Best Android Resources

If you haven’t already, Stop Using Task Killers on your Android! The Android OS is designed to move applications out of memory when they’re through — killing them disrupts the process, and potentially removes resources that should have been left for running processes. If you exit your apps using the return button, everything should function normally!

That being said, I do keep a copy of Advanced Task Killer lying around, just in case.

Also, my Incredible has a problem with something gobbling up system resource — I’m getting that “low of resources” message a lot — apps won’t update and mail won’t download. Killing tasks has no affect on the situation…. update coming…

Hey, this is a little late — these should be coming out on Friday or Saturday from now on. Hopefully. We’ll, see, right?

Highlights from the week’s readings, tweets, and posts:

Android Apps:

BeeJiveIM costs $10 — that’s a lot of an Android app. Not a lot for a non-Android App. I’ve paid for Photoshop, and $10 is not expensive. But I’m not planning on buying it myself.

LifeHacker looks at Shake2Mute which does the obvious on your ringtone.

Android.StackExchange gets us the lo-down on custom vibrate patterns.

LinuxMag looks at AppInventor

Android.StackExchange schools me in uses for FireFox- and Chrome-to-Phone

Android News:

PC World had a run-down of Android web browsers, and Android.StackExchange also looks at alternative browsers

Productivity for Professionals is a new paperback on using Android for work.

the MIUI ROM was released, in China, and looks a lot like the iOS.

The firstStackExhange 1.0 Q&A site devoted to Android, ForceClose explained it was sticking around, but will change platforms.

A Redditor rants about Android’s problems and another drew a drew a cartoon about wifi and 3G switching.

Another Redditor explains his super Android battery-saving setup. He’s a fanatic, but gets 24+ hours.

LoveMyDroid talks about Android Apps sendind data to advertisers — aaaargh!

Miscellaneous

I installed, waffled, and fell in love with the Palm export Graffiti for Android. Also includes some thoughts on virtual keyboards, and why Graffiti hits the nail on the head when others miss.

InputSelect annoys me — plus, I havea lot of virtual keyboards installed

1. I have too many virtual keyboards installed…..
2. the Input Select menu lists the keyboards in order of installation. Without a scroll-bar or any indication that the most-recently installed keyboard is off the bottom of the screen. Out of any discernible order, unless you remember when you installed it.
3. ugh
4. There’s no such thing as “too many” !!!
5. mmmm….. searching market for more keyboards…..

14. See, is that so bad? Plus, the HandCent keyboard doesn’t really work outside of HandCentSMS, anyway, so it’s more like 13.

Check out PC World’s Battle of the Android Browsers article. They did time and usability tests on six browsers — Skyfire 2.0, Dolphin HD, Opera Mini, and Mozilla Fennec, and the stock browsers from Android 2.1 and 2.2.

What did they find? Opera comes out pretty good due to server-side minimizing of web-pages. Fennec is still in alpha, and has LOUSY load times, but looks promising. The stock Android browser actually slowed down from 2.1 to 2.2 (by a fraction of a second, but, still!). And SkyFire 2.0 was the fastest.

All three of these third-party browsers have carved out their niche versus the stock Android browser, making them worth the download for some users. That’s the beauty of Android: You have options, and you’re not stuck with just one browser. But out of the three, we pick Skyfire as the best third-party browser overall, due to its fast page-load speeds, extensive features, and video support. In its current state, we can’t yet recommend Mozilla’s Fennec, but it has potential, and we’re interested in testing it again after it has had more updates.

Well blow me down!

(source)

I’m not too surprised at the poor Fennec (FireFox mobile, if you haven’t been paying attention) performance. It hasn’t been slimmed down, and has a lot of work to be done. I can’t even get it to install on my Incredible! But as a FireFox extension developer, I’m disappointed.

Okay, the Thunderdome metaphor is lousy. Because the test is for six different browsers, and all of them left alive. Bonus points for a catchy title?

The classic Palm keyboardless stroke-input technology is available for Android! This is simultaneously cool, geeky, and not nearly as useful as I had hoped.

If you’ve been using a Palm for the past 15 years, this will help you transition. If you love weird input devices (**ahem**), you’ll find this interesting. If you need a fast, accurate method of inputting text to your Android phone —this might not be it.

However it is far from useless. And I may well change my mind. The QWERTY keyboard is made for ten fingers in a large area. Finger-tapping that layout makes no ergonomic sense. Swype and other glide-entry virtual keyboards are moving to the gesture-paradigm, but they’re still stuck with the QWERTY-layout [uh, there are some squirrely candidates out there, but no major players, yet]. Graffiti, while a remnant of a barely-touchscreen-age, was solidly in the gesture paradigm — you use not-too-large gestures to approximate the letters. We all know how to write, right? Even if our handwriting is crappy….

