Database Info

My friend hates his TP cuz of these issues and blames me 4 selling him on HTC.

My friend hates his Sprint Touch Pro and blames me 4 selling him on HTC.
If anyone can offer any help or fixes, I would greatly appreciate it.
I am going to e-mail him a link to this thread.
Thank you.
The following in quotes is the e-mail he sent me.
Here's the low down on my HTC Touch Prop Experience thus far and why I will
sell this turd on ebay...
Cant type first and last name into messaging "to" field (once you hit the
space bar for the last name it selects the first 'josh' in your phone book,
etc.)
Cant search by company name in the address list (I need to look up account
in my phone all the time by company name)
Some names do not appear in contact list search at all but I know they are
there and can get to them manually
Cant search first and last name in contact list (must type one or the other)
GPS won't automatically drive to calendar appointment when the address is in
the appointment or give the option to drive to the appointment
GPS won't give you the option to drive to an address in your address book
GPS freezes up and stops navigating when you turn off the screen (to save
the battery). Won't start again until you close the app and restart.
Several times the phone has frozen up and the touch screen would not
respond...cant get into messages, can't get into contact list.
Auto backup fails every night (third party app but the best one on the
market)
every day the phone freezes up in my contact list...multiple times every
single day. I have over 1700 contacts....I have reset my phone at least 5
times already today.
using three fully charged new batteries a day...I am on my third battery
today as of 5pm and yes I bought three freaking batteries
T9 text input randomly turns itself on and I have to manually turn it back
to ABC input
Facebook and twitter apps suck to the point of being unusable (Facebook app
is the brand new one from Microsoft's upcoming windows mobile 6.5 OS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Put Juicy 8 on it and it's a whole new experience.
dwizzy130

Wow, i hate lists, but here i'll try to help with some limited knowledge from a touch pro owner since october (my first real smart phone)
use arrow keys left/right to select next person in list when starting to type name
cant help you there, i look up by person's name. There may be alternative software out there for a different address book connected to the main one? SPB mobile shell might have something. Found it! you can do it by going to contacts - then in the menu view-by and select company
maybe those numbers are listed on your sim card and not on your phone book, in the options there should be an option to show both address books
shesh you're picky again, Name one example where you actually need to type both to find the person you want! (i can't think of one example)
Wow, you really think windows thought of everything didn't you? GPS can't do squat without GPS software
This is most likely due to a problem with your firmware - update your ROM and see what happens
Update your ROM - i suggest a nice EnergyROM 2.0 or 1.3 - it is pretty damn stable and bug free - most of your issues from here out sound like things that can be fixed by wiping your phone and installing a better rom than the junk tossed together by the service provider
Why does it fail? What is the backup software? PIMbackup is a pretty solid one, and why do you need to backup nightly? I sync my contacts and calendar with google sync. Thats the only vital data i don't want to loose that changes daily (except for tasks, still waiting for google sync to add tasks)
Again - update your rom! Imagine a car torn apart by a kid in his first year at auto school, and then trying to put it together in a month. That is what the hack jobs who work as rom chefs for service providers do to these phones when they add in their junk bloatware. (Also HTC provided an update with new features, most providers now have released revised versions with their bloatware added of course, but they still work better than the original firmware that comes on the phone)
Battery life depends on use. How often do you have it check for email? My battery lasted only half a day when i told it to check every 5 minutes. Then i realized i really don't care about checking email (and nobody important emails me that often) so i set it to 4 hours - battery life went up drastically. Also turning down brightness, and turning off wifi will save a LOT of battery life. I get a sold day and a half out of my phone now. (with pretty decent amount of use)
Can be another issue with the firmware you're running. There is an app called Advanced Config Editor, I think there is a setting to disable T9
Sigh, indeed, applications are still a work in progress, before the iPhone, there was very little competition for slick applications, but consumers will prevail in the end. For now - its all about keeping up to date with your favorite phone blogs to find out about the latest software available
In all honesty, the TP and other windows mobile phones are not for everyone. They work great if you know what you want to do with them but if you expect to just pick up a phone and go, buy a freeken iPhone and enjoy your watered down smart phone for braindead people. (Hey, i bought my mom one for christmas, she's all happy that she changed the ringtone for me.... despite the fact her past 5 phones could also do that in less than 5 buttons......)
HTC makes a wonderful selection of mobile devices, I have always been pleased with their products.

