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[zoku88]

Can anyone help an android newbie out?

I went from 'cheapest prepaid phone available' to iPhone 3 about 2 years ago, and I'm a smart phone convert now.

One of the main selling points for staying with iPhone (I'm now using iPhone 4) is the personal hotspot functionality. My iPad is wifi only, so when I'm out and about I tether it to my iPhone for net access.

Now that I have an iPad, I rarely play games on my iPhone (which was another huge selling point). I occasionally play a simple puzzle game but that's about it..

Is the sexy nexus bendy phone on the first page the latest/greatest android must-have phone? Will it allow me to link up with my iPad for net access?

Can't really say if its the latest or greatest since it's not announced yet. Just rumours.

As far the hotpost thing, every device with Froyo or newer will have hotspot ability. But, you will have to pay your carrier for it (unless you bought an unlocked one or you had a custom ROM.)

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Yeah wifi tethering is possible on android. How you go about it can vary though. It also depends on carrier. In think there are only a few carrier/software/hardware combos that allow you to do it out of the box no extra charge, but if you root you can absolutely do it.

are you paying for tethering with your iphone right now? Or using a workaround?

 

[lachesis]

Well, I'm on the Android wagon too. My family (Myself, wife, sister-in-law & niece) all were up for upgrades, so we decided to join the modern society by ditching our old basic free phones. All the girls are getting iPhone 4S, but I decided to stick with Android. Obviously, with 20% company discount and all - Sprint's unlimited data family play was the most logical/value per money - so we went to Sprint - from Verizon.

I was going to wait for Nexus Prime myself - but since its unveiling got delayed (partially due to Jobs' death?), and not even sure of whether it would get released on Sprint - decided to go with Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch.

Yeah - it's like 6 month old phone already in other parts of the world - but it seems good enough for me, who's a first time smart phone user.

My phone, unlike iPhone 4S's will get delivered on Monday. It's like a new toy coming to me, so I'm rather excited. Not sure what I can do with it, coming from stone ages.. so little bit overwhelmed here.

 

[FlutterPuffs]

Finally broke down and bought an android. However, since I'm still eyeing the Nexus Prime, and it might take 2 months at least to reach Malaysia, I bought a second hand Motorola Defy. Have a few questions though;

1) I managed to scratch the screen in one bloody day. Any way of repairing that?

2) Any tips for a new android owner?

 

[Cipherr]

Can anyone help an android newbie out?

I went from 'cheapest prepaid phone available' to iPhone 3 about 2 years ago, and I'm a smart phone convert now.

One of the main selling points for staying with iPhone (I'm now using iPhone 4) is the personal hotspot functionality. My iPad is wifi only, so when I'm out and about I tether it to my iPhone for net access.

Now that I have an iPad, I rarely play games on my iPhone (which was another huge selling point). I occasionally play a simple puzzle game but that's about it..

Is the sexy nexus bendy phone on the first page the latest/greatest android must-have phone? Will it allow me to link up with my iPad for net access?

Most carriers want you to pay extra for tethering. Past nexus devices had tethering built in, and IIRC carriers actually pushed updates to REMOVE that functionality. I would say, check with your carrier, as for tethering, yeah the Nexus will be able to do it, nearly all phones can, even if it isnt native, plenty of free apps will allow you to.

 

[rozay]

I really hope the next nexus will be able to. Hopefully an unlocked GSM version won't have any restriction, but if the phone goes on contract with Verizon I highly doubt they will allow it on their version.

Didn't Sprint block their Nexus S from using the stock tethering app?

 

[sooperkool]

BTW, what is this Voodoo you mentioned before?

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.projectvoodoo.controlappdonate&hl=en

 

[Beatbox]

Epic Touch is on the way. Look forward to joining in on the fun here. Can't wait to stop using this shitty Samsung Eternity.

 

[pubba]

Yeah wifi tethering is possible on android...are you paying for tethering with your iphone right now? Or using a workaround?

