eyeballs on web ads. As long as android (in all it's balkanized glory) can do that, they don't care.

[Xopher]

wtf are you babbling about? What does installing an app mean for sprint adding crap? It's like saying that...well i don't know what it's like, because you aren't making any sense.

I. did. not. install. it. sprint. did. it. came. with. the. phone. it. costs. $25. for. "some." people.

[daoist]

what. the. fuck. is. it.

[Xopher]

some exchange server email and calendar syncing app.

[daoist]

So what were you complaining about gmail for?

[Xopher]

i was never complaining about gmail. never ever.

[daoist]

i've been loving this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=bck-08

Got it really cheap on ebay, like $12 shipped. looks kinda like a 2nd gen ipod shuffle and lets you use your favorite headphones. It even has a mic so you can take calls.

[Lars]

I want headphones that look like the Discman headphones from the 90s, but are Bluetooth. If I am going to wear headphones whilst listening to a podcast (treadmill, yardwork, etc), it needs to be without wires. Nothing seems to be quite there yet.

[daoist]

There's plenty of BT headphones without wires. In fact, it took me quite a while to find one with.

[daoist]

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO