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Android Software Thread - Tasty Desserts, Tastier Apps

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Beezy said:
Can someone answer my question a few posts up?

Sorry, I assumed the same as you did from their descriptions in the marketplace. I've only spent about 10 min with the GBA one however so I'm not much help. :/
 
Actually I just checked and the GBA games that I've tried on it did save. It's just the SNES and Genesis ones that won't save. I haven't tried the NES and GBC emulators yet. Could this have something to do with the fact that the GBA one made me download a BIOS file before I could use it? None of the other -oid emulators made me do that.
 
I dont have a android phone yet but can somebody tell me if yahoo messenger webcams work on android? do streaming live webcam sites like stickam work? do any um...adult...live webcam sites work?

I'm trying to decide between the nexus or the droid....if one of them does live streaming video better that could make my decision.
 
basik said:
I dont have a android phone yet but can somebody tell me if yahoo messenger webcams work on android? do streaming live webcam sites like stickam work? do any um...adult...live webcam sites work?

I'm trying to decide between the nexus or the droid....if one of them does live streaming video better that could make my decision.

We already have a thread for mobile porn facilitation. If you want titties, buy a netbook.
 
womp said:
Weird, mine show as a red ribbon with a star in the center...Although sites like Picasaweb or Google Reader have their own icons as well.
This is indeed weird. My link to mobile GAF shows up as the GAF logo, the link to a news site shows this red ribbon with the logo in the corner. I added both the same way, linking to bookmarks
 
Battersea Power Station said:
Did you duders try the Swype beta? My wife's been using it on the Droid and says it's very good. You don't have to be accurate at all, so fat fingers need not worry.
Slower to type with for me so I deleted it. Neat technology though.
 
skybaby said:
So there are no apps that create a wifi AP for android? This sucks, HTC phones with windows have this built-in :(
What would the connection do for you? You're just looking to create a >2 computer network?
womp said:
Slower to type with for me so I deleted it. Neat technology though.
Did you give it some time? It took me a while to change the way I use the keyboard -- there's an adjustment curve.
 
Google And Spotify Dance Over U.S. Launch

Spotify. The elusive European streaming music startup that you just can’t get access to in the U.S., unless you know someone or jump through a few hoops.

The U.S. launch has been delayed over aggressive negotiations with the labels over the price users will pay in the U.S. Spotify insists on free, the labels want to move away from that model entirely.

We’ve heard that a compromise has been reached. Spotify will be free for users, but a “very limited” number of people will be able to use it.

Much more interesting, though, are the conversations with Google that we’ve confirmed. The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it.

Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service.

We haven’t heard whether the deal was done, and there’s a chance Spotify will be part of the January 5 Google announcement. But our sources say the deal has likely gone cold, at least for now.

When Spotify does launch in the U.S., though, look for a new version of the player that adds social elements – like social playlists – to the product. That’s a big weakness Spotify has against MOG, which uses social elements to aid discovery of new music. And Spotify will also supposedly let you play songs that you have on your hard drive (like via iTunes) that they don’t have in their library. That will help fill in the ever-decreasing gaps in their library, and make Spotify that much more compelling for users.
 
Battersea Power Station said:
What would the connection do for you? You're just looking to create a >2 computer network?Did you give it some time? It took me a while to change the way I use the keyboard -- there's an adjustment curve.

Played with it about a week now...Snagged it the day it came out. When it started having me choose basic words (Did you mean?) from a list as I was 'swyping' and interrupting my 'groove', it ceased to functionally do what I wanted - Type faster. I found that I was hen pecking quicker.
 
Battersea Power Station said:
What would the connection do for you? You're just looking to create a >2 computer network?Did you give it some time? It took me a while to change the way I use the keyboard -- there's an adjustment curve.
I cancelled my 3g modem service and signed up for the 3g data plan on the phone. Sometimes I need to use my netbook on the go.
 
radioheadrule83 said:
Spotify could be a killer app if Google Android phones suddenly get access to the free version without invites.


I have never used it before . What is the big deal about it?
 
skybaby said:
I cancelled my 3g modem service and signed up for the 3g data plan on the phone. Sometimes I need to use my netbook on the go.
If you're willing to root your device, there are WiFi tether apps.

