Hi. New user here. I rooted my G1 a couple of days ago. I love it.
I was thinking of cool stuff I can now do with my phone, and I came up with this idea... A WiFi business card. It is more of just a bragging thing for the phone...
I walk up to a smart phone user. I tell them to connect adhoc to my phone and bring up a browser. Any page that they load while connected gets redirected to an apache server on my phone. It brings up my picture, a resume, and any other stats that I want to show off.. (Or anything else, the sky's the limit on this one.)
I am thinking that it could be turned off and on with a toggle of some sort.
Again, this is not really a "useful" thing, is is more of a "look what I can do" thing.
I am thinking that it would use bits and pieces of apache, squid, the adhoc tethering app, and ipchains, kind of mixed together and stripped down for speed.
Thoughts?
I'm not trying to shoot you down for thinking outside the box...
But heres what I'm thinking: the way to get most info to them is to create a 2d barcode and have a shortcut on your desktop to display it so they can scan it with their phones camera. (as more and more phones support reading 2d barcodes)
Most likely this is faster to display for you and scan for them then configuring an adhoc network on their device.
Obviously I would have several 2d bitmaps to choose from:
personal card
business card
url(s) I want them to have
etc
You can get a reader for other phones and create QR codes here:
http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm
I actually just created 3 barcodes and stuck them in my /sdcard/barcodes dir and created a shortcut to that folder on my desktop using Linda File Manager. Works pretty well. Click on the Barcodes link on the desktop. Pick an image. It opens in the picture viewer.
Well, it is not just for business cards and such. Really it could be anything. An advertisement, pictures, bio, directions, a map, an event, etc.
Like I said before, it is not for a purpose, it is really just another show off tool that proves how much you can do with this phone.
I understand
Why am I hacking up some of the stuff I'm doing? Just for fun.
Well, after a lot of hours of work, I'm real close to putting my first app out.
It includes a 5MB database that can't be loaded from /assets due to it's size. The app itself is small.
Now, as I know it, there are 2 deployment methods:
1. Google Market
2. My own hosted site
Google Market is easy on end user...find an app, install (and pay if req'd). Works over 3g and WiFi. Gives you 24 hours to uninstall before you're credit card is charged. Drawbacks are one-time $100 vendor fee and 20% fee per download. Plus, as my apps may grow, the databases I use could get fairly large. Now, most phones can handle the size (my Droid goes to 40 gig with 32 gig SD card), but searching a huge database on the phone could lag like crazy.
A self-hosted site can be had for $50 a year from GoDaddy or 1 and 1 with FTP, MySQL databases and much, much more. With the SQL running on a hosted server, queries would be fast. Drawbacks are the user has to download Google ADB package, app and database. Then hook-up phone via USB, set a couple of settings on the phone and actually run the "adp install <package name>". Then you need some type of payment center (Paypal) and possibly a refund policy.
So, I'm on the fence here...comments and suggestions appreciated!
From what I've read, lagging for loading databases can be brought to a minimum by altering the way it loads. Instead of loading all the content up front (possibly with a dialog to keep the user amused while waiting) or by loading it as the information comes in. The listView might lag because of the phone's memory available as opposed to a problem with the app. It could be the app. If it needs resources, then make it a top priority and allow it to tell the OS to kill other resource-hogging applications to make way for the information download. It's just a speculation. I don't know this for sure, but I would check the Android Dev site and other places for more information.
Interesting idea...I could just set the data (about 80,000 rows) up as a flat file and then do an INSERT based on user input. Do query, return results and delete rows from table. That takes it to, on average, about a 2,000 row table.
Not sure how I can encapsulate (hide) the data from prying eyes or worse yet, changes to the data! But I will research that idea further and do some code changes and testing....thank you very much
I decided to get a hosted site for a couple of reasons:
1. To get my OWN MySQL databases
2. To create a web site to drive my business and apps delivery
I've finished my application and it works great. 80,000 row database on server, app is 40kb on the phone. Data retrieval is fast...i can get over 100 rows back in 2 seconds on 3G; WiFi would be even faster.
I've decided to push my apps to users via the web site. I'll offer a crippled demo version for review before they buy...no return policy. That is, if you like the demo and buy it, well, you made the choice LOL
I'm still not warm and fuzzy about making user download adb package, hook-up phone via usb and install. But I'll offer something I don't see much on Google Market and that is: SUPPORT. Each app I create will have it's own e-mail address for comments, concerns, enhancements and, god forbid, bug reports. I'll probably also offer free updates if I change the program or upgrade the database.
Well, time to go do the web site. I'll admit I would rather be coding vs. web site design!
Why not both? You could use google and it's HUGE base of users (which may never even know about your app otherwise) and still host the database online at your site. Note that many (most) phones are crippled by the carrier to NOT allow downloads from anything but the market.
