Android phone OS lover

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#41

Mrs. Shooter just picked up a Motorola Droid Pro the day after Christmas. She loves the blackberry style “hard” keyboard instead of the touch screen. Of course, you do lose screen size with it, but it is a very capable phone, light years ahead of my original, first generation Motorola Droid.

She is loving all the free downloadable apps. I’m excited to see what she’s found when I get home tonight (I’ve been out of town most of this week).

I’m finally understanding widgets versus apps myself. I wish there was a better tutorial for that somewhere. Does anyone know of one?

~Shooter Out

#42

Thanks! I think I’ll take a trip to the store to go play with an HTC this afternoon.

#43

desire is great, but just a few more two bits,

check out the nexus S. basically the new version of the Desire. which is really just a re-branded nexus one. a little confusing.

The S will have a better screen, faster GPU, a decent camera, which is saying something for an android phone. theres built in NFC Which wont really matter for a year or so but will be fun after that. basically tech allowing you pay for stuff with your cell phone. and best of all it has straight on vanilla Android; which means you will get all the newest upgrades, as soon as google releases them and not six months down the line when your carrier decides. (your millage may very)

downside would be Some people really like HTC sense, and you won’t get that skin, and there is no micro sd expansion slot which is fine to me cause 16gb built in is more than enough, but if you need more than that you wont be able to upgrade.

both great phones though.

#44

actually, HTC Desire is almost the same phone as Nexus One, but Nexus S is a different beast.

Nexus S is no longer made by HTC, but by Samsung. Being from Taiwan, I am having difficulties recommanding anything made by Samsung at this point. But if you like Nexus S, you can go ahead and get it. But it is not the re-branded Nexus One, as it is OEMed to a different company in a different country (the one that begged everyone else in the industries to set the price on DRAM and Displays during the 2008 market crash because they were way over producing and they weren’t going to make it, but as soon as the market came back the company that came begging went to rat out everyone else to the US and EU, getting a full pardon while the CEOs of other companies gets arrested in the US and faces harsh fines from EU).

#45

sorry guess i was unclear

HTC desire is the nexus 1 with HTC sense skin on the Android operating system

Nexus S made by Samsung The new Google approved phone which runs Android proper.

god this gets confusing, maybe i’ll just recommend the iPhone…

Kidding

#46

Rather than google approved, it’d be clearer to just say it is the google phone (phone itself is google branded), that’s ODMed to other companies. Like iphone isn’t manufactured by apple, instead it’s OEMed by Foxxcon and many other companies. The difference is with apple these companies don’t get to design, they just assemble.

#47

is anyone else using TV Show Favs app for the android?
http://www.tvshowfavs.com/#

or

i am lovin it. i can tell which episodes i have seen of a show and it will keep track of the ones i have missed. including all 697 original Dr Who Episodes.

check it out.

#48

interesting. would it give reminders when a new episode is coming?

#49

HTC Droid Incredible saved man from bullet

http://techd.in/hardware/htc-droid-incredible-helps-save-a-man’s-life-from-gunshot/

yes, future armour, recycled phones.

#50

is there anything Android phones cant do? :stuck_out_tongue:

but for true The incredible lives up to its name. bullets or not.

#51

Sorry, you do have to manually check it. BUT, all the shows for today are shown and if you look at your list of shows it show which ones have upcoming new episodes…

#52

First a thought regarding the great debate… Apple versus Android.

Apple’s iOS is closed and consistent. Pretty much all iPhones are the same (well, granted there are 4 different versions, and all in a couple different sizes), but for the most part, they’re all the same and they’re all controlled purely by Apple as far as updates. So if you want something consistent and controlled the Apple iOS is the way to go.

Google’s Android is about open and options. Tons of options in hardware, service providers, various features, and less “moderated”. So if you want options and customization Android is the way to go.

My preference… I’m a nerd-geek… so it’s Android all the way.

And if you have Android and version 2.2, be absolutely certain to get “Voice Search” from the Market.
The default, previous version Voice Search allows you to do searches online, but the 2.2 market-provided one also allows for things like “Send text message to…” or “Map of…” or “Navigate to…” or “Call business by name”. Lots of awesome features like that, and the more I use it the more I’m amazed!
Plus even things like since Google search natively has some special handling for things, like if you type a math equation in the search bar on Google it will do the math and put that at the top of the search results page… so using Android Voice Search you can even do math by voice! Like to calculate a tip hit the button and say “20 dollars times 1.15”.
I love my Android! :slight_smile:

#53

Voice Search is even amazing in Mandarin. I can read a line of Chinese poetry into it, which phonetically is difficult to decipher without being context aware, and yet 9 times out of 10 it will search for the correct thing, calling up google with the correct text.

The handwriting recognition and picture translation are also amazing. I am really impressed.

#54

Found a songbird app on the market, its pretty cool.

#55

songbird alsi available on pc, made by the same people that brought us firefox

#56

Amazon is brining some spice to Android lately.

First with their own Appstore. ( http://www.amazon.com/appstore ), which for the most part has the same applications as the regular Market, but each day they feature a pay-app for free.

And secondly they now offer Cloud Drive ( http://amazon.com/clouddrive ) . They give an initial 5gb of storage for free that you can upload whatever you want to. But if you upload your music you can use the Amazon MP3 app to stream your music from your cloud drive. Also, if you purchase music through Amazon MP3 it will automatically be made available through your cloud drive and will not count against your storage limit.

#57

A tip for gmail & Android users…

If you use your gmail as your primary email account you probably get a lot of email to it. If you use your Gmail Android app to get notifications of new emails it may get somewhat annoying if you get a notification every time you get the latest advertisement email or Facebook “somebody did something” emails. They’re still emails you want, you may just not want them all blinging through to your phone.

Well, that’s where Gmail’s Filters are great. Only emails that hit your “Inbox” raise notifications on your phone. So using a Filter you can have a message skip the Inbox and also automatically assign a Label to the message. The easiest way to create a filter in Gmail is to open an email you want filtered, click the “More Actions” -> “Filter messages like these”. By default the filter will be created for messages from that particular sender address which is typically what you’d want. Then after clicking “Next Step >” set the “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” option and probably "Apply the label: " (and you may want to set up various labels but I have most emails like this go to an “Ads & Services” label).

Now whenever one of those emails arrives, Gmail will automatically label it and skip the inbox, thus your phone doesn’t get blown up with it. But on your list of labels (in Gmail and on your Android app) the label will be Bold-faced and show new message counts so you can still easily see when you have unread messages under them.

#58

hi BitshiftNull, that’s exactly what i do on my gmail. Now there’s the new priority inbox thing on gmail, i wonder how that’s going to play on Android.

#59

I read they’re working on implementing the Priority Inbox features to the native gmail app on Android. Although, I tried it and didn’t care for it. I prefer the “Multiple Inboxes” lab over the Priority Inbox. With the lab I have my (main) “Inbox” first, but then my other main grouping labels listed as separate inboxes right after that one on the main screen.

#60

I’m a fan of animated wallpapers, but for the past few months I’ve been using Worldtour. It’s an app that cycles a backround image from live webcams around the world. You can set the refresh frequency and there’s a lot of webcams you can pick from, or use the random setting. Its cool to open your phone and see a still image from outside a Romanian museum taken live (there’s some sort of event happening right now), or my favorite, a penguin enclosure from a zoo. Those crazy penguins get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Sometimes you gotta be careful, there was a half naked man in Times Square New York one time, but that’s part of the fun I suppose.