All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

• Motorola may have a 'unified' direction but that doesn't make their phones all that nice. Don't get me wrong, my Defy is a great piece of kit but it's no looker, nor are a number of their other phones.
• HTC have the whole unibody aluminium thing going which us pretty cool but I still wouldn't call them stunning.
• SE have one good looking phone, the rest of them are so-so IMO.
• LG are rather lacking in the looks department.

Anyway, I don't see how you can say Samsung lack a direction, true it's not unique but they certainly have a direction - right behind Apple

 

Agree with all of your points. I never said motorola had an attractive design direction, just that they had a distinct one. Out off all of the brands mentioned though I think HTC (other than the thunderbolt and evo3d) have the most attractive and interesting design direction.

 

If I could get Super AMOLED+, an aluminum unibody, a 1800mAh battery, and Exynos.... there would be world peace.

Sadly, though, there isn't and probably will never be.

*le sigh*

 

LOL... QFT

 

It's more than that though, a lot of their phones are almost too similar.
They're same-y, they're boring.

I mean, look at this:

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Then compare that to this:

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Ok, so the Droid Bionic may look a little different but it's not much compared to the differences in HTC's range, which are not in themselves blessed with a huge amount of variety.

 

As soon as I saw that...I was willing to put my phone shopping decision on hold...

MrXniick's right, 4 has several enhancements over 3.0 that make a big difference depending on how you felt about 3 (I personally <3 3)

I'm sure all four of the major's here will pick up variants of it. I can dream that the variant on VZW would get a keyboard...chances are though that it won't as the Fascinate didn't have it.

I think it's the styling...it's very generic. I like how it looks but it is admittedly very me too..

I would have loved to see a metal construction Galaxy S II. The Omnia 7 proved that they could make a nice looking phone out of solid materials. Even a metal back on the GSII would do wonders for it I suppose.

I agree with all your points. There really isn't a "jaw-droppingly" good looking Motorola. HTC's metal unibody thing is getting meh IMO. It's nice..but meh, and I actually like the Thunderbolt because it sorta got away from that look, at least from the back. SE designs to me look.."off" for some reason...dunno why. I think that LG's are good looking but again..."generic."

 

Yep. 3 was really great. It wasn't invasive, it didn't eat RAM like it was candy (hello blur), and there were actually super useful things added to an otherwise stock Android build. Samsung's work on a GPU accelerated UI and browser for Android is enough for me to say Samsung is probably the best OEM for the smoothest Android experience, aside from Google themselves. They have smooth inertial scrolling, nice hardware switches in the notification area, "rubber-band" bouncing at the end of lists and menus that has a very natural gravity, and lots more that you won't find with any other OEM.

4 is just expanding on that, making it a smoother and altogether better experience.

About the S7550 that Pistachio keeps referring to... it, in no way, compares to anything TouchWiz on Android. It is a completely different operating system, target demographic, and price class. Making any kind of comparison between that handset and the GSII would be like me comparing my GS1 to my RAZR... not even relevant in the least, slightest, tiniest, little bit.

IMO, it looks very professional. There's nothing flashy about it. It's thin, it's functional, durable, and lightweight. IMO, the build quality is better than the original Galaxy S by a long shot, and I've had hands on time with it. It's quite impressive to hold it, but to use it is what will blow you away. It's just not like any other phone I've ever used. It's smooth to the point where you think it should be too good to be true. It's almost like it anticipates where you're going to tap and already has everything processed and ready to smoothly display... Android is shockingly smooth. And if there ever was an iPhone killer, this is it... Truly.

I agree. Just the addition of the metal backplate, as in the Captivate, made the design feel so much more premium. Between the Captivate in one hand and the GT-i9000 in my other, I would almost say they should be priced differently (if I didn't know they were from the same family). If the GSII had a metal backplate it would be the ultimate piece of hardware and software.

 

Yeah, I never quite understood the hate for it. I suspect many took one look at the UI and screamed "it sucks..iPhone...etc."

I didn't know they wen't as far as GPU accelerating the browser. It all makes sense though after seeing how smooth the browser is on Galaxy S II. That sold me early on.

And yeah, I should have googled the S7550, that's definitely not running TouchWiz. Closest thing to what's on there I could say would be TouchWiz 1.

Awesome! Glad to hear it's a great device. The performance seems to be great. I'd argue that it's better to have a phone that performs well in day to day scenarios than in sheer benchmarks. *cough* Atrix *cough*

Nice, and yeah, one of the things I liked about the Captivate was the unique shape and metal back.

 

I think the hate for touchwiz came from those who did not replace the launcher.