Frankly, I think you could probably do it more efficiently. I don't know the details, but why not have the app download the database from your site upon first usage and store it to SD card? A local copy even on an SD card will be orders of magnitude faster than any online solution.
Yeah, I'm still 50/50 on it.
Speed is not an issue on this app; max rows I pull back may be 60 and it takes 2 seconds. Literally, by the time your finger is off the "Search" button, you have your data And if you think about it, how many databases are out there already that people are hitting off of web pages? My 2 second download was on 3G, I imagine the WiFi to be even faster (just tested it on WiFi...3G was faster LOL)
I like the control of the database on my end and it keeps the user from having to download a new copy if the database is updated.
And I'm trying to look at the big picture here too. I'm an unemployed programmer after a 13 year career. I don't mind coding apps for "the people", but I want to get my foot in the door of business' that are going to need smart apps, just like they all needed a web page years ago.
I just have to do some more research and make a decision. However, I do think you are right; the market has huge exposure and can even lead people to my site. The hosted sites is dirt cheap...$50 a year.
I know my app is pretty solid, just hate to think about paying that one-time vendor fee and the 20% per download. Then again, that takes ALL the billing concerns from me; the market handles it all.
Thanks for your feedback!
Hi all, I love the XDA forum, have been browsing it for years, but this is the first time I thought I could add something and wanted to post!
This may not be perfect and I'm certain some of it is replicating, however
I thought maybe a post that covered everything in one place would help someone like me out there making their first foray into Android. And please no haters, I have taken a significant chunk out my night to share my travels with you.
I have spent the last three days trying to ratify my decision on replacing the iPhone with the SG2. The first night was filled with lot's of appreciative 'oohhs', as I explored everything from the beautiful screen to the plentiful configuration options which was exactly what I was hoping Android would be about.
I then spent the next few days (until now) trying to do things that would have just taken an hour or so to do on my iPhone. Namely syncing contacts, calendar, music, photos and videos. This post is aimed at Mac OS users who are taking one small step at a time to Android / Windows 7 .
Firstly, connectivity: two options. You can either go into Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging which is used by some synch programs, or more useful Settings->Wireless and Networks->USB Utilities->USB mass storage. You'll need to unplug any cable already in, click on the above, and then plug in your cable. Then click on the button that says 'turn on USB storage'. You should then see the internal storage mounted as a drive on your Macs Finder where you can look through folders etc.
Note that if you have an SD card, this will also get mounted, but as a separate drive. I found it useful to use my Finder to rename both drives so I could always be sure which I was looking at.
Business stuff:
Email: Easy if you have a consumer service such as gmail, yahoo etc. For small business owners like myself, unless you run an Exchange server, first thing you should know is that only IMAP mail will give you 'push' to your phone. POP3 will work but requires manual synch and not the best use of your battery. I use Zen Internet to host my domains in the UK, and they list their IMAP settings which you'll need. Works great, even SSL for secure email. And full push email, for iPhone users, this is the direct replacement for using MobileMe for your work email.
This was the first and consequently easiest thing I did after purchasing that lead me into a somewhat false sense of security at the purchase
Calendar: You'll need to share your iCal with Google. Easy enough, just do a search on Googles help for CalDev and iCal, I can't post the link as a new user
Contacts: If you have a newer Mac OS, you can go straight into Address Book and under preferences, share the book with your Google account. This will also transfer photos for your contacts if you use them which is nice. Note, you need to press the 'Sync now' option in the top right on your Mac screen where the two arrows in a circle are for the sync to happen. If you don't have this icon or it is greyed out, set up iSync in your System Preferences under the Apple logo top left.
If like me, this function didn't work great (seems that ppl have better results importing from Google rather than exporting to Google with this method) you can either download vCards from your existing contact system and import them into your device (after connecting), or import them into Google via a browser connection. They will then sync with you SG2. Note you will NOT get photos from vCards, they are just text. However, the SG2 has a nice facility for adding photos from your photo collection once that is synced.. see below.
Personal Stuff:
Quick preamble, there are LOADS of different syncing softwares out there, most tend to do one thing OK, but no replacement for iTunes and iPhone users will be dissapointed. I downloaded countless types. Doubletwist (DT) as recommended by many on this forum was the way to go for me, although of significant note was the iTunemywalkman app which you have got to love for its simple and effective coding, especially the fast on the fly re-encoding of your music if it is DRM (EDIT: not DRM! see below!) or lossless, or you just want mp3 rather than AAC. You can even set the bit rate, top notch bit of software. It is however focused on music.
However, with a little usage help, DoubleTwist does photos, video and music.
