"Tech Talk; Android Phones & Apps"

[Dan in Florida]

Originally Posted by Greythan

Cool stuff Dan. I guess I need to actually get one of these. I've stubbornly stuck to my corporate issued blackberry because I'm cheap.

My wife is stuck on Blackberry too! This week she finally upgraded to a Blackberry Bold 9930. It has the traditional Blackberry keyboard with touchsceen also, but pretty limited (comparatively speaking).

[Greythan]

BB's really stink. RIM will be out of the business soon. At least that's my prediction. With software that basically allows enterprise connectivity to iOS and Android phones, they're losing the lone beachhead they had against the competition.

[Dan in Florida]

This has NOTHING to do with phones/tablets BUT it does have to do with Technology and I wanted to share (I don't think they want too many tech threads)...THIS IS NOT SPAM...just reporting what I bought.

We, at my office, just came across this NEW item which I think is a must have for many of us concerned about security. I just bought a 4GB encrypted drive for $60 (plus shipping) and it works great...CHECK IT OUT!

Example, if you travel and lose your laptop, or it's stolen...you may have sensitive documents (or naughty photos) that may be compromised, with this you are safe.

It's a HARDWARE SECURED drive with Pin Pad. They explain the details better than me.

You Tube

AND...what he didn't tell you, that I learned with my drive, when you unplug the drive (or turn off your computer) the drive AUTOMATICALLY LOCKS AGAIN.

I plan on scanning all my paperwork docs and putting on my drive. I will put my NUMEROUS passwords on there too, for my wife, should something happen to me.

Made in america (I believe)...here is their website where I ordered from: http://www.lok-it.net/

Tell me it's not cool!

You Tube

[Tobalaz]

I'm sorry, I'm completely thrilled about this and couldn't justify starting my own thread for bragging.
A couple of days back, I had my android tablet plugged in to charge, poor thing got knocked off the table and broke the internal female charging pin off the tablet's motherboard so I could no longer charge it.

I picked up some superglue and electrical solder (60/40) at ACE, cracked that bad boy open, glued the piece in place on the board then soldered it back on.
Already had the soldering iron, glad I didn't have to buy that too, bright side, found out I've got 2 fine tip soldering irons for small electronics and an industrial soldering gun for thicker gauge wire (like battery cables). Really, practicing on people's cars (lol, suckers!) gave me the practice I needed to move to a smaller job.

I thought I was past getting excited about pc hardware and gravitating to software, but man fixing my discontinued, out of warranty G Tablet was a rush for this nerd!

Sad and funny at the same time right?

[Riffer X]

Tobes, you know your shit about this stuff, I am very impressed and nice to have a tech wizard around.

May need you someday.

[Tobalaz]

This is so crazy I didn't believe it myself till I tried it!

My G Tablet would get fingerprinted up to hell and back again and I was always cleaning the screen 2x-3x a day or else it would start losing sensitivity due to oil buildup.
I was going through the XDA forums, and low and behold some nut put rain-X on his tablet and swore by it, so I thought what the hay, Anything beats cleaning this damn thing so often, I'll give it a shot.
So, as per the instructions, I got my screen completely spotless, (plus cleaned it two more times just in case) and lightly applied rain-X with a microfiber cloth, pretty much followed the direction off the bottle like I was putting it on the outside of my windshield, and it worked!
It dried clear, the oil off of my fingers doesn't build up like it did, so I'm only cleaning it every 2-3 days, and the touchscreen seemed to improve on sensitivity.
Maybe the sensitivity didn't get better so much as without the oil buildup stayed sensitive noticeably longer, but hey, whatever works right?
I don't know if the trick works on more expensive tablets or not (heard they use a higher quality coating), but it's supposed to work on phones as well. I've personally got an anti fingerprint screen guard on my Evo, so there's no point for me.
Just thought I'd share this amazing little tidbit I dug up (and confirmed that it worked) while looking for stable ports of ICS for my tab and phone (I'm REALLY hyped for them).

[Tobalaz]

I love my tablet, but hate the fact it only allows 2 gig of app space.
I found 2 ways to fix this, both require rooting.
I'm going to just put the easy way on here.
DroidSail Super App2SD (ROOT)
http://market.android.com/search?q=p...dsail.dsapp2sd
It's the only app2sd variant I've found to this point that can force move damn near anything to your SD card or 2nd internal partition.
It really helps since a good deal of Amazon apps are stuck in the default app space.
I also found it does wonders on my Evo since it only has about half a gig of allowable app space, and since most HTCs use the same OS format, even when they have 8+ gigs of internal storage, it would keep those models from getting the low memory error as well (Incredible would be a prime example).
Ps, don't move your widgets or any program that controls CPU freqancy. Bad things could happe.

[Inspecta]

Ok, I need some help guys, and I know you guys know your shit.


I want to upgrade my phone, I got a HTC incredible last year, and while it's been pretty good, now it's buggy, lagging and I've already had to do one master reset on it, and it has this bug where it thinks the memory is full when it's not. It's a pain in the ass.

So I have 2 lines on my account that are eligible for upgrade. And I'm looking a few phones. Let me know if you guys have any strong opinions about one or the other.


I'm with Verizon, so I've narrowed my choices down to two (my budget is right around a hundred bucks.)


I can get an Iphone 4....not 4s (no siri) 8gb

Or Verizon has an online deal right now where I can get the HTC Rezound for 99.99, and it comes with a pair of beats by dre headphones ( I think the earbud)


I want the phone that records the best video.

If you guys know of another phone that fits the bill, please let me know.