According to the Graffiti right-holder,  it is “the most popular handwriting recognition software ever developed for mobile devices” (What’s in second-place, the Apple Newton?!??). And after fiddling with it throughout the day, I wasn’t all that slow.  But while DVORAK may be better than QWERTY, we still use QWERTY, because we are used to it. And it is tough to break the habits of finding letters where we expect them — especially when there are NO letters to find.

And although this is the 2.0 version of the app, there are some elements that seem not out of beta. It’s tough to get punctuation (which isn’t even mentioned in the keystroke guide). Lots of virtual keyboards come with alternate screens including URL fragments, special symbols, cut-copy-paste shortcuts, etc. Nothing like this exists for Graffiti; indeed — the FAQ says “Short cuts, including those for cut, copy and paste, are not currently implemented.”.

Update: After using Graffitti for nearly two days, it’s continuing to grow on me. The touch screen is designed for a single finger, and so is Graffitti. The lack of an on-screen reference (like a keyboard) is offputting, but the strokes are rapidly learned, since they are so similar to “normal” handwriting.

Screenshots

The classic entry screen — alphas on the left, numerics on the right. Bonus: word-prediction. I never had that on my Palm III

Swype er, Stroke upwards out of the entry-area, to get a keystroke guide. Tap the guide to get successive pages, including cursor keys, punctuations, and special characters. No copy-n-paste, though. Fortunately, some paste support is built-in to Froyo 2.2.

See Also

End Gadget: Graffiti for Android scribbles Palm OS memories all over google
download Graffitti (Cyrket link)
Data-Entry-for-the-touch-screen-challenged

After my wife’s LG Ally updated to Froyo 2.2, her copy of Baby ESP stopped working — the icon turned into the default android, and every attempt to launch force-closed. Android Market said it was installed… but also wouldn’t launch. Turns out a number of other were having the same problem.

I’ve got a lot of complaints about the Android Market, so much so that I use the twitter hash-tag #AndroidMarketFail (maybe not often, but sometimes).

HOWEVER, this is a success story — because once you purchase an app through the market, you can uninstall it, and reinstall it for free. This is great, convenient, and no need to remember product or registration keys (all issues I’ve run into for desktop apps).

So, back to the problem. The app was in some sort of limbo after the OS update — it was there, but not working. So, Uninstall. Reinstall. Then it works. Hooray. Wife is happy, and all my diaper changes get tracked! (that is, the baby’s diapers that I changed!)

#AndroidMarketWin

Swype, my favorite virtual keyboard doesn’t didn’t work after I rooted my phone. This is killing me. :-(

I fixed it  — needed to disable, then re-enable Swype in the settings. Thanks to this DroidForums thread for the answer.

1. Menu >> Settings >> Language and Keyboard >> uncheck Swype
2. Menu >> Settings >> Language and Keyboard >> check Swype

See Also

Root-Hog-or-Die
Data-Entry-for-the-touch-screen-challenged

It only took me three tries, but Unrevoked finally rooted my phone (HTC Incredible). Why the multiple tries? who knows — maybe I did things out of sequence. The first time, for sure, I had not installed the recommended drivers. The second time — eh. Things get weird on my system. Six years since the OS was installed, and it’s WinXP. ::shudder::

Anyway. Unrevoked  provides root access and ROM-flashing for many Android devices — they’ve got great tutorials. And despite my issues above — following the directions actually did the trick. YMMV.

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting screenshotting

You can’t take a screenshot unless you’ve rooted your phone — and here’s a screenshot of my phone, so you know I must have rooted it. [caveat: you can take screenshots if you’ve installed the development environment and work through the adb application — but I couldn’t get that to work.]]

Okay why did I want to root my phone? To make the other programmers at work stop making fun of me! They all rooted their phones last week or the week before!

Seriously. I’m behind the curve on this one — but I was in no rush. My main motivation was to 1) take screenshots and 2) see what the process was like.

It took me a few tries — including some false start applications, but Unrevoked did the trick.

Taking Screenshots with Screenshot

There are a number of free/paid screenshot apps out there — but I used a free one with the obscure name of Screenshot. It simply works. Set the timer, go to your application and wait; or set it to “Shake” mode, go to your application and shake it. Hard. And files show up in a screenshot folder. Happy day.

Actually, I had installed Screenshot prior to rooting, so I could tell that the root had “taken” — because the app asked for elevated root permissions. Plus, it actually worked [no screenshotter will work on an unrooted Android phone. Which is annoying].

Personal Failures

I tried rooting before Unrevoked, and it didn’t take. Here are some that may work for you, despite my experience.