Cant type first and last name into messaging "to" field (once you hit the
space bar for the last name it selects the first 'josh' in your phone book,
etc.)
Cant search by company name in the address list (I need to look up account
in my phone all the time by company name)
Some names do not appear in contact list search at all but I know they are
there and can get to them manually
Cant search first and last name in contact list (must type one or the other)...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can do all these things by default in the stock WinMo contacts on my HTC Fuze
GPS won't give you the option to drive to an address in your address book
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Know nothing about the Sprint GPS nav app (I assume that's what he's using?) but Garmin Mobile does this, and I suspect most other GPS nav apps do as well.
As far as crashes and battery usage go, the only fix is to flash a different ROM without all the provider bloatware. Sounds like most of his gripes are related to Sprint's implementation of the device, not about HTC or the device itself. In any case, he'll probably never be happy with it - tell him to get an iPhone where he can blithely ignore all the missing features and lack of flexibility.

Asurion Mobile AddressBook for Android

Hello XDA,
I am one of the developers of the Asurion Mobile AddressBook and I would like to get some feedback on our product from the users here. I have been using this forum for some thine now for Winmo and respect the opinions of the developers here. It would be great to see what everyone thinks of the application. It is available in the Android Marketplace, just search Asurion. Or you can go to our site at http://www.getaddressbook.com/.
A little about AddressBook, it is a socially connected address book that allows you to get information about your contacts from different social sites like Facebook and Twitter right in the address book, through mini programs called Mixins.
Soon we will have an APK for developers to develop their own Mixins for AddressBook. When its ready I will post more information if anyone would like to beta for us.
AddressBook is still in a beta form and is available for 1.6 and 2.0 and above. Please try it out and let me know what you think. AddressBook is new and we are open to positive and negative feedback.
Thanks,
Peter

Just installed
Main app + all MixIn
It's a nice app, just a bit slow on my HTC Sapphire Magic Vodafone 32B with 2.1 Eclair Rom
I don't like "MixIn solution", why not a full app with all modules inside ?
I've launched main app, then I gone to market and installed Facebook MixIn for first.
After a lot of privacy authorization with some screen not well fitted I did a little war with Matching People, cause a lot of them were not matched nice.
I need Photos compare, cause I've some cases with two or more people with the exact name... like my cousins =)
I had some Facebook MixIn Force close Crashes and some com.google.process.gapps crashes too, right now...
I installed flickr and associate it with some of my contacts and no problems at all.
at last I tried Twitter and no probs with it...
I think it's a good app, but a bit slow...
last thing:
Support for all languages (I could translate it in Italian if you need)
I don't like number in this format 000-000-0000
or 00-000-0000
I know it's a developing app and I will wait for next releases of this.
Well Done
Good Job

This is some great feedback, thanks for taking the time to try it out and post back.

Just wondering
Is this ultimately going to be a paid application?
You know like:
5.99/mo
4.79/mo
1.99/mo
What's our deductible? :0

Haven't tried the app, but if you could spread the QR codes apart it will ease their reading.

Thanks for your app!
played with it 30mins.
1. got the main app
2. started a new a/c in www.getaddressbook.com
3. got the MixIn: Facebook
4. start the MixIn app, input Facebook a/c
5. click Allow buttons 3 times
6. MixIn starts to get contacts from FB
7. Auto Match
8. Manual adjust Auto Match results
9. Launch main app
The above steps took about 25mins (330 FB contacts; 300 gmail contacts; Auto Matched 180; manual picked out... haven't counted >_< i believe picked out 30 - 50).
Cool:
-Auto Match tried to best match FB | Local contacts even they are not perfect match.
e.g. Shirley Lam | Salei Lam (it matches)
-Facebook photos can replace local as well as sync. to Gmail Contacts
-Consolidated activities log (SMS, voice call, etc) for individual contact
Not:
-[MixIn: FB] Say you have some contacts named Peter Chan, you will get confused without some other hints like Organization.
I picked those contacts out in Auto Match to prevent mis-matching as Org is not displayed in Auto Match results
-[main app] Contact list won't remember the last viewed location.
I scrolled from top to Carol, click twice to view details, click Return and the contact list scrolls back to top.
-[main app] Slow. Maybe it's my outdated HTC Magic... (it's CyanogenMod 4.2.13 w/ EBI1 mod]
For me:
Keep and waiting for updates!

