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Just got my XDA today, and I thought I'd give some feedback as to what I've experienced so far, and mabye throw in a few questions to help me get more out of it Hope you guys dont mind.
First of all, goddamn its slow. I think my pentium 200 runs windows XP faster than this thing runs windows mobile. Its a 200mhz risc processor and it struggles to run an embedded OS. Mabye the bloated and slow windows mobile wasn't the best choice to run on the slowest of the XDA family, although I'll bet the bigger and faster models have exactly the same problem.
Secondly, how the hell do you close an application, because the 'close' button at the top right certainly doesn't do that. I send some texts, add some reminders and calender entries, close them, go back to the today screen and what do you know? the task manager tells me that they're all still open. I installed Magic Buttons and that helps a lot.
The dialer screen. Whenever I call someone or receive a call, thats it. Game over. The dialer screen wont close, minimise, go away or bugger off. If I want to see the 'Today' screen, I've got to restart the device.
Sorry for all that ranting Just one little question if I may.
Is there an addon for the the today screen that will collect the calender and tasks and birthdays and all that stuff and display them all together (in order)?
Also some desktop icons would be nice. My device spends most of its time displaying the today screen, I'd like some desktop icons to launch my most used applications, since my start menu can only display 7 (plus a few last-used applications)
Sorry if I sound like a moaning old git, but I expected a lot more from this device. A 200mhz processor running a streamlined (what a joke) embedded OS.
Old gits are perfectly allowable..
I use iLauncher and PocketBreeze. Check them out at http://www.sbsh.net ..
I don't think that the device is that slow personally. Although, I won't argue it is slow. I think some of it is the customizations that also get thrown in. I wiped out mine and didn't do any of the customizations, and it's much faster. (I have a Cingular 8125.)
The closing program is a common issue. The basic reason behind it is often times people want it out of sight when they close it. By it still being open though, it allows it (naturally) to load faster. Of course, opening too many apps, and you have the slow down issue.
It almost sounds to me like there may be something wrong with the phone though.. I have had no problems with the dialer screen. And you definitely shouldn't have to restart the device every time you use it. Perhaps a hard reset might be in order? If it still does it after that, maybe reflashing the device would be in order then.
Anyway, good luck with the phone!
Thank you very much for letting me know about those programs. What a difference they make, the device is a pleasure to use now
Need to sort out a 2gb mini sd card now, any idea where I can pick one up? I heard a bad story a while ago that ebay was flooded with cheap copies and bad quality storage cards I'm kinda scared to buy one now.
That I wouldn't know. I have a 1 GB card which is generally more than enough for what I need it for.
Glad to hear you liked PocketBreeze and iLauncher. I absolutely love 'em..
sk0t said:
That I wouldn't know. I have a 1 GB card which is generally more than enough for what I need it for.
Glad to hear you liked PocketBreeze and iLauncher. I absolutely love 'em..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second that!! I coulcn't live without them!!
Just got a T-Mobile HD2? Read Jamie’s "New to WinMo and absolute newbie tweak guide"
I wanted to write this guide due to the number of “THE HD2 SUCKS!” threads I’ve seen floating around. Guys, what did you think you were getting into here? This phone runs Windows Mobile. The very core of running this OS involves tweaking it beyond recognition, but, however, once you do that it can run quite beautifully. I wrote this guide to appeal to beginners. I try to avoid things like, "Oh, edit this registry value...What does it do? No clue, but it saves battery life." Those types of tweaks are for a different guide.
About the phone and Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is old. Really old. Try ten years old, and, sometimes, it really does feel like it's age is apparent.
The phone crashes. A lot. Get ready to soft reset a lot. Turning off Sense can help with the crashing, though.
The interface is called Sense. You can turn this off and revert back to Titanium, the default Windows 6.5 theme.
The HD2 is not like an iPhone. Get an iPhone if you want an iPhone. Apps that run on the iPhone do not work (and probably will never be ported) on Windows Mobile.
Yes, the screen is glass. It's scratch resistant, not scratch-proof. I hear mixed opinion on whether you can get away without using a screen protector, and plenty of people complain about how easy it is to scratch. It's your call, but keep in mind that glass is 6-7 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Hardened steel is 7.5. Your keys will scratch the absolute hell out of it. Some partials of sand and grit can scratch it, keep that in mind. And a drop from only a few feet will completely spiderweb the screen. Don't drop your phone.
The phone ships with two browsers: Opera 9.7 and Internet Explorer. Yes, that is an older version of Opera, but I feel it works fine. Opera 10 does not support pinch-to-zoom, and to my knowledge there are no tweaks to enable it.
The HD2 comes with Voice Command. To activate it, hold the green call button until it beeps at you. Then speak your phrase. A guide to using it can be found here. Your phone can read your SMSes to you.
Don’t like a tweak or application you installed? Uninstall it, and it reverts back to how it was originally.
Please see the Flashing Rom section on the different versions of Windows Mobile (6.1, 6.5, 6.5.3, etc)
Contrarily to the desktop version of Windows, hitting the X button does not exit a program, it just minimizes it. Please see the section about task managers.
WAIT ONE MINUTE
Wait! Hold on. Before you complain about ANYTHING (especially about messaging, lag, a pink camera hue, etc.), please make sure you have the newest stock ROM. To check, slide all the way to the right to Settings, then to About Phone, then to Software Information. What does it say under ROM version? Does it say 2.13.531.1?
If it doesn’t, you owe it to yourself and your sanity to flash to the new ROM. It’s real easy, too. Just go here and follow the instructions. http://dl.htc.com/ruudownload/t-mobileUS/DeviceDownloads.aspx?pid=leo
If you notice some weird-ass screen sensitivity issues (I never did), you should try installing this cab. Hey, it’s the first sticky; you should know this.
How to install a .CAB (You’ll be doing this a lot): First, download it from wherever. DO NOT EXTRACT THE CAB. Connect your phone via Activesync (Or Windows Mobile Device Center) . Drop the file onto your phone somewhere. Open File Explorer on your phone, run the file and install it to the device or storage card. I normally install to the device because you have plenty of storage, and if you connect the phone via disk drive to your computer, you temporarily won’t have access to any programs on the phone if they are stored on the card. If you need more instruction on installing cabs, please see my post here.
Killer Apps (That means required)
Cookie’s mod: This is my favorite tweak for Windows Mobile, especially more so now that version 1.8 is out. Install Cookie’s mod and it makes your whole life easier. What is it? It contains a bunch of features, but its main feature is to customize your home screen. By default, it makes it looks kind of iPhoneish, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. You can edit the home screen with more icons, widget things like toggles and an MP3 player, different types of adjustable (in size and layout) clocks including analog ones, and so forth. But, the cool part is that if you swipe up on the home screen, it turns into this iPhone-like icon grid interface--actually--more like an amalgamation of the iPhone and Android. You can scroll left and right to access more pages. Fill up the 3+ pages with applications, contacts, toggles, widgets, and you have the easiest and most convenient way to launch them. You could fill up an entire page about Cookie’s mod, though, and it’s important to download the editor for the program. Without the editor there won’t be much editing going on.
