All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

I don't know how Android handles host file but I remembered I got greedy on the iOS (IPod Touch 3g), and put a whole bunch of entries in host file and it ended up slowing the browser to a crawl because for each domain it hits, it has to check the list from top to bottom.

It literally felt like I was on dial up, it's fixed after I took out 2/3 or so of the entries in there.

 

With that hosts file I can browse pages almost as quick as on a real PC. Android must handle it differently?

 

Visualized: Nokia R&D spending, almost 3 times its peers -- Engadget

Aava Mobile reportedly set to reveal Medfield-based Android / MeeGo phone at MWC -- Engadget

All that money and someone else is going to beat them to the market with Meego...

 

I wonder what the heck they are spending all that money on(ie. what is the R&D). I mean it's measured in BILLIONS. We don't see any handsets with revolutionary hardwares, heck in comparison to HTC, it's like Nokia isn't even releasing handsets in the US.

 

Even over here they're barely doing anything of any note...

 

They invest a lot in infrastructure development, aren't they (Nokia Siemens Networks) competitors to Ericsson AB (Not Sony Ericsson) in that field? Unlike Apple, which just designs phones for the most part.

 

Nokia Siemens Networks ≠ Nokia in the same way that Ericsson AB ≠ Sony Ericsson.

 

Sony Ericsson isn't on the list, nor is Nokia-Siemens Networks (which is a 50-50 venture, and has annual sales of $22 billion so I'm guessing it has a large R&D budget which is all consolidated to Nokia). I'm assuming all of the companies R&D departments include funding for their respective joint ventures. Nokia invests in many diverse fields compared to their more "singly focused" competitors. The idea that they spend more and get less (or worse) results is not relevant. We don't know how much they are funding each of their divisions. So we cannot judge the merits of their vast investments. Nokia is an integral participant in the worldwide wireless network industry, not just yet another smartphone designer. They're more of a conglomerate than their nearby competitors, so of course their R&D will be higher.

The idea of "They spend so much yet produce nothing of worth!" is only true if you look at smartphone operating systems. They spend so much more, because they do so much more...

 

Last time I checked, there weren't any other mobile phone manufacturers with the initials 'SE'...



The diagram is of phone manufacturers only.

 

Ah, I was looking at the 2008 chart, which was not broken down by category sadly. It does appear that Symbian funding is higher than necessary...

 

Given that the values for Motorola and Samsung are specifically for their mobile devices arms, I was working on the assumption that the same applied with Nokia but that is very much an assumption.


On a different note, I came really properly close to bricking my Defy today.
It was not fun.

 

With a locked bootloader, how does one do that?

 

There are 'undowngradeable' ROMs out there, I flashed one and it wouldn't work and I couldn't get into recovery.
I could boot into bootloader mode and flash other ROMs but they were even worse, they wouldn't boot at all.

In the end it turned out that on this new ROM, it's a little bit different to get into recovery mode.
When I finally did, get into recovery and wiped the data, thankfully it started working.


There are worse things can happen, if you lose battery halfway through flashing it reverts into a weird mode whereby it won't charge and constantly displays a message about the battery being low.
The only known fix is to wire in a 5v supply in parallel with the battery and re-flash.

 

Interesting. I remember those unlucky folks that flashed the signed bootloader, unknowingly, to their Galaxy Tab and now they're stuck with it....

Same with the loss of power on Samsung phones. I have a jig built, just in case I ever have that happen.

 

I'm considering buying a cheap battery and fixing up something a bit more permanent, that way if it happens again, I don't have to faff with fitting the wires into the battery contacts without them slipping.

 

HAL i noticed geotagging is enabled when using the camera. How do you disable it?

The satellite dish icon keeps blinking and it geotagged one of my photos. I cannot find a setting at all.

 

@gdansk: I was right, that figure of €2.9bn (~$3.93bn) dollars that Nokia are spending on R&D is purely handset-related.
They're spending a whole other €2bn (~$2.71bn) on NSN.



Taken from GSMArena

 

You can disable the GPS from the notification dropdown, and under settings-->Location and Security--> uncheck use wireless networks. That should stop geotagging.