looks cool..will try this later when i get home for work..
speed is defiantely something that can be worked on.

thebluecoat said:
Is this ultimately going to be a paid application?
You know like:
5.99/mo
4.79/mo
1.99/mo
What's our deductible? :0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, the application will be free. And no deductible that I know of

It looks interesting but what you should definitely not miss is the T9 dialer. The way you can find contact by typing their name directly from the dialer is the only feature that makes me stay on 1.5. I tried other apps from the Market but nothing could match HTC's Sense UI dialer. If you can bring something clean similar to this I'm sold!

Another question for the community. Are there any features you are not seeing in the AddressBook that you would like to see, things that would make this app a must have?

Great work on the app. After using the app for a few days the main reason I stopped us using it was the user interface. Its not horrible but compared to everything else on the phone, it looks a bit outdated (quality wise). Other then the ui, it can be sluggish at times but nice work.

DesertWolf1971 said:
Another question for the community. Are there any features you are not seeing in the AddressBook that you would like to see, things that would make this app a must have?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Darvo is absolutely correct. The T9 dialer is something that is sorely missing from most builds. I think it would especially appeal to stock users as well as those running cooked roms. I have been searching for a reliable answer to this outside of a Sense UI but haven't found anything that I'll stand by 100%.

Thank you .........

I appreciate your effort with AddressBook; however:
I find it extremely inappropriate and invasive that the app immediately syncs my contacts upon install to -- where? your servers?
There should be a clear warning that this is about to happen!
Please delete my data from your servers!
Also, the 'delete all' function on your site does not work, at least not with Safari. I 'moved' all to the 'delete' column on right, but clicking on 'delete selected' does nothing.
And with Chrome I couldn't even log in. Got some error about 'src' and try the support page.

I am sorry that app is frustrating you. There is a screen during setup that lets you know about the backup. This function can be turned off in the app. If you give me your user name I will delete your account from the database. The back up is meant to protect your contacts in the case that you loose your phone or get a new one. As for browser support, right now we are only supporting IE and Firefox. Again sorry the app is frustrating for you.

Great app!
I really like and appreciate this app. The 2 biggest features that drew me to waste countless hours playing w/ hero roms on my mytouch were hero's T9 dialer, and the social integration. I'll 3rd the motion for a T9 dialer in your app. No complaints otherwise. Bravo - and thanks for the great app.
P.S. Backup to server is a bit redundant in my opinion, because your contacts already sync w/ your Google acct - but, to each is own. I might be missing an advantage to it anyway. I just opted not to use it.
And props for soliciting feedback here in the forum - where the REAL users are.

DesertWolf1971 said:
There is a screen during setup that lets you know about the backup. This function can be turned off in the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? Because I can see in the options where to change the time and frequency of the sync, but I don't see how to disable syncing altogether. Maybe I'm just missing something?

Good catch, looks like there is a bug, you should be able to set it to not backup. We will work to get that fix in.

I have been playing around with the Hero, but I am not sure I have found the T9 dialer, what does it do?

Feedback
I've been following this app since it first arrived, and I must say bravo for doing what only HTC dared to attempt. It works well, too, except for a few things.
1. It may SEEM that scrolling smoothness isn't that important. Ask Apple, they'll tell you the truth: Its the only thing the masses give a Sh&% about, how something looks. So imitate the apple or hero contact style, because the one here is rough but needs only an easy fix! Smooth scrolling and better "sleek" colors. Same for the dialer.
2. It seems to run too often in the background, which slows my phone seemingly, no matter how often i taskiller it.
Eagerly awaiting the next release...