Check out this picture for a basic example of what you can do with cookie's mod. Note: The top picture is what you switch to when you swipe down on the main home screen; the bottommost one is when you swipe up on the home screen, left screen is a swipe to the left, and so forth. That was kind of hard to explain. Please see the thread for all of the features, customization options, etc. This is what Sense should have been like from the start.
Any task manager: Okay, you really need a task manager to make multitasking useful while not slowing your phone down to a crawl. Touching the X on a program does not actually exit a program, it just minimizes it. Map one to a specific part of the screen or a button, and easily switch programs. Hey, it’s you real advantage over the iPhone here; stream some Slacker radio or Grooveshark while you edit that Word document. Personally I use Arkswitch, but there are other great ones like Duttys. Hell, here's another one. At least add the default Windows Mobile task manager to a quick link at the very least.
BSB Specific Tweaks
Okay, so you have the newest official ROM and Cookie’s mod and you still think this phone is a piece of junk? Don’t fear yet. My next recommendation is to install BSB Tweaks. Download it here. What is it? Basically a bunch of settings you can modify that you normally can’t edit without a registry editor. This program is literally a godsend as it allows you to change, like, 50 popular settings that you couldn't do easily.
Don’t like lock screen and wish you could turn it off? Slide the off switch on “Auto Lock”.
Want to access the Windows settings through the Start Menu? Slide “Windows Settings” to on.
This is my opinion, but you can turn off “HTC Vibration” to make typing on the onscreen keyboard a bit more accurate, and you probably save battery life, too.
If you don’t like the phone’s screen turning on whenever you get a text message, slide “SMS Wake Up” to off.
I recommend turning on “Album Close,” because I don’t see the need to always have it running in the background.
Do you feel that the back button is a bit too stiff, and backing out of texts with it is a little uncomfortable? Turn on “Manila Send Butt.” to get a nice graphical send button, and it changes the left softkey to “back”. Very handy if you’re a big texter.
I recommend adjusting the LED notifications to however you see fit. Personally, I like having it flash for SMSs, but not anything else. Your opinion obviously differs.
I hear turning on “Wifi N” apparently helps improves, well, everything. I’ve heard, “Oh man, it’ll load pages instantly,” “You’ll get a wifi connection faster,” and other stuff, but I haven’t really noticed a difference. But I hear enough clamor that it probably doesn’t hurt to turn it on.
I highly recommend turning on "Opera Tabs". By default, you are limited to 3, which is laughable.
You can tinker with the other settings. A lot of them are a matter of personal taste.
Touch Tools Specific Tweaks
You might be asking why you need two tweaking programs that are 90% similar, and the answer is that Touch Tools does some stuff that BSB Tweaks doesn't See this post for the differences. Beware that Touch Tools is a lot more powerful and not as user friendly.
Slim Volume Tweak : Like the volume bar you get in apps like Youtube? You know, that transparent one that doesn't completely obscure whatever you're doing? Go into the Touch Tools folder, go to Slim Volume, hit Add, open the app you want to change the volume bar in, and shake your phone. I like doing this to whatever plays music.
Battery Life Tweaks
Tweak #1: Okay, I have no idea why, but the battery on this phone doesn't last very long. I recommend turning the backlight off automatic mode and setting it to a nice low, barely visible percent. Hey, you got to make it through the day, right? To do this, mosey your slider all the way over to settings, then to Sound & Display, then to Backlight. Joking aside, I feel it is perfectly readable indoors at 20%.
But there is a problem: once you go outside into the sunlight (the light, it buuuurns), your phone’s screen is nearly unreadable. Now you could take the time to crank up the backlight or turn it back to auto, but an easier way is to install this cab, map it to a Quick Link, and bam, you can quickly switch the auto backlight on and off.
Tweak #2: Turn My Location off. I have no idea why, but turning this off helps greatly--apparently it uses the data connection too much.. To do so, slide the slider to settings, and then click on Location. Make sure you turn off Location Service Settings and not AGPS.
Tweak #3: Turn off the various data synchronization. This phone can sync with various emails, Outlook, Twitter, the weather, your medical records, Facebook, the monolith, Youtube, and probably some others I am missing. Turn them to manual or put them to sync every couple hours to save battery. NOTE: It is extremely annoying to turn Facebook on and off (contacts pictures vanish, etc) so I recommend against turning it off.
Tweak #4: Web browsing takes a truly crazy amount of power. If you are going to do a lot of browsing, enable WiFi instead of using 3G, but be sure to turn off the WiFi if you're not using it, however. Also consider using Opera Mini 5 to browse the internet if battery is a concern. It uses less resources (bandwidth, processor, etc) than Opera Mobile 10.
Other tweaks: If you turn off Sense (Settings Tab > Right softkey > All settings > Today > Items) you’ll gain a huge battery life increase. I, however, feel that turning off Sense goes against the spirit of the phone. I like the Facebook integration and all the eye candy. And most of the tweaks have to do with Sense.
Useful Tweaks
HTC Flashlight: For whatever reason, the stock flash light does this stupidly infuriating demo where it scrolls through the flashlight settings. I have no idea why it does this; it conveys no useful purpose. It feels like this takes an eternity to do when you’re just trying to find something under your bed. Download this to fix that problem.
Lock Screen Icon at the Middle or Bottom: Okay, so our phone has a giant screen. I have pretty small hands and it was a bit of a reach to unlock the phone when the icon was at the very top of the phone. Install one of these and you can have it at the respective location. Very…handy. See what I did there?
4 Row Start Menu: By default the phone’s start menu ships with 3 rows. In my opinion, this is a huge waste of screen real estate. Install this CAB to fix it and make your Start menu so much more useful.
Power off icon: Want an icon to turn the screen off that you can put in the Quick Links? Check out post #3 here.
Turn off Weather Animation: Holy crap, it must always be cloudy in Kentucky or something as my home screen was always filled with clouds. A bit of a roundabout way to turn these animations off is to click on an empty Quick Link square, and pick "Weather Animation On/Off shortcut". Now you have a nifty icon to toggle the clouds (maybe sunlight in your case) on and off, and maybe even save some battery. Want less clouds? Install this .CAB. Wait, you said you want more home screen animations that aren't weather related? Bam and bam.
