Vapers that love Android and Google Chrome

[elmattias]

Go launcher is optimized for ICS. Has been for months.

I use it. No issues at all. For features, customization, and support there's no better launcher.

Apex and nova are ok, but lack so many features.

I'm a go junkie though...launcher, SMS, dialer, task manager, calendar, contacts, twitter widget.. Almost everything.

The latest update allows you to access your movies, music and pictures from the app drawer.. Brilliant!

Just started using speaktoit assistant, and i have to say,.I'm impressed. I actually froze s voice for the time being (there is no deodexed s memo app yet, and it can only save notes there. Speaktoit at least saves them to evernote)

Only things it could use are a wake up command and custom app filtering, and it would blue any other voice assistant away.. Check it out

vaping since: a while
Cigarettes avoided: lots
Money saved: probably not
devices: Yes
(insert crappy graphic and vendor logo here)

really? i hadn't seen it, when i first got an ICS phone (end of may when i got the LTEVO) GOlauncher wasn't optimized and gave the black softkey for menu at the bottom still....i'll have to check into it again.....and yes, GO does make good apps, although the only one i use religiously is GOSMS, as it is just far and away better than the stock SMS app, as for the launcher i had issues with the soft key, and the locker was kinda....dingy....and i really don't like the dialer...but that's a to each his own thing...oh and by the way guys a few devs have ported some jellybean apps to ICS, so if you're rooted, you can get google now....and i must say, its far and away superior to anything i've ever seen with siri....now if i can just get true jellybean........

 

[elmattias]

Guys, can you please tell me what the benefits are of rooting? I don't want to have to fiddle with stuff - once it's up and running do you have to do any fiddling with it?

to be perfectly honest sandy the need for root is becoming less and less as android develops further....however, i say that if you're not at least running on ICS, then rooting can be a tremendous benefit. my personal favorites are still the wifi tethering and CPU underclock/overclock....but the possibilities go well far and beyond that....if you'd like to see some of the benefits, as well as the plethora of apps you can't even run without root access, i'm going to provide you with a few links:

Why Root - Android Wiki

How and Why to Root your Android: 15 Worthwhile Apps : To Root, or not to Root?

AddictiveTips » Blog ArchiveTop 10 Reasons To Root Your Android Phone

20 Apps for Rooted Android Phones : Intro

the first link provided is probably the most technical and in-depth, while the next couple explain it in a little bit more "real world" terminology...after that a few lists and some apps....hope it helps!

 

[DaveP]

Anyone know when ICS is going to get a "Mark all" feature in the stock email app? My HTC with 2.1 came with an email browser that allowed me to choose settings, delete email, and then "mark all". Once they were all checked, I'd uncheck 3 or 4 and then tap "delete".

I had to do a screen at a time individually on ICS and delete them, then load more. My AT&T email server fed me about 50 emails on first use. I understand that there are better apps than the one that comes with ICS. Any recommendations?

 

[skri11a]

Anyone know when ICS is going to get a "Mark all" feature in the stock email app? My HTC with 2.1 came with an email browser that allowed me to choose settings, delete email, and then "mark all". Once they were all checked, I'd uncheck 3 or 4 and then tap "delete".

I had to do a screen at a time individually on ICS and delete them, then load more. My AT&T email server fed me about 50 emails on first use. I understand that there are better apps than the one that comes with ICS. Any recommendations?

I don't have a good answer for you Dave. JellyBean apparently lacks that feature too. I know that for a lot of people, Touchdown is the only thing they'll use for corporate email. I'm honestly not sure if it will work with POP accounts though. I remember K9 was a pretty good alternate when I used it a couple of years ago.

I just flashed JB to my SIII this afternoon. So far, it's great. It kills TouchWiz in smoothness. I'll post more after I play around with it over night.

 

[DaveP]

I don't have a good answer for you Dave. JellyBean apparently lacks that feature too. I know that for a lot of people, Touchdown is the only thing they'll use for corporate email. I'm honestly not sure if it will work with POP accounts though. I remember K9 was a pretty good alternate when I used it a couple of years ago.

I just flashed JB to my SIII this afternoon. So far, it's great. It kills TouchWiz in smoothness. I'll post more after I play around with it over night.

So you think K9 is worth looking at? I'm fine with the stock email app. It's just a pain when you accumulate lots of emails and have to select each one, delete each one you marked, and then go to the trash folder and do it again. I liked the Mark All feature in 2.1 Eclair. I and many others don't understand why the included email app was defeatured in ICS.