But why not use a cable tether app? You don't have to root and you'll save battery life on both devices. Try PdaNet. The free version doesn't support https connections and will bug you about "upgrading" every few minutes, but it's still great in my opinion.
dsunit1 said:
I have never used it before . What is the big deal about it?
It's like having iTunes but never having to purchase any music.
 
JonathanEx said:
Basically, a program that you can stream pretty much any song for free.
Cool, but i Music already does that on Android, and pretty well too. I like the idea of this being built-in though. I just thought Spotify offered more than that because of the hype it gets on here. PEACE.
 
skybaby said:
I cancelled my 3g modem service and signed up for the 3g data plan on the phone. Sometimes I need to use my netbook on the go.
PDANet supposedly works on Android, but I never got it working properly on my last laptop. OTOH, the Hero from Sprint has tether service built-in. It is a bit wonky to get working, at first, but works flawlessly once up. PEACE.
 
Got my Droid Eris a few weeks ago, and am loving it so far. One question though - why doesn't Advanced Task Killer show all the programs that are running? For instance, if I boot up Flixster to check movie times, it doesn't show up in ATK and I can't 'kill' it, even though ATK does log the drop in available memory from opening it. And Flixster doesn't offer a way to 'quit,' so thus far I've found myself uninstalling applications I can't find a way to quit. I have no need for movie times to be constantly running in the background eating my battery.

Is there another task killer that will show all running programs? Or is there a reason ATK isn't showing some?
 
TheEastonator said:
Got my Droid Eris a few weeks ago, and am loving it so far. One question though - why doesn't Advanced Task Killer show all the programs that are running? For instance, if I boot up Flixster to check movie times, it doesn't show up in ATK and I can't 'kill' it, even though ATK does log the drop in available memory from opening it. And Flixster doesn't offer a way to 'quit,' so thus far I've found myself uninstalling applications I can't find a way to quit. I have no need for movie times to be constantly running in the background eating my battery.

Is there another task killer that will show all running programs? Or is there a reason ATK isn't showing some?

I don't like ATK too much to be honest...Give TaskPanel a shot. I've been using it for the past couple of days and I am really happy with it.
 
Those task killers shouldn't really be necessary. They're only really useful as a convenience - to kill all none-vital tasks when you want to start afresh. But personally, I don't really use them or trust them to do that correctly/cleanly...

If an app is done correctly, and doesn't try to meddle with the intended cycle for applications - then when you go back to the home screen and push the app into the background - it creates a save state and flags itself up as possible to be 'killed'. Then if the phone needs more memory, the phone will kill older apps/tasks itself. Services like the music service etc are allowed to persist. Oftentimes when you go back into an app and its in the same place you left it, its not always because its been open and processing the entire time, but because its loaded the relevant view and save state from when you last had it open (at the top of the task stack).

activity_lifecycle.png


Therefore I just feel that if a program is lagging your phone up and being constantly active (even when backgrounded), its not your phones fault for trying to multitask too much, its the programs fault for not being written as Google intended. I've uninstalled a few apps for being crappy in that regard.
 
Yup, completely agree with you radiohead. I heard Photoshop.com Mobile was bad in that regard. :/
 
radioheadrule83 said:
Those task killers shouldn't really be necessary. They're only really useful as a convenience - to kill all none-vital tasks when you want to start afresh. But personally, I don't really use them or trust them to do that correctly/cleanly...

If an app is done correctly, and doesn't try to meddle with the intended cycle for applications - then when you go back to the home screen and push the app into the background - it creates a save state and flags itself up as possible to be 'killed'. Then if the phone needs more memory, the phone will kill older apps/tasks itself. Services like the music service etc are allowed to persist. Oftentimes when you go back into an app and its in the same place you left it, its not always because its been open and processing the entire time, but because its loaded the relevant view and save state from when you last had it open (at the top of the task stack).

http://developer.android.com/images/activity_lifecycle.png

Therefore I just feel that if a program is lagging your phone up and being constantly active (even when backgrounded), its not your phones fault for trying to multitask too much, its the programs fault for not being written as Google intended. I've uninstalled a few apps for being crappy in that regard.
While it's true that a properly written application should halt its processor-intensive work when it's paused or stopped, and should do so quickly, I know that not every developer will be so conscientious.