Photos: thought you might like to hear how I deal with this. For those who haven't used DT, it is a one-way sync only of photos e.g. it will put all your iPhoto pics onto your SG2, but won't take photos from it.. - don't worry easy to work around.
On my GS2 I have the 16GB internal and 16GB SD card. I use DT to do my photo sync to get the library onto SGS, then once I have mounted the phone storage and can see it in Finder (as per above), I open iPhoto and import the photos I've taken into my library straight in iPhoto just like any other regular import such as from an email or downloaded jpg. File->Import to Library. Then navigate to your internal storage, and go into the DCIM folder to find your photos.
I then delete all photos from my internal storage on GS2 through Finder. As the DT software will download my library onto my external SD card, I still have all my photos to look at on the phone, but it keeps it on separate storage areas and easy to manage. For me it feels similar to when I would 'delete camera roll' after syncing my iPhone and it is really not a hassle.
Videos you just do the same thing.
Music: Ahhh, music...the biggest pain in the butt. Easy to drag and drop music files and playlists onto your SG2, but for me and many other would result in Unknown Artist, multiple entries for collection CDs and almost worst was complete lack of playlist, despite it being in the storage!!
This is where itunemywalkman comes into its own BTW, as you can send music through grouped by Album, Artist or Playlist (where in the SG2, playlists were listed as albums, partly solved it).
Anywhooo, to ensure you get the best results, I first recommend you go into Settings->Applications->Manage Applications->All and then go to Media Storage. Select 'clear data', this will not delete any existing music (although I recommend you do, except for music purchased on the phone which I would then import into iTunes and then delete from phone). This just deletes the index, which can cause problems in getting the rest to work if you don't.
Then you go into your DT software, and sync your music. Make sure you sync to the right Samsung device listed, again one will be your internal storage and one your external.
It will also re-encode some music for you, but not DRM which you can sort out with paid for apps, or I think burn a CD and then rip mp3. Other threads will explain... pain in the arse considering you 'own' the music. One of the reasons I moved from Apple... Another issue to resolve is the multiple entries per album, this is to do with your iTunes setting, go into all the tracks listed on the album and tick the 'part of a compilation' box and if necessary paste the album name into each track. This will ensure the SG2 will see it as one album despite lots of different artists.
Once you have all the music on the SG2, unmount the storage from Finder by pressing the eject button, and the you can do the same on the phone. It will take a little while for the Media Storage scan to do its thing as it is rebuilding its index.
Then go into the Market, and download a free app called 'MediaFix'. The guy who developed this should be given a Google Knighthood for doing what they seemingly couldn't. It will repair all the missing meta data, such as artist name and album etc... Most importantly for me though, the playlists require the correct meta data and after running this app (it took about 20 seconds to do my whole 8GB catalogue), suddenly all my playlists showed up! Hurrah!!!
One last thing, download from Market 'Cover Art Downloader' to get all your album art back, or at least a fair bit of it. DT has their own version for £2.99 which you'll need if you have lots of covers like me... Cover Art Downloader seems to crash after about 430 new albums discovered!
I should note I use the DT player on my phone too, for some reason the Samsung player still doesn't see my playlists although it does have the track meta-data now.
All with correct info, and the most crucial thing my SG2 needed to do well for me...
DT will keep this sync'd for you, just quickly wipe your Media Storage file before sync and then run MediaFix after. A little painful, but I have noticed in my case anyway that if you don't do this every time your playlists can get a little messed up again missing artist info (even though the songs and albums still have it...)
With this for photos, DT for audio and Google sync for iCal / Address Book I have now got an iPhone replacement. MediaFix from market is essential to get it working properly though (or convert everything into MP3 before syncing, like you need to do for DRM)... this is because music loses meta data with the Android media index, this will also resolve playlists not showing up, which rely on the meta data.
Hope this helps someone.. I have spent days trying to get my (amazing!!) SG2 working. Quite a contrast to when I updated my 2G iPhone to 3G and after a 20 minute synch was basically left with the same phone as before with more memory and slightly faster. A little underwhelming an experience for a new phone (but I can hardly moan at Apple for getting sync so right), the SG2 has been far more exciting and a steep learning curve. . talk about them being at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The SG2 is better hardware, but it takes more effort to get running the synch as well, but nothing good in life comes easy.... I'm quite technical and didn't lose faith, but I have been left far from satisfied with the experience which is such as shame as the hardware is so great. Google will NEVER challenge the iPhone until they sort this. I have to admit, if the iPhone 5 came out looking as amazing as the SG2, I would probably somewhat reluctantly strip off my shame and get back into bed with it - purely because of syncing..
It's hard to believe that the hardware is just so far ahead of the needed unified desktop software written by Google for Android with all Android hardware providers submitting an API into their 'bloatware' (I actually quite like the Samsung TouchWiz).