Maybe HTC added some features. The home screen weather clock updated your location as you moved from city to city, also, and had some nice visual effects as well. After my upgrade to a new phone, I'm going through the standard search for the right apps to customize it. I'll eventually find all the right ones and things will be good again.

 

[The Doctor]

K9 is the best email app since ever!

(as I am on the Dev team my opinion may be skewed )

Also: go locker is one I don't use. Or the keyboard. Or the clock. Widget locker, custom Swype and uccw for those

Considering a ROM with Google now, but to be honest, the only s3 or jellybean app ice been impressed with is the modified dropbox apk that gave me an extra 50 gigs. Lol

There is a jellybean based ROM that has it (gnow) for my phone, from the same dev that made my current ROM... I'll flash eventually, but for whatever reason he didn't add the bravia engine into that one, so I'm torn.

My general rule is to wait a month between ROM release and flashing... this is tempting. I'm really digging speaktoit assistant...she sings me soft kitty...

Vaping since: a while
Cigarettes avoided: lots
Money saved: probably not
Devices: Yes
(insert crappy graphic and vendor logo here)

 

[DaveP]

I downloaded K-9 and it is good. I can select all and then unselect the emails I want to keep for a while, then delete. Good app!

Jelly Bean is supposed to have an Iphone Siri killer app builit-in (Google Now, I think it's called). I have tried a couple of the assistant apps so far and find the Google app that came with my Nexus to be sufficient for quick emails and texts and making quick phone calls by speaking the name.

Comparison Google Voice Search vs Siri. Google response times beat Siri hands down.
http://www.androidauthority.com/sam...e-voice-seach-voice-assistant-face-off-99931/

We're beginning to enter the Captain Kirk era. Computer! Where are we! Plot a course to the beach!

I'm a programmer of sorts. How difficult is it to move from various other languages to Java? I'm a past programmer who delved in Visual Basic, Pascal, C ++, Dbase, Clipper, Foxpro, very light assembler routines, and wrote business apps around town. I wrote one that my multi-national employer distributed to 10,000 fellow field service engineers in my company. I was a field engineer who recognized the need for an app by viewing from the bottom up how things worked. Home office agreed after field testing my program with the guys who worked in their area.

I wouldn't mind getting into app development for Android. I wrote a shareware program back in the 80s/90s that received some mild recognition and generated a respectable number of registrations over a couple of years. How likely is the average guy to make $1000 or more a month on an app or two? Do free apps generate significant income from ads?

 

[sandybeach]

to be perfectly honest sandy the need for root is becoming less and less as android develops further....however, i say that if you're not at least running on ICS, then rooting can be a tremendous benefit. my personal favorites are still the wifi tethering and CPU underclock/overclock....but the possibilities go well far and beyond that....if you'd like to see some of the benefits, as well as the plethora of apps you can't even run without root access, i'm going to provide you with a few links:

Why Root - Android Wiki

How and Why to Root your Android: 15 Worthwhile Apps : To Root, or not to Root?

AddictiveTips » Blog ArchiveTop 10 Reasons To Root Your Android Phone

20 Apps for Rooted Android Phones : Intro

the first link provided is probably the most technical and in-depth, while the next couple explain it in a little bit more "real world" terminology...after that a few lists and some apps....hope it helps!

Thanks, Elm! That helped. So if I root, can I still just use the Play Store apps only? I don't like using non-market apps; since I don't know coding, I have no clue if they are safe or not.

 

[sandybeach]

I downloaded K-9 and it is good. I can select all and then unselect the emails I want to keep for a while, then delete. Good app!

Jelly Bean is supposed to have an Iphone Siri killer app builit-in (Google Now, I think it's called). I have tried a couple of the assistant apps so far and find the Google app that came with my Nexus to be sufficient for quick emails and texts and making quick phone calls by speaking the name.

Comparison Google Voice Search vs Siri. Google response times beat Siri hands down.
Face-off: S Voice vs Google Voice Search (Video)

We're beginning to enter the Captain Kirk era. Computer! Where are we! Plot a course to the beach!

I'm a programmer of sorts. How difficult is it to move from various other languages to Java? I'm a past programmer who delved in Visual Basic, Pascal, C ++, Dbase, Clipper, Foxpro, very light assembler routines, and wrote business apps around town. I wrote one that my multi-national employer distributed to 10,000 field service engineers in my company. I wouldn't mind getting into app development for Android. I wrote a shareware program back in the 80s/90s that received some mild recognition and generated a respectable number of registrations over a couple of years. How likely is the average guy to make $1000 or more a month on an app or two? Do free apps generate significant income from ads?

Dave, just guessing here, but I think you could easily make that much money. My kid had to learn mobile for the Facebook Mobile Team he is on -- he said it is all the same basically, code is code.