In the first days of using my Droid I was using the GiantBomb app to view a video or two, then put it away to browse the web. Much to my surprise, after just an hour of use my battery was half-dead. Checking the battery usage showed something like 78% of the processor usage attributed to the supposedly idle Giant Bomb app.

I'm not pointing fingers, especially since that particular program is considered to be an alpha release, I'm just saying that there is no guarantee that 3rd party applications will behave properly, so there's no harm in providing a little protection for yourself if you aren't sure.

And yes, Taskpanel is pretty great when it comes to providing a simple and functional interface for automatically and manually shutting down processes.
 
radioheadrule83 said:
Those task killers shouldn't really be necessary. They're only really useful as a convenience - to kill all none-vital tasks when you want to start afresh. But personally, I don't really use them or trust them to do that correctly/cleanly...

If an app is done correctly, and doesn't try to meddle with the intended cycle for applications - then when you go back to the home screen and push the app into the background - it creates a save state and flags itself up as possible to be 'killed'. Then if the phone needs more memory, the phone will kill older apps/tasks itself. Services like the music service etc are allowed to persist. Oftentimes when you go back into an app and its in the same place you left it, its not always because its been open and processing the entire time, but because its loaded the relevant view and save state from when you last had it open (at the top of the task stack).

activity_lifecycle.png


Therefore I just feel that if a program is lagging your phone up and being constantly active (even when backgrounded), its not your phones fault for trying to multitask too much, its the programs fault for not being written as Google intended. I've uninstalled a few apps for being crappy in that regard.
I'm more concerned with using a task manager for the battery savings. Some apps- like the marketplace and browser, don't appear to go into a background.
 
TheEastonator said:
I'm more concerned with using a task manager for the battery savings. Some apps- like the marketplace and browser, don't appear to go into a background.
Eh, not correct, but whatever.
 
poweld said:
Eh, not correct, but whatever.
Hm? The amount of free memory according to ATK jumps dramatically when i close either of those apps - wouldn't that imply that they're still being stored in the RAM, not relegated to the background?
 
TheEastonator said:
Hm? The amount of free memory according to ATK jumps dramatically when i close either of those apps - wouldn't that imply that they're still being stored in the RAM, not relegated to the background?
That's true, the memory used is freed, but keeping information in memory isn't really what drains your battery, it's the CPU usage. When an activity goes into the background (when you can't see it) the activity is supposed to pause its CPU-intensive work.

The exception, of course, is when a service is created by the application, such as a music player. One of the major uses of a service is for it to continue even after the activity is forced into the background. If a CPU-hungry service is spawned, it will continue to use cycles until the the associated activity's process is killed (or it completes its task).

This is why a task manager is useful... in case applications are "naughty". Applications developed by Google, especially crucial ones like Browser and Market, are likely never to be cause for this sort of problem.
 
Using an addon task manager seems kind of frivolous to me.
I just created a shortcut to "running services."
 
poweld said:
In the first days of using my Droid I was using the GiantBomb app to view a video or two, then put it away to browse the web. Much to my surprise, after just an hour of use my battery was half-dead. Checking the battery usage showed something like 78% of the processor usage attributed to the supposedly idle Giant Bomb app.

Wait... there is a Giant Bomb app for Android?!?!?!

*Checks Market*

Awesome!

I don't care if it's a resource hog... this one is going straight to my home screen!
 
womp said:
How did you go about doing that? Cool idea.
Just hold your finger on the homescreen and select "shortcuts."
 
Jtwo said:
Using an addon task manager seems kind of frivolous to me.
I just created a shortcut to "running services."

Just tried that. Doesnt seem to show all the running tasks that way.

Crateman said:
Wait... there is a Giant Bomb app for Android?!?!?!

*Checks Market*

Awesome!

I don't care if it's a resource hog... this one is going straight to my home screen!

Great, I didnt know about that App either. Very cool.
 
Crateman said:
Wait... there is a Giant Bomb app for Android?!?!?!

*Checks Market*

Awesome!

I don't care if it's a resource hog... this one is going straight to my home screen!

Blew my mind when I first found out about it as well.:lol It's in beta, but it works great!
 
Bad_Boy said:
Is there a free app to change icons with?

Yeah some of the Android icons look straight up 00's Linux-ish..

Anyway, I hope to find out:

-The native Mail program is compatible with Exchange 2003. I DON'T want to use 3rd party apps
-When I take a picture, can I use the Facebook app to upload it, like on an iPhone?

