Are there any tips tricks or hacks for android phones I need to know about? I am leaving the land of the iphone and moving over to android to see what it’s like. I am not a latest and greatest phone person. I am tired of my iphone 4 and had a chance to get a Galaxy Avant for cheap. I am phone in the pocket person and didnt want a giant pants dragging phone. The screen on the Avant is an inch bigger than the iphone 4 so it should be good enough for me.
I don’t care to hear from either iphone or android fanboy. As a long time iphone user I am sure to figure out the pros and cons pretty quickly.
I am asking about programs I should get or things I need to dump.
If you find a media/music player that doesn’t suck, I’m interested. All the ones I’ve tried seriously blow.
QuickOffice is decent, and Ingress is pretty cool for a while if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s like geocacheing with less of a “figure it out” mentality.
Go settings, about phone, scroll all the way to the bottom, then keep tapping where it says “build number” and it’ll unlock a developer options menu. This will let you do stuff like keeping the screen on while the phone has power.
Under security menu, check “unknown sources” this “jailbreaks” the device so you can install applications without using the play store.
My recommended apps:
Doggcatcher- for podcasting
Opensignal- for finding where the cell towers are and testing your download speed
Snapseed- photo editor
Servestream - Internet radio, really simple basic app but needs no facebook logins or any other crap like that
VLC- play literally any media
Poweramp is a pretty sweet media player. Think it cost $5 or something. I use Podkicker for podcasts, ES File explorer for file management etc etc …
Consider the can of worms opened mate.
I use a LG Google Nexus5, and I gotta say I love this pure android OS distro better than the manufacturer branded distros.(That and the fact that the Android L / Lollipop update will be offered faster than the other brands.)
If you get tired of it, like I did over the years with different brands, you might want to try and go for a different ROM. CyanogenMod and Miui are regarded as the better ones.
Apps I can recommend:
Adobe Reader - PDF document reader
Any.DO - to.do list app
CCleaner - Cleaning cache files etc easily.
ES File Explorer 3 - Awesome file manager
Inbox - new way of emailing
Perfect Viewer - comics reader
Root Checker - Check if you have root access to your device
Sunrise - Calendar app / widget
SuperSU - Control your apps properly
Towelroot - Root your Android device
TuneIn Radio - Awesome streaming audio app
Zaklamp - LED Flashlight app
That’s weird. My N5 just got upgraded to lollipop and a lot of things seem more sluggish. I wonder if I can turn off the animations without digging too deep.
Can’t you turn them off or speed them up in the dev menu? That turned my old Galaxy Advance from snail to somewhat useable before I jumped shipped again.
Hmm that is weird - it was the first thing I noticed, just seems a lot smoother, especially scrolling long webpages or in Google+
I don’t like how they have merged Gmail with other email - I liked to keep my work emails separate, I wonder if I can create a folder and have them pushed in there automatically?
The new predictive text input seems a bit strange as well but I’m sure I’ll get used to it..
I also haven’t timed anything. They might not actually be any slower. I just tend to react badly to to many animations, cuz it makes me feel like I’m waiting for things that should be instant.
ETA: this article sums up why I don’t like it.
If it weren’t for the $1500 toy I don’t use but can’t bring myself to sell (Google Glass), I’d go back to iOS over this…to whatever version is on my iPhone because it worked fine.
Well, received and installed the update yesterday and so far so good.
For me, it seems everything has become even more fluid and better… Did hate the automatic inclusion of Google Fit. (And the knowledge that I was able to stop and hide it, but not remove it completely…)
The other thing I loved about Kit Kat was the ease with which I could stop/mute all notifications.
The new Gmail Calendar app on Android is cool and I do like the new notifications/messages thing.
It also annoys me that I have to do something before I can put in my password to unlock the phone as opposed to seeing the unlock widget when I wake the screen up.
Granted, iOS has that severe flaw too. But I got used to not having to wait that half-second a hundred times a day. Google littlerally (slight exaggeration) just threw away a minute of every day of my life.
4.4 screwed up the lock screen if you are using pattern it now requires a keypress, swipe and THEN pattern … was this fixed in lollipop ? .. not that it makes much difference as it wont be released for my phone until April
Pet peeves vs iphone have to be the need to purge the ram a few times a day when things get sluggish and apps requiring scary permissions - seriously, why the hell does a flashlight app or game need access to my contacts and outgoing call / txt log ?.
Couldnt survive without isyncr, its really the only decent way of syncing itunes playlists from my computer, and i use rocketplayer as my media player after trying a few it sounded the best - however to use eq you have to pay for it
If i didn’t need to use android for development purposes I’d probably go back to an iphone in a heartbeat - everything seemed to work so much more fluidly even on my old 3gs.
the best music player for android is - in my opinion - the “gone mad music player” or short “gmmp”! you can select your music from:
Artist
Album
Genre
Title
Folders (YEAH! folders! barely any musicplayer for android supports ID3-Tag AND folders!)
Playlists
Smart (smart-playlists, so for e.g. 30 day-old music or latest added…)
Search (a simple search which searches the whole library for id3-tags and filenames and folders)
additionally you have the option to set FX like EQ (10-band), balance, force mono, limiter, bass boost, tempo, auto-pitch correction, virtualizer.
if that is not enough, you have your settings menu and an estimated amount of thousand settings (VERY, VERY many!)
so, for us as DJs and producers this may be the perfect music player
at least for me it is the perfect player
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