Clouds and sheep > Angry birds

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Not sure why you'd bother with that app. The newest version has features removed, is very laggy, barely works without force-closing.

Just have a read of the latest user reviews - some very angry people.

The browser version is actually more usable.

last edited by parabol at 20:31:11 03/Jan/12

O get custom firmware for sure. I'm using Darkyrom and it craps all over the SGS stock firmware both performance wise and battery wise.

I also use dolphine web browser.

I highly recommend getting your custom firmware on.

Clouds and sheep > Angry birds

Girlfriend is now addicted to this. Thanks.

These threads are great and they pop up every know and then but you should really have a quick info on what the app is. Like for example what does Layer/Vaulty do?

Heardy, rooting is really easy. It depends on your phone, but most phones have been automated to the point of clicked buttons.

Running an SGS with Onecosmic's Ice Cream Sandwich rom (Android 4.0.3)..

Apps:
Beautiful Widgets (pretty clock/weather widgets)
Facebook (will probably switch to browser)
iSyncr (syncs music playlists with iTunes)
MyBackup Pro (useful for backing up sms/call logs when changing roms)
Pure Calendar Widget (see a list of upcoming calendar events in a convenient list)
SwitchPro Widget (have a useful little button bar for turning things on/off)
WhatsApp (send text/voice message without sending an sms - like IM)

Games:
Minecraft Pocket Edition
Hotel Mogul
Robo Defense
Shopper's Paradise
Star Traders RPG Elite

if you jsut got a new phone herady. why didnt you get the galaxy nexus?

SG2 is great, good choice heardy. Putting cyanogen mod on my phone breathed new life into it. I was so sick of its shit which I attributed to a majorly cracked screen. After installed the mod, it was like a new phone, a lot of the shit went away like the phone turning on by itself and the touch getting wacky.

Also something really annoying with SG2 is that when it recharges comptlely it beeps. There's no direct way to turn this off, it's some shit that samsung put on there. Some one at work got one, only work around is to set the notification volume to 0 and then setting a message sound to anything other than default. Won't get email notification or anything else but sms should get a bing.

I recommend:

Sleep as ANdriod - great alarm program, monitors your movements and tries to wake you up at the right time moment.

I'm trying to find a maps program. Like google maps but offline. I know there are apps out there that let you cache Maps but I don't want to rely on it. Would really love Nokia's maps but for android.

These threads are great and they pop up every know and then but you should really have a quick info on what the app is. Like for example what does Layer/Vaulty do?

Good point. Too tired to do it now, might do an edit later.

In any case - Vaulty helps you hide your pr0n so it doesn't appear in your gallery, file managers, etc. Just in case people get snoopy with your phone ;)

My partner has a stock sgs, I swear mine 'just works' much better. Definatly worth following the tutes on custom flashing.

*waits patiently until march so i can switch to android*

i want that big ass screen!

Not sure why you'd bother with that app. The newest version has features removed, is very laggy, barely works without force-closing.

Just have a read of the latest user reviews - some very angry people.

The browser version is actually more usable.last edited by parabol at 20:31:11 03/Jan/12

weird - the new version of the FB app for me is the best one by miles. I've always found them a little clunky but I like the interface of the current one. Only really annoying thing for me is it still doesn't support comments on photos in photoview mode, and notifications are too slow to load (why aren't they loaded in the background when it loads news?)

I've had an andriod phone for 6 months now and have not installed one app, am I lame?

I've had an andriod phone for 6 months now and have not installed one app, am I lame?

depends what you use the phone for I guess. I use mine as a stop watch and sometimes a quick & dirty spirit level so I have those apps on there. I also have a calculator app that has all different conversions for time, speed, mass, volume, etc. Sticky notes help me remember stuff.

ha. I just checked my phone and still got that car performance app on there from when my speedo broke so I used my phone. :)

the new version of the FB app for me is the best one by miles

The older verion used to be a proper standalone app that cached content and only downloaded updates and reformatted accordingly. i.e. you could pull up a photo or event you viewed previously at lightning speed while the app was loading other stuff (news feed updates, etc).

The current version just seems like a mobile browser window loading ajax/whatever content from scratch -everytime-. I can't even do basic stuff like I used to, such as change my attendance status in an event, view the categorised attendance list, etc. Can't access much of the content in messages/events/walls, etc either anymore as they just stripped them out of the app in the last couple of updates

Just installed the app again now. Took 20 seconds to load up my home page over Wifi. Was happily browsing the full desktop version on my PC at the same time without issues.

CoPilot

Great but none for Asia :(. They've got a sale on. Super cheap maps for UK/USA/Europe. Still haven't found one.


Turns out that the new google maps has a prechache option in the labs settings. Works a treat, but it's missing the ability to modify or manage the cached maps. Otherwise, it's great.

I now have a transformer (my other laptop bit the dust and i spend more time on planes than i used to) and a SGS.

My SGS has nearly no apps since i got the transformer, everything is much better on the transformer. When I don't have the transformer nearby (like i leave it at home instead of taking it to work because it's so distracting) here's what my phone has on it:

Running MiUi, OC'd to 1.4ghz and Undervolted a bit, I get 2-3 days depending on use (life has increased since my tablet came into the picture).

Therefore I use
Glitch Kernel app (paid)
Rom Toolbox (comes default with miui for making miui better)
Themes app (comes with miui, just makes my phone a bit different every few days or weeks)
Super user - good for managing permissions of stuff.
Add killer scripts. - Self explanitory.


Optionally I use

• Airdroid. This is a must have. It allows you to access most of your phone from a web page. This is gold at work or at home, instead of typing responses on the touchscreen pulling your phone out all the time, i type them on my PC or transformer.


• Poweramp. This is for its great widget, and because it handles A2DP much better than any other music player.


• Sketch and draw - A simple way to enjoy drawing stupid things when bored


• Skype - though i recommend always logging out of it when you're not using it. It's a battery killer.


• 3d weather widget - egh it's a clock and it has weather. big woop.

On my tablet widgets are everywhere because having a widget for a giant calendar and a giant email widget seems to make more sense. It's like how on my computer I'd have a couple of windows open monitoring stuff before going full screen with something.

For games I played all of the available

• Princess Punt
• GTA4 (was a pain to buy this but with my xbox controller and hdmi connection it plays great
• Youtube - Self explanitory, i have many subscriptions and it plays 720p+ content wonderful, plus i have a mini hdmi cable to my bed so i throw stuff on that while my PC is off at night. Cleverly youtube is fullscreen on the HDMI TV but the "related results" and stuff is open on the tablet in case you want to look for what you want to watch next.
• Lots of tower defence games and stuff i bought in the 10cent sale
• Stock browser again, just it's the latest because i put on someone's custom rom, with the propper hardware rendering its damn smooth. I watched day9 live stream in 720p on my tv during midday and it was as smooth as my computer would have been.


Cool. That's about it, nothing fancy here i'm just impressed that both my phone and tablets/transformer entertain me.

greazy, try OsmAnd .. lets you download map/point of interest packs. whole thing is based on openstreetmap. also lets you use google maps, bing, and a bunch of others as layers. not 100% sure if there's an asia pack, but i'd be surprised if there wasn't..

I know there are apps out there that let you cache Maps but I don't want to rely on it.

that's good enough for me, remember the name at all?

Greazy, I'm pretty sure you can cache google maps for offline use, though not everywhere of course. this was a big feature they put in last year.

http://www.howtogeek.com/94561/google-maps-for-android-now-supports-offline-caching/

Swype is a must have for touch screens and fat fingers.

ankidroid - flashcards for learning things (mostly languages).

Advanced Task Killer

If you're manually killing apps, you're doing it wrong.

The only times these sorts of apps should be used is in the rare occasion that you have some shitty app that's misbehaving and crashed or won't close. Android is much better at managing its memory than the user is.

If you're manually killing apps, you're doing it wrong.

The only times these sorts of apps should be used is in the rare occasion that you have some shitty app that's misbehaving and crashed or won't close. Android is much better at managing its memory than the user is.

