This will be my next phone, and my question is how feasible will the following be (and if it is, where do I post it as a request?):
With the multiple user profiles in lollipop, I'd like to be able to create a "fake" profile that I can use in circumstances where I am being forced, or uncomfortable with, unlocking my phone and handing it over, while still pretending it's my main profile. An obvious scenario is a mugging, if the mugger forces me to unlock the phone before handing it over. Another scenario could be when airport security asks me unlock the phone. Or it could simply be for lending the phone to a person I don't trust with my personal details.
How I envision accessing it is by using a different finger to instantly switch to the fake profile and unlock it. If I normally use my right thumb for my main profile, I'd use the left for the fake one. So in a situation like a mugging, I'd use the left thumb to unlock the phone and hand it over, possibly with the password for the fake profile as well, and the mugger should be none the wiser. While in that fake profile, all other profiles should be hidden and the data protected, allowing me to plausibly state that it is indeed my main profile.
The main thing here is that it needs to be quick and look natural, as well as hide and protect my main profile and data. No fumbling around with switching user profiles through the normal user interface, etc.
Is this possible on the S6 you think?
Related
Coming from the PC world, I feel like my tablet is very insecure. Email is always synced, app store & and amazon app store have full purchase authority etc. If I lost my tablet, I am thinking it would be a big pain in the ass. Does anyone here use the honeycomb built in encryption function? Does it slow the tablet down (as far as file transfers)?
One thing I like about a tablet is the "always on" functionality. The thing about encryption is that I would need to enter a password every time I turn the thing on. Is there a better way to secure the tablet?
Also, I have noticed that if I leave my transformer unattended for even a few seconds it turns off and locks. I changed the "screen off" option in setup to 3mins but it didn't seem to change this behavior. Am I doing something incorrectly? Is it possible to have the tablet sleep (or turn off... whatever it does) after a couple of minutes but not lock for X amount of time?
Just set up a pattern unlock screen. Takes about 0.5 seconds longer to unlock the screen but makes it secure. Couple that with encryption = fort knox. The only way someone can use your device then is to know the screen code, know your google account password or hack the encryption. Without encryption someone who knows what they are doing can pull files using ADB. But chances of a thief stealing it and knowing how to do that are slim to none.
The drawback is however that if you have the dock plugged in you still need to use the finger pattern unlock rather than just press the key.
Has anyone discovered an application to keep the screen powered up when plugged in WITHOUT having to set the screen lockout to Never?
I'm mostly thinking of the scenario where I'm in the car and don't want to be fumbling to always hit the power button to turn the display back on. Ideally these "profiles" could do much more (turn on bluetooth, set volume levels, set screen lockout to never, etc) and reset the properties to other values based on the selected profile (Car, Work, etc.)
Any leads would be greatly appreciated.
Something like profiles would certainly be great but is currently not supported on Windows Phone. At least for the regular developer, like me. There are some hidden, undocumented ways to do some of these "Profile" settings, but Microsoft will never allow such an app in the Marketplace.
It could be done with a homebrew app, but then you will have to have unlocked phone to use this app and the updates will be manual. Probably such an app already exists, you might try searching on XDA.
HTH
Hi.
Since coming from android I've been a frequent user of apps who lets the phone change it's settings due to specific triggers, like turning silent at night and loud in the morning, turning silent when a certain calendar happening occurs, turning of wifi when leaving home etc.
Is there anything like this for using along with windows phone?
Thanks in advance
Pemell
Actually, (some of) this is theoretically possible, but nobody has done it so far. It's also not going to be allowed on the Marketplace; you'd need to use some unofficial APIs.
For example, the DllImport Project already has shown the ability to control the phone's volume. Programmatically muting the phone at a certain time, for example one minute after a meeting is supposed to start, should be pretty easy.
The trick would be to make sure the phone also un-mutes it when the meeting ends. WP7 doesn't (officially) allow third-party software to run continuously in the background, and while you can schedule a time for the software to run, it make no guarantee ot to-the-minute accuracy. There are ways around the official restrictions, but most of them have serious battery-life considerations (although telling the process to sleep for the next 30 minutes * 60 seconds * 1000 miliseconds would probably work without draining battery). Additionally, I'm not sure how much access apps officially have to calendar data, although on interop-unlocked or full-unlocked phones there are varius ways to access that data.
For things other than volume control, like enabling or disabling WiFi (almost completely unneccessary on WP7, the WiFi power management is, if anything, too conservative already) you'd need to find the place in the OS that controls it. Probably just sending SetDevicePower to the Wifi driver would work to disable it, though I don't know if that would show up correctly in the UI.
12 of the best new features in Android Lollipop
Google’s approach for rolling out the latest version of Android, Lollipop, is a little different. There are the usual things we see every year — a new Nexus phone and a new Nexus tablet — but instead of a big event, the company is posting details in blog posts and on the main Android site. So if you’re tracking the rollout closely, you probably have a sense of what’s new and what’s cool in the OS. If you’re not, though, getting a sense of what Lollipop is actually like and what it actually does isn’t easy.
Luckily, we got a chance to sit down with some Google execs last week to get a walkthrough of the coolest features. We won’t know everything until we actually have a chance to use the final version, but there are some clever additions we saw last week. Here are some of our favorites.