Is Activesync or WMDC annoying the absolute hell out of you by popping up on your computer? If you want to charge your phone via USB and you turn the phone's screen on for any reason, it starts syncing which can lag both the phone and computer. The simplest way to fix this is to start up Activesync on your phone (it's probably in your task manager already, damn thing's like a zombie) without it being connected to a computer, and then hit the Menu softkey, and then go to Connections, and unclick the check box for "Synchronize all PCs using this connection." Yeah, your computer beeps whenever you turn the screen on, but you won't get the annoying pop up.
A word about the WiFi's Power Save Mode (Com Manager> Wifi > Advance > Power Mode): Yeah, it probably does save you battery, but it does this by limiting your download speeds. I don't like slow page loads so I recommend setting it to performance, but the call is yours. I just don't think sacrificing page load times for battery is worth it.
If you hold down the red end key for a while, a handy menu pops up with some options. Make it even more useful with this thread. It adds a bunch more features like the option to restart Sense.
Mimic an iPhone or Android device when browsing. Guys, like mobile sites? Yeah, not many support Opera 9.7 and if you go to the m.website.com, you usually get the mobile website designed for your "niece's ****ty eight-year-old Boost mobile phone". An easy way to get the more feature rich website is to trick sites so it thinks you have an iphone or Android browser. I recommend doing this for Android because there are many Android devices that support 840x480 while the iPhone does not and many websites appear kinda busted.
To do so, fire up Opera. In the address bar type only "about:config" (not http://about:config) sans quotes. Scroll down to User Prefs and go to Custom User-Agent and type in whatever one you want. I recommend using the Nexus One user agent, even if the iPhone usually has better mobile page support.
Nexus One:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
iPhone:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3
Hate mobile sites with a bloody passion and would prefer the desktop version no matter what? Try using the desktop firefox user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6
Commonly Asked Questions
I want to enable pinch-to-zoom in X program: BSB Tweaks can enable a few programs to work with pinch-to-zoom. You can also add your own application, but the caveat is that it literally zooms onto the screen like a magnifying glass. Not too useful in my opinion.
How do I take a screenshot of the screen? BSB Tweak can do this, too. Just go into Menu, pick screenshots, and shake your phone whenever you want to take a picture. Very handy....literally.
I am going out of the country. How do I easily disable data? BSB Tweak.
I want to add rotation to X program: BSB Tweak.
How do I change the softkeys: BSB Tweak.
How do I increase the number of tabs in Opera? BSB Tweak.
How do I watch flash videos? Internet Explorer has Flash, Opera 10 has a setting to enable it, too, but I recommend using the Skyfire Browser to view Flash Content.
Wait, what is the best browser then? Oh boy. It depends on the person. Why not try them all? I primarily use Opera 9.7 (the phone ships with this), and it does a great job of rending pages accurate and relatively quickly. Opera Mini 5 uses server-side page compression so pages load extremely fast, but you get some screwy pages (Engadget), and pages aren't fluid. Skyfire also uses server-side compression, I think the interface is god-awful, and I do not like how it renders pages. However, it has excellent Flash support. There are other browsers like older versions of Opera, Bolt, and Uzard--which I think has great potential if it would actually work. I recommend sticking with the first three.
Awesome Applications
First off, we have a subforum dedicated to Windows Mobile Apps and Games. You won't find the cool programs on the Windows Market Place; they're here on XDA. Another site with a huge repository of software is www.freewarepocketpc.net. It's hard to find the real gems. It seems like half of the programs are high schooler's computer app projects or something. What follows are my recommended programs. I mean, you have this nice phone and you need some applications you can show off, right?
Slacker Radio: One of my favorite music applications, which comes with the phone, however, you probably need to update the software anyways. So make an account and enjoy streaming internet radio. It actually has, you know, working buttons unlike the Pandora application.
SciLor’s Groovemobile: This is an interesting one. Typing in the name of a song and it starts playing. Ridiculously cool. Guys, I promised myself I wouldn't post any registry edits as I feel they are beyond a beginner's level, but the music stops playing when you use the hardware key to turn the screen off. For people who know how to edit the registry, follow this post to keep the music playing in standby until I can find a .CAB for this.
Bing: So HTC finally decided to start making phones where the GPS actually works (I did a side-by-side comparison with the Touch Pro 2 and I felt like crying for the TP2). Take advantage of this with free turn-by-turn navigation courtesy of Microsoft.
Opera Mini 5: Yes, the phone comes with the full-fledged Opera Mobile 9.7 which I like a lot, but Opera Mini is ridiculous with how fast it loads pages. Very useful when you’re on an Edge connection, or if you want to web browse for a few hours because it is much less resource intensive.
Deluxe Moon: Want an application full of eye candy that you can show off like all those annoying-ass iPhone users? You want this. It shows the phases of the moon. It has very good aesthetics.
FpseCE: The famous PS1 emulator. While it only runs about half of the games I throw at it, nothing will wow people like playing Metal Gear Solid on your phone. Snake? SNAAAAAAAKE. Though, you have to donate to get the better version with multitouch for the HD2.
Morphgear: Not a fan of the PS1? Want to emulate nearly everything else? Download this modular emulator to get started. By default it only plays SNES games, and you have to pay for the other modules to emulate other system. It can get rather expensive, too. It is also a little difficult to set up. Check this post for a how-to.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Sporty Pal: While I advise against bringing your HD2 cycling or running, this is an extremely nifty application to play around with. Walk around your neighborhood and it’ll give you a map of the area with a line of where you walked, various stats like top speed, and so forth.
MyMobiler: Install on computer. Hook up phone via Activesync, control phone from computer screen. Pro Tip: Select “zoom 50%” to actually have it fit on your computer screen. This makes texting your girlfriend with the slide-out qwerty keyboard soooo much easier.
My recommended MP3 player: I still haven’t found one that is as good as the iPhone’s. iMulator comes close to its feature set, but it crashes a lot for me. Yes, Sense does come with a built-in music player, but I think it is pretty terrible. Tweaks for this is for another episode--guide, I mean. Another great one is Nitrogen, which I tried out due to a suggestion. It is incredibly finger-friendly, but finding that one song you want to hear can be a chore. I also keep hearing this clamor for Pocket Player, but it is not free. I took that trial for a spin and it performed admirably. Finding a specific song was a breeze too. Lastly, don't forget that Windows Media Player does come with the HD2, and it's not that bad, honestly. You have to tell it to cache your library, but it performs rather well. It even works with voice command and all that cool stuff.
Dude, my phone still sucks. It lags, freezes, whatever.