Sorry for the long post, please let me know if this has helped, it will make the lost 2.5hrs of my Saturday night seem worthwhile..
Peter
MediaMonkey
Hi!
First of all thank you for the post
I just wanted to say that mediamonkey (at least the 4.0.0.1393 build that I'm using on a x64 windows 7 vaio) synchronises your music and playlists to the phone or to the SD card with almost no setup required and I had no problems with the id3 tags or album art until know. I use the stock music player and tunewiki on the phone. I have never tried but it also has options to automatically convert incompatible files, including video...
The only hassle I had was with the genius mixes and I solved it by creating proper playlists using itunes DJ by choosing the genius mixes as sources and importing them to mediamonkey.
By the way I have an unbranded SGS2 with the KE2 stock rom
This seems like a lot of trouble. Do you find it annoying and tedious? I use a MacBook Pro, and am trying to decide between getting the Galaxy S2 this summer and waiting for an iPhone 5. I'm just concerned with how much trouble it will cause me to do simple things (lack of compatibility?) using an android phone with a mac.
Maybe it would be easier if I just ran Windows 7 (already have a license) on bootcamp or say, parallels, when I want to deal with Galaxy S2 things?
All that stuff works fine, but I am all apple and I found two Mac programs to take care of everything I needed.
I used BusyCal for iCal syncing, it works with the new Mobile Me Cloud, so no problem there.
Second I'm using The Missing Sync, this program sync's iTunes music and movies, as well as iPhoto to and from the GS2.
Both these programs cost money but a small price to pay to have them work as well as they do.
Why not use Kies for Mac?
nice posting thompps!
it will for sure help ppl when switching from ios to android.
but is'nt it obvious that syncing between devices of the same manufacturer is more simple then between varous systems?
apple will allways put hurdles in the way when it comes to syncing with other devices, thats the way they keep their customers dependent... (i must confess its not only apples procedure, but they are master in this discipline)
anyway thumbs up for your effort and wish ya fun with your phone!
Yes thanks good post even though Apple is not a product i have ever used .
Should be a sticky for ex IPhone users .
jje
sadly DT on my mac doesn't read my iPhoto library. Missing Sync and FoneSync doesn't see external SD... how can I fix this?
i must say, although i don't have a mac or an iphone, i thank you for your post, i really appreciate when junior members decide to give something back to the community and your guide is well thought out and structured. good work.
thompps said:
Hi all, I love the XDA forum, have been browsing it for years, but this is the first time I thought I could add something and wanted to post!
This may not be perfect and I'm certain some of it is replicating, however
I thought maybe a post that covered everything in one place would help someone like me out there making their first foray into Android. And please no haters, I have taken a significant chunk out my night to share my travels with you.
I have spent the last three days trying to ratify my decision on replacing the iPhone with the SG2. The first night was filled with lot's of appreciative 'oohhs', as I explored everything from the beautiful screen to the plentiful configuration options which was exactly what I was hoping Android would be about.
I then spent the next few days (until now) trying to do things that would have just taken an hour or so to do on my iPhone. Namely syncing contacts, calendar, music, photos and videos. This post is aimed at Mac OS users who are taking one small step at a time to Android / Windows 7 .
Firstly, connectivity: two options. You can either go into Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging which is used by some synch programs, or more useful Settings->Wireless and Networks->USB Utilities->USB mass storage. You'll need to unplug any cable already in, click on the above, and then plug in your cable. Then click on the button that says 'turn on USB storage'. You should then see the internal storage mounted as a drive on your Macs Finder where you can look through folders etc.
Note that if you have an SD card, this will also get mounted, but as a separate drive. I found it useful to use my Finder to rename both drives so I could always be sure which I was looking at.
Business stuff:
Email: Easy if you have a consumer service such as gmail, yahoo etc. For small business owners like myself, unless you run an Exchange server, first thing you should know is that only IMAP mail will give you 'push' to your phone. POP3 will work but requires manual synch and not the best use of your battery. I use Zen Internet to host my domains in the UK, and they list their IMAP settings which you'll need. Works great, even SSL for secure email. And full push email, for iPhone users, this is the direct replacement for using MobileMe for your work email.
This was the first and consequently easiest thing I did after purchasing that lead me into a somewhat false sense of security at the purchase
Calendar: You'll need to share your iCal with Google. Easy enough, just do a search on Googles help for CalDev and iCal, I can't post the link as a new user
Contacts: If you have a newer Mac OS, you can go straight into Address Book and under preferences, share the book with your Google account. This will also transfer photos for your contacts if you use them which is nice. Note, you need to press the 'Sync now' option in the top right on your Mac screen where the two arrows in a circle are for the sync to happen. If you don't have this icon or it is greyed out, set up iSync in your System Preferences under the Apple logo top left.
