Android phones, apps and tablets

Meanwhile, at GA2G Towers...

At least your phone screen is big enough to type capital letters Joe. I fear its the abyss for our spenceey. :-D

Ha I'm on a monitor at work! When I'm on a phone your lucky if there's a sentence you can read.

I have a year left on a 24 month contract, and getting fed up with my Desire constantly running out of system storage. I'm considering my options. Either sell it on and get something a little better to sort me out for the last 12 months of my contract, or root it and try and sort out the storage problem (moving dalvik cache and whatever else I can do).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/htc-desire-gsm

It's easy and completely sorts the storage issue. You don't need to worry about the dalvik cache or whatever, just backup, root, install CyanogenMod7.

I've currently got 16 apps and 30mb free.

+1 Rooting the HTC Desire was one of the best things I did.

Once the S2 arrives I'm contemplating rooting is straight away.

Galaxy Note Android 4.0 update to include special content

Earlier this year, Samsung had promised a Q1, 2012 time period for the roll out of the Android 4.0 update for the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Note. But while its younger brother has started receiving the update, the Galaxy Note users are still munching on Gingerbread that is well past its expiry date.

*Samsung recently announced that the Android 4.0 update for the Galaxy Note has been pushed to Q2, 2012. This means it could be coming as soon as April or as late as June. *

*But to make sure that the wait is worth the while, Samsung has announced that the update will come with some extra goodies exclusive to the Galaxy Note. This includes a Premium Suite of applications and extra multimedia features. *

*The Premium Suite includes the S-Pen application, which allows you to scribble with the provided capacitive stylus, as well as draw tables and grids that are automatically digitized, along with solving hand-drawn numeric formulas. The Premium Suite also includes My Story app, which lets you create personalized digital cards for friends and family. *

Along with this, you will also get a special version of Angry Birds Space. This version will include 30 extra Danger Zone levels, not found on any other platform.
And then of course, it's Android 4.0 itself, which will bring new features like Face Unlock, redesigned multitasking view, GPU accelerated UI, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZz2pr69DY

Read it, and weep.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/htc-desire-gsm

It's easy and completely sorts the storage issue. You don't need to worry about the dalvik cache or whatever, just backup, root, install CyanogenMod7.

I've currently got 16 apps and 30mb free.

Or partition your sd card with a decent sized ext3/4 portion and go silly, I've got about 50 apps with 92MB free on my desire

When they say ics is gpu accelerated does that mean all phones after the update will have improved graphics?

I'm glad you didn't highlight the 'face unlock' feature in the text. We could probably open each others, it's that insecure.

Hopefully someone will crack the angry birds extras soon, I can't see that being exclusive to one device but you never know.

When they say ics is gpu accelerated does that mean all phones after the update will have improved graphics?

It means apps and system features which have been written to take advantage of it will be quicker, possibly more efficient.

Watching HD video without GPU rendering turns my phone into a convenient device for warning my hands on a frosty day.

Anyone use Google's 2 Step Authentication via the Android app Google Authenticator?

Right, if you do, follow these steps:

#1 Go into the Market/Play
#2 Search for Google Authenticator
#3 Download and install it (even though you already have it installed)
#4 It will tell you that it has imported the credentials, and will now uninstall the old version
#5 Done

Why?

Because Google lost their signing keys and can't update the old Authenticator. So had to release a new one that will stay updated... DO NOT uninstall the old one prior to installing the new one. Install the new one and, when prompted to, uninstall the old one.

Yes, this is shitty.

But, at least they aren't considering compromising the key signing security to make it easy for themselves.

AARRGGHH...

Please can someone help me upgrade to IceCream Sandwich on my Transformer!

Pretty please!!!

S2 has been delivered :) Any tips I should know for the phone? My last 2 phones have been htc.

S2 has been delivered :) Any tips I should know for the phone? My last 2 phones have been htc.

Root it immediately with CF root and then choose one of the stable ICS roms to flash. That's what I did within hours of owning mine. Your battery life will be improved and you won't have that godawful T Mobile jingle anymore.

Other than that, and I never thought I'd say this about a Samsung phone, enjoy the fastest reasonably sized handset out there.

Try three finger scrolling on the stock browser or Twiter app. It goes straight to the top or bottom. No more flick-flick-flick on long web pages

More tips: http://thehandheldblog.com/2011/06/14/galaxy-s2-tips-tricks/

My favourite one is in the contacts list: Slide a contact left to send a message or right to call.

I'm going to try and hold off rooting - even more so since It's getting ICS soon (if it hasn't already?)

Thanks for the 3 finger scrolling tip - always annoys me on my htc.

I'm going to try and hold off rooting - even more so since It's getting ICS soon (if it hasn't already?)

Thanks for the 3 finger scrolling tip - always annoys me on my htc.

Check Menu>Settings>About Phone. If the android version is 4.xx then you have ICS. Otherwise it will be on 2.3 which is Gingerbread.

So I have no signal at the flat, Ive spoken to Vodafone on that chat thingy on their website a couple of mins ago - They told me to put my phone on 2g, and expected the signal to work it didn't. So they told me that I should pay £50/£30 for a signal booster... Why should I?
Then I asked to opt out and they quoted the T&C saying they cant ganturee(sp) signals indoors. They wont even lower my contract neither.

That's me fucked.

Keep on at them , the least they can provide is the box so you'll get signal indoors . a few friends of mine have managed to get them for nothing.

Really? The box youre on about is the signal booster I mentioned above, they would only knock £20 off? :/

is there anyway of finding out data usage?
Im on tmob and have a Desire (mk1)
looking at new contracts and 500mb seems to be the norm for data, when i took my contract out it was 3gb limit.
i havent got a clue how much im using, so ma worried that if i get a 500mb limit i might reach/ breach it regularly.

Lots of apps for keeping an eye on data usage:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=data+usage&c=apps

Threaten to switch to 3, for their cheaper internet access rates. T-Mobile have an Full Monty package, which includes nearly any phone, on a 2 year contract, for £36 per month. This actually has no internet restriction, and can be used for tethering, or downloading, or whatever. I have this with my Galaxy Note, and another similar T-Mobile package with my other phone. I had said I was leaving to go to 3, and they gave me the Full Monty offer, months before it was released. Same details and cost, but differently named.

3 have All You Can Eat packages from £15. But of course you need to see what is offered with each package.

http://www.three.co.uk/ThreePortal/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobnocache=false&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1223572947709&ssbinary=true

http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/PricePlan_Details?content_aid=1220470029198

http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/PricePlan_Details?content_aid=1214306268521

http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/PricePlan_Details?content_aid=1220470166037

http://store.three.co.uk/view/searchTariff?categoryType=DATA&expand=includedInternetAllowanceInMB&includedInternetAllowanceInMB=15360.0&includedInternetAllowanceInMB=12288.0&includedInternetAllowanceInMB=10240.0&includedInternetAllowanceInMB=5120.0

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/pay-monthly/plans/

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-tariffs/the-full-monty-36-24m/phones/

is there anyway of finding out data usage?
Im on tmob and have a Desire (mk1)
looking at new contracts and 500mb seems to be the norm for data, when i took my contract out it was 3gb limit.
i havent got a clue how much im using, so ma worried that if i get a 500mb limit i might reach/ breach it regularly.

I've been using Onavo and have found it excellent in tracking data usage, can also assign limits and do things like make certain apps wifi only

Holy cow - draw something is addictive.

Agree, will challenge you to a game sometime. Annoyingly my copy makes me log in every time and doesn't notify me when it's my turn, like Words With Friends does..