I personally will pay for an app that I like the free version of, just to give the developers some money. And especially if it makes the ads go away.

I also wonder if a lot more money is generated by apps that sell something - you know, like games, where you have to buy power ups and gadgets and that sort of thing.

I've met people who don't make a lot of money but they are addicted to gaming and pay money for stuff that I would never consider spending money on. I think that would be your target audience

 

[elmattias]

Thanks, Elm! That helped. So if I root, can I still just use the Play Store apps only? I don't like using non-market apps; since I don't know coding, I have no clue if they are safe or not.

Yes you can still exclusively use play store apps...to be honest root really isn't required for non-market apps if you have astro installed...the big one for apps and root though is titanium backup...so you can make a complete backup of your apps on an sd card

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

[DaveP]

Dave, just guessing here, but I think you could easily make that much money. My kid had to learn mobile for the Facebook Mobile Team he is on -- he said it is all the same basically, code is code.

I personally will pay for an app that I like the free version of, just to give the developers some money. And especially if it makes the ads go away.

I also wonder if a lot more money is generated by apps that sell something - you know, like games, where you have to buy power ups and gadgets and that sort of thing.

I've met people who don't make a lot of money but they are addicted to gaming and pay money for stuff that I would never consider spending money on. I think that would be your target audience

The hard part about programming and creating something out of your head is conceiving the idea. I was a member of ASP (Association of Shareware Programmers) back in the 80s. I needed an appointment calendar at work and the only way to do that was a word processor template and that was manual tedium. So, I developed a calendar program that allowed direct entry into the day fields, just like you would do with a pencil on a paper calendar. I wrote it in Turbo Pascal and compiled it into an EXE file and wrote a help file and manual. I offered it as shareware program with a $25 registration fee that included a printed manual and an unlocked version on disc that didn't pester you with "If you like this program please support the author and register" message that popped up ever 2 or 3 uses at launch.

I probably made $500 or $600 bucks out of registrations, but I wrote it for myself, anyway. Back in those days there weren't many outlets where people could search and download. There wasn't an internet so bulletin boards were about the only place to find downloadable programs. These days millions of people are in the app stores at any one time. The market should be huge, even if there's more competition.

Your son is right. Languages are similar and differ mostly in syntax and usage of parameters and the way they are passed back and forth between modules, functions, procedures, and processes. Once you get the syntax and usage right, you are back in the game.

 

[DaveP]

So, now that Apple has received a favorable decision in the courts, what happens to the Android interface we have learned to love? Pinch/Zoom? Dragging documents? Will we not be able to swipe icons and use settings to swipe apps out of memory and close them?

I think the courts are granting a monopoly to Apple on it's interface. The counter suits will be interesting.

http://www.zdnet.com/samsung-apple-verdict-the-aftermath-7000003166/

The hardware design ruling only affects Samsung but the UI feature patent infringement may be applicable to all of Android. As CNET points out, the three major UI patents ruled to be infringed are:

'381 patent

rubber band effect when scrolling to bottom of page
dragging documents
pinch/zoom
twist/rotate

'915 patent

Distinguishing between a single-touch scroll and a multi-touch action (pinch/zoom)

'163 patent

Double-tap the screen to zoom in or center a web page, photo, etc.

 

[DaveP]

Dragging, zooming, and stretching icons and text are all Xerox inventions developed at Xerox PARC, down the road from Apple. Steve Jobs took a guided tour of the facility back in the 70s and liked the windowed computer interfaces he saw under a non-disclosure agreement while there.

He later invited the 3 main scientists who developed all of that to dinner at his home and offered them jobs at Apple. In the agreement, he agreed to implement their ideas in new products that the new guys were to develop. Xerox ignored those little jewels of the personal computer, saying the technology didn't fit into the mainstream thrust of their product development and current sales strategy. Xerox invented the personal computer, the mouse, the graphical interface, along with all its iconic tools, and the laser printer. These tools were used in house at PARC to develop other products and display the drawings. Apple turned it all into business and personal computer products for the masses. The Apple Lisa and the Apple McIntosh came from those Xerox Scientists who left and went to work for Apple.

Xerox sued Apple but the courts decided that proof of invention only counted if you had applied for a patent. Subsequent to that suit, Xerox patented everything in sight, whether or not it applied to their business or not! Lesson learned! I worked for Xerox from 1973 until a couple of years ago and experienced that little fiasco from the inside.

 

[The Doctor]

What Apple neglected to account for is that Android is open source.

Let them file their claims, end users will only be affected if they allow themselves to be.