If like me, this function didn't work great (seems that ppl have better results importing from Google rather than exporting to Google with this method) you can either download vCards from your existing contact system and import them into your device (after connecting), or import them into Google via a browser connection. They will then sync with you SG2. Note you will NOT get photos from vCards, they are just text. However, the SG2 has a nice facility for adding photos from your photo collection once that is synced.. see below.
Personal Stuff:
Quick preamble, there are LOADS of different syncing softwares out there, most tend to do one thing OK, but no replacement for iTunes and iPhone users will be dissapointed. I downloaded countless types. Doubletwist (DT) as recommended by many on this forum was the way to go for me, although of significant note was the iTunemywalkman app which you have got to love for its simple and effective coding, especially the fast on the fly re-encoding of your music if it is DRM (EDIT: not DRM! see below!) or lossless, or you just want mp3 rather than AAC. You can even set the bit rate, top notch bit of software. It is however focused on music.
However, with a little usage help, DoubleTwist does photos, video and music.
Photos: thought you might like to hear how I deal with this. For those who haven't used DT, it is a one-way sync only of photos e.g. it will put all your iPhoto pics onto your SG2, but won't take photos from it.. - don't worry easy to work around.
On my GS2 I have the 16GB internal and 16GB SD card. I use DT to do my photo sync to get the library onto SGS, then once I have mounted the phone storage and can see it in Finder (as per above), I open iPhoto and import the photos I've taken into my library straight in iPhoto just like any other regular import such as from an email or downloaded jpg. File->Import to Library. Then navigate to your internal storage, and go into the DCIM folder to find your photos.
I then delete all photos from my internal storage on GS2 through Finder. As the DT software will download my library onto my external SD card, I still have all my photos to look at on the phone, but it keeps it on separate storage areas and easy to manage. For me it feels similar to when I would 'delete camera roll' after syncing my iPhone and it is really not a hassle.
Videos you just do the same thing.
Music: Ahhh, music...the biggest pain in the butt. Easy to drag and drop music files and playlists onto your SG2, but for me and many other would result in Unknown Artist, multiple entries for collection CDs and almost worst was complete lack of playlist, despite it being in the storage!!
This is where itunemywalkman comes into its own BTW, as you can send music through grouped by Album, Artist or Playlist (where in the SG2, playlists were listed as albums, partly solved it).
Anywhooo, to ensure you get the best results, I first recommend you go into Settings->Applications->Manage Applications->All and then go to Media Storage. Select 'clear data', this will not delete any existing music (although I recommend you do, except for music purchased on the phone which I would then import into iTunes and then delete from phone). This just deletes the index, which can cause problems in getting the rest to work if you don't.
Then you go into your DT software, and sync your music. Make sure you sync to the right Samsung device listed, again one will be your internal storage and one your external.
It will also re-encode some music for you, but not DRM which you can sort out with paid for apps, or I think burn a CD and then rip mp3. Other threads will explain... pain in the arse considering you 'own' the music. One of the reasons I moved from Apple... Another issue to resolve is the multiple entries per album, this is to do with your iTunes setting, go into all the tracks listed on the album and tick the 'part of a compilation' box and if necessary paste the album name into each track. This will ensure the SG2 will see it as one album despite lots of different artists.
Once you have all the music on the SG2, unmount the storage from Finder by pressing the eject button, and the you can do the same on the phone. It will take a little while for the Media Storage scan to do its thing as it is rebuilding its index.
Then go into the Market, and download a free app called 'MediaFix'. The guy who developed this should be given a Google Knighthood for doing what they seemingly couldn't. It will repair all the missing meta data, such as artist name and album etc... Most importantly for me though, the playlists require the correct meta data and after running this app (it took about 20 seconds to do my whole 8GB catalogue), suddenly all my playlists showed up! Hurrah!!!
One last thing, download from Market 'Cover Art Downloader' to get all your album art back, or at least a fair bit of it. DT has their own version for £2.99 which you'll need if you have lots of covers like me... Cover Art Downloader seems to crash after about 430 new albums discovered!
I should note I use the DT player on my phone too, for some reason the Samsung player still doesn't see my playlists although it does have the track meta-data now.
All with correct info, and the most crucial thing my SG2 needed to do well for me...
DT will keep this sync'd for you, just quickly wipe your Media Storage file before sync and then run MediaFix after. A little painful, but I have noticed in my case anyway that if you don't do this every time your playlists can get a little messed up again missing artist info (even though the songs and albums still have it...)
With this for photos, DT for audio and Google sync for iCal / Address Book I have now got an iPhone replacement. MediaFix from market is essential to get it working properly though (or convert everything into MP3 before syncing, like you need to do for DRM)... this is because music loses meta data with the Android media index, this will also resolve playlists not showing up, which rely on the meta data.