This is true of 99% of apps, but if your phone is lagging after you go back to home screen and shuffle between screens for a while, chances are something hasn't suspended right.

Those dodgy apps can be found through advanced task killer by just killing one at a time. seeing it's effect, or killing the one you suspect is being bad.

Then i suggest removing it.

I often kill skype this way.

Kairosoft make by far the best games on android.

Lots of new ones out now just as good as game dev story.

Pocket league story
grand prix story
mega mall story

My top picks from kairosoft

Why would you randomly kill one at a time to see its effect?

Just grab SytemPanel which will show you both the instantaneous CPU usage of apps as well as the total CPU time (more useful). Also get BetterBatteryStats to see what apps have been holding wakelocks ...

Yeah, no, i don't need to spend that many apps or time searching for phone issues, i just kill the most recently installed and see if that fixed it, 80% of the time it has, the remaining 20% of the time it's skype. My point wasn't how to fix your phone, it was the legitimacy of the task killer.

ok well i couldnt wait for you lot to answer my questions about launchers so i went and googled myself an answer hehe

after suitable research, i downloaded Go Launcher and some themese and lockers etc - pretty cool how it changes a lot of the look and use of the phone, nice for a change, some interesting stuff too

:)

after suitable research, i downloaded Go Launcher and some themese and lockers etc - pretty cool how it changes a lot of the look and use of the phone, nice for a change, some interesting stuff too

I was using GO Launcher until I got an ICS rom. Now just using the stock launcher, it's great!

So I didn't get around to looking at the new phone straight away and I've been sick the past 24 hours but I want to get onto this asap.

The phone was bought from ebay (advertised as AU stock) and came with Portuguese language as standard, this set off alarms, and then once logged in it has a lot of tmn ( http://www.tmn.pt/ )branding shit and more Portuguese crap.

So I want to know how to nuke the phone completely to take all that extra shit off.

http://www.hard-reset.com/samsung-i9100-galaxy-s2-hard-reset.html

I followed that guide but that just brings me back to the same shitty tmn branded crap.

Somebody help me, otherwise I am going to rage at the seller on ebay and send the fucker back. But I kinda want to leave that as a last resort as my SGS is shitting me so badly at the moment....

You suggestion was to search for the rogue app by, to quote: "just killing one at a time. seeing it's effect, or killing the one you suspect is being bad".

The question was is this app useful, in which case, yes and an example of one of many uses.

There may be other apps that can be useful for the example i gave, but it was just one example.

You've gone and invented some retarded details about the scenario to push out other apps as more useful for the specific scenario you've created, but I don't really care, because it was just one example.

Who gives a shit about wakelocks? My battery with little use (just sms, facebook, browsing and camera) lasts 3 days, if i can't charge it in that time then i'm not going to go hunting for wakelocks.

Rather, if my interface is laggy, i'm going to kill the program which made it laggy and move on with life.

You've gone and invented some retarded details about the scenario to push out other apps as more useful for the specific scenario you've created

Wrong. I was pointing out that suggesting to people to randomly kill apps hoping they get the right one is retarded when there are actual apps for that job. And no, they aren't for a "specific scenario" - they are for the scenario you're talking about.

Rather, if my interface is laggy, i'm going to kill the program which made it laggy and move on with life

Yeah after an hour of fumbling around foaming at the mouth end-tasking shit randomly hoping you got a hit on the correct app ...

Who gives a shit about wakelocks?

Obviously not you, since you don't seem to know what they are.

Yes I used PayPal so that could very well be an option.

They also advertised as 'new' however the seal of the box was broken. So someone had been into it.

Model GT-I9100
Baseband I9100XXKI1
Kernal Ver 2.6.35.7-I9100XWKI4-CL575468
Build GINERBREAD.XWKI4

EDIT: This is the ebay item (I now realised I paid overs, damn) http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250959605667&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:AU:1123#ht_5916wt_932

I also went with this buyer due to ~14,000 trades with 99.8% positive feedback. Really annoyed now :/

They also advertised as 'new' however the seal of the box was broken

Yeah dodgy. The ebay listing even says: "Brand New: A brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging (where packaging is applicable)"

2.6.35.7-I9100XWKI4

Yeah I think that's a european kernel.

the most common is i9000 which is the international version

That's the Galaxy S. Anyhow he's already pasted his model #: GT-I9100.

