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Smart Dock users thread (tips and tricks)

Wethe Smart Dock on the S4 turns your phone into a desktop computer, it's pretty awesome, and Android has come a long way in supporting a desktop environment, but there are still many areas it needs help. this thread is all about getting the most out of your desktop machine; the Galaxy S4.
thread isn't too organized, but I'll try to update this post if other Smart Dock users are interested in a collaborative effort to get the most out their Smart Dock, with the smoothest experience possible. please share any tips or tricks you're using for your Smart Dock setup
some helpful tips I've found:
*attaching a USB keyboard turns the phone display off, and switches monitor to landscape.
*using External Keyboard Helper Pro lets you remap a few keys on the keyboard, as well as suppress on-screen keyboard. its SUPPOSED to activate automatically when docked, however doesn't work correctly.
*all Samsung apps intelligently work with a keyboard
flipping pages on the homescreen is difficult, and also any swiping/ scrolling features.. still finding a functional solution for this.
*changing dpi could probably make for a smoother expense
*also need to find a way to connect to dock with bulky case.. possible micro usb extender?
*suggested apps that work perfectly with external hardware:
Power Amp (auto plays in background even if not loaded when pressing play/pause/forward/back)
MX Video Player (all video controls)
Solid Explorer (reads flash drives/external hard drives )
FireFox (only browser I've found so far that suppresses the on-screen keyboard on its own)
*a great list by NZTechFreak that is regularly updated with compatible hardware can be found here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2252618
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app

Cool thread!
A few things I've learned in my time with the Smart Dock:
* Ultimate Rotation control is a good app for forcing landscape.
* Screen Standby #Root is a great app for Root users allowing the screen to be turned off while still mirroring the display, lots of cool options like ability to automatically turn on with certain apps or MHL connection etc.
* For Root users again: Paragon NTFS/HFS+ is a good app for allowing you to use NTFS drives with the Smart Dock.
* An externally powered USB hub is a good thing to have - the power output for the Dock is relatively limited and if you try to connect multiple things often times they will fail to be supplied sufficient power. A powered hub eliminates that problem, and also gives you MWOAR PORTS! Who doesn't love more ports?
* If you have troubles with sound on connecting to the TV make sure the HDMI cable is fully inserted, the port has a tight fit and it is relatively easy to not insert an HDMI cable fully. If still having problems try using a stereo sound output only (that option is greyed out in settings while you are docked, so change it while not docked if you need to).

I wish the S4 could somehow go into tablet UI when docked on the smart dock, and then open tablet versions of each supported app.
It's great that it outputs 1080p but when viewing content on a large 42" or larger HDTV, it's quite annoying to only see 4 or 5 lines of text because it's mirroring the phone's display.

delucz said:
I wish the S4 could somehow go into tablet UI when docked on the smart dock, and then open tablet versions of each supported app.
It's great that it outputs 1080p but when viewing content on a large 42" or larger HDTV, it's quite annoying to only see 4 or 5 lines of text because it's mirroring the phone's display.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah I agree, I think changing the Screen Density, or the DPI could be a very useful thing in this case.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app

Initial impression - good potential, poor execution

I may have a lemon S2 Classic. 24 hours in and there are 3 relatively bad issues:
- Pedometer step counter does not work AT ALL. Wore watch all day and it shows I took *zero* steps.
- Heartbeat measuring is a major fail. Click the icon, and the resulting curve is erratic & all over the place. Never even locks on a heart rate and eventually gets to a "try again" button every single time.
- I have display set to always on. After a few seconds, it reverts to a plain black display with clock hands only. No other features. I can live with that, but wait a few minutes more and the screen goes completely black until I touch it or shake it to wake it back up.
I'm hoping someone can point out tips that mean some of this stuff is just user error, but I've spent a ton of time combing the settings both inside the watch as well as inside the phone app. HTC One M9, by the way, and the BT paired without a problem. Thinking Best Buy is about to get a watch returned! Thoughts on what I'm missing?