Hope this helps someone.. I have spent days trying to get my (amazing!!) SG2 working. Quite a contrast to when I updated my 2G iPhone to 3G and after a 20 minute synch was basically left with the same phone as before with more memory and slightly faster. A little underwhelming an experience for a new phone (but I can hardly moan at Apple for getting sync so right), the SG2 has been far more exciting and a steep learning curve. . talk about them being at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The SG2 is better hardware, but it takes more effort to get running the synch as well, but nothing good in life comes easy.... I'm quite technical and didn't lose faith, but I have been left far from satisfied with the experience which is such as shame as the hardware is so great. Google will NEVER challenge the iPhone until they sort this. I have to admit, if the iPhone 5 came out looking as amazing as the SG2, I would probably somewhat reluctantly strip off my shame and get back into bed with it - purely because of syncing..
It's hard to believe that the hardware is just so far ahead of the needed unified desktop software written by Google for Android with all Android hardware providers submitting an API into their 'bloatware' (I actually quite like the Samsung TouchWiz).
Sorry for the long post, please let me know if this has helped, it will make the lost 2.5hrs of my Saturday night seem worthwhile..
Peter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi, thanks for the post peter. i have registered on xda today, just so that i could reply to the post. so your saturday night 2.5hrs sacrifice is appreciated!
in south africa contract upgrades are only 24 monthly. i was actually the biggest symbian fan and was very reluctant to move to the iphone 3GS. i was sold. but then i found all the nice apps were paid (something which i am against) and it was either jailbreak the iphone 4 or sg2. obviously if i am posting here, i have gone for the sg2.
i have not fully used the syncing properties on the iphone...and was mislead when the usual "connecting to itunes" states "step 2 of 3 backing up" - i upgraded my software after the pdf loophole was discovered - started with blank apps, lost all my photos etc. the contacts somehow remained.
so here is my question. i dont have an imac, i ahve an ordinary dell laptop. i also use my mobile device (either with cable or bluetooth) as a modem to connect to the internet. (this was one of the features that sold me on iphone - swith internet tethering "on" and you surfing in seconds).
having said that: i mainly need all my contacts to be synced.
the rest i can sacrifice, but pics, texts etc will be nice.
so now that you using the sg2, how is the touch screen sensitivity? messages also in chat form? i didnt understand the part of the blog if it allows for push email notifications? i use gmail.
thanks for post once again and thanks for helping me out on my journey to android...
regards
rava
Thanks for the Herculean effort! Have just made the move myself (Samsung Note) and, being less techie, remain daunted. Any experience with Mark Space syncing tools?
I'm sure everyone here uses and loves the multi users feature. It gives a true independent workspace for each user, however it's not always fascinating.
While the apps need to be downloaded in each profile, the main issue is about locally stored data.
For instance, I want to share some pictures that I have in my gallery with my wife on the same device but can't figure out how to do it.
Would appreciate if anyone can share a solution to be able to share local files with another user profile
junooni said:
I'm sure everyone here uses and loves the multi users feature. It gives a true independent workspace for each user, however it's not always fascinating.
While the apps need to be downloaded in each profile, the main issue is about locally stored data.
For instance, I want to share some pictures that I have in my gallery with my wife on the same device but can't figure out how to do it.
Would appreciate if anyone can share a solution to be able to share local files with another user profile
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the apps actually are NOT downloaded for each user. Only one copy is used by both.
Have to think about intentionally sharing pictures. I am sure Google Drive would work - but that is overkill, and you might wind up with two copies...
sharing of local files is the main issue
junooni said:
I'm sure everyone here uses and loves the multi users feature. It gives a true independent workspace for each user, however it's not always fascinating.
While the apps need to be downloaded in each profile, the main issue is about locally stored data.
For instance, I want to share some pictures that I have in my gallery with my wife on the same device but can't figure out how to do it.
Would appreciate if anyone can share a solution to be able to share local files with another user profile
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Click to collapse
Nope, I have no use for multi-user on the N7 or any tab. To me, a tablet is a personal device, just like a phone. I have no need for multi-user on a Nexus 4 either, it's pointless.
Because storage is limited on the Google Nexus devices (discounting usb) both my wife and I have our own. Each is setup for our personal preferences and taste. If we want to share data, it's easily copied, or shared with Google drive, dropbox whatever.
We are both remaining on JB 4.1.2 and have no immediate plans to update.
