Moving from winmo to Android, Disappointed - General Topics

I just got my Samsung spica, with Android 1.5 Cupcake. I have been using winmo for a long time from HTC tytn to my last one is winmo 6.5 on Xperia X1.
Android is very different, I have seen so many videos and heard so much about it that I thought I know almost all of it. When I got the Spica and the first thing that I did was to download taskiller, I read about if before that this could free up the rams. But what I didn't understand that unlike winmo, taskiller actually kills a task, since there is NO WAY to close a task. There are no close button at all (is it me or that's just stupid?). Then I thought I would get a battery percentage app. Apparently you have to pay for all of them!! I have to pay for a basic app to monitor battery % (should have been added in the operating sys).
Then I started playing with the games, there are lot of games to try out. Some of them are free too. Spica has a 800Mhz processor so I tried the Speed forge demo, it was great.
Now I thought I would check the GPS, so I opened the google map. Wow it was fast to find my location! Then I thought I would try to find the local bus schedule from the map. In my Xperia X1, when I see a bus stop, I could just click on it and it would give the bus schedule (I am in montreal). In spica I tried to tap on a bus stop, it didn't work. I realized that its because the google map in it might be a old one. What a disappointment!
The final disappointment was when I tried to save an app in my SD card. I have a 6GB data plan, so I was download a lot of apps, then I thought I will move them to my SD card, apparently there is no way to do that. I mean come on!!! Later learned that they are working on it.
So it is clear that you need to have huge ROM (and RAM). Xperia X10 should have 1GB ROM, I think I should wait for it. Or should I get Desire instead as it has 512MB RAM? Or should I find a rootable Android phone? Or should I just wait for WP7?
This is so confusing now....

There are free battery apps, I don't see why you couldn't find one. I believe I use Battery Lite.
There's a neat task killer called osTask that give a UI for killing tasks, similar to the WebOS PalmPre, so you control task killing rather than auto.
I wouldn't be surprised if they update google maps for the bus stops for you and/or add google earth to your phone. But updates tend to start on the latest os version (eclair).

Not familiar with Samsung spica nor do I have your app issues. But my Nexus with Android 2.1 rocks (rooted or not)!

ya, so far android phone do not have hotswap sd card slot as the os requires the sd card to be in to store your apps/multimedia.
but its can be use as a thumbdrive still when you hook up to your pc and select mount sd card as removable drive.
so far so good on acer liquid, try upgrading for yr device.

You don't need to close apps, or use taskkillers. You don't need to free up RAM, Android will do that for you. It keeps apps in the memory so that when you open them up it's faster, when memory is needed it will kill the least important apps to make room.
Battery apps are available for free, the system itself will show you battery percentage without an app or widget Settings>About Phone>Status.
There is no way to move an app to SD because of piracy. Apps2SD is enabled amongst the modding community and you should be able to find a way of enabling that. Surely you can understand the issue, you should be able to install as many apps as you want... assuming you don't have a G1

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I kind of got the hang of it at the end (even though I couldn't find a free battery app). I solved my bus stop problem after I found one app in Google labs made for Montreal specifically. Yet I wasn't satisfied with the phone for 1.5 Cupcake I guess. So I returned it after one day of use.
Then I just learned today that Samsung is releasing 2.1 in that phone. My luck Well I now I think I will go for the X10. It is suppose to come on 14th April in Canada (with Android 1.6 though).

Related

Do apps need killing to speed android?

hi
This may be a daft question but do I need to keep killing apps so they do not use resources? I have installed a 16gb card in my HTC Hero and if I run music I note a slow down which goes when i force quit an app.
Have I misunderstood how the android os manages tasks? Any light happily recieved on this issue... thanks.
Well android i believe kills apps itself sometimes but it depends how you exit it.
Atleast on my MT3g there is some lag while music player is going even if all tasks are killed...less of crouse if i make sure they are but still. Sometimes i catch pandora or gallery or browser still in background so it always helps to kill them. Best app for that is Es Task manager - from all ones i tried this one works best.
Also your microsd card size wont make phone any faster if thats what you think, Also look into maybe some ROMs if you want your hero to be faster. I know Cyanogens rom for mt3g makes phone much quicker then t-mobile/google roms.
thanks. I think I am going to move to a G2 anyway. The HTC is too limited with Android 1.5

[Q] Auto Reloading of web pages

Hi all, I'm sorry if this is not the correct place to post this. But I hope the Mods will replace it where appropriate.
I just was wondering if there is a way to stop that annoying reloading of web pages when I push the browser to background process in my old Android 4.0.3 device. It so consumed data. Is there any way to keep the pages in memory or something?
Thanks
Hi,
As far as I know, it's because of Android cleaning unused programs from memory (RAM) when it's getting full, and on lower specs phones it happens pretty quickly, although I don't have accurate numbers here.
It's a core feature of Android, so I'm not sure there is a way to bypass, limit it or whitelist programs, perhaps on rooted phones, but I'm eager to know if it's possible.
But, is it the same on newer devices? I hope not, cos it's so lame.
So that's it... I just can't do anything unless I root. Hmmm...
Thanks for your comment though.
I can't answer for sure, but on all my devices it's the same problem, even under KitKat.
I suppose my RAM isn't enough, but someone would have to confirm if the problem still exists on high end devices like S4 or G2.
I don't know what you'll get here by rooting your device, cause all of mine are rooted but sometimes I still get the problem.
Well at least you can delete some bloatware so it's never a bad idea if you feel confident rooting the phone.
For repro, I usually do this, between each step, just press the Home button to return to the home screen :
- Launch a heavy game such as Dead Trigger 2 or Real Racing 3, or even a smaller one like Subway Surfers
- Launch Chrome, open something simple like Google News for mobiles
- Open the camera, no need to take a pic but just open it and go back to home straightaway
- Open Gmail, or another mail app
- Open Play Store
- Try to go back to your game (or browser)... on all of my devices I lose my current level, as it's as I've force quitted... yeah that sucks for low end or old devices like mines, but I don't think there is a workaround.
Just to say, on my iPod Touch 3 I get a better experience for games, although I have to go through reloading on Safari tabs.