[APP] Executive Assistant - for anybody whose inc is an office phone too

Holy guacamole! Has anybody else seen or used this app? I am amazed - its spectacular. It is a 1 stop widget for email / calendar / tasks / sms / missed calls / voicemail / facebook / twitter / google reader.
I just downloaded and installed the free version of the app from market and various add-ons and am positively blown away. Will be buying the paid version to get rid of ads when i get home.
I have been searching for something like this for weeks and found a reference on droidforums or something like that. My stupid, stodgy, underpowered, small low res screen, bad browser, no apps, no customization blackberry can now safely be consigned to the trash can! My d-inc will be my new work phone and with this app and the widgets I have absolutely everything I needed.
A few things to note:
1. Set up took a small bit of time for me but once set up properly it is great.
2. Editing any incorrectly entered settings is confusing since the menu button keeps pulling up general phone settings. You have to click inside the widget and then press the menu button to get the app settings. They should make that better.
3. The widget app does not seem to support exchange email - just gmail including google apps and other IMAP/POP accounts such as yahoo, hotmail - you need paid accounts for those last 2 I believe. I guess for my exchange account i will use the htc widget (strangely though the app does support exchange calendars).
4. There are countless settings - spend the time to figure them out. Font size, color, background - way too many things can be changed.
5. I confused myself by using it on the lockscreen - when you switch on the screen, you dont see screen unlock - you just see a summary page of the emails / calendars etc etc. - you have to click the home button to get the slider to unlock your phone.
6. http://www.appventive.com/executive-assistant is the app site but there is not a helluva lot of info there. You are a bit on your own in figuring out the settings etc.
7. I have 2 google emails - 1 personal, 1 office g-app and of course google voice. It did not like that and would not login into all my email and voice till I entered their passwords properly instead of letting the app gather that from the device settings.
8. I have not tested battery drain yet but I suspect it will lead to some since it seems to pull the emails rather than just polling the android apps.
For anybody who wants to use their droids as work related phones - this is by far the best thing I have ever come across.

not that I'm cynical, and it does look interesting, but this post sure sounds like developer pumping his app

corefile said:
not that I'm cynical, and it does look interesting, but this post sure sounds like developer pumping his app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hahahahaha. check my other posts - u will see i am a noob tinkering around - not a dev or anything like that - probably sound too excited because i finally got an app which makes my bberry (useless junk i was forced to use since the iphone is bad too) replaceable. am a private equity guy - i know financial statements not java or whatever android is written in.
PS: there is 1 more drawback - if u try to use multiple widgets, 1 setting applies to all. So u cant have 1 widget for SMS/Twitter/Facebook and 1 for email - maybe i am doing something wrong but thats what it seemed like.

Does not support exchange = fail.

Hatman41 said:
Does not support exchange = fail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 That is the only mail that I check on a daily basis. Double Fail!!

Devildog8791 said:
+1 That is the only mail that I check on a daily basis. Double Fail!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
triple it, it a deal breaker for me, great idea though. would buy it if it was able to read from the exchange mailbox (i don't want yet another mailbox checking or recieving, its already downloading the email, just read that inbox?)

If anybody can recommend anything better, I would love to try that. I suggested this only because there is nothing better than this out there - at least I have not found any. Even without exchange, there is no consolidated widget for all the things in 1 screen.
I have a JB iphone 4 too and I use lockinfo (cydia app). That's the best implementation of a launchpad for various items (calendar, weather, email, missed calls, sms, voicemail, notifications, tasks, twitter) and so on... So far no such widget/app seen on the android platform. This one is close but as you can see from my comments too, its not perfect.

I have Executive Assistant and I must say it's very useful.. if you're looking for something else that also displays all information you might want to try Slidescreen and Slidescreen Pro. I'm not sure if you can read exchange mail through them but they're very clean and professional looking.. they act as a new home though.

Good find!
Checkin out the free version now, no exchange support isn't an issue for me as I don't use it, but if the rest of the app is solid and the dev has enough of a following, I think it's safe to say that exchange support can be expected down the pipeline (Here's hoping since I know a lot of folks use it!)
OK, bought full version, dude SWEET find! Been looking for something like this!

