The Android thread

First report on Tasker. Awesome.

Works flawlessly on my DHD for disabling the WiFi and dropping the screen brightness (the only two things I have it doing do far). Setting it up is a bit of a learning curve but I'm getting there. No apparent impact on performance.
 
I use and love tasker as well, it is so versatile. There still are a few things I wasn't able to do yet, but overall it is one mighty tool to play with. Just the other day, for a specific app, I programmed tasker to keep my screen alive and to dim it to minimum brightness when I lay the phone down for longer than 10 seconds. Hint: you can also buy tasker via PayPal on their website, no credit card needed.
 
Well got back from Futureshop AGAIN...

Turns out the $50 voice + data didn't need to be met however data was needed, so we just tacked on the Data Lite 100MB for $10 a month, cancel it in 12 months and just pay $120 with service and no termination fees.

Also got $100 gift card instead of $50 one.

So all went well for her with the trade from the Hero to the Desire.

And i still want FroYo for my Xperia X10 haha.
 
Maps 5.0 out now in the market :)

No rotation support (just pan, zoom and tilt) on the nexus one and it's siblings (desire, etc...) :(
 
Well, do you really need rotate? The point of a map is to know where north is, isn't it? ;) Plus, you can tilt and compass rotate if you need to look around.

What follows is a review of the Case-Mate Tough Case.

=========================================

What all smartphones have in common is large, shiny and rather fragile. Even if they have unibody aluminium shells and gorilla glass, they're still prone to scratches, if not breaks. That's why a case is always a good idea, especially when out and about. I've dropped my Desire on the ground many a time when going out for a few drinks with my mates and if it weren't for a case, it'd be pretty banged up.

I've owned 4 different cases for it so far. It started off with a leather pouch, which got ruined when I took the phone for a swim (no case will help you there, unfortunately), but it was time to switch anyway as the leather had stretched and didn't hold the phone inside as it should, so I switched to silicone based skins, looking for the right combination of flexibility and protection. The first one I bought was a simple single injection silicone skin, which I immediately saw was only a temporary solution as it was really soft and already didn't fit the phone perfectly. I kept looking and stumbled upon a company called Case-Mate, which seemed to be the most praised on smartphone forums, from iPhone, BlackBerry and Android owners.

At the time of my discovering them, they had a few silicone cases in store, both single and double injection (pricier, but supposedly more sturdy), which I ordered, called a Torque case. They also had a big COMING SOON sign over something called a Tough Case. The site has international shipping, accepts paypal and I received it just 2 weeks after. This was a completely different story. The silicone was much firmer and it fit around the phone snugly, the design and production quality were substantially better and I thought I had found what I needed.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/getDynamicImage.aspx_path_htcdesTOR-4.jpg https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/getDynamicImage.aspx_path_HTC-Desire-Torque-Case1035.png

Unfortunately, I still very much like how my phone looks and feels without a skin, so at home I left it off, which meant taking the skin off and putting it on at least once a day and even with the double injected silicon the skin began to stretch to the point of there being a gap of at least 2mm after a month, which made me a very sad panda. :(

I completely forgot about the Tough Case in the mean time and on the brink of ordering a new one, when I came across the Android Central blog's new test of the Tough Case. The concept of a double shell skin intrigued me as in theory it should prevent, or at least hide the normal siliconee drawbacks of stretching. I ordered that and 10 days later it was on my phone.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9909.jpg

The silicone inner skin seems to be single injection, very soft and stretchy and fits tightly around the phone, with the outside moulded to fit the plastic shell perfectly. It's designed to protect the front of the phone with a raised bezel all around the edge, which would be impossible to do with a single piece plastic shell.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9910.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9914.jpg

The plastic shell is made from a very sturdy material, but I can't say whether it's ABS or HDPE. It hasn't scratched or bent yet. The buttons are all still very much accessible and it has all the required holes for the ports, camera, loudspeaker and microphone.

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9915.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9917.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9929.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9934.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9935.jpg

https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2010/12/16/_ICE9940.jpg

I received the case 1 month ago while the photos were taken just a few minutes ago. If it's not obvious from the photos, the skin still fits around the phone like a glove. There is absolutely no give anywhere, in your hand it fits like it was part of the phone's actual case, not just an aftermarket skin. I haven't skimped on taking it off and putting it on, either, which only shows the good strengths of the design. Even if the silicone skin does stretch a bit, as soon as you clamp on the plastic shell, it starts pushing it back against the phone, negating the stretch.

The website offers this case for many different phones, so go check it out, I give it 5/5 androids.

androidLogo.png
androidLogo.png
androidLogo.png
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Well, do you really need rotate? The point of a map is to know where north is, isn't it? ;) Plus, you can tilt and compass rotate if you need to look around.