Sounds like you have a bad unit. My steps have been as accurate as any other wearable I've used. The heart rate monitor is excellent (you need to wear it snug though)... I can't comment on the ambient display as I don't use it
Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

I think You should return it - the problems You mentioned don't occur on my S2c.
The pedometer is not perfect, at least not before You make more than ~10 steps. If less, the smartwatch is not recording it (as far as I read, it suppose to work like that, cause devs implemented it to be 'eco-energy' and not start recording with every move). But in daily use it works fine for me.
Heartbeat sensor should record fine, maybe the grip on the belt is to loose? Try to make some activity with sHealth and observe if the sensor records anything.
About display - if You choose from settings 'always on' it WILL show only plain black display with clock hands. That's how it suppose to work If You are interested in having the face always turned on then look in the Store for 'I am Alive' app.

Gear S2 battery lifespan experience?

Hello,
Gear S2 is here for about a year - what is the battery experience?
For example, someone charging the battery every day for a year - do you experience battery capacity drop?
My coworker owns Moto - after about a year of daily charging the battery lost most of its capacity making the watch unusable.
Does Samsung put better batteries?
I bought S3 recently and hope for a good news...

I have had my watch for over a year. Gear S2 classic non 3G. I charge it at night and use it all day and it is still at 60 to 70% I haven't noticed any real drop in the battery capacity

Same here. Not noticeable degradation after a year.
I received mine for Christmas 2015 and been wearing it every day since.
In fact, with the firmware upgrades, it may be better than when I first received. I do keep my brightness at 3, Always On, and Bluetooth only. No Wifi, no NFC.

I can get around 2 full days with a charge, but it takes some settings tweaking to get it. Normal stock settings, I'm lucky for 18 hours. Worse if I am running an overly elaborate watch face.
I enable Do Not Disturb when sleeping.
Delete Running widgets that you don't use (steps, heart rate, water /caffeine), stuff like that.
On the Gear Manager, go in and modify what notifications you receive on your gear.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems the more apps that send notifications, it drains both my gear and S7 battery faster.
I also like to look in the information screen, and look at the Memory Usage. CPU / Memory hogs will show there.
My setup
Style
Watch Always On - Disabled
Device
Wake Up Gesture - Off
Auto Open Apps - Disabled
Display
Brightness - 3 or 4
Auto Low Brightness - On
Screen Timeout - 15 seconds
Call
Voice Answer - Off
Messages
Send as Audio - Disabled
Connection
Bluetooth - On
WiFi - Off
NFC - Off
Alerts (Receive BT disconnection alerts) - Off
Gear Info
Report (Diagnostic and Usage) - Off

Restrict all background data when screen is locked

Hi,
I come from sony xperia z3 compact, which had a really cool feature, stamina mode, and what i especially liked about it, is that when it was activated and you locked your phone (screen lock) - it restricted ALL background data, no exceptions. Only when you lighted the screen, it would activate the data. Does anyone know, how can i achieve the same feature with the Samsung S7. Basically all i want is that if i lock my screen, all the background data is truly disabled?

Samsung's equivalent of stamina mode would be the "Power Saving" option, of which there is two tiers("Mid"and "Max"). Background data is restricted by default in both modes, although I think the "Mid" tier still allows it periodically.

Yeah i saw them, thanks for the input, although the MAX setting makes the phone lose its features. I will try the MID setting (i disabled the limiting of cpu and some other stuff, because i want it to function normally when i use it). Maybe theres an app, that will make it work just like i want it. Because the s7 battery should last longer - with sony, wifi off and background data restricted, i sometimes got like 4 days without charging. I am not a 24/7 nose in the screen type of a guy anyways, i mostly call and when neccessary look stuff up on google and read my mails. Would be nice to extend this S7 battery to around 3 days or so with such usage.

Mickovich said:
Yeah i saw them, thanks for the input, although the MAX setting makes the phone lose its features. I will try the MID setting (i disabled the limiting of cpu and some other stuff, because i want it to function normally when i use it). Maybe theres an app, that will make it work just like i want it. Because the s7 battery should last longer - with sony, wifi off and background data restricted, i sometimes got like 4 days without charging. I am not a 24/7 nose in the screen type of a guy anyways, i mostly call and when neccessary look stuff up on google and read my mails. Would be nice to extend this S7 battery to around 3 days or so with such usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can add *some* apps for use in MAX mode, most notably WhatsApp. Maybe use Tasker to toggle data when the screen turns off?(Would need root though). But yeah, there's only so much you can do for a big AMOLED paired to a power hungry SoC I've never known more than a day and a half's usage though. Perhaps other people have better suggestions.

so far its been 6,5h since last charge, and its on 91% - with the mid power saver mode, cpu limiter disabled, screen res on FHD, screen brightness about 40-45%, wifi off, and gps on high accurancy - it looks somewhat promising. I'll see how long it will last on that charge and proceed from there.