[Tobalaz]

I'll let you know right now, my HTC EVO has the same 8mp camera as the Rezound, and it does great pictures and video.

If you go Apple, you're going to get software, great, easy to use software. iPhones are the Macs of the phone world, they're basically idiot proof and user friendly at the cost of customization. You're going to pay for damn near every app you use or need and any apps you've already purchased are NOT going to transfer over.
It's not a bad phone, but it has limited flexibility with the software, a non-removable internal battery, and you can't expand the storage space via microsdhc card. And that 8 gig of onboard, non-expandable storage is going to get ate up FAST if you decide to record in 720 instead of 480. If you really want to read up on the iPhone camera, try here: http://takezer0.com/iphone-4-as-film-tool/
It has a single arm cpu running at 1ghz with 512 mb of ram and 8gb internal memory (which is shared by iOS which really leaves you about 7 gigs, not 8)

The Rezound has the best 4.3" screen on the market (highest pixels per area, beats out the iPhones which are #2 with a smaller 3.5" display), does full 720p playback, records video in 480, 720 and 1080. It has the generic base HTC 1 gig of app space (1.6 gig internal, .6 of that reserved for the OS) expandable up to an additional 32 gigs (comes with a default 8 gig card), which, when paired with one of those lovely Hyperion extended batteries, is going to give you some nice recording time. Your current app purchases are going to transfer over (+1 in my book) and you've been using HTC's Sense interface already.
The Rezound comes with android 2.3 (gingerbread) and will be getting updated to Android 4 (ice cream sandwich), which is a plus. If you're wondering what happened to Android 3x (honeycomb) it's tablet only.
The Rezound also runs an arm cpu, but it's is dual core 1.5ghz (snapdragon3), and a full gig of ram so you're getting a little more horsepower to work with.

Both use Qualcomm gpus that are descendants of Power VR's Kyro gpus (used in the Sega Dreamcast). Power VR could do more with less, because it didn't render in layers like AMD, Intel and Nvidia gpus. It couldn't handle rapid massive pixel fill (like from artificial rendered explosions) so it never caught on in PCs, but when not crippled by explosions it ran frame for frame with the Radeon 9700 and Gforce 5900 with less than half the transistor count. Not the best technology for a gaming pc, but remarkable for phones.

It's a call you have to make, me personally, Android guy. It's way more flexible on the software end and has better overall hardware.

[Tobalaz]

PS
You can fix that low memory error on your current HTC if you wanted.
You would just have to root, remove some bloatware, and force move a few apps.

[Inspecta]

Thanks for the info Tobz. Yeah I was leaning towards HTC just for a smooth transition to a new phone. I love HTC sense. My buddy keeps telling me that the iphone is so easy to use I'll never want to use another phone. But I'm a bit more sophisticated, so I don't mind a phone that's a bit more complex. Plus I love to customize all my shit.

As far as the low memory error, I have a program that I run whenever that thing rears it's ugly head. Usually it's just an annoying notification, however sometimes it will halt txt msgs from being received. That sucks.

At any rate, I'm 99% certain I'm gonna get the rezound, just cause I'll have a better camera, more memory , and I get a free pair of beats by dre headphones...

[Dan in Florida]

I couldn't agree more with Tobalaz!

Originally Posted by Tobalaz

I'll let you know right now, my HTC EVO has the same 8mp camera as the Rezound, and it does great pictures and video.

If you go Apple, you're going to get software, great, easy to use software. iPhones are the Macs of the phone world, they're basically idiot proof and user friendly at the cost of customization. You're going to pay for damn near every app you use or need and any apps you've already purchased are NOT going to transfer over.
It's not a bad phone, but it has limited flexibility with the software, a non-removable internal battery, and you can't expand the storage space via microsdhc card. And that 8 gig of onboard, non-expandable storage is going to get ate up FAST if you decide to record in 720 instead of 480. If you really want to read up on the iPhone camera, try here: http://takezer0.com/iphone-4-as-film-tool/
It has a single arm cpu running at 1ghz with 512 mb of ram and 8gb internal memory (which is shared by iOS which really leaves you about 7 gigs, not 8)

The Rezound has the best 4.3" screen on the market (highest pixels per area, beats out the iPhones which are #2 with a smaller 3.5" display), does full 720p playback, records video in 480, 720 and 1080. It has the generic base HTC 1 gig of app space (1.6 gig internal, .6 of that reserved for the OS) expandable up to an additional 32 gigs (comes with a default 8 gig card), which, when paired with one of those lovely Hyperion extended batteries, is going to give you some nice recording time. Your current app purchases are going to transfer over (+1 in my book) and you've been using HTC's Sense interface already.
The Rezound comes with android 2.3 (gingerbread) and will be getting updated to Android 4 (ice cream sandwich), which is a plus. If you're wondering what happened to Android 3x (honeycomb) it's tablet only.
The Rezound also runs an arm cpu, but it's is dual core 1.5ghz (snapdragon3), and a full gig of ram so you're getting a little more horsepower to work with.

Both use Qualcomm gpus that are descendants of Power VR's Kyro gpus (used in the Sega Dreamcast). Power VR could do more with less, because it didn't render in layers like AMD, Intel and Nvidia gpus. It couldn't handle rapid massive pixel fill (like from artificial rendered explosions) so it never caught on in PCs, but when not crippled by explosions it ran frame for frame with the Radeon 9700 and Gforce 5900 with less than half the transistor count. Not the best technology for a gaming pc, but remarkable for phones.

It's a call you have to make, me personally, Android guy. It's way more flexible on the software end and has better overall hardware.