Favorite Android Apps (1 Viewer)

[Parker Clack]

I had just grabbed Volume Control which basically does the same thing.
 
Thanks for the heads up though.
 

 

[Hanson]

If you want to see how your android phone handles 3D games, Gameloft is offering free demos:
http://wapshop.gameloft.com/wifi/tryandbuy/
Heads up -- the demo isn't that big, but the data you have to download after the install is HUGE. Make sure you have wifi and plenty of juice (maybe even just let it run overnight plugged in).

 

[Parker Clack]

Its been awhile since I have talked about some new apps that I have downloaded.
 
Edwin - Nice voice controll app to use along side of Vlingo.
 
Battery Booster - I like it because it turns off my Wifi or Bluetooth when the screen goes to sleep and then
starts back up when you wake the phone back up.
 
MySettings - Nice all in one place to turn off your GPS, set your Auto Rotate, Auto Sync, Screen Brightness and more.
 
LockBot - Nice lock screen option that lets you set it to Froyo, iPhone, Hero, Eclair, X10 and Galaxy.
 
No Lock - Allows you to turn off the locking feature of your phone so you don't have to go through your lock screen each time your screen
turns off.
 

 

[Hanson]

I am using the stock Android keyboard as my default keyboard, and it is a tremendous upgrade over the stock HTC keyboard.
 
It does predictive text and spell checking, but unlike the stock HTC keyboard, it adds spaces after words. If you add punctuation, it will backspace and add it. I can tap out messages very quickly using this keyboard, and since I'm choosing the words, I rarely need to go back and correct myself. And unlike the stock HTC keyboard, it doesn't go overboard with the suggested words and requiring you to add everything you type into the library. The stock HTC keyboard annoyed me with its constant interruptions to add words to the library, many of which I didn't want. And not only does the Android keyboard have a nicer and richer library of words to choose from, it scans your contacts so that if you start typing a contact's name, it comes up as a suggested word. On top of that, the feel and responsiveness are miles better than stock HTC. I don't hit as many wrong keys as I used to, even in portrait mode.
 
Even better: I can do all of these things one-handed now. So I don't go into landscape mode that much when typing since it works very well in portrait mode.
 
Added bonus: The keyboards appear to interact with the text to speech feature. When I use text to speech with stock HTC, it will not capitalize at the beginning of sentences. With Android, it capitalizes the beginning of sentences and seems to do a much better job of picking the correct words. So not only will your typing improve, but the voice recognition improves as well.
 
There is one little bug that is annoying but not a dealbreaker for me -- when inputting text into some forums, the keyboard will start chugging and slowing down occasionally. I don't know why this happens, but I just power through it. I don't think I will be able to beat a seasoned Swype user or hard keyboard vet in speed tests, but the is the least frustrating keyboard I've ever used. And that includes my Touch Pro 2 keyboard, generally regarded as the best slide out keyboard ever made.
 
Directions for downloading an installing the keyboard in the link:
 
http://www.goodandevo.net/2010/08/stock-froyo-keyboard-available-for-htc-evo-4g.html

 

[safesinger]

I picked up the Samsung Interceptor about 2 weeks ago.
The apps I enjoy are.
 
Pandora
ArcMedia
Wifi Analyzer
ACV (Comic book reader)
Tv.com
Mort Player (Audio Books)
Weather Channel
Verizon Fios DVR Manager.
Google Sky Map
 
I love the phone it self it has a speedy 800mhz processor and also a pull out Keyboard.
Not that the touch feature isn't a cool thing just stinks for texting.
I was using a HTC Touch pro with Windows 6.5 and it was touch only no pull out KB was rough.

 

[Parker Clack]

Hanson:
 
Looking at the stock Froyo keyboard for EVO I noticed that many of the people using to display the keyboard
using some sort of note pad.
 
../../../image/id/364607/width/1000/height/800
 
What program is this that has the Save, Camera, QR Mark Icons below the
message box? It says New Note in the header. I couldn't find anything like it in
the Android Market.
 
Parker

 

[Hanson]

I got nothing, Parker. Maybe you'd have better luck on the XDA-Dev forum.
 
BTW, here's a sweet little program that fixes a small flaw in many Android apps: SDRescan.
 
The issue is, when I add music or other media to the SD card, it won't show up in some of the players. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but if you restart the phone, it will show up when the system scans the SD card on bootup. Which is all fine and dandy, but you don't want to go restarting the phone every time you want to a single song. SDRescan reindexes the SD card contents so that all apps can see all files.

 

[safesinger]

Do all the EVO's lack a KB? I am with Sprint so not sure if there are other EVO's with a KB.
The Samsung Epic 4g is identical to the EVO in every way but has a Keyboard and uses an Amoled screen it is 4.0 inch screen instead of the EVO's 4.3 but when I was looking at both side by side the Epic took the EVO out in picture quality with ease.