About RAM use, development and priorities

Hello peepz,
This is sort of a development thing but since I am neither a developer or very adept at codes (I'd call myself a sorta competent end-user) I thought I'd just post in the general forum.
We hear a lot about ram use and how we do not have to worry about it and android handles it. I understand how android handles memory but I have a problem with the ram use regardless. Operating an older device with just 1 gig of ram I am frequently dealing with lag and redraws because android has to make room for a new or old app I'm launching. The cause is usually found in apps that have absolutely no business keeping themselves in memory. I just deleted a simple website reader that hogged 30 MB persistently. Before that I deleted the Facebook app and messenger that together claimed 100 MB, even though I use greenify.
I am rooted, on cm 11 never used app killers. Why is my android using different priorities than me?
I just wondered.... Could there be a function in android where we could manually assign priority levels load apps? Personally, I could not care less if I have to wait a bit for Facebook to load but I get really aggressive if I have to wait for my app drawer, home screen or phone book.
Or is it purely a development thing where apps are told by there developers they are the king of the droid and the most important thing ever and behave as such? Why does my ram manager still think it is cool to kick out my launcher in favor of a social media app?
Manually assigning priorities could really make a device behave the way the user wants.
Or maybe I completely get it wrong...
Anyway, please discuss and have a glorious day!

[Q] 2B the next level; does smartphone has its virtue memory inside?

I was wondering and still be, does smartphone has its virtue memory inside?
My phone is G2 mini. It's kind of worth for a few budget but for long-term usage.
MSM8226 didn't help at all
The point came from using many apps in the same time. 3 apps were at least; facebook via Dolphone browser, music,and colornote.
" I intended to save some text from browser to colornote."
Music was running in background while anothers I switched them from App to App.
It made every time I went back to my browser, it had to reloaded time to time. The contain was gone even text that couldn't be save.
Morever, IF switching had been made, and I kept it waiting up to 5 munites, another App, colornote, would take time more 5 seconds to come up.
Then music stopped. I went back to browser again, it was gone anyhow. Everything I texted in browser was in the wind.
Looked like OS or something got the wrong intention about prefetching for App, I'm not sure that I'm right to say this. BUT it disturbed me a lot.
-Not sure if it was about OS has to manage its own resource even power to give user's intention.
-Not sure if it was about Home lauching's cache or SoC
-Not sure if the manufacturer claimed that Quad core, its 4 cores, help together to process the main task or just remain the-at-least core to process both background App and main App - checked from CPUZ; it showed CPU#0 just run alone for idle mode, and CPU#1 to CPU#3 would be activate if some main Apps were used.
HOWEVER, If this is concerned about virtue memory in OS or in App or whatever?
Thank you all in advance
Classic case of not enough RAM.
It's full, so it closes other apps to make room for the active one.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
so if I bought a bigger room, so it would help?
I mean what about differences in a bigger room with the same just-4-head of 1.3GHz? I'm afriad.

[Q] -Navigation- (Navigon by Garmin)

Sony Xperia Z3 comes now with "-Navigation- (Navigon by Garmin) pre-installed. I played with it and I like it. The thing is that the program must be installed onto the phone's internal memory to work and that takes a lot of space due to, mostly, of the large file containing the maps.
One good way to solve the space issue, would be:
1. Find a solution to launch program installation from the sd card (similar to iGo) and keep the program's folders there, or,
2. Install the program on the internal memory but move the folder containing the maps and poi onto the sd card and change the directory to point to.
Has anyone tried to do that? If yes, did it work? And if it worked, would that person be kind enough to write down explicit steps for the rest of us to follow?
Thank you.
Well you would have to create simlinks, that requires root. In Android 5.0 Google will allow you to shift app data without any tweaking.
Also I heard the Garmin app was pretty bad from reviews.
Navigon kinda sucks. Garmin's Streetpilot is much better but I've have not tried to install it on Z3 yet. I have it running on HTC Sensation though.
Currently, the best nav. soft is Sygic and it lets you keep map data on SD card.
Nokia here maps is pretty good, they provide navigation data to many companies. Google Maps is the one I use just because I got used to it, you can save maps on it too.
I would say after testing a lot in the early days of Android phones, Sygic was by far the best android nav. I still use it now and am very happy with it. In the day it was light years ahead of the competition, not sure if this is still the case.
danw_oz said:
I would say after testing a lot in the early days of Android phones, Sygic was by far the best android nav. I still use it now and am very happy with it. In the day it was light years ahead of the competition, not sure if this is still the case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think sometimes its hard to compare because some have better coverage in some regions than others.
Now, since the thread became a rating for the GPS software, I might ad that, in my opinion, iGo is the best navigation software for android,ios and windows!
I've used it on my previous phones but I wanted to try something new...like Navigon by Garmin since it came for free...
czguy said:
Navigon kinda sucks. Garmin's Streetpilot is much better but I've have not tried to install it on Z3 yet. I have it running on HTC Sensation though.
Currently, the best nav. soft is Sygic and it lets you keep map data on SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So... anybody figured it out yet?
If you are rooted then use an app called foldermount. Have only used it on rooted 4.4 stock and it works fine as long as you link the folders through /data/media/0/Navigon/ rather than /sdcard0/Navigon, and ignore foldermount s requests to change it back.

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