Guyz,
I joined this forum a couple days ago. As an intro, I’ve been building and maintaining desktop computers since 1997 for self and family, and my wife’s salon and spa business website with old Frontpage. My main computer is a water-cooled Intel 6600 (I think) go stepping cpu and GTX 8800 vid card, six bay case, 800 watt PSU, dual boot with two removable drive bays, one for main drive and one for game drive, upgraded in 2008 when I was heavy into gaming City of Heroes. Built it for fun. Overclocked and all that jazz. I have a laptop but haven’t gone into it yet.
I got my first smartphone a year ago, Samsung Galaxy Core Prime. With only 8gb of storage It’s useless for as app krazy as I need to be and they are just useful apps like banking, shopping ect, no gaming. I was luving it till I ran out of room even with a 64gb SD card! I found you can’t move very much to the card and I don’t do photos and video much at all so I was very disappointed to say the least. The Samsung rep at Best Buy where I got the phone told me that the local Verizon store should have never put me in the phone to begin with as it’s considered a prepaid. My luck! Some of the sales peeps at the Verizon store are a joke. The dood wanted to wipe my phone until I stopped him. Like that was going to solve something! I was pissed he didn’t know any more than that about the phones he was selling! I went home looking to root the dang thing, hehe. So that’s what brought me here to begin with. I managed to install SKD and did a backup of the phone via Titanium Backup’s site instructions. I bought the pro version but it’s almost useless unless the phone is rooted (sweet app though from what I’ve seen). I found a root for it on this forum but stopped messing with it when I decided to go with the S7. I’d have to have help with the instructions anyway. The posters talked in advanced terms that I didn’t understand so…..
I gave the phone to my wife with Hangouts installed. We moved our landline to Google Voice a year or more ago so with it she can dial using it with wifi. Pretty kewl. There’s lots of Time Warner and Verizon hotspots around so she could use it pretty well where we live. Now trying to wean her off the little flip-phone, hehe. Still have to root it down the road to be useful though.
I went to a Samsung noob class at Best Buy and found that they had the S7 for $100 bucks for a two year contract and thought the 32gb would be plenty with my SD card. Wrong! Even my new S7 has a third of the 32gb space taken up with bloat and what few apps I’ve installed about 4, and I haven’t even installed about 10 or more apps I want. I’ve had it since Apr 1 and I need to root it already, dang! I know, no root available yet. Besides, I want to use the phone for a little longer to make sure it works well while still under warranty.
Now for my noob questions….and I did my homework as best I could. I’ve read all three pages of the threads on this forum looking for answers and can’t find them (I learned lots of other stuff while reading them so thanks guys for that). I’ve looked all over Google search too and just can’t put my finger on the issue.
I want to install apps directly onto my SD card and am looking for a way to do it. I was following a video on YouTube to install apps directly to my SD card via SDB. The video is titled “How to install Android Apps onto SD Card By Default” but the command “adb shell pm set-install-location 2” resulted in a Java error: “java-lang SecurityException: Package Android does not belong to 2000”. (much cussing followed)
Is this really a good, workable method or should I look in another direction? How do you guyz handle this situation?
Off Topic: Anyone using the Ceton 6 channel cablecard and extender system? I’m looking at that to get rid of these two Time Warner DVRs and haven’t quite figured out how to get the signal to older CRT TVs with an Xbox 360 as extender.
Much appreciation for your time looking at this harangue.
Mac Cauley said:
Guyz,
I joined this forum a couple days ago. As an intro, I’ve been building and maintaining desktop computers since 1997 for self and family, and my wife’s salon and spa business website with old Frontpage. My main computer is a water-cooled Intel 6600 (I think) go stepping cpu and GTX 8800 vid card, six bay case, 800 watt PSU, dual boot with two removable drive bays, one for main drive and one for game drive, upgraded in 2008 when I was heavy into gaming City of Heroes. Built it for fun. Overclocked and all that jazz. I have a laptop but haven’t gone into it yet.
I got my first smartphone a year ago, Samsung Galaxy Core Prime. With only 8gb of storage It’s useless for as app krazy as I need to be and they are just useful apps like banking, shopping ect, no gaming. I was luving it till I ran out of room even with a 64gb SD card! I found you can’t move very much to the card and I don’t do photos and video much at all so I was very disappointed to say the least. The Samsung rep at Best Buy where I got the phone told me that the local Verizon store should have never put me in the phone to begin with as it’s considered a prepaid. My luck! Some of the sales peeps at the Verizon store are a joke. The dood wanted to wipe my phone until I stopped him. Like that was going to solve something! I was pissed he didn’t know any more than that about the phones he was selling! I went home looking to root the dang thing, hehe. So that’s what brought me here to begin with. I managed to install SKD and did a backup of the phone via Titanium Backup’s site instructions. I bought the pro version but it’s almost useless unless the phone is rooted (sweet app though from what I’ve seen). I found a root for it on this forum but stopped messing with it when I decided to go with the S7. I’d have to have help with the instructions anyway. The posters talked in advanced terms that I didn’t understand so…..