My real life review/experiences after 5 days

If you want TLDR skip to edits in the end and camera TLDR.
Not going to repeat what is written in tons of review + specs you can find anywhere. Bought mine for 358EUR (incl. 6EUR prepaid card to be eligible for this price at O2).
For this price you receive heavy package with 4/64 version, but there is nothing in package besides fast charger and type C cable, no earphones, no case and the heaviest item it's guidebook in dozens of languages. My version it's COL-L29 8.1.0.100(C432) out of box with April security patch, no update available. With 64GB version you have available 50GB of space, though I guess already some of my stuff taking space.
Phone it's no problem to hold on the sides/edges in hand, but back it's really slippery on any surface and will have to buy case not to protect it but to make it less slippery. Even if there is less slope on sofa it will slide down. Length of phone it's same as (wife's) Redmi Note 3, phone is just much narrower and display longer (because of big bezels in RN3, RN5 was only slight improvement in this aspect).
I've had two options between Blue and Grey color. I checked blue in the shop and personally find it childish, it's nice if you are woman or teenager I guess, but I decided to go with boring grey to be surprised it's actually light blue (can post photos later), so quite nice.
Rear lens it's protruding a lot, not understand why they don't make it flush and rather won't put bigger battery inside.
Bezels around display are THICK, I was using years old TCL S950 Alcatel Idol X), one of the smallest and very thin 5" phones and even this budget phone from years ago has thinner side bezels.
Fingeprint sensor in front can be used as navigation which I switched on since I don't like wasting screen space and sadly Huawei haven't yet implemented Edge gestures I was using through Xposed on this temporary TCL S950. If you long press it acts as Home button and you will get haptic feedback, but if you just tap it it acts as Back button without any feedback which is kinda annoying. Swiping through from either side it acts as Recents button, but that's not very convenient and honestly I practically never use Recents button, but heavily use Last app switch which I haven't found here yet.
Default launcher it's agressively switching back to default instead of Lawnchair when changing some settings, but I guess after finishing setting up the phone it should stop trying to force itself on you.
Pretty much all third party apps can be removed, but there is ton of Huawei and Google bloatware. I mean I understand Huawei not letting you to disable or uninstall some of their apps, but why they don't allow uninstallation of Google apps it's mystery to me. You can just disable some of the Google crap (I am using only Play Store and Photos, nothing else), not uninstall it and some things I never heard (on LOS/NOS with pico opengapps) of like Carrier services you can't even disable.
At first I thought also because of phone I can't install Kii 2 keyboard, but aparently it disappeared from Play store for everyone, so will have to install APK or Swype, since preinstalled Swiftkey it's annoying.
Developer options are normally accessible, you can disable animations and change more settings than on LOS15.1 including switching Bluetooth codec to aptX and aptx HD.
I immediately disabled Notch and prefer black bar hiding it, but truth it's there is zero space for notifications because of crappy EMUI, on the left side of notch I have useless VolTE icon, two signal icons, wifi icon and network speed and nothing else, on the right side I have battery with percentage in indicator and miniature clock, not sure where are supposed to be displayed notification icons they mention in settings. Notifications are also displayed as annoying heads up which seem to be impossible globally switch off without 3rd party app.
I still haven't set up any security features, so I can switch on display directly with power button and what is more annoying also by holding fingerprint sensor which seem to be impossible to disable.
Battery doesn't seem to be anything to write about home, 3400mAh should be decent but we will see with longer testing and optimization. Out of the box I've had 70% capacity, now I am on 14% pretty much just setting up phone with lots of downloading through Wifi, no BT, no mobile data, no NFC, no GPS and taking maybe 50-100 photos. Screen according settings consumed 58% of all battery (including software) with 4hrs screen on time. Oh yeah I disabled Vivid display color mode to Normal, which immediately changes colors to much warmer, though color temperature it's on default. Apps not customized for 18/19:9 you can use in full screen and stretch them, it seem to work fine. There is also smart screen resolution to save battery by automatic switching from 2280x1080 to 1520x720, but not gonna use 720P on such big display.