 

[Hanson]

There are no Evos with keyboards. The only Sprint Android option with a keyboard is the Epic (correction: the Samsung Moment and its successors all have keyboards, but I would not recommend them) . Verizon has a few Android phones with hardware keyboards, most notably the Moto Droid 2. The G2 has a slide out keyboard and is coming on TMo. AT&T has a very small line up of Android phones, with the Captivate being pretty much the only option. With Windows Phone 7 being GSM only until the second half of 2011, it looks like AT&T won't be doing much in the way of Android while Verizon appears to be going all in with Android.

 

[Hanson]

Dolphin HD 3.0 is out, and it seems to have been optimized some for froyo.  I noticed that the pages load faster, and a lot of the slowdowns and choppy scrolling that would occur as pages loaded are gone now.  The lag I would occasionally encounter with gestures seems to have been fixed.
 
But while these are good enough reasons to upgrade, the big thing for me is the new window shade feature for tabs.  Just like the notification bar, when you touch to the top of the screen, you can pull down a shade that shows you all your tabs with thumbnails and descriptions.  You can then swipe between the tabs or close them altogether.  It also shows you the notification bar which you can pull down as well without having to go to the home page first.
 
The only drawback to this feature is that if you touch anywhere near the top of the screen, the shade activates.  So if there's a link at the very top of the browser, you have to zoom in so that it clears the very top of the page. 
 
Still, I use the tabs all the time in Dolphin, so this is great feature.  It's also really convenient for me to check for notifications without having to leave Dolphin for the home page.

 

[Parker Clack]

Hanson:
 
Is the Window Shade something that is enabled on start up? For the life of me I don't see anything different if I touch the top of the screen.
 

 

[Hanson]

I have checked every setting in Dolphin HD, and I have no idea how to enable or disable it. I didn't do anything to enable it on my side, so I assumed it was a function of 3.0 out of the box.

 

[Hanson]

Well Parker, you may be the lucky one. The window shade I was gushing over is proving to be more of a problem than a feature.
 
It used to be that there was no quick way to navigate from tab to tab in Dolphin HD. When you hit Menu, it would show all the tabs, but you could only see two or maybe three at a time.
 
In 3.0, as I discovered today, you can hit Menu and then swipe the tab row left and right, which basically does what the shade does sans the page screenshot (it even gives you to access the the notification bar). So while there isn't much more functionality in the shade, the shade keeps activating when I try to touch a link at the top the screen. So it's become annoying now, and I have no way of turning it off.

 

[Hanson]

Parker, I think I've figured out your issue. You have to be fullscreen mode to access the window shade. If you can see the notification bar, then you're not in fullscreen mode.

 

[Parker Clack]

Ok, now I see what you are talking about. Thanks for the feedback on the browser.
 
I still haven't found out what program they are using I mentioned earlier. I posted over on xda and android central but no response.
 
If you find out anything let me know.
 

 

[Parker Clack]

I just downloaded a very cool app called Wifi File Explorer http://www.appbrain.com/app/wifi-file-explorer/com.dooblou.WiFiFileExplorer that allows you to connect to your phone via Wifi instead of having to connect over a USB cable.

Check it out.

 

[Hanson]

Thanks for the tip, Parker. However, I followed the advice of the commenters and downloaded Websharing instead. And then I bought it. The reason was mainly for multiple file uploading. I had been doing this through eStrongs, and while that worked, it uploaded quite slowly -- I estimate it was working at 5mbps or so (which was still a huge improvement over Astro). Websharing shows you the upload speed, which is 15-17mpbs. So I'm getting a huge bump in the speed department. That alone was worth the $3 fee -- however, Websharing allows me to stream music directly from my phone, which is pretty cool. There is a video streaming option, but it doesn't work that well -- since none of my videos are optimized for streaming, they have to fully download first, but even a 1MB file hangs forever anyway. There is also a beta DAV file sharing component that doesn't work for me right now, but it could be my settings. If it does start working, it will allow drag and drop file transfers, which would be excellent.

Websharing also has a nicer interface, but really only works fully with IE.

My biggest issue with the program is that the transfers slow to a crawl or simply shut down if the screen goes off. So I still have to leave a program open that forces the screen to stay on. If it's plugged in, it will keep the screen on, but only if it's plugged in. The other pet peeve is that you can't multiple file select using shift+click -- you can only ctrl+click to multiple select one at a time. I suppose once the DAV sharing issues are worked out, this won't be an issue.

I'm listening to a playlist from my phone right now through my htpc, with shuffle and repeat functions available. I'm pretty sure there are multiple Android programs that allow you to do this, but this is pretty sweet for now -- I used to plug the phone into a boom box with an aux port if we wanted to listen to tunes on the phone, but now I can do it through the receiver with the added benefit that I can still use the phone untethered while that's going on.

So it's $2 more, but well worth it for me.

 

[Parker Clack]

Hanson:

Thanks for the tip. I will check it out.

 

[Hanson]

I haven't tried it, but PowerAmp is on the Market now, and it will play FLAC and ALAC files in addition to the gamut of file formats most media player handle.

 

[Shane D]

ive been using power amp all week. i really like the interface. much better than stock htc players and i even like it more than doubletwist. very nice player.