I get 2 GB a month on my current iPhone plan, and I guess when I tether the iPad it counts toward this data cap? If I go over 2GB they charge some ridiculous data charge per MB. Australia gets raped re: phone plans

But that's great to know about the tethering! I'll get one of these fancy android bendy screen phones in December when I go to Thailand for a 5 week holiday. I'll give my iPhone 4 to the gf for Xmas. That way everyone gets a new toy. She's using a horrible Acer Liquid from 2009

 

[Jake.]

thanks so much for all the help/recommendations guys, but i am still having one issue (on an s2) - my battery is still pretty shitty, even with juicedefender, so i went to investigate in battery usage and i noticed that awake and screen on are not matching at all. the phone seems to be awake 3-4x more than the screen is on. does anyone have any ideas why? i have wi-fi and GPS manually set off, and have juice defender running as mentioned.

someone said on one of the first few pages that this is a problem, but i have no idea what is going on. can anyone advise?

 

[zedge]

Uninstall juice defnder. That crap is not needed. What kind of battery life are you getting?

 

[NomarTyme]

Any more games like Third Blade?

 

[Lesiroth]

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.projectvoodoo.controlappdonate&hl=en

Woah, that looks awesome. But unfortunately I'm not familiar with the stuff to adjust in that app,do you have any suggestions?

 

[nubbe]

Uninstall juice defnder. That crap is not needed. What kind of battery life are you getting?

That shit helps quite a bit actually.
Killing data connections saves a huge amount of power

 

[zedge]

That shit helps quite a bit actually.
Killing data connections saves a huge amount of power

It made my battery worse. Then I read the countless articles on how these task killers ect are completely unnecessary and can actually worsen battery life.

 

[Jeff-DSA]

We should put in the OP that task killers are really only necessary for old versions of Android and that if you're running 2.2 or better you're doing more harm than good. Or was it 2.1 where they really improved that memory management?

Either way, they're unnecessary.

 

[zbeeb]

It made my battery worse. Then I read the countless articles on how these task killers ect are completely unnecessary and can actually worsen battery life.

i dont actually use either, so I'm not 100%, but i thought juice defender didnt do task killing? it simply managed intervals for data connections to be active to save power.

 

[zedge]

i dont actually use either, so I'm not 100%, but i thought juice defender didnt do task killing? it simply managed intervals for data connections to be active to save power.

Android does this on its own. You are essentially running another application doing the same thing that is already being done..likely eating up battery at the same time.

 

[Jake.]

JD cuts off 3g when the phone is asleep - android doesn't do that by itself (from what i've seen).

i am still stumped as to why awake/screen on aren't matching up, background data is switched off also. ugh.

 

[zedge]

Maybe juice defebder is keeping the phone awake? How much battery life are you getting anyway?

 

[Jake.]

before JD i would get around 20ish hours and that was with barely using it. JD says it has improved the battery life by 1.47, and whilst i have noticed a slight improvement i don't think its that high.

 

[kehs]

There's a 2.3.5 update being pushed out to the Galaxy SII that's supposed fix the shitty battery life.

For those in the US, expect it next year I guess.

 

[Londa]

i'm not upgrading until there's a dual/quad core with a keyboard as good as the one on the Epic 4G.

Wow at the epic, I didn't know there was a phone with decent directional keys. o_o I want it so badly... (I currently have a G2)

 

[zedge]

I'm getting about 10 - 12 with Med to heavy use. That's on 2.3.3 which has poorer battery life than the newer 2.3.4 and 2.3.5. That's stock on Bell GS2. Seems pretty normal to me. The problem is I love playing around with this phone so much I can't put it down for more than 2 minutes.. lol Can't expect the best battery life for myself. The odd day that I have been really busy and not used it much its been at 3/4 battery after a full day still.

 

[Jeff-DSA]

The best keyboard ever was the Cliq keyboard. I had that before getting my G2. I really, really miss that Cliq keyboard still.