My last suggestion is to flash a custom ROM. These are where people pretty much customize their own ROMs with newer builds of the default software, programs they personally like, their own tweaks, etc. You’ll find a lot of these are much more stable and responsive than stock ROMS. However, there is a small chance of bricking your phone, and it voids your warranty (although you can flash "to stock" and no one is the wiser. Get started reading about it here. And I mean read the damn thing. Don’t flash the wrong thing to your phone, brick it, and then make a new thread talking about it. If your SOP is to glance over the red, bolded text, maybe flashing ROMs isnt' for you? It really isn’t that hard if you just carefully read the directions, though. I guess there is always the option to wait for Android to be ported over.
Just for your information, the HD2 ships with Windows Mobile 6.5. There are newer versions out, namely 6.5.3 and 6.5.5, and these pretty much make the OS more finger-friendly (but you are using Sense which also tries to correct this). 6.5.3 has the bigger, more finger-friendly buttons and the remapped Start button. See this page for a picture. Personally I like this layout better, but it involves flashing a custom ROM to get. You also have your people who prefer 6.1, a really un-finger-friendly version of Windows Mobile.
I need more tweaks and applications!
Check out these threads here and here.
Part 2: Custom ROMs.
I really wanted to stay with the stock ROM, I really did. It worked pretty damn well out of the box. It was miles ahead of the Touch Pro 1. I appreciated nearly everything working without me having to immediately flash ROMs. I, however, began to get fed up with it more and more, mainly with the keyboard. As always, it just didn't seem to be able to keep up with me. Plus, the phone was freezing now and then. So I finally broke down, hard SPLed my phone, and flashed a new ROM only because I saw that a new version of the soft keyboard was much improved. And you know what? The keyboard finally worked how I wanted it to work. So on that reason alone it was worth flashing a new ROM. But there is another thing about flashing custom ROMs:
They fix things but break others.
Yeah, you'll hear people say nothing is wrong with their ROMs, but I think that is always nearly a lie. When I flashed that ROM a while ago I had several other weird bugs pop up. Like, if I received a text while in Opera, the keyboard would pop up with no way to remove it from the screen. Yeah, it seems like bugs are just the norm with Windows Mobile. It would also freeze frequently, sometimes several times a day, and picture messages would work with one build, but not the other. It seemed like community efforts to get MMS working completely failed. I flashed a few more ROMs, some older, some from different people, but I have finally settled on one I really like.
The newest ROMs seem to fix most of the freezing issues due to that new Tilt Sense version. I recommend getting one with that. Eventually these chefs will put newer Sense and Winmo builds in that are prone to freezing. That is nature of ROM flashing--you have to do it until you find a good one. I still have to put up with the keyboard popping up in Opera, but it's worth it to having a fast keyboard and it not freezing all the time. If I flash a new ROM, it may fix that, yes, but it will probably break something else.
Afraid to flash?
Yes, it does void your warranty. Yes, you can brick your phone. Yes, you can end up with a ROM that may be more buggy than you were led to believe. You, however, have been gifted with the ability to read and comprehended. It really isn't that hard if you read the instructions on how to do it. The T-Mobile USA specific ones.
I reccomend Nitrogen for playing music. Runs perfect on my HD2 running Energy Rom, with no stutters or skipping, or stopping once the screen turns off.
http://nitrogen.wmskins.com/
For some reason, unlike the older versions of Windows Mobile where you could have the option to make hitting the X-button permanently closing the program, Stock 2.13 only minimizes it. So I think you should either make it a good hint for people running stock to add the Task Manager to the shortcut on the homepage to check it from time to time.
Cheers.
PoisonWolf said:
For some reason, unlike the older versions of Windows Mobile where you could have the option to make hitting the X-button permanently closing the program, Stock 2.13 only minimizes it. So I think you should either make it a good hint for people running stock to add the Task Manager to the shortcut on the homepage to check it from time to time.
Cheers.
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Click to collapse
+1 on that, esp for people new to the phone
This is still a great guide Jamie, thanks for the effort! Maybe we can get it stickied, or at least added to the "start here" list already at the top of the forums.
Stickie
sirphunkee said:
+1 on that, esp for people new to the phone
This is still a great guide Jamie, thanks for the effort! Maybe we can get it stickied, or at least added to the "start here" list already at the top of the forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I 2nd that!
awesome!!!! great post.
It's stuff like this that makes me really appreciate this forum. Thanks!
Absolutely brilliant post!
great post.
that's all.
This thread saved my life
I just bought my Tmobile HD2 on craigslist everything was fine until i rebooted it. I had never seen an HD2 lag the way it did like i mean where is the snapdragon when u need it my friend's HD2 on the other hand ran circles around mine. I don't think i've ever had a more painful experience of htc sense but thanks to this thread i found the answer to my problems it was running the older version of the stock rom
SD Card
For those people having lag problems with the HD2. Try formatting your SD card i noticed a great difference in speed when i formatted my card then did a hard reset also i would advise you to get a better memory card like a class 6.
Thank's very helpful and excellent tuto.
thanks
thanks very informative but I still dont know what to do with this phone
Thank you for taking the time to make this, its very informative, and a fun read.
super helpful post! thanks a million!
hmm
Quick question, (I apologize, I am new to the HD2 and winmob)
I have installed and set cookie + editor along with bsb tweaks and noticed that while texting, I dont have the ability to rotate the phone into landscape mode, in other applications (photos for instance) it works just fine.
I've looked over both tweaks a few times to see if I missed anything and cant seem to find the reason why.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Robbie
QUICK FYI for you all. I just tried to download and install the RESET BUTTON...ranster_reset file downloading off of rapidshare. Sent my firewall virus program and about every other red flag jumping off my PC screen saying the file is infected with a trojan virus.
FWIW
BatVette said:
QUICK FYI for you all. I just tried to download and install the RESET BUTTON...ranster_reset file downloading off of rapidshare. Sent my firewall virus program and about every other red flag jumping off my PC screen saying the file is infected with a trojan virus.
FWIW
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I removed the link until I can investigate further.
Edit: okay, so I found the .CAB here, a bigger tweak guide for the HD2.
Edit 2: Okay, I ran the file through http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus and it came up completely clean. I also ran it thorough 19 scanners here and it totally came clean: http://i49.tinypic.com/2wd3n9s.jpg. I honestly have no idea why it tripped. Can you share more details?
In conclusion, Anyone who is using it is probably safe. Check it out yourself, it's been in another guide forever. I think someone else would have said something about it if it really is a virus. Maybe the advertising on rapidshare tripped your scanners? Anyone else is free to try and verify, however.
I'm new to the T Mobile HTC HD2 phone how do I download the apps onto to my phone? I can't seem to figure it out
So after having spent quite a bit of time browsing through all the stock touchwhiz apps, I have to say, for the most part I'm really enjoying TouchWhiz. The launcher can be replaced so even if it REALLY bugged me, it is an easy fix. The apps have really impressed me, though. The social integration is quite extensive.