Taintdroid...android's duff security model

Worrying article on how apps are using personal information.
www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/30/suspicious_android_apps/
I'm sick that they had to go too such lengths to find out. We need a better net architecture to enable a proper firewall to work.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

Also, app naming FAIL!

Well, since they only tested 30 apps and won't release the names of the ones they tested, only saying that they are "the most popular", personally I don't buy it.
And the information these apps are sending out is primarily geolocation. Well, no ****. If an app wants your location and you don't think it should have it, it's either using it for ads or you should decline to install the app and just send an email to the dev asking him why he needs that information.

tjhart85 said:
Well, since they only tested 30 apps and won't release the names of the ones they tested, only saying that they are "the most popular", personally I don't buy it.
And the information these apps are sending out is primarily geolocation. Well, no ****. If an app wants your location and you don't think it should have it, it's either using it for ads or you should decline to install the app and just send an email to the dev asking him why he needs that information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed... geolocation is pretty obviously straight forward. I don't know about the 'transmissing every 30 seconds' thing though.
Any thoughts ont he transmitting sim card and IMEI info?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLujX1Dw4Y
Also discussed here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=795702
With explanation where to get it from http://www.appanalysis.org/

A very well-written reply by "Steven Knox" on The Register, demonstrating how this 'research' is simply a pile of intentionally-misleading statistical rubbish:
By selecting only from applications that access both personal data and the internet, they're overstating the significance of their study by about 3x. Furthermore, their summaries blur this distinction unnecessarily.
Specifically, their FAQ says "We studied just over 8% of the top 50 popular free applications in each category that had access to privacy sensitive information in order to get a sense of the behaviors of these applications." Since there were 22 categories at the time they did the study, that would imply (22*50=1,100 * 8% =) 88 applications. However, they actually only tested 30, because of the 1,100 top 50 applications only (from the PDF) "roughly a third of the applications (358 of the 1,100 applications) require Internet permissions along with permissions to access
either location, camera, or audio data." -- meaning that the other 742 apps don't have the necessary permissions to play badly. The clause "..that had access to privacy sensitive information in order to get a sense of the behaviors of these applications." from the FAQ is grammatically ambiguous in this case (it may refer to "applications" or "category"), and not specific enough to indicate that over 2/3 of the applications are (relatively) safe by dint of not having the necessary permissions.
They also didn't include in their study apps from 10 of the 22 categories, but they don't explain whether that was due to a) there not being any or enough applications in those categories that required internet and personal data permissions, b) a conscious choice to focus on the other 12 categories, or c) the results of random selection (with an explanation of why they did not use a stratified sample).
Once you factor back in the applications they ignored, the numbers don't look quite so bad. Assuming their sample was representative, 2/3 of the 358, or about 239 applications of the top 1,100 of the time use personal data suspiciously. That's about 21.7% or just over 1 in 5 -- still significant, but a far cry from 2 out of 3. In fact, the worst case maximum is actually 358 of 1,100 or just under 1 in 3 (32.45%) because they are as mentioned above the only ones that actually acquire the permissions necessary to do anything "suspicious".
I understand why both the researchers and the reporter used the 2/3 figure -- you all believe you have to sell the point as hard as possible*. But the real story is that it's likely that at least 1 in 5 Android Apps use private data "suspiciously" -- and that number is still high enough to cause concern and to justify the further use of tools like TaintDroid. It's a pity you didn't trust the facts enough to avoid the unnecessary sensationalism.
*I am assuming, here, that Mr. Goodin did actually read and digest the paper as I did, rather than simply picking out the figures from the study, the FAQ, or a press release.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

good spot. But one in ten woolf be too many. The point is we should have more fine grained control and transparency off what apps do over the net, and we can't, by design.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

We need to develop a shim that reports modified IMEI/SIM data for different apps. IMO, very few apps need that information. We may not be able to keep all those apps from sending our private information, but we can make that information useless if it appears that we all are using the same IMEI/SIM...

patp said:
...The point is we should have more fine grained control and transparency off what apps do over the net...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
agreed....