 

[Radec]

Any chance that the Nexus Prime will start shipping before December this year?

I don't live in the US and we got the SGII last May 2010.

 

[Cudder]

Android does this on its own. You are essentially running another application doing the same thing that is already being done..likely eating up battery at the same time.

Android doesn't kill off data connections on its own. Of you have wifi on, its constantly on. If your 3G is on, it's always on. It's one or the other. Juice Defender shuts off all connectivity to a network and only opens them up for a brief moment to allow data to sync, then shuts it off again. In the moments when your data is off, you save tons of battery.

 

[zedge]

Android doesn't kill off data connections on its own. Of you have wifi on, its constantly on. If your 3G is on, it's always on. It's one or the other. Juice Defender shuts off all connectivity to a network and only opens them up for a brief moment to allow data to sync, then shuts it off again. In the moments when your data is off, you save tons of battery.

You can change wifi to turn off when the screen is off. Or just turn it off when you don't need it. I think manually turning off 3g data would be more beneficial if you're worried about battery that much too. Having another process running in the background to monitor and shut these things off would be counter productive IMO, and my own experience.

 

[Jake.]

I'm getting about 10 - 12 with Med to heavy use. That's on 2.3.3 which has poorer battery life than the newer 2.3.4 and 2.3.5. That's stock on Bell GS2. Seems pretty normal to me. The problem is I love playing around with this phone so much I can't put it down for more than 2 minutes.. lol Can't expect the best battery life for myself. The odd day that I have been really busy and not used it much its been at 3/4 battery after a full day still.

i have android 2.3.3 as well - i just upgraded my firmware via kies and i thought that would upgrade android too. how do i get 2.3.4?

 

[zedge]

i have android 2.3.3 as well - i just upgraded my firmware via kies and i thought that would upgrade android too. how do i get 2.3.4?

If you didn't get it through Kies then you will have to wait for another official update. Or you could go to a custom ROM but thats a whole other ball game, I'm not playing that game anymore lol.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Haha, I'm like an expectant mother going through the nesting phase over here. Making plans to get all my data organized, backups in check, and picking out headset colors (red cord!) Etc...


Yup, I'm excited. I just hope the phone is actually as good as all the signs are pointing to. Software too, the new music app really is that big of an improvement. G+ is nice too.

 

[Jake.]

If you didn't get it through Kies then you will have to wait for another official update. Or you could go to a custom ROM but thats a whole other ball game, I'm not playing that game anymore lol.

i'll keep my eyes open then, thanks man.

 

[zbeeb]

You can change wifi to turn off when the screen is off. Or just turn it off when you don't need it. I think manually turning off 3g data would be more beneficial if you're worried about battery that much too. Having another process running in the background to monitor and shut these things off would be counter productive IMO, and my own experience.

Effectively, juice defender does this for you, only it also allows set intervals for apps to receive updates. Definitely beats having to manually switch things off/on/off and you still get notified when messages/emails/etc come through.

All that said, I have no issues with 1 day battery life. Just throw the phone on charge every night!

 

[zedge]

Effectively, juice defender does this for you, only it also allows set intervals for apps to receive updates. Definitely beats having to manually switch things off/on/off and you still get notified when messages/emails/etc come through.

All that said, I have no issues with 1 day battery life. Just throw the phone on charge every night!

Same here, charge at night. If I am using it alot I will plug in at work too to keep it topped up, never really worry about running out of battery.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

The best keyboard ever was the Cliq keyboard. I had that before getting my G2. I really, really miss that Cliq keyboard still.

And it had the d-pad on the correct side (for games.) Wish Moto would return to that.

 

[OriginalThinking]

Can you share your google GAF circle?

I can but I'll need to know who you are. I'll PM you

Lol I'm thedinosaurking, I get extra weird on twitter. So beware, I guess.

Yeah, you weren't joking!