Vaping since: a while
Cigarettes avoided: lots
Money saved: probably not
Devices: Yes
(insert crappy graphic and vendor logo here)

 

[sandybeach]

Dragging, zooming, and stretching icons and text are all Xerox inventions developed at Xerox PARC, down the road from Apple. Steve Jobs took a guided tour of the facility back in the 70s and liked the windowed computer interfaces he saw under a non-disclosure agreement while there.

He later invited the 3 main scientists who developed all of that to dinner at his home and offered them jobs at Apple. In the agreement, he agreed to implement their ideas in new products that the new guys were to develop. Xerox ignored those little jewels of the personal computer, saying the technology didn't fit into the mainstream thrust of their product development and current sales strategy. Xerox invented the personal computer, the mouse, the graphical interface, along with all its iconic tools, and the laser printer. These tools were used in house at PARC to develop other products and display the drawings. Apple turned it all into business and personal computer products for the masses. The Apple Lisa and the Apple McIntosh came from those Xerox Scientists who left and went to work for Apple.

Xerox sued Apple but the courts decided that proof of invention only counted if you had applied for a patent. Subsequent to that suit, Xerox patented everything in sight, whether or not it applied to their business or not! Lesson learned! I worked for Xerox from 1973 until a couple of years ago and experienced that little fiasco from the inside.

Did you read Steve Jobs' biography? I really enjoyed it -- that Xerox story was in there; of course twisted around a bit, though.

 

[sandybeach]

What Apple neglected to account for is that Android is open source.

Let them file their claims, end users will only be affected if they allow themselves to be.

Vaping since: a while
Cigarettes avoided: lots
Money saved: probably not
Devices: Yes
(insert crappy graphic and vendor logo here)

Open source - it's how I dream of the world going.

 

[DaveP]

What Apple neglected to account for is that Android is open source.

Let them file their claims, end users will only be affected if they allow themselves to be.

Vaping since: a while
Cigarettes avoided: lots
Money saved: probably not
Devices: Yes
(insert crappy graphic and vendor logo here)

Kind of makes you wonder if OpenOffice3 will suffer the same fate one day. It's open source, but supported and organized by Sun Microsystems and Oracle, among others. Android looks to be in a pickle that only begins to exhibit liability if a company adopts it. It will be interesting to see how the suit pans out as Samsung responds in the courts.

OpenOffice3 is MS Office friendly enough for an MS Office user to jump in and be productive quickly.

If click and drag and some of the other interface attributes of Android are copyright violations, Apple may have something to fear from Microsoft or vice versa. Maybe Samsung should have pointed out in the suit that they didn't create the interface, only used it as an open source OS for their hardware.

 

[sandybeach]

Hey, when I was a Chicago chauffeur, I used to drive this guy Gene Munster around a lot; He is an Apple analyst. Wish I would have listened to him when he was bullish on AAPL when it was at $160

From ZDNet:

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, the most bullish analyst on Apple, didn't go put much weight on the patent victory. He said:

We believe that Samsung is likely to make software modifications to devices to work around the patented software features in question. For devices that infringe on design patents, we believe those devices may no longer be sold in the US; however, it does not appear that newer devices, including the Galaxy SIII are impacted. Net-net, we do not believe Samsung will see any meaningful interruption, likely only minor interruption, in device sales in the US... We believe that it is likely that other lawsuits between Apple and other handset makers move toward a settlement, given the precedent of the Samsung case. In these cases, we note that software changes are the most likely competitive outcome (aside from monetary exchanges). We do not believe further settlements are likely to hamstring Android in any serious way.

My take: Munster is dead-on. Unless the Galaxy S3 is hit, the patent loss to Samsung is manageable. Android will continue its March unless Apple finds a way to stop it in emerging markets like China.

 

[DaveP]

Companies go to war and spend lots of money trying to gain competitive advantage and protect what they believe are proprietary technologies. When you have multi-national companies fighting patent rights in various countries, the lines get blurred.

Lawyers make lots of money and the prices go up, the more these companies spend on lawsuits. Eventually, they can lose the competitive advantage if they spend their investors' dollars on lawyers and court actions and the investors start to complain that their dividend payments are being eroded by such actions.

A lot of this is saber rattling. Billions spent on lawsuits only serve to reduce money available for research and development. It won't last. Apple and Samsung will eventually just glare at each other and stop the fight.

 

[MrPicC]

OH HEY FRIENDS!
Fully bricked my phone tonight. No odin/download mode, no boot to anything, only blue light.. Tried all the tricks and I can say I screwed myself.. Now to cancel go to another carrier or stick with sprint.. Tough tough choice tomorrow..