Easy Root Compatibility Test - The “EasyRoot” rooter app was removed from the Android Market in August, 2010. The dev still makes it available, but only after your jump through some hoops, like running this test. Which compiles a bunch of device data and mails it off. the app works quite well — it compiled a bunch of data and mailed it off. And then I never heard nothing, never again no more. Supposedly [this app will] test and see if your phone is supported. If it is, it will directly to your download! In my case, it only emailed. Whatevs.

Some other Root resources

Okay, other than screenshots and geek cred — what is rooting good for? Here are some resources:

android.StackExchange: How do I root my phone?

android.StackExchange: What does ‘to root a phone’ mean?

android.StackExchange: Are there any risks to rooting a device?

Android Police: Rooting Explained the top 5 benefits of rooting your Android phone

ROM Manager

See Also

Dude-who-stole-my-Swype

I like HootSuite on my desktop browser because… it’s the first desktop Twitter-client that I really used. It’s got support for multiple accounts — and best of all, you can schedule messages. I’ve tried Seesmic in the browser — but without the scheduling, I’m seriously cramped. Plus, I’ve gotten really used to the click-stats from the built-in ow.ly URL-shortener.

Peep

Now, when I got my Incredible this summer (2010), I don’t think that the HootSuite client was available. I first used Peep — the HTC-Sense bundled client. It worked: it interfaced to Twitter, had a widget on the Home screen, and loooked pretty. But that was about it.

Microblog

I’ve got a couple of status.net accounts at http://identi.ca, and the first Android client I found was Microblog was the first client I found, but force-closed on me every time I tried to launch. So…. I can’t recommend it meaningfully. Unless you like seeing the force-close box.

HootSuite

HootSuite (paid and “Lite”)

I use HootSuite on the desktop, but the tweet-scheduling features that I love in the browser version are only available in the paid-version of the Android app.

The HootSuite Android client has support for multiple accounts and their lists, mentions, etc — all of which are referred to as “Streams”. The interface to get to these is nice — you can see all clients, and scroll through the various “Streams” to pick and choose.

The next feature I’m looking for is support for multiple account types — and HootSuite falls down, again — because it only supports Twitter. I just found a workaround using Ping.fm but haven’t tried it yet…. will get back to you on that.

Finally, the stats that I like to see in the desktop client are not available in the “Lite” version — only in the paid app.

(photo source)

Seesmic

I prefer Seesmic on my Incredible as the best twtter/micro-blogging client. Admittedly, I started with Seesmic, but after two weeks of having HootSuite installed, I haven’t felt like switching, yet.

It supports easy retweeting to alternate accounts, as well as support for Google Buzz, Facebook, and Status.net. I don’t use the Facebook integration, and I hardly ever use the Buzz integration (since my person twitter-feed goes there, anyway), but I do like the status.net interaction.

It’s easy to attach a photo and shrink a URL. There’s no ability to track click-stats, that I’m aware of.

The accounts interface is not as slick as HootSuite’s — you can only see the overall accounts list, pick one, THEN select a streams (and the “lists” option doesn’t appear on-screen, only when you hit the “menu” button).

See Also

Xrad:MicroBlogging - I have some random links and rants on my personal site

Tweetdeck — one week in - TweetDeck is still in private beta; I’ve apparently installed and configured it (since my account is showing up there, today), but I haven’t used it to any extent. It looks nice.

25+ twitter clients for Android This guy downloaded, installed, and took screenshots of 25 different Android twitter clients. Not a lot of reviewing going on, but the tsk is impressive. I ganked my HootSuite shot from him.

How to add a new folder to Android

1. Press Home
2. find an empty space on a home screen
3. tap [+] , or long-press on the Home screen
4. Add To Home will open
5. Select Folder
6. Select New Folder
7. Folder will appear on screen

How to add a “Live” folder to Android

1. follow steps above
2. but don’t select New Folder — select any of the other options
   • Android Developers: Introducing Live Folders

How to delete (or remove) folder

1. long-press on the folder
2. Drag item to re-arrange or remove should appear at top of screen
3. drag folder to Remove at bottom of screen

How to rename folder

1. tap folder
2. folder will open
3. long-press on folder-name (default = Folder)
4. Rename folder entry window will appear

Some things you can’t do with folders

1. you can’t put a folder in another folder
2. you can’t put a widget in a folder

Not enough room for more folder or shortcuts?

Try Multicon (review link). While not directly related to folders, this highly configurable widget lets you put more icons (apps, shortcuts, and some system tools) on your homescreen. Like a folder, it can be used to maximize screen real-estate. (Also available via AppBrain)

See Also

How to Add Contact Shortcuts to Your Android Phone
Incredible Folder Options