 

[3phemeral]

Looks like Music 4.0.1 FINALLY synced for me. Awesome.

 

[brain_stew]

Well, I'm on the Android wagon too. My family (Myself, wife, sister-in-law & niece) all were up for upgrades, so we decided to join the modern society by ditching our old basic free phones. All the girls are getting iPhone 4S, but I decided to stick with Android. Obviously, with 20% company discount and all - Sprint's unlimited data family play was the most logical/value per money - so we went to Sprint - from Verizon.

I was going to wait for Nexus Prime myself - but since its unveiling got delayed (partially due to Jobs' death?), and not even sure of whether it would get released on Sprint - decided to go with Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch.

Yeah - it's like 6 month old phone already in other parts of the world - but it seems good enough for me, who's a first time smart phone user.

My phone, unlike iPhone 4S's will get delivered on Monday. It's like a new toy coming to me, so I'm rather excited. Not sure what I can do with it, coming from stone ages.. so little bit overwhelmed here.

It's still the best handset currently on the market (even after the 4S announcement). You've no reason to feel like you're getting something outdated and it won't be until mid-late 2012 at the earliest until something offers a worthwhile performance upgrade (Krait and A15 based SOCs, quad core A9 solutions like Tegra 3 are I'll conceived stop gaps, in the smartphone market at least

 

[OriginalThinking]

One of the benefeits of going with the TI Omap series 4 chipset for the prime instead of the SGS2 Exynos is the better GPU - By going with TI we should get a dual core power VR chip, similar to that found in the original Galaxy S Hummingbird but presumably at least a level up. Should be much more powerful than Mali in benchmarks Whether it will be the same GPU to be found in the new iPhone 4s should be interesting to see.

 

[Randy Lanzarote]

One of the benefeits of going with the TI Omap series 4 chipset for the prime instead of the SGS2 Exynos is the better GPU - By going with TI we should get a dual core power VR chip, similar to that found in the original Galaxy S Hummingbird but presumably at least a level up. Should be much more powerful than Mali in benchmarks Whether it will be the same GPU to be found in the new iPhone 4s should be interesting to see.

Current OMAP series 4 chips (4430 and 4460) are not dual core GPU, they have a single core SGX540, albeit clocked higher than what was in the Hummingbird. The Mali GPU in the Exynos is the better GPU. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4760/arms-mali400-mp4-is-the-fastest-smartphone-gpufor-now
The upcoming 4470 has the improved SGX544, but again that is still single core (but has a dedicated 2D core to save on power).

Series 5 OMAP should see dual core GPUs, but they aren't due until around Q3 2012.

 

[brain_stew]

One of the benefeits of going with the TI Omap series 4 chipset for the prime instead of the SGS2 Exynos is the better GPU - By going with TI we should get a dual core power VR chip, similar to that found in the original Galaxy S Hummingbird but presumably at least a level up. Should be much more powerful than Mali in benchmarks Whether it will be the same GPU to be found in the new iPhone 4s should be interesting to see.

The Omap4460 rumoured to be used in the Nexus Prime actually uses the exact same SGX540 found in Hummingbird, in fact there's not a single Omap4 on the roadmap with a dual graphics configuration.

Its actually a significantly slower GPU by most measures (sans real world triangle throughput but that's not as important as you'd think) but TI might be able to get it somewhat competitive by running it at very high clocks. Although, then you have to consider the much higher resolution screen to power and then you're back to square one with significantly slower real world graphics performance.

TL;DR: Don't buy a Nexus Prime for its graphics performance and nothing on Android (including Tegra 3) is going to touch the A5 in graphics performance for the best part of a year.

 

[OriginalThinking]

Current OMAP series 4 chips (4430 and 4460) are not dual core GPU, they have a single core SGX540, albeit clocked higher than what was in the Hummingbird. The Mali GPU in the Exynos is the better GPU. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4760/arms-mali400-mp4-is-the-fastest-smartphone-gpufor-now
The upcoming 4470 has the improved SGX544, but again that is still single core (but has a dedicated 2D core to save on power).