Tap and Go: Android has never been particularly good at transferring your settings and apps from an old phone to a new one. It’s always been a crap shoot as to whether all your apps would actually be downloaded from the Play store, to say nothing of your home screen and wallpaper. That’s partially Google’s fault, but it’s also a difficult problem to solve because of the diversity of hardware and software in the Android ecosystem. "Tap and Go" is a small step towards resolving that. You can pair them with NFC and your old Android phone will then use Bluetooth to send over all the details of what your phone should have installed over to the new phone.
Ok Google: Several of the enhancements on Lollipop were inspired by Motorola. The first is the ability to say "Ok Google" even if your phone is in standby mode. Your phone will wake and then you can use voice to search, send texts, and more. It requires compatible hardware, though, and so far we only know for sure that the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 support it.
Double tap to wake: Speaking of waking up your Android device, you can just double tap the screen of the Nexus 9 tablet to wake it up. Like the advanced "Ok Google" command, it requires compatible hardware. We also hear it works on the Nexus 6.
NEXUS GETS SOME OF THE BEST FEATURES FROM THE MOTO X
Ambient Display: Another feature that’s made it over from the Moto X is the idea of displaying bits of information on your screen as it comes in without turning the whole thing on. On the Nexus 6, it’s much more advanced — basically you get black and white versions of what would normally be on the lock screen anyway. It requires an OLED screen to work, so for now it seems like this is going to be a Nexus 6-specific feature.
Face unlock: Android’s face unlock feature has never really worked all that well. It’s kind of magical that it can recognize your face, but it’s often slow and usually needs really good lighting conditions to work. In Lollipop, Google has tweaked it so that it starts running silently as soon as you turn on your screen. Since you can interact with notifications on the lock screen now (see below), the idea is that you’d power it on, mess with a few notifications, and by the time you’re done Face Unlock has already kicked in and unlocked the phone.
Lock screen notifications: As with the iPhone, Android Lollipop will put notifications right on your lock screen. But on Android, the notifications on your screen are basically the same as those that appear in the drop-down notification shade. Why does that matter? Because on Android, you get a lot of control built-in to those notifications. You can archive email, tap reply, expand notifications to see more information, and so on. Now, you can do it directly on your lock screen. As a small bonus, if you have apps with sensitive information that you want to see notifications from but don’t want to display their contents, you can set them to be "redacted" when they show up on the lock screen.
Priority Mode: But the best notification enhancement in Lollipop is something Google calls "Priority Mode." It’s a little bit like "Do Not Disturb" on iOS but it seems much smarter here. You can easily choose which apps can still disturb you when in Priority Mode (the rest won’t bug you). Even better, when you set it, Android gives you the option to set a duration before it goes back into normal notifications. That way, you won’t forget to switch it off. There’s also a total silence mode that will turn everything off — including alarms.
Guest Mode: Android has allowed multiple user accounts on tablets for awhile, but in Lollipop there’s a new option called Guest Mode that works on both phones and tablets. The idea is that it creates a clean, safe, and disposable workspace that anybody can use. Your guest can even quickly log in to their account to check email. You or your guest can get rid of the data inside the guest account at any time.
THE NEXUS 9 IS EASY TO HAND TO YOUR KIDS
Pin Apps: Sometimes Guest Mode is too much work, and all you really want to do is launch a game and hand your phone to your kid — but not let them leave that game to mess with your email. Lollipop has a new feature (enabled in settings) that adds a pin to each card in the mulititasking view. When you tap it, that app won’t let you leave without entering a passcode. It’s similar to the "Guided Access" feature in iOS, but a little easier to use.
Improved Quick Settings: Quick Settings have been reorganized again, and they’re a bit easier to figure out now. Plus, the brightness slider you’ll find there is a little bit smarter: by default it responds correctly to ambient light at any brightness level. Speaking of sliders, the volume slider that pops up when you hit the volume key is also smarter: it has the buttons for the various Priority Notification modes right there.
Overview: The multitasking view now has a new name, Overview, and a new Material Design look. Each app is a big card, stacked up, and you can scroll through many more recent apps than you used to be able to. But the best feature is that any app can create multiple "cards." So, for example, when you compose a new email your inbox is still in the overview, so you can switch back and forth between tasks in a single app.
Material Design: The best and most obvious feature in Lollipop comes last. It’s a complete redesign that we already got a good look at this past summer, but there are new designs pretty much everywhere. One example: the contact card. Android adds a dynamically-created color overlay to each photo based on an accent color from the photo itself. Red lipstick, red overlay. Orange sweater, orange overlay. It’s a nice touch.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/28/7082875/12-best-new-features-android-lollipop-nexus
Hello everybody.
So, I have just purchased a Gear s2. I know it's late, but it finally got cheap enough for me.
There is something I believe to be very simple to develop and very useful for millions of orthodox Jews: We have issues with electricity on Saturdays. Simply put, an app that turns the smartwatch into a dumb watch for either a given period of time, or until one of the buttons is pushed, would do the trick. This means that the time and date would be constantly displayed in the most energy saving manner possible, touch screen and all other sensors on the watch are off, and all connectivity is off as well.
A simple version of the app will allow the user to turn it on and off manually. A more sophisticated version will know by itself when to switch to "dumb watch mode": the times when a user needs his watch to turn dumb are calculated by ancient Jewish calendar and clock. But they are preset and known in advance. There are many apps, programs, calendars add-ons, etc. that already know to calculate those times. Applying such existing plug into the smartwatch would predetermine when it needs to get dumb and when to get smart again, without the users' need to do anything manually.
Can this be programmed?
I think enabling both Airplane Mode and Power Saving Mode may be what you're looking for.