I've gotta say my one beef with it is that there is really a lack of options I would expect in a non-standard app. If TouchWhiz apps had the extensive options seen in replacement apps like Handcent SMS, ADW.Launcher, I don't think I would have anything to complain about. It would be really nice to be able to disable certain tabs and options..
Anyways, what do you guys think? Do you like it overall or just assume get rid of it all? Which things do you love most about it and which do you hate?
I can honestly say that any custom roms without TouchWhiz will have to have something pretty amazing to draw me away from the stock rooted rom or another TouchWhiz based rom.
I agree completely. I am really enjoying touchwiz, but am missing some of the customization i have come to love with Android.
I am hopefull that future updates will address some of this.
So far I am really impressed with TouchWiz3. The contacts app should be ported over for everyone to use. I have the filters to only include contacts with phone numbers, having the ability to jump to a specific letter in the address book and sliding across a name to make a call.
Wish I could select a default calendar to post to instead of the phones My Calendar. I have to keep selecting my google calendar every time I create an appointment. It's a bit annoying.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
I'm loving TouchWhiz. Being a long time CMmod and ADW launcher user and having tried the old TouchWhiz version w/ the obnoxious sidebar, I was ready for CM6 before even laying my hands on this phone. Now I seriously doubt I'll switch even when CM6 becomes available.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
I have to disagree I'm not happy with TouchWiz and really wish I could get the AOSP contacts and calendar back that's all I really care about...
Calendar most importantly
I really like TouchWiz. I don't like the App Drawer though. I still prefer LauncherPro, so i'll be using that instead.
TouchWiz 3 is particularly ugly. Ugly colors, ugly icons. Just tacky as they come.
I would have returned the phone if it wasn't for LauncherPro.
I miss the flexibility of the vanilla Android 2.1. I've been using CM5 on my G1 prior to buying the Vibrant. Can't wait for CM6 for the Vibrant.
I so so on TW, I'm using LauncherPro at the moment but I wish I could use my samsung widgets
Could've been a 9.5 phone but some small but major annoyances
The touchwiz calendar app is nice, but you are unable to create a new event that defaults to you google calendar...its defaults to the phone's default calendar ("My Calendar"). Also, the default alarm time before an event is set to "none" and can't be changed to the typical 5,10,15..min before event. Why? How can this be useful...The beauty of android is in the cloud. I guess they are trying to appease to folks that don't use google services, but this is a damn Android, so im calling this a dumb and stupid decision. The same logic is somewhat applied when adding a new contact, but a pop up gives you a choice to save to sim, phone or google, so it is definitely better implemented in the add contact option, but I must ask...Who is buying this phone and saving contacts to the sim card? It's a damn Android!
The other issue which I initially didn't use much on my G1 (CM 5.08), but later fell in love with is custom ring tones for a specific caller. The only way to do this with the Samsung Vibrant is to actually save the contact on the phone vs with google. I just don't get this....once again This is an Android phone. Why did they create these additional profiles and not default them to the standard Android behavior. This is why fragmentation of the Android OS can be bad.
These are really my only major gripes after having the phone for less than a week, well besides that annoying shutdown tmobile jingle and the power/unlock button on the side...oh and I wish this phone had hdmi out. The video out is really a neat feature, but its not a good experience using the standard def audio/video out jack.
I know these may seem like minor annoyances, particulalry the calendar and custom ring tone, but getting the basics right is what I think counts the most. Leave well enough alone!
With all that said it is a great phone and once you go superamoled there is no going back.
I forgot to add that I running ADW and there is no way I could run this phone with that awful iphone look alike launcher. I'm also rooted and tethering (wired or wifi) does not seem to work.
I'm hoping Cyanogen works his magic with this device...it will be a beast!
I hate touch wiz and the fact that it looks like an iphone. Don't really like the icons and the accu weather click is hideous. I use beautiful widgets and adw for my launcher. I think adw us the best launcher because of it's ability to customize extensively.
Feeling Vibrant on xda-app
Anyone else having problems with ADW Launcher Notifications bar?
I've got "Hide Status Bar" unchecked and yet it just keeps disappearing, I tried with it checked and got the same result, it'll be there for a while and disappears, even when I pull down the notifications drawer it's still not there just a blank line of wallpaper at the top.
I've actually gone back to the TouchWiz becuase I can't reliably see my batter meter or signal strength.
Anyone get this?
I think a lot of you are missing the fact that the Launcher is not "TouchWiz 3.0". The skin goes much deeper than just the launcher.
Copying contacts to the phone is also very easy. Export them and then Import them. They're on the phone now... not sure if this would work because they're still linked through Google, but they are on the phone now too so you could unlink them from Google.
If you want ugly just look at a stock Android phone. Ugly, tacky.. since when is black and blue tacky? The icon backgrounds in the app menu might not be to everyone's liking but it's still WAY Better than the stock app drawer with it's hideous background and yellow coloring throughout
I agree. I don't mind touchwiz at all. I'd like the option to switch to default Android look though. My main gripe with touchwiz is the calendar and the fact that the applications menu is a cheesy rip of the iPhone menu, come on Samsung. Also, I quite enjoy the AccuWeather clock.
jaxrunner said:
...I know these may seem like minor annoyances, particulalry the calendar and custom ring tone, but getting the basics right is what I think counts the most. Leave well enough alone!
With all that said it is a great phone and once you go superamoled there is no going back...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm totally with you on the touchwiz calendar and contacts apps having some serious issues. Though I really like the color scheme, love the subtle grey in notifications, the black task-bar, and the blue menu headings, it looks clean to me.
Anyway, I have found a temporary solueion for the Calendar, for myself at least. Should work for anyone who's rooted.
Grab the Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk from the thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6472313&postcount=674
then use a shell to backup TouchWizCalendar.apk/.odex and TouchWizCalendarProvider.apk/.odex
then remove all 4 files
and install the Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk from the link
and grant permissions to let the new calendar & provider access your data when it asks.
I'm stoked because this brought back the default calendar widget too, which I was seriously missing
Add in the GenieWidget.apk from the nexus one here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=600959
And I'm one step closer to having all the default apps and widgets that I like =)
Now if only I can do the same with the Cyanogen Dialer, Alarm and contacts app... not sure I'm feeling that reckless tonight though, lol.
cheers!
I don't like it in general, but a few additions really ought to get disseminated to every ROM.
I'm using ADW launcher.
You can tell TW is glued on top. It doesn't feel integrated. It actually seems to hamper the nice Google integration I've had. It's great that Tmo wants to offer something, but not letting me change my voicemail number manually (but leaving it in there) is forcing it on me. Makes me bristle.