Series 5 OMAP should see dual core GPUs, but they aren't due until around Q3 2012.

Thanks ;-)

The Omap4460 rumoured to be used in the Nexus Prime actually uses the exact same SGX540 found in Hummingbird, in fact there's not a single Omap4 on the roadmap with a dual graphics configuration.

Its actually a significantly slower GPU by most measures (sans real world triangle throughput but that's not as important as you'd think) but TI might be able to get it somewhat competitive by running it at very high clocks. Although, then you have to consider the much higher resolution screen to power and then you're back to square one with significantly slower real world graphics performance.

TL;DR: Don't buy a Nexus Prime for its graphics performance and nothing on Android (including Tegra 3) is going to touch the A5 in graphics performance for the best part of a year.

Thanks too!

 

[kinggroin]

The Omap4460 rumoured to be used in the Nexus Prime actually uses the exact same SGX540 found in Hummingbird, in fact there's not a single Omap4 on the roadmap with a dual graphics configuration.

Its actually a significantly slower GPU by most measures (sans real world triangle throughput but that's not as important as you'd think) but TI might be able to get it somewhat competitive by running it at very high clocks. Although, then you have to consider the much higher resolution screen to power and then you're back to square one with significantly slower real world graphics performance.

TL;DR: Don't buy a Nexus Prime for its graphics performance and nothing on Android (including Tegra 3) is going to touch the A5 in graphics performance for the best part of a year.

Pretty much. Its not like there's really much on the market that'll actually take advantage of a dual gpu setup. Hell, not much on ios either (though to be fair, that extra gpu grunt will probably be used for the next iteration to power a bigger screen and much higher resolution to keep the point high).

So long as ICS is efficiently designed and is fully gpu accelerated, the 540 will probably be more than fine.

 

[PrivateWHudson]

I can't get gmail to sync automatically. It's been happening for a while, but after a couple of days of really trying to fix it, I'm almost at my breaking point.

I almost think it has to do with having the same e-mail on my touchpad. When I first hooked up my touchpad I noticed that I had to manually refresh it. Not to long after, I had to start manually refreshing my phone's gmail app as well.

Any ideas?

 

[nubbe]

I can't get gmail to sync automatically. It's been happening for a while, but after a couple of days of really trying to fix it, I'm almost at my breaking point.

I almost think it has to do with having the same e-mail on my touchpad. When I first hooked up my touchpad I noticed that I had to manually refresh it. Not to long after, I had to start manually refreshing my phone's gmail app as well.

Any ideas?

Gmail stop to sync if you are low on internal memory

 

[PrivateWHudson]

Gmail stop to sync if you are low on internal memory

How low?

Here's what it's showing right now:

Application Storage
Available space
1.08GB

Internal Storage
Available space
9.29GB

 

[panda21]

There's a 2.3.5 update being pushed out to the Galaxy SII that's supposed fix the shitty battery life.

For those in the US, expect it next year I guess.

is that out in europe? do you just get it from kies or is it an OTA thing?

 

[sooperkool]

Woah, that looks awesome. But unfortunately I'm not familiar with the stuff to adjust in that app,do you have any suggestions?

There are preset configs in it so you don't have to tweak it manually if you don't want to.

 

[JonnyBrad]

is that out in europe? do you just get it from kies or is it an OTA thing?

Its been on xda for a while now. I think its not been pushed out officially to anyone yet though.

 

[OriginalThinking]

How low?

Here's what it's showing right now:

Application Storage
Available space
1.08GB

Internal Storage
Available space
9.29GB

Hmmmm. I remember the Desire having this issue a lot and I sorted it for a few customers. *Racks brains as to how I solved it* Try clearing any data in your Gmail app for a start. Through applications under menu that is. Also try changing your Gmail password on your desktop/laptop (you can change it back later) and that will automatically prompt you to sync.