Though the launcher was not horrible, I much prefer the standard 3d app draw introduced in android 2.1 on the nexus one. Other than the launcher, touchwiz 3.0 had some great things (as I have mentioned in past posts). And as Hal alluded to, Samsung's work on hardware acceleration and intertia scrolling really is quite fantastic.

 

Actually the GS1 has a GPU accelerated browser too. Samsung has been the only OEM to implement that. Not even Google has that with the Nexus line.

Sidenote, we just got the greenlight to rollout disaster recovery teams to several places in AL, GA, and Mississippi. We're about to rollout in force, with enough mobile equipment to run small countries.

Here's some of the press photos of some of the disaster relief trailers and equipment... We can have this up and running in about a hour and a half. With enough capacity to run government and civilian applications and services. Every local fiber trunk, phone trunk, data trunk, wireless trunk... all of it is routed through these facilities until normalcy is restored to the local CO. Most of the places we're rolling out to has had power knocked off, lines down, and generators hit by storms.

 

^^ That's awesome.

 

I know right! I've only got to be a part of a mobilization once, and that was Hurricane Katrina. I'm with this one, and we're heading to Tuscaloosa and Cullman, Alabama. Two of the hardest hit areas. Some of the stuff we provide to aid in disasters and helping to find survivors and people in need of emergency assistance:

• Cell signal triangulation - We can triangulate a cell signal to within 3 yards.
• Activity logs in certain areas where there's structural damage - to help figure out where help needs to be sent.
• SMS help lines and QoS to compliment the local EMS capabilities.
• Looking for SMS's with SOS, help, or emergency in them... in multiple languages.
• Looking for device registrations/terminations on the network from a geographical standpoint.

 

Pay us 1 million dollars or we'll shoot down the moon with a frickin' laser!

 

LOL... exactly what I was thinking. ATT is getting serious about making their own death star.

HAL: When they finally decide they want world domination/destruction.. please warn us at NBR

 

Umm, like, totally.

You'll neva eva see it coming.

Beautiful isn't it? Our sample has a signed bootloader, a al Galaxy Tab.

 

I swear it's so much nicer using a touch screen phone with a matte screen protector on it. Not usually a fan of screen protectors or cases, but I kinda like this.

/is_a_glossy_display_hater

 

Woohoo finally got my mom to switch to a smartphone

 

Get her to using CM7. That is an achievement.

 

Lol Its not available (usable enough) for her phone. its only an LG Optimus T, but a good step from a flip phone

 

Anyone know of a way to get live wallpapers working on the Intercept? I'm rooted, but not running a custom ROM, kernel or recovery.

 

If you could install clockworkmod recovery some way, I could make you a zip installer with the files needed for LWP's. All you need is Livewallpaperpicker.apk to be dropped into /system/app.

All Android 2.1+ phones are capable of running livewallpapers. How smoothly they run is a whole 'nother thang though.

 

I installed ROM Manager and clicked "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery", and it gave me a huge list of phones to choose from, but the Intercept isn't on it. Here's the list it gave me:

• HTC Incredible (CDMA)
• Motorola Cliq
• HTC Desire S
• HTC Desire HD
• Acer Liquid
• HTC HD2
• Droid Eris (CDMA)
• Huawei Pulse Mini
• Dell Streak
• Huawei Pulse
• Commtiva Z71 (Boston, Blaze, and more)
• Geeksphone ONE
• Spice MI700, Commtiva Link N700 and more)
• Huawei Ascend
• Galaxy S Fascinate
• Galaxy S Vibrant
• Galaxy S Captivate
• Galaxy Tab - Verizon
• Galaxy Tab - ATT
• Galaxy Tab - T-Mobile
• Epic4G
• Droid Pro
• Motorola Droid (CDMA)
• Galaxy S i9000
• Huawei U8150 Ideos
• Advent Vega
• Elocity A7
• T-Mobile G2X
• LG Optimus 2X
• MyTouch Slide
• HTC Thunderbolt
• Dell Streak 7
• Motorola Backflip
• LG Optimus One
• HTC Legend
• HTC Hero (GSM)
• HTC Buzz (Wildfire)
• HTC Dream (GSM)
• Viewsonic GTab
• HTC Hero (CDMA)
• Motorola CLIQ XT/Quench (MB501)
• Motorola XOOM
• HTC Click/Tattoo
• ZTE Blade
• Google Nexus S
• Motorola Milestone
• Motorola Droid X
• Motorola Droid 2
• HTC Incredible S
• Geeksphone Zero
• Evo Shift
• Captivate (MTD)
• Vibrant (MTD)
• i9000 (MTD)
• HTC Evo (CDMA)
• HTC MyTouch 4G
• HTC Aria (GSM)
• HTC Desire CDMA
• LG Ally
• Ion/MyTouch 4G (GSM)
• HTC Magic (GSM)
• Nook Color (old)
• Nook Color
• HTC G2
• Google Nexus One (GSM)

Would my Samsung Intercept be compatible with any of these, or am I just out of luck?