As far as changing ringtones, I haven't gotten that far. Working on rooting and getting my adb going with it (to get the calendar back to vanilla, frankly). I imagine aContacts might solve that. Thanks for pointing it out.
The blues would be fine (although I'm not a fan since it's much like WM 6.0), except they don't match very well. It almost looks like a corporate argument, or a cheap contracted graphic artist, or both, and someone worked on the WinMo 6 team. And much of the blue-tinted gray text fields don't go with the fully gray Android button color. I'm not a fan of trying to do browns & ambers as accent colors, as a slice of the wheel, fine, but I've tried, and it just doesn't work. Maybe it's the shiny black tube. It just looks 2006 to me.
I love the control bar in notifications. I was doing it with BarControl, then BarTender, but it's so, so much nicer now. Add a "Fastbright" or better yet, replace the silent with it, since I can do that with one of the two hardware keys. The "just took off my rose-colored glasses" tint could definitely go.
I do like the phone app. A lot. Especially in-call. It's clean. The BT took too long to connect if it wasn't enabled first, but I can see this being streamlined, which would be slick. The calculator & dialer ain't as pretty, but being old I like the big, no, HUGE numerals. I like the "0" long-press to vibrate (wish it were customizeable).
I love using a gesture to call or sms. The sideways stuff has been wasted "space" so far. I hate the redundancy of using a line that could show a contact and a space in the menu to add a contact. It's also weird not having a way to go from contacts to favorites. I was having trouble on the CM ROMs, so I guess it's just nice that it works without a bug, too.
I guess I like the updates tab in the contacts app, it's a great way to check what's up before making a call, but I've already got my methods, so if I really feel like I need to know, I'll check first. My guess is it won't take off, not like it is, but it got me thinkin' how nice it would be to pull all those social networking sites together and list them under a contact. Total agregation. So I suppose it's a step in the right direction.
I doubt it qualifies as TouchWiz, but I adore the camera app. That action shot mode could prove useful. And the continuous shooting while holding the "button" is excellent. I don't get the "beauty " mode. Didn't help. (Maybe it's only set up for darker skin as an obscure FU to HP.) What I don't love is that it won't post to Picasa or Facebook by default, a few other third party photo hosting places, but not either of the ones I use... since I got on board with Android. Huh. I smell something here.
Music app is nice & simple. I haven't looked, but I'm guessing it's pretty lightweight. It carries my biggest gripes about the interface, tho, the empty space above and below each line mean less data for me to see on each screen, and it's on a big black, ultra-shiny tube.
regarding the OP: you CAN change the volume of the tmo startuip & shutdown jingle by going to settings-->sound&display-->system volume
the one thing i noticed when i pick my own ringtones that are either in the internal sd OR external sd storage, is that if i set them, then mount sd card, then unmount, then my f**king ringtones and notifications all change back to the annoying as F**K default. !! i would LOVE to be able to mount JUST the external sd OR the internal sd ONE AT A TIME OR both IF i wanted to.
but no... someone at samsung or tmobile didnt think of this. too me a lot of the little things we as smartphone users really care about were entirely overshadowed by the concern for aesthetic beauty of touchwiz 3 by samsung. tmobile or someone needs to push and update that will edify the smartphone features as they should be...
Good find
s0niqu3 said:
Anyway, I have found a temporary solueion for the Calendar, for myself at least. Should work for anyone who's rooted.
Grab the Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk from the thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6472313&postcount=674
then use a shell to backup TouchWizCalendar.apk/.odex and TouchWizCalendarProvider.apk/.odex
then remove all 4 files
and install the Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk from the link
and grant permissions to let the new calendar & provider access your data when it asks.
I'm stoked because this brought back the default calendar widget too, which I was seriously missing
Add in the GenieWidget.apk from the nexus one here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=600959
And I'm one step closer to having all the default apps and widgets that I like =)
Now if only I can do the same with the Cyanogen Dialer, Alarm and contacts app... not sure I'm feeling that reckless tonight though, lol.
cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I may just try this...Thanks
i love this new phone and new os but some things are really annoying and i hope they will be fixed in a future software update
no custom ringtones and no seprate volume control for ringtones this really sucks cause if i turn down the game or music volume it turns down the volume for everything.
playing a game like need for speed and hitting that stupid search button will kick u out of a game ur playing.
setting wallpaers u cant set a full wallpaper u always got to crop the image first i hate this.
no turn by turn directions for maps.
the dialpad and message theme kind of sucks i hope this can be changed
i would like to be able to set a wallpaper for the main screen just not the lockscreen
headphone volume output need to be way louder
the phone tile when u miss a call or get a message would be cool if it would show u who u missed a call from and if u got a text message it would show who text u and half of the message or something like that kind of like what the me tile does when u post something new
putting contact tiles if it would show messages and misssed calls alerts on there tiles that would be great
the top menu bar should always show battery lift signal if u get a txt message etc.
improvment on loading time for games etc..
cant think of anything else i want changed right now
other then that i love this new os i been using iphone since the 2g iphone and this is just way diffrent i also use a android device
I'd like more options within text messaging. I'd like the ability to initiate a call from a text message, and the ability to add a contact from a text message.
I've been a Windows mobile user for quite a while, and made a switch to Android, now to Windows Phone 7, it's great, but I agree with everything you posted, but adding a file explorer it a must. The ability to select or hide different photos that show on the picture tile, an option to hide/show the keyboard while typing (so you can see the whole screen), and the ability to turn on/off wifi, Bluetooth from the main screen instead of digging into the settings each time. Plus a few more settings, like wifi rules, (turning off Wifi automatically after unused, if you like). It would also be nice to be able to remove that little white arrow in the upper right corner of the main screen, it takes up so much real estate on the main screen. Landscape mode on more screens would be nice too.
Oh, and the option to remove an account, I already have a Windows Live account that I don't use stuck on the phone. I don't see a way to remove it, and cant' change the email address or log in id info, only the password.
I'm sure updates will be rolling out to resolve some issues, or possibly apps.....??
surround
you can just add a second windows live acccount and disable the first one by unchecking everything effectively disabling it. I wish you could delete the main one too. However, I posted this somewhere else, the phone got corrupted and after i did a hard reset and connected to my computer, the Zune software restored all my programs (in the backgrouind without my knowledge) and all was good again. There are some bad reveiws of this phone on youtube, but some of the reviewers got it all wrong. For instance the screen resolution for movies is EXCELLENT. It takes the zune software a long time to convery and copy some movies but worth the wait. There are some bugs and some things could use improving. I would say the one thing that bugs me the most is when you zoom in on a net page...the text could be sharper. But I can live with it. All in all the phone is a pleasure and I look forward to the updates.