There is no dedicated setting for custom LED color notifications, you can set them within apps, but no system setting as in NOS/LOS, so will need 3rd party app. LED notification it's very small, brightness it's fine but quite small.
The most interesting in the end - the camera. Focus it's nice fast, tested on baby, out of 11 photos of baby moving on bed 9-10 were sharp so focus speed it's right (that was my main reason to upgrading from Xiaomi Mi4c). But post processing oh my... Huawei it's using extreme post processing to make everything extremely sharp with high contrast losing colors/details adding noise, skin smoothened even with Beautify set to zero.
And don't get me started on AI - it seem like some cheap filter which is just raising saturation by 20-30% so the grass or leaves on trees are extremely green, yellow building turn into orange, if you actually compare reality with photos the photo without AI has natural colors, AI photo is oversaturated.
When it detects people then it's one track mind - bokeh bokeh bokeh everywhere, results are quite funny with small children which are always moving, with still grown up people it's OK but it has problem with children (maybe pets too, dunno). It seem to work fine only with clothes/body, but when child held some toy motorbike in hand part of the wheel was blurred too, also a bit fingers holding it.
Basically only benefit of AI it's brightening the darker spots of picture, but otherwise colors are oversaturated and it's using too much bokeh, by my experience with those 50-100 photos in afternoon in 90% cases you need to disable AI afterwards, so maybe it's not really even worth keeping it on at all and defnitely this AI gimmick would not hold me from leaving EMUI for AOSP/LOS/RR. Pro mode works only with rear camera, not with front camera.
At selfies it's heavy postprocessing as always, if you don't shave few days your hair will be blurred and not sharp as it should be (though no AF on front camera so maybe too much expectation, but I've seen better front cameras for sure even at budget phones) because their postprocessing it's trying to give you baby skin. This is even more annoying considering my children have sometimes skin problems, so I know their skin is not perfect already at first sight at any photo. Hey Huawei, I am not 20yo Asian girl using whitening cream and umbrella, but adult caucasian man who doesn't give AF about creams!
Camera TLDR - silk/baby skin, bokeh/portrait scene for any photo of people, oversharpening, but focus it's fast. AI TLDR - oversaturating everything, but brightening dark parts it's OK.
Later can report on GPS speed, jack output quality, speaker loudness, signal, call quality, battery life etc. but for now I was just setting up phone and testing camera. As for heating haven't really noticed it except maybe one ocassion.
edit: grey color according Huawei
https://i.imgur.com/NKqgu73.jpg
full crop original vs "smart" AI - whole hand blurry, not only outer edge
edit 2: the battery life it's bad, only 6 hours SOT only on Wi-Fi without mobile data, BT, GPS, NFC, calls, gaming, with 2 active SIM, mostly at home with lower brightness, mostly Reddit and surfing, some Spotify and YouTube (both testing maximum volume of speaker and earphones but no longer than 20 minutes at max) in browser, shooting maybe 40-70 photos and about 1.5min H265 video, some with maximum brightness outside. I've had similar battery life with Mi4c running SD808 (!) though heavily optimized Nitrogen OS and smaller 5" display with basically no photos and one active SIM, I hope it's the relatively heavy use of camera although it's not shown in stats
edit 3: fingerprint unlock it's fast as any other Huawei device (didn't experience issues as in some YouTube reviews), face unlock it's even faster, when enrolling face they need only one photo which seem odd for accuracy
edit 4: OK battery life seem reasonable 6-8 hours SoT on Wi-Fi only with small use of camera. Wi-Fi reception is atrocious though, where i had average signal with Mi4c i am getting disconnected with H10, that's pertinent worst thing about this phone together with very small LED notification light almost useless. AI blur it's really stupid leaving always some areas not blurred or blurring shoes of person for example which should be in same focus

Hello @PeterMarkoff,
Thank you for the detailed and well structured review of the Honor 10. I really appreciate the effort you put in to write this and now I'm following you to get any updates you might have related to the device.