 

Does anyone know of a quick and simple guide to learning adb?

 

Try this, Mastershroom. It seems it was written for 2.1, but 2.2 is no different for livewallpapers. You just need the Android SDK... or adb.exe.

 

I have the SDK, although that post you linked doesn't mention anything about either the SDK or adb.exe.

I ran those commands on Terminal Emulator, but it told me "cp" didn't exist, so I used "cat source > destination" instead and it seems to have worked. Rebooting now.

EDIT - when I go to change my wallpaper, Live Wallpapers now shows up as an option and I can view a list of them, but when I select one to view, it hangs for a moment, vibrates a few times and gives me a message saying "The application Android Live Wallpapers (process com.android.wallpaper) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again." and the only button is "Force Close".

Did I do something wrong? Does it have something to do with the fact that the Terminal Emulator didn't recognize the command "cp"?

EDIT PART DEUX - I got only one of the Live Wallpapers to not force close, the Polar Clock one. The rest of them won't even preview. Is this phone really that crappy that it is physically incapable of running these?

 

Could be, sadly. Like I mentioned in the "What's in Your Smartphone" thread, the S3C6410 doesn't have a standards compliant GPU.

Try getting a freebee from the market and see if any of those work.

 

I got one with scrolling green text a la The Matrix that was specifically recommended in the thread you linked, and it works for me. I'm going to try and find something different though...I wish there were a way to tell what will and won't work before actually installing it.

 

^ yeah that phone isnt too good for live wallpapers. Even if you do get one working, itll probably suck more resources than its worth. Same deal with my old phone.

 

This

Even on my nexus one, there isn't really slow down, but home screen scrolling is definitely a little bit smoother without live wallpapers.... and the n1 is a lot more powerful than the intercept. I would just skip the live wallpapers. Its cool to show it off, but not really useful

 

Yeah +1, i run the live wallpapers on my Samsung Vibrant, with ADW EX with effects, and i can see it gets a little less smooth. And even on my phone it uses some mentionable resources.

Im stubborn though and i still use them on my old phone i didnt though, it made it too choppy and not worth it.

 

The Matrix one recommended by that one guy is working pretty well.

I'll put it this way: this phone lags whether I use a live wallpaper or not

 

lol

have you tried OCing it?

 

Nope. I haven't really looked into it. The CPU in this thing is 800MHz, I believe. Maybe if I don't have to raise my voltage (battery life sucks already ), I'll try bumping it to 1GHz or so.

At some point I'm just going to do a factory reset and just clear everything out. This phone was never a speed demon, but it feels a bit slower than it used to, as far as I can tell. Any good apps for backing up contacts? I don't want to have to enter them all by hand again

 

yeah 1Ghz could help it.

All your contacts are automatically synced to you google account, no need to back them up But you can use Titanium Backup to backup all your apps and contacts.

 

So I've signed up as a tester for an attempted port of CM7 to the Arc.
I'm hoping nothing goes wrong...

 

Nothing can go wrong. You already got past the dangerous part which is unlocking the bootloader. If rom flashing goes bad, just flash another working system image. Back up your personal data.

As mentioned in the thread:

 

Yeah, I know.
But I have crappy luck with stuff like this...

 

Does that "Arc" mean some sort of ROM or the Xperia Arc?

 

Glaxy S II Review on Engadget


Now I just want to know when it's released in USA and PLEASE go to ATT.

 

Nice, good luck!

 

Why is the base from a Sholes handset?? It would be much easier if it were from, say, a Desire HD... Same hardware and similar internal setup.

 

Screen res I think - only Motorola and SE use 480x854.

blagus seems to know his stuff, he's helped out quite a bit around the Arc forum, so I have to presume he knows what's he's doing.

 

Ahh. Ok. Though it's the same resolution, that could be changed in the DHD source when compiling the kernel.

Oh if I only had an Arc. This sounds fun.

 

You can still get involved, I'm sure blagus would appreciate any tips and advice you could offer.

 

I might just PM him.

 

Looks like Google's cleaning house... They've removed several apps from the Market. Mainly the music apps and the game ROM downloaders. I'm looking for more though...

 

What apps precisely? And what for?
Music apps are great? Aren't they?

 

PowerAMP ftw

 

I thought some of you might cringe at some of these

fugly android