Cheers
 
Mecha_Infantry said:
Yeah some of the Android icons look straight up 00's Linux-ish..

Anyway, I hope to find out:

-The native Mail program is compatible with Exchange 2003. I DON'T want to use 3rd party apps
-When I take a picture, can I use the Facebook app to upload it, like on an iPhone?

Cheers
It is, and you can. *Unfortunately* there is a bug with the latter, uploading pictures to Facebook, where the picture is rotated 90 degrees and you cannot do anything about it... this really irks me, so I hope it gets fixed up.
 
I'll post this again since nobody replied last time. Are there any apps for Droid that allow you to take panoramic photos? Paid or Free is fine. I've searched the Market lists but couldn't find anything and I was just wondering if anyone here knew of one in particular. Thanks!
 
Any app that will let me stream the music on my PC to my phone?
 
poweld said:
It is, and you can. *Unfortunately* there is a bug with the latter, uploading pictures to Facebook, where the picture is rotated 90 degrees and you cannot do anything about it... this really irks me, so I hope it gets fixed up.

Fucking a!

So that's all my problems solved, thanks for the help
 
Jtwo said:
Just hold your finger on the homescreen and select "shortcuts."

I understand that part. :D

But where do you find the 'running services'? I'm not seeing that on any lists off hand, at least to shortcut to the home screen that is.
 
womp said:
I understand that part. :D

But where do you find the 'running services'? I'm not seeing that on any lists off hand, at least to shortcut to the home screen that is.
It's there for me in Settings.

Hold home screen, shortcuts, settings, running services.
 
ONE! LAST! QUESTION!!!!

I noticed on my co workers Hero, that when in Gmail (didn't try the normal Mail), there is no Reply/ReplyAll/Forward button unless you scroll right to the bottom/beginning of the email thread?

Not a deal breaker, but with such long email/work signatures it's be a little annoying at the beginning
 
poweld said:
I believe this is what you're looking for, though I haven't tried it myself, but it seems to get high praises:

http://dacp.jsharkey.org/
I looked at that video and it seems to be a Remote substitute for Android. That is cool because I was hoping there was something like that, but it doesn't accomplish what I wanted.

What I want is something that will stream my PC music to my phone. As in, I will be at school and if I want to listen to a song, I can just stream it to my phone. That way, I don't have to carry my music library with me.

I hope I'm making myself clear. Thanks!

On another note, is there a way to have my phone contact list sort by last name instead of first name?
 
Mecha_Infantry said:
ONE! LAST! QUESTION!!!!

I noticed on my co workers Hero, that when in Gmail (didn't try the normal Mail), there is no Reply/ReplyAll/Forward button unless you scroll right to the bottom/beginning of the email thread?

Not a deal breaker, but with such long email/work signatures it's be a little annoying at the beginning
Each message in the chain should have its own set of those buttons.

On devices with a hardware keyboard (not the Hero, obviously) keyboard shortcuts work (R for reply, A for all, F for forward). I guess there's no way to do that with the touch only devices ):
 
Bboy AJ said:
I looked at that video and it seems to be a Remote substitute for Android. That is cool because I was hoping there was something like that, but it doesn't accomplish what I wanted.

What I want is something that will stream my PC music to my phone. As in, I will be at school and if I want to listen to a song, I can just stream it to my phone. That way, I don't have to carry my music library with me.

I hope I'm making myself clear. Thanks!

On another note, is there a way to have my phone contact list sort by last name instead of first name?
Sorry, I actually understood what you wanted, it's just been a while since I used remote, and forgot that it serves as a... well, remote.

I don't see anything that will do that. The closest I can come to thinking of a similar application is the FTP/SFTP client. I'm not sure if this supports streaming, but in my brief testing the speeds of SFTP transfers were *abyssmal*, and that was while in WiFi transferring within the LAN.

So... I guess the answer is no.
 
Battersea Power Station said:
Each message in the chain should have its own set of those buttons.

On devices with a hardware keyboard (not the Hero, obviously) keyboard shortcuts work (R for reply, A for all, F for forward). I guess there's no way to do that with the touch only devices ):
Huh, never noticed it since I do use a Droid which has the keyboard shortcut... I can't believe there is no menu option for Reply. Bizarre.
 
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