I gave the phone to my wife with Hangouts installed. We moved our landline to Google Voice a year or more ago so with it she can dial using it with wifi. Pretty kewl. There’s lots of Time Warner and Verizon hotspots around so she could use it pretty well where we live. Now trying to wean her off the little flip-phone, hehe. Still have to root it down the road to be useful though.
I went to a Samsung noob class at Best Buy and found that they had the S7 for $100 bucks for a two year contract and thought the 32gb would be plenty with my SD card. Wrong! Even my new S7 has a third of the 32gb space taken up with bloat and what few apps I’ve installed about 4, and I haven’t even installed about 10 or more apps I want. I’ve had it since Apr 1 and I need to root it already, dang! I know, no root available yet. Besides, I want to use the phone for a little longer to make sure it works well while still under warranty.
Now for my noob questions….and I did my homework as best I could. I’ve read all three pages of the threads on this forum looking for answers and can’t find them (I learned lots of other stuff while reading them so thanks guys for that). I’ve looked all over Google search too and just can’t put my finger on the issue.
I want to install apps directly onto my SD card and am looking for a way to do it. I was following a video on YouTube to install apps directly to my SD card via SDB. The video is titled “How to install Android Apps onto SD Card By Default” but the command “adb shell pm set-install-location 2” resulted in a Java error: “java-lang SecurityException: Package Android does not belong to 2000”. (much cussing followed)
Is this really a good, workable method or should I look in another direction? How do you guyz handle this situation?
Off Topic: Anyone using the Ceton 6 channel cablecard and extender system? I’m looking at that to get rid of these two Time Warner DVRs and haven’t quite figured out how to get the signal to older CRT TVs with an Xbox 360 as extender.
Much appreciation for your time looking at this harangue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not to sound foolish, but just covering the bases....Are you aware you can move the apps the SD card from the system itself?
From your settings Select:
Applications > Application Aanager > select the app you downloaded. It'll show you the "Application info".
From there select "Storage", it'll show where it is stored (internal or SD card).
If it can me moved press "Change", then the pop-up comes up with "Change storage location" for "Internal" or "SD card", sounds like you'd want SD card.
It will show an "Export" screen, then you hit "Move" at the bottom.
The "Transfer" screen shows up, when it is done it'll show the the app page info page again listing "Storage" and show where you moved the app too.
That should help free up some space.
If that's not what you're looking for, then you could try the adoptable storage option, where it lets you use part/all of your sdcard for use as actual internal storage...but there's caveats to that...like you won't be able to use the card outside of the device....you really should read up on it before you attempt it for sure.. Though, I'd recommend trying the first suggestion to see if it suits your needs before moving on to this:
http://www.modaco.com/news/android/heres-how-to-configure-adoptable-storage-on-your-s7-s7-edge-r1632/
hope that helps.
I had already tried the first suggestion. I was able to move maybe five apps to SD. I also found a few videos on adoptable storage but the command like location2 didn't work. Some of those guys you can't understand what the heck they're saying, hehe. I'll have to try it again. I also used Debloater and didn't find even one app that I hadn't already disabled in Applications. There were 21 disabled before I did anything, probably by Verizon. Besides, there's not too much bloat on my Verizon. I had disabled nine apps myself so not too bad.
One problem I wish I could solve off topic is the Play Store apps I don't want keep showing up. One is Google Talkback. I can't find the app on my phone anyway and can't find anything on the net to get rid of it or hide it. Any suggestions on this issue? To this point almost half of my system storage is used. All my photos and documents have been sent to SD and then to Google Drive.
Mac Cauley said:
I had already tried the first suggestion. I was able to move maybe five apps to SD. I also found a few videos on adoptable storage but the command like location2 didn't work. Some of those guys you can't understand what the heck they're saying, hehe. I'll have to try it again. I also used Debloater and didn't find even one app that I hadn't already disabled in Applications. There were 21 disabled before I did anything, probably by Verizon. Besides, there's not too much bloat on my Verizon. I had disabled nine apps myself so not too bad.
One problem I wish I could solve off topic is the Play Store apps I don't want keep showing up. One is Google Talkback. I can't find the app on my phone anyway and can't find anything on the net to get rid of it or hide it. Any suggestions on this issue? To this point almost half of my system storage is used. All my photos and documents have been sent to SD and then to Google Drive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
probably old news, but thought I'd follow up, just in case....
The Talk back app is there, you just have to toggle system apps, otherwise it won't show.
Check out the screenshots attached....you'll find talkback in "Applications Manager" > "More" (top right) > "Show system apps".
Scroll down and you'll see it. From there, you can press on it and enable/disable at will.