CyanogenMod is a firmware that many people use, that link will take you to the installation instruction page. Read it first before you do anything.

Not recommended - it's still fairly unstable with many features missing. The newest beta is meant to show promise, but that's what you hear about EVERY beta!

CheckROM and others are meant to have less issues.

last edited by parabol at 22:03:42 09/Jan/12

I just chucked it up because it had a relativly straight forward install. From there it is pretty easy to change firmwares.

^^ The ROMS can add new features, strip out bloat (not just carrier bloat, but unwanted system services that can't be removed with root), change optimisation settings, and give a very different user experience to the stock ROM. Different ROMs have different aims - some are designed for maximum responsiveness, some go for maximum features, and the good ones are minimalistic and just fix show-stopping bugs in the official firmwares.

One tiny example: I liked that my Motorola Defy had a notification LED. You could just glance at your phone while it's sitting there and find out if you have any texts, emails or missed calls without touching your phone or taking it out of standby. The Galaxy S2 doesn't have that LED, but a custom kernel can make the touch-screen button lights blink on and off to achieve the same effect.

Second example: the stock ROM on my Defy is laggy and unusable after a month - I actually miss calls because the screen stops responding while I'm trying to swipe-unlock. The battery also lasts a day. I put the CM7 rom on and bam, super-snappy and the battery lasts 2-3 days (or closer to a week if I turn data off when not using it).

However I'd say a majority of the ROMs out there are incomplete or buggy. Lack of complete camera abilities is a typical shortcoming of some of them. However a few of them are pretty good.

What sucks is you mostly hear from people who have too much time on their hands and who flash a new beta version of ROM X.Y.Z every week - play with the ROM for 15 minutes and claim it is rock solid and awesome battery usage. People flock to use this super awesome rom and then you hear of the dozen other bugs that person didn't find as they don't actually use their phones normally since they're too busy wiping flashing every other day.

last edited by parabol at 00:57:09 10/Jan/12

* BUMP *

Any one have a good battery status app? The standard one doesn't show % of battery used.

Ideally I just want one that looks like a battery and has a digit number in it that tells me how much % is left.

Thanks!

I guess Battery Widget, it shows what you're after. Otherwise I would recommend using Easy Battery Saver, as it seems pretty darn good.

On another note, if you live in Melbourne and catch trains use Train Trapper.

JuiceDefender is a super must have. Using it gives me at least 50% extra battery life for normal use, on light use I get 70% extended life. I also turn Wifi off because just having it on chews through the battery.

Google maps just added cache management. It's great now, just wish you can increase the size of caching or specify certain locations.

Not android but WP7, check out these guys, they are victorian based indie group, game looks pretty solid and interesting:

Free version here(run by ads)

Paid version here

Their web page: www.craftworldgame.com

no really, i want to know this... does anyone know?

with weather australia app how do you get it to show the general weather for the week (like a widget) without opening it?

is airdroid just an access centre for phone files? i've been using WiFi File Transfer to do pretty much the same thing - just sets up the phone as an accessible ftp on the same network. is this the same as airdroid?

with advanced task killer, i've just been killing all apps, instead of going to specific apps.. although at most i've only had to use it once a month or two so didn't mind the minimal battery loss of restarting all apps.

is airdroid just an access centre for phone files? i've been using WiFi File Transfer to do pretty much the same thing - just sets up the phone as an accessible ftp on the same network. is this the same as airdroid?

No, it's a web based access point for your phone's most basic features. Basically you use your PC's web browser to open a web page that is hosted by your phone, on that page you can play music from your phone, read and send text messages and a few other things.

I've found it pretty nifty for receiving and sending text messages at work without ever having to pick up the phone or type on the tiny keyboard, but haven't ever done much else with it.

Flash you fucking showoff