if you are rooted. With Root Explorer go to /data/system/ and open accounts.db you might be surprised what you find in it... Some people it will be fine for but mine it shows my exchange email and password in plain text and a few others show up as plain text has well...Its not geo they are worried about (for the most part) and...this file has been known about for awhile
Don't worry though unless your downloaded android specific virus holding apps you wont have any problem. And if your getting all your apps legally through the market then its no big deal =) and if your pirating them...well I don't feel bad for you...

echoside said:
if you are rooted. With Root Explorer go to /data/system/ and open accounts.db you might be surprised what you find in it... Some people it will be fine for but mine it shows my exchange email and password in plain text and a few others show up as plain text has well...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opened it, my accounts are there, but no passwords....

rori~ said:
Opened it, my accounts are there, but no passwords....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my gmail is somesort of encrypted but doesnt look that great.
Exchange shows up
facebook doesnt show anything at all aha
Thats why I said some might not have anything. Awhile back when I first heard about it one of my friends had two or three right there in plain English I didn't have a phone at the time to check...
Its been reported before but kind of just brushed over no biggy. To go real conspiracy theorist....I think apple is submitting all these articles...

ButtonBoy said:
We need to develop a shim that reports modified IMEI/SIM data for different apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great idea

The source code/instructions for TaintDroid are now out:
http://appanalysis.org/download.html

Anybody found a (recent) kernel with built-in TaintDroid-support?

[Q] Could someone make a custom ROM that steals personal information from users?

Recently I received a notice from Google saying that my account was accessed from Russia. I also recently installed a custom Android ROM onto my T-Mobile HTC HD2. I was thinking, pretty much anyone can take the Android OS, make a custom version, and release it for download, right?
If so, is it possible that the person who created the custom Android ROM also modified it so they could steal my personal information? I really do like the ROM I am currently using and would not like to switch if I don't have to, but this whole Google thing has me paranoid now.

I have had my facebook lock down a few times from that kind of thing. But never out of the country. Did you check if mock locations is enabled? Settings - Applications -Development. Not sure id that could be the issue, but it is possible it was your phone reporting as another location.
Sent by Supersonic!

Now Google has sent me a second notice, AFTER changing my password, so this is really starting to bother me. I tried changing that Mock Locations setting, but it was already disabled. Just to be sure I haven't entered any of my new passwords into my phone yet since this last incident and I'm going to see if I still have problems.

johnny1178 said:
Now Google has sent me a second notice, AFTER changing my password, so this is really starting to bother me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not good. Stay away from those warez & p0rn sites that end in ".ru"
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Watch out.
Are you sure google is sending these messages?
And does the mail contain a link for you to click on sayiong to change your password?
Alot of times the mail themselves are the scams. And are in most cases sent using the google account but from another server.
Could you copy paste the headers...leaving out your personal mail. In Outlook you can view this by opening the mail File->Info -> properties.
You should see internetheaders there.
Copy paste them. Dunno how to find them in Gmail havn't checked yet gonna see later how to view them in Gmail

Anything is possible, someone making a ROM could put whatever they wanted in there.
It's probably not the most likely way your account would end up compromised though, it could be anything from random hacking to malware on your PC.

Well, that's a good question. It's something that I wonder myself and that sometimes concerns me.

I have ESET antivirus installed and regularly do quick scans on my PC, but I suppose that wouldn't catch everything.
As far as the Google notice, it is not an email message. The notice appears in a red box with bold text at the top of my inbox when I sign into gmail, and I also checked the URL to make sure I was actually on Google.com.
I remember when I looking for ROMS to download, this particular build (can't remember the name) had the most thread views out of all of them at the time, so hopefully someone else would have noticed this issue by now if it was part of the build...
Anyways, thanks for your help. I'll try running an in-depth ESET scan to see if anything comes up.

I took it a step further and don't use any google account on my custom ROM at all. the less I rely on apps and cache data the better.

I always thought about that. Just me being cynical I suppose. Some of these deevs just do it for the love

I never thought of that before, maybe I should be more careful in the future..

Thank you gr8 idea...

lude219 said:
I took it a step further and don't use any google account on my custom ROM at all. the less I rely on apps and cache data the better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are you doing where you'd really need to worry about that? Just seems like using an android phone without a google account would be a pain.