Thing i dont like about video watching is Netflix over 3G is good quality.. but youtube is crap over 3G. There NEEDS to be a setting for this. Its just a hub extension, but hopefully something gets fixed.
A lot of your suggestions are for the OS, not the physical phone.
It would be nice if the OS could utilize the awesome speaker on the phone a bit more. For example, speaker phone is pretty weak. I also dislike how if the speaker is not slid out, everything is muffled. I guess they expected the sound to reflect better, but it just doesn't.
That's really all I can think of besides the lack of a microSD slot that's visible anyway. I'd take my phone apart to see if there is one, but I don't have a torx bit small enough.
Besides the OS limitations, I think the phone is awesome.
I want to be able to set the notification LED to blink for new texts, emails, etc
dccorona said:
I want to be able to set the notification LED to blink for new texts, emails, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second this. One of the things I miss most from my Tilt2 and all other winmo phones have been the blinking notification light.
Need more from microsoft
I want to be able to block unwanted call, more options in the settings menu and better functions for the camera.
definitely need to be able to explore the phone. more wifi options would be nice as well. also the speaker seems to be a bit lacking. ( sure thumps when i hook it up over the cd deck in my truck though!) I had the htc tp2 prior to this and i became completely addicted to the wifi router utility, so for me personally that would be the most important thing. if anyone knows about anything like this under development let me know. i'm always willing to donate to a good cause.
One of my teens got his old LG upgraded to a Surround for Christmas yesterday. I'd been thinking when my Tilt 2's upgrade time comes this summer I'd do the same -- but not after spending a frustrating afternoon helping him with it!
We played with it in the store several weeks ago. I think the slideout speaker is a gimmick but he's 16 and thinks it's great. We both agree the WinMo 7 tile thing is a bit silly but is FAST, and he loves the HTC Hub UI. The hardware is very good (though I'm not sure I agree with no micro-SD slot).
But using Zune software to sync is a PAIN!!! My Vista laptop took 1/2 hour to download the device drivers, then insisted on a reboot before downloading the Zune software (another 20 minutes). Then the Zune install insisted on checking for an upgrade (yet another 20 minutes) before going thru a rather painful 10 minute install.
Once installed, it was very unhappy when I changed the monitored folders, and took several attempts before it would sync with the folders I'd copied off the kiddos old micro-SD card. Of course what I was most amazed about was the lack of drag-n-drop support in Windows! What kind of lame-brained, Steve Jobs-style of engineer would nix that? (I did find the reg hack to renable that just a few minutes ago, but haven't verified it yet.)
Lots and lots of lockdowns in WinMo 7 that I don't like, as have been mentioned by previous posters. This whole thing reminds me why I disklike the iPhone's OS so much!
Maybe my next phone is gonna have to be an Andriod phone instead...
I kind of agree with all of you. Microsoft might have come into this having windows phone shut a little too tight.
However, that only means that there is more room for improvement.
Multitasking would be nice, especially ones that resonate when you dont have to see them, like streaming music. or at least faster app switching.
File Explorer is kind of important and Bluetooth file sharing too.
Tethering is not that important, but on my fuze I used to use it whenever I went on trips and the hotel tries to give me wifi for $30 a day...but eh... the screen is so much bigger, and it goes a lot faster too that I dont see any need for it, (besides plugins like java, or flash)
Oh and a definite must is the camera settings STAYING THE WAY I LEFT THEM. Whenever you exit the camera, it goes back to default. and on my phone at least, video recording goes to vga, so i would have to set it to 720p if i wanted it.
would love the call blocking and please a flash player!!!!!!!
Improvements
After Multi-tasking and copy and paste are added in the soon to be released update, I would like to see a few more additions. Flash player, Pandora, LED indicator light options for notifications, ringtone options beyond what they have allowed so far, the ability to send videos as MMS messages and a battery % remaining would make me ecstatic.
heh.... guys you will never see multitask like it was on 6.5 ..
as multitask they say - future CLOUD infrastructure update .. which will allow run signed apps on cloud infrastructure .. that means = you will be allowed to create ICQ client .. part of client will run on MS servers . that part will collect ALL YOUR ICQ EVENTS .. and then send to phone via PUSH notify .. on phone side nothing will be rly changed ..coz multitask goal does not collaborate with main WP7 idea - ISOLATED ENVIROMENT FOR APPS
Keyboard directional arrows
Is anyone missing keyboard up, down , left and right arrows? I sure miss them. Lifting your fingers off the keyboard to position the cursor on a particular spot in the sentence is really time consuming and not very precise.
Correct, I will really appreciate arrows in the keyboard
Sent from my Samsung Focus using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
My only feature request for all WP7 devices is gapless music playback. I really, really hate the two seconds silence between tracks, especially on electronic music or The Dark Side of The Moon (man, I love that album.)
Wi-Fi Router
The most important thing that is missing on Windows Phone 7, no doubt, is the wi-fi router function. Today I have to walk with two phones, because of the missing of wi-fi router.
Another important things are:
- File Manager
- Send photos/files via bluetooth
- Outlook Notes synchronization
- Office docs synchronized on the Windows Live could be open on a computer and vice-versa
Main software that I wish to be developed for WP7:
- Log Me in
- SQL Server Client
- Olive Tree Bible
- Google Maps (Oh Google Maps, you don't know how I miss you and your amazing Latitude)
- Auto CAD WS
- Skype
- MSN Messenger
I agree with everything else you published.
MMS Settings
Be able to customize the MMS Settings, some carriers have differnt tier's of internet with different APN's and it is a Necessity to have that option!!!!
Everyone should be getting their phone in the next few days. I am coming from iOS so I am not 100% sure about all of androids apps and features. I have spent a lot of time in the last month learning as much as I could about switching over but I would like to get some opinions from everyone. I hope this will also help any other novice users get the most out of the note 3.
1. Are you going to use a launcher .. if so which one? why?
2. What apps will make using the note more enjoyable/easier?
3. What apps can I wow people with a demo of?
4. Any other general app recommendations?
5. What general settings should I initially use? or disable?
6. Anything I missed for a first time android user?
1) NEXT Launcher 3D
2) NEXT Launcher 3D
3) NEXT Launcher 3D's "Swing with Scroll" feature
Impuls3101 said:
Everyone should be getting their phone in the next few days. I am coming from iOS so I am not 100% sure about all of androids apps and features. I have spent a lot of time in the last month learning as much as I could about switching over but I would like to get some opinions from everyone. I hope this will also help any other novice users get the most out of the note 3.