Compass mode only works when centered on your location. So you cannot pan to a different place, and use compass mode to rotate as you want.

And the point of rotate is to look at an area of interest from any perspective, specially useful when looking at area with 3D buildings...
 
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...I'd be pretty happy with it if it showed my Google Voice number (or even my actual mobile number) when calling people. It always ends up using some random number in some random area code... I'm pretty sure the people I call are confused as all hell by this. :lol:

Huh. Either I was completely wrong, or Google just fixed things so your Google Voice number is displayed on the caller ID.

I think it's just the idiots I'm calling that threw me off, I still get the "WTF? What number is this?" so I assumed the random area code and number Google showed it was dialing through was what displayed on their caller IDs. But that isn't the case, it seems to report the GV number.
 
Nice review there of the Tough case :cool:

I still love mine 2 months on. Best case I've bought for the Desire.

Anyone updated to the new market yet? I managed to update to the new google maps, but even following some suggestions on XDA-developers I still can't get the new market.
 
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Well i got the new market on the Xperia X10 about 2 days ago, was bugged but it seems that they pushed another update for the market to correct the bugs present in the SE 2.1 Stock Rom with buttons being half way and the spacing of the list being too thick, it's spacing is normal and everything looks fine now.

Overall quite impressed with the new market layout, however it hasn't been pushed to the Desire yet it seems.
 
Nice review there of the Tough case :cool:

I still love mine 2 months on. Best case I've bought for the Desire.

Anyone updated to the new market yet? I managed to update to the new google maps, but even following some suggestions on XDA-developers I still can't get the new market.

Well i got the new market on the Xperia X10 about 2 days ago, was bugged but it seems that they pushed another update for the market to correct the bugs present in the SE 2.1 Stock Rom with buttons being half way and the spacing of the list being too thick, it's spacing is normal and everything looks fine now.

Overall quite impressed with the new market layout, however it hasn't been pushed to the Desire yet it seems.

The update came to me at some point a few days ago, didn't notice for a while until I came acroos the automatic updates button. I also just go the new Google maps today but my device doesn't seem to support the 3D features.

I had a preview of the market from when I ran 2.2 though, and it was one of the big things I missed from that ROM. Now if I can just find a media player that skips tracks when you hold the volume button, and has a lock screen widget, I really will be missing nothing I care about from 2.2 (Cyanogen).
 
I got the new market some hours ago... my device was massively sluggish for about five minutes and then I realized what was happening. Some notification would have been nice Google, I thought my device was slowly dying on me.

Also, I don't like the new Market. I'll probably get used to it, but it doesn't mean that it's not unnecessarily cluttered and flashy now.
 
So I just discovered android has the ability to auto dial extensions or voice mail passwords and it's ilk. This is the greatest feature of anything I have ever owned EVAR!

If you don't know how to do it, just go to the phone number you want to add the extension to, put in a "space" a letter "p" another space and the extension. You can do this multiple times in the same number for multiple extensions.
 
So I just discovered android has the ability to auto dial extensions or voice mail passwords and it's ilk. This is the greatest feature of anything I have ever owned EVAR!

If you don't know how to do it, just go to the phone number you want to add the extension to, put in a "space" a letter "p" another space and the extension. You can do this multiple times in the same number for multiple extensions.

:lol:

Are you kidding? Every cell phone has this ability, I think even most landlines do too. Usually long-pressing either * or # will input a pause into the number.
 
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Nice case review!
Let's see about one for my phone. :)
 
:lol:

Are you kidding? Every cell phone has this ability, I think even most landlines do too. Usually long-pressing either * or # will input a pause into the number.

none of my old cell phones (baring my hero of course) or old landlines could auto dial extensions. The concept had never even crossed my mind until last night.
 
none of my old cell phones (baring my hero of course) or old landlines could auto dial extensions. The concept had never even crossed my mind until last night.

Perhaps I was exaggerating a little bit, but it's certainly not limited to smartphones. ;)
 
I got the new market some hours ago... my device was massively sluggish for about five minutes and then I realized what was happening. Some notification would have been nice Google, I thought my device was slowly dying on me.

Also, I don't like the new Market. I'll probably get used to it, but it doesn't mean that it's not unnecessarily cluttered and flashy now.

I assumed that that was just android on my HD2 that ran like shit when stuff was installing, or do real android devices do the same thign
 
Some stuttering does occur when installing apps, especially the large ones, can't be dealt with otherwise.

On a similar note, Power Amp Unlocker can be purchased outside the market now, for all those who can't access paid-for apps: http://powerampapp.com/buy-poweramp/
 
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