 

Nokia needs to stop funding Symbian so heavily... NOW. Move to MeeGo, and send Symbian's R&D money to the MeeGo devs! Symbian is making Nokia less and less relevant, in a quick fashion. Also, for the amount of money they pour into Symbian, it should be MUCH better than it is. 850Mln Euros is a LOT of money for a defunct OS. That graph there makes me wonder about Nokia's real future. They have a killer OS with MeeGo. They need to capitalize on that, like, right now.

 

What's stopping them from releasing MeeGo? The last demo I saw of the OS seems pretty well done and complete. Is it still in the testing stage? Or does Intel not wanting to be beaten to the market refuse to let Nokia release the OS first?

 

Probably mostly the latter, with a bit of the former. Considering that Intel hasn't made a consumer phone before, and they're relying on Nokia for now, they have to wait.


After really watching the Honeycomb demo, I really want a nook color. I do hope that the rumors surrounding it (B&N priced it at a loss in order to recoup via eBook sales, but rooters using it as a general tablet aren't buying eBooks) being "recalled from stores" and locked down is false. Not that it'll stop anyone anyway but still, thought it was cool.

 

I'm unconvinced.

Until it makes it to market and has to mix it with Android and iOS, I don't think it can be deemed good or not.

Ineptitude?

I don't think it's got anything to do with Intel as some nobody company is supposedly set to release a dual-boot MeeGo/Android handset at MWC.
Plus, isn't MeeGo open source? Surely if it's open source, there's not much Intel could do to stop Nokia from releasing handsets, is there?

 

Bad move - if it's true...

 

Yes ive disabled that and i still get the satellite icon.

 

Hmm, Sony Ericsson roadshow on the 15th.
Free food and they'll be showing 3 new handsets - so that's the PSP phone ( they gave it away by saying they were hooking a PS3 to a cinema screen), the 'Neo' and something else.

I would imagine that these are the phones they'll be showing off in a pre-MWC press conference on the 13th.


Oh and they're going to be giving away an unspecified number of these new handsets too...

 

Kinda OT, but this is the Android thread.

What do you guys think of the HTC Aria? I bought an almost brand new one on eBay for $180, which is like $50 cheaper than the others. It had only been listed for under an hour.

 

me personal I would not get a phone off ebay... last 2 times i have done it they broke within the few weeks and one of them had a banned imei even though the seller had 99.9 percent rating.. if you can see whats around you on the cregslist so you can actually see what your buying first hand

 

I paid with PayPal, so I can get my money back if there are an issues.

 

I know it's not really on-topic but here's a bit more Nokia-related news:

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop rallies troops in brutally honest 'burning platform' memo? -- Engadget

 

That was a very well put memo by Mr. Elop.

Your earlier comment about MeeGo not being a killer platform because it isn't in the market yet, and hasn't had time to mix with Android and iOS is arguable. Yes, it's not out yet. Yes, they've taken wayy to long on development time. BUT... the same could be said about WebOS. WebOS is a platform without compare, but due to it being marketed wrong, and sad hardware, it's sales were lackluster to say the very least. Nokia's reason for delaying MeeGo thus far has been due to the very things Elop was referring to in every other paragraph... "ecosystems". Qt has an amazing developer backing, and when Nokia releases MeeGo it will explode. It's amazing software, and because it's Nokia, it's also amazing hardware. Once those financial and development ducks are in a row, like Elop plans on doing, Nokia can only go upward.

 

This is the major android thread so I thought I would post here.... I got inspired from a youtubes video and desided to make my own Car Media dock.... aside from the rubber bands (My case gets here on thrusday from amazon so they will be gone!) what do you guys think?
Twitpic - Share photos on Twitter

 

That's kinda cool.. What is that, Honeycomb? And kudos for showing Cake on the screen! Love Cake.

 

I agree. For one, that would end a lot of the uniqueness that Nokia invokes in terms of hardware is concerned. And, if Microsoft agrees to let Nokia do their own thing with Windows Phone 7, that undermines Microsoft's ability to directly push updates and control the experience end to end Apple style. I also can't see people accustomed to Symbian's power and customizability falling in love with a restrictive OS that can't multi-task.

Microsoft has to get the ball rolling on updating and evolving Windows Phone 7 or its dead in the water. Period.

HTC Aria's a decent little phone. Basically a HD mini but with Win Mo swapped out for Android, it's pretty good, esp. if you aren't too keen on carrying around a large screen phone.

That's pretty cool, esp. since you used a Nook Color..I thought it would be a smartphone in there.

 

My smartphone is personaly too small for me to deal with while driving..the nook is the perfect tablet for a car and on the market imo... its not that expensive, can be overclocked to 1.1ghz if you want to.. its fast enough to do EVERYTHING from videos to flash and eventually hulu and netflix.. im using a mortplayer and mortplayer widgets, simi folder and clock and some volume widget..... MORTPLAYER is perfect for a car!!! its got a included interface deigned to run in car mode and its perfect

 

How well does Nook Color run Flash content?
And nice car dock.

 

Well from others running 2.2 they say its great! I haven't flashed a 2.2 build yet because I want to make sure my device always works as I need it for school

 

I see. My Galaxy S runs flash just fine but sometimes it chokes while running high bitrate 480p content. (ie. hulu).

Oh yeah, you can watch hulu using Flash already. The fading/mouse hovering video controls just isn't the most intuitive thing for a touch screen device but it definitely works.

 

Yes it was, surprisingly frank.
Though I still don't share your positive outlook for Nokia.


If you don't mind me asking, on what basis do you say that MeeGo has great developer backing?
Though it kinda doesn't matter IMO as it's no guarantee of success - Apple didn't need it to make the iPhone a success and whilst they have a great deal of developer support now, that's because the OS was already successful, not the other way round.

As for your comment about Nokia's hardware, I disagree.
Their top handful of devices may be ok but they're no more than that, none of them really stand out in any meaningful way, they're certainly not putting the competition to shame. And you only have to go back a short while ( or just ignore the N8, C6 and C7 from their current line-up) and most of what they're putting out is pretty poor.
I mean, there's not one handset Nokia have out just now that could go toe-to-toe with your Galaxy S and unless they surprise us all on Sunday, all that's going to happen is they'll end up even further behind.


But first and foremost, until they get a MeeGo device to the market, none of this makes any difference - it could have a telepathic control system and make it's users seem irresistible to the opposite gender, it makes zero difference until there's something people can actually buy and from what's said in the memo, that's currently still not that close to happening.
For all his honesty and good ideas, Elop's got a lot of work if he wants to make Nokia relevant again. They're a proverbial super-tanker, you can't click your fingers and turn it around, so there's a lot of work needed to get them on the right track and every day they spend doing that is another day spent losing ground.

 

Penguin Skiing is a fun app, amazing my Vibrant runs it at 5 times the FPS vs. my old Aria.

 

Tried and failed at getting 2.3 on my phone

SPL/Radio issues and im not dealing with changing that stuff

2.2 just fine

 

That seems to be a common thing for 2.3 custom ROM's. Especially CM7 Nightly builds. The radios cause pretty bad battery drain.

 

My phone is now running on 2.2, do you guys think an app killer is still necessary?!

 

MX Moto Lite, funny game.

Not really... but i still have ATK installed incase i wanna kill something unnecessary.

 

Alright, thanks!
I'm quite surprised. It runs much better with 2.2! The keyboard has also improved!
Anyone with a Samsung Galaxy S?! Should I reapply OCLF?!

 

Is it a custom rom?

Did you undo it when flashing to 2.2?

AFAIK OCLF only converts RFS to EXT2. What you want is EXT4.

Im using the voodoo kernel and it does it to ext4

 

I have the standard Rom and yes I took it off before applying the update!

 

I use one sometimes, check out Mini task Manager, best one ive found nice and simple.

Download Mini Task Manager for your Android phone on AppBrain

 

Have you tried "Automatic Task Manager" , very similar but it end`s the selected task`s when you phone goes into standby and tells you how much memory it has saved when you wake the phone up.

Automatic Task Killer ~ Android Application v3.0 By S.Tachibana | Tools

 

You don't really need a task killer on most Android phones, and using one can do more harm than good. Just throwing it out there.

 

I love the "WF & Clock widget" , if you dont have an HTC phone.

https://slideme.org/application/wf-clock-widget