1. Are you going to use a launcher .. if so which one? why?
2. What apps will make using the note more enjoyable/easier?
3. What apps can I wow people with a demo of?
4. Any other general app recommendations?
5. What general settings should I initially use? or disable?
6. Anything I missed for a first time android user?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome aboard! Here's the first thing you'll have to deal with: Size. The Note 3 (I have a Note 2) will seem huge and you may get buyer's remorse. Most of us do. It wears off in a couple of days, though and then you'll wonder how you dealt with such a small phone.
1. I use Apex launcher. Why do I use a launcher? Because I like to change the number of rows/columns from the standard setting. I also like to eliminate the Google search bar. And, I like using gestures to go to apps. I use swipe-up for Google Now and swipe-down for notification shade. Why do I use Apex instead of others? No particular reason but it seemed to have the most available features for a free version at the time. I have since paid for it.
2, There are a bazillion apps. But, coming from the iPhone I would first experiment with keyboard replacements. Why? Because you can and the iphone users can't. Try Swype or Swiftkey. Swiftkey is amazing at guessing what your next word will be. Most of all, get used to swiping instead of typing. Once you get good at it it's MUCH faster than typing. Then show that off to your iPhone buddies and say, "Take that!"
3. If you really want to dazzle people with your new phone find a high def YouTube video (the Vevo ones are good). Playing a beautiful video on a large screen has some really powerful WOW! factor.
4. Some apps I use a lot:
Color Note - A great note and checklist app that syncs via the cloud.
Chrome Beta
Flixter for getting movie times and watching trailers
Gas Buddy to find cheap gasoline
Amazon App store. A free app every day. You have to side load it, it's not in the Play Store.
Droid of the Day - A new app suggestion every day
Timely - One of the most beautiful alarm clock apps. It also syncs with all your devices
The usual apps: Netflix, Pandora, Watch ESPN, HBO Go, Dropbox, et al.
5. I turn off Auto display brightness. I leave my Note 2 at full brightness all the time. The battery can handle this just fine.
I leave GPS, Wifi, and NFC on all the time.
Make sure you setup Google+ to automatically upload your photos
6. Don't go too crazy downloading apps. You may find your battery suddenly draining too fast. If you don't like or use an app delete it immediately so it won't eat battery.
Good luck and have fun.
Impuls3101 said:
1. Are you going to use a launcher .. if so which one? why?
?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nova Prime because it is better than TW in every way.
Ok I will answer some of my own questions from using the device the last 10 or so hours I hope this helps someone else. Please add suggestions because I am still getting used to everything.
1. Nova launcher seems to be easier to use because it takes all ur tw settings and imports them. It makes it easy to switch between the two. I like the tw weather widget better though
2. -I still need to find a good email client that syncs the few accounts that I have together. I haven't looked into this yet.
-Equalizer is a really good app to put more bass or customize the sound of your music.
-Adblock plus is really nice to have while browsing the internet .. I always hated that I couldn't use it on the iphone.
-The adapt sound settings helped make my headphones sound a little better. I use an aux in on my car so it kind of sucks that they don't have profiles for different sources.
3. -Next Launcher is really nice to show people but I don't know if I could use it everyday and its 3x the price of other launchers.
-Real Racing 3 is a nice demo game but good old angry birds star wars 2 probably looks the best and it has a note 3 achievement
-slow mo camera is really nice but anything less than 1/2 speed and the image starts to look very grainy .. 4k really has a wow factor even on the 1080p screen.
4. Sketchbook for Galaxy is a lot of fun to draw in with the s-pen.
5. -I followed this guide for disabling some of the bloatware: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2478448
-I also disabled most of the air hover features because they are nice for demoing the device to someone but I probably won't use them. Plus I wear glasses and it doesn't seem to detect my eyes very well.
-People are reporting poor wifi and one of the settings suggested is to turn off network auto connect.. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2472779 .. I experienced the problem but reset my router and it seems fine now.. not sure if its a software glitch or what.
6. -Here is a useful guide on how to transfer your contacts : http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/transfer-iphone-contact-to-android/
-The only thing I am missing from iOS are the nice lock screen notifications. If anyone has a suggestion please let me know
Impuls3101 said:
Everyone should be getting their phone in the next few days. I am coming from iOS so I am not 100% sure about all of androids apps and features. I have spent a lot of time in the last month learning as much as I could about switching over but I would like to get some opinions from everyone. I hope this will also help any other novice users get the most out of the note 3.
1. Are you going to use a launcher .. if so which one? why?
2. What apps will make using the note more enjoyable/easier?
3. What apps can I wow people with a demo of?
4. Any other general app recommendations?
5. What general settings should I initially use? or disable?
6. Anything I missed for a first time android user?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. I have been using Nova for a while on my Galaxy Nexus, and use it on my N3 now too. It's not too bloated, allows custom number of icons per row/column, gestures, and resize all widgets. I used to use Apex, and that was really good too, but I switched a while ago to Nova because there was some feature Apex didn't have, though honestly I don't remember what now, and they may very well have added it.
2. SketchBook Mobile by Autodesk (makers of AutoCAD and Inventor, among many other engineering-oriented programs) is kind of cool, it's a sketch program that you can do a lot with, and works well with the stylus. Not the most useful app, per se, but a fun "proof of concept" if you will, and it's free. I believe there's more options than the built in equivalent, though I haven't used either a ton yet.
3. Any high def media will look awesome. Show them Netflix streaming, or as someone else said, HD Youtube, or any other HD video. Even pictures taken with the camera look great, simply because of the huge high res screen. Pictures taken with the phone probably would look even better on the screen than ones taken with another phone with a better camera but worse screen, because it's still small enough to cover up minor imperfections, but big and crisp enough to really look amazing.
4. For a music player, I like PowerAmp. It's got a really good equalizer, and a ton of settings to play with. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the interface, but it's not awful. You can also customize the widget as much as you want, in terms of colors, fonts, transparency, buttons, size, what's displayed, etc.
I also use UberSync for Facebook, which lets you use sync HD pictures from facebook as contact photos. You can also import birthdays into your calendar, if you want, and some other info from people's profiles. You can choose what resolution to use, how often to sync, and only use wi-fi if you want.
5. I turned off all of the Smart features and that kind of thing. I don't want to control my phone with my eyes or hand gestures, I want to use it with my hands or S Pen. Of course that's fully a matter of preference. Also I noticed that the setting to alert you if you walk away without putting the S Pen back in is disabled by default, so I enabled that. I still worry I'm going to lose it sometime, but that's just because I'm forgetful.
Impuls3101 said:
-Adblock plus is really nice to have while browsing the internet .. I always hated that I couldn't use it on the iphone.
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How are you using Adblock without root??
jmorton10 said:
How are you using Adblock without root??
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I'm using Firefox with the adblock plugin and its working great. Firefox now flies on this phone.:good: