My wife and I share a Google Music account, giving us both access to All Access. Only one person can use it at a time, but that works for us.
On her old iPhone she could sign into google music with my email and hers and it worked great. Just switch to mine to use the all access and it was fine. Now she has an android phone, and if she connects my account to use for Google Music she gets all my emails, contacts, calendars, etc.
We can turn off synch, which helps a little, but she still has all the accounts/contacts merged. I contacted google, and that was their suggestion. Any one have a better suggestion that would just share Google Music without merging the accounts completely?
Related
Hey folks,
is it at the moment (in the future?) possbile to use a fullfeatured android-system without a google account/being bound to google? I love WM 6.5, because it comparatively is independent of any cloud stuff. Windows Mobile Phone 7 is very closed and lives in the cloud. So how open is android and to what extent is it spy-/adware?
Thx
My thoughts:
I was a WM5/6 user for quite a few years (at least 4+ years). I heavily hacked my WM phones to get the functionality I craved.
After fooling around with various Android ports to my HTC Titan, I decided to give the TBD Verizon Android phone (aka Droid) a chance when it came out. Since that fateful day, I haven't had a single regret. The Droid (and Android) is absolutely amazing.
Prior to my Droid, I had a couple of almost totally unused GMail accounts. I was resigned to the idea that to get the full functionality out of my Droid, I needed to move into the Google "cloud".
I have been amazed at how well everything flows together, now that everything syncs/baselines off of my main GMail account.
I'm not sure how functional the phone will be if you don't have a GMail account. Here is my (probably inaccurate) guess of functionality degradation you will face by not using a GMail account:
1) The Google Market may not allow you to purchase any apps. App purchases are paid through Google Checkout - Which is associated with your GMail account.
2) EMail integration is obviously very well implemented with Google. When a message is sent to my GMail account, it seems like I get it just a few seconds later on my phone. You can also set up your GMail account to poll any of your already existing email accounts from other providers. While not updated as fast as your GMail account, it still operates very well, and also color-codes which email account your messages came from. If you don't want to use GMail, the K-9 Mail app can work as an alternative to the GMail app.
3) Syncing with Google Contacts and multiple Google Calendars won't be available to you. The instant syncing of contacts/calendars is *very* useful, and works totally seamlessly. Again, updating a contact (or event) on the web (or your phone) nearly instantaneously updates the phone / web, respectively. You don't have to worry about losing contacts or calendars anymore. If you already had a GMail account with Contacts & Calendars, all that information is available on your phone within a minute or so after you have powered up your Droid for the first time. (Note: I do have some moderate gripes about how contacts are displayed & grouped on GMail & Android. I hope Google will be addressing these items soon). If your Droid gets damaged and you don't have a GMail account, you will probably have to manually reenter all your contacts / appointments.
4) Other non-Google "push" apps (such as Flight Tracker Pro) probably won't work since they need your GMail address to send their integrated information to your phone to update their app status.
5) Probably a bit of other stuff, but I'm too tired to think right now.
As far as my "who is watching my activity" paranoia level is concerned, I don't have any concerns at all about Google. I haven't seen a single instance in the months I have been using my Droid where Google appeared to be targeting any overtly obnoxious advertising in my direction. (However, if you are still concerned about ads, there is a hack to Android to block all ads). If I had any concerns, I would certainly trust Microsoft less (by a few orders of magnitude) than Google.
I'm not entirely sure how Google is making a lot of money from the Android adoption, other than having more devices natively using Google for searching (which can result in their advertising revenue). But from what I have seen, it is no worse than when you are using Google on your PC to do your web searches.
After using Android for months now, I can't ever see going back to WM6 again. WM6 was incredibly lame in comparison. Web browsing on Android is what I always hoped the WM6 platform would achieve (but never seemed to reach). Android is an amazing OS, certainly comparable to the Apple iPhone in almost all aspects, and exceeds WM6 in most aspects.
My advise would be to take the plunge and get an Android phone & GMail account set up. Try it out. If you don't like the OS (or Google cloud stuff), you can always return the phone within a couple of weeks for all the carriers, and go back to a WM6 phone.
The only thing you really need a google account for the Market. I have all syncing (mail, contacts and calendar) turned off and auto sync turned off. I believe you have to leave background sync turned on but that's it.
For everything else I use a hosted exchange account.
if you can live without google voice and google talk, then yeah. It is a fully functional OS. Market is not essential to core functionality and you can always install apks directly from sdcard as well as switch your search engine to whatever you prefer.
I'm coming from a 3GS tomorrow and was wondering is it possible to somehow extract data like wifi connections with passwords, Bluetooth devices, etc to a Android device so I don't have to set it all up again?
That would be no. Unfortunately apple is a very closed system. Makes it very frustrating to switch devices. I'm sure that's not their intent at all
If you're not jailbroken the backup/transfer choices you'll have will be even more limited. The best bet will be to do a google search for each thing you want saved/transferred. That way you'll find the latest methods for what you're trying to do.
Sent from my páhhōniē
Yea I figured it would be a pain if at all possible. I'm jailbroken so maybe it will be a little easier. Can't wait to get out of Apple's grasp haha
To get a nice jump on things, go ahead and get a google account setup. With a google account you get google: voice, gmail, calendar, docs, picasa, music, plus a few others.
Start uploading your stuff to each of those, if you're not using them already.
Export your phone book to voice, up to 20,000 songs to music, all calendar appts, documents, and pictures on your phone -and desktop if you want- to picasa.
Once you get your android and log in with your google account, the only thing that will download is your phone contacts. The rest you can use like they're on the phone but they'll be online. Just open google music and all your songs are there. Saves alot of space on the phone. And if you want you can download music, pics, and documents to your phone through each of those apps.
Sent from my páhhōniē
gr8hairy1 said:
To get a nice jump on things, go ahead and get a google account setup. With a google account you get google: voice, gmail, calendar, docs, picasa, music, plus a few others.
Start uploading your stuff to each of those, if you're not using them already.
Export your phone book to voice, up to 20,000 songs to music, all calendar appts, documents, and pictures on your phone -and desktop if you want- to picasa.
Once you get your android and log in with your google account, the only thing that will download is your phone contacts. The rest you can use like they're on the phone but they'll be online. Just open google music and all your songs are there. Saves alot of space on the phone. And if you want you can download music, pics, and documents to your phone through each of those apps.
Sent from my páhhōniē
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea I've always used gmail & have a voice accnt but never really used it. I did finish uploading all my music to google music and am really looking forward to that. How is the performance streaming with that? I'd prefer to not have to keep much music physically on the phone.
I've never used picasa, but I was always interested in that, any tips for that?
draztikrhymez said:
Yea I've always used gmail & have a voice accnt but never really used it. I did finish uploading all my music to google music and am really looking forward to that. How is the performance streaming with that? I'd prefer to not have to keep much music physically on the phone.
I've never used picasa, but I was always interested in that, any tips for that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol, I got at least 6 more days of uploading music to go. It's already been running 24/7 the past 7 days. ~13,000 tracks is a but much I guess, not to mention only a 2mb broadband line. But it's free internet. Perk of renting from a friend.
But music loads pretty fast. Usually less than 4 seconds for the first song, then usually 1 second or so for each one after that, depending on signal.
Picasa is awesome. It shows up right in the gallery on your phone. Can't even tell they're not on your phone they load so smooth.
And to share photos with picasa is really easy. It also integrates with google+.
It really takes a little bit to realize all the things you can do with your phone. People will ask me to send them a picture of something I took, 8mp camera after all, and my brain gets overloaded trying to pick only 1 way to send it to them.
Sent from my páhhōniē
Is there an app out there that would allow custom notifications for SMS\phone\gmail for users of google voice? There are several that work outside of google voice, but not so much with it.
Only app I found that mostly worked was Whoisit lite. Lite version works fine, except any new email cause it to stop responding & force close. Tried the pro version & got my refund. It didn't crash on email notification, but initially it would only play the default sound, not the custom, then it wouldn't allow anything to play when an email arrived. (The dev on this app has disappeared, so contacting him to fix it isn't going to work.)
I like having all my stuff in one easy to access location, that syncs everything with my voice account, so not using google voice isn't really a consideration.
Ideas or suggested apps?
What are the possible replacements for google services?
Aptoide/Yalp store as replacement for play store?
If it works, I guess installing youtube, maps, etc. from either store should work? Or not?
Or we can find alternative apps thatbwork like youtube, gmaps, etc. anyway
How about retrieving contacts saved in google account? Can i retrieve them using browser logged in my google account? How to import into phone?
Users of Apps/games that require google login like pubg should use alternative logins now. Will it work?
What are the all the requirements for degooglefied phone like nubia x?
Hi,
I'm using one phone like that, until some solution for the google services is found.
It's a bit uncomfortable, but it's working. In anther one post I have uploaded a picture how it looks like.
Here is the answers of your questions:
sgn15 said:
Aptoide/Yalp store as replacement for play store?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm downloading the applications from Google Play store, and then installing the apks manually.
sgn15 said:
If it works, I guess installing youtube, maps, etc. from either store should work? Or not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YouTube app generally working, but closes when cant find the google services. Anyway I'm watching the videos from the browser.
Maps - you can install Chrome and then pin it to the home screen. Works like charm.
You can install Mesanger, WatsApp, Viber, Skype - they work.
sgn15 said:
How about retrieving contacts saved in google account? Can i retrieve them using browser logged in my google account? How to import into phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have download a Microsoft launcher. It has Cortana as voice assistant. Then Outlook app, which can import all the contacts and from your accounts (o365, Google, Hotmail, yahoo etc.)
sgn15 said:
sers of Apps/games that require google login like pubg should use alternative logins now. Will it work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With PUBG I had some issues installing it because except the apk has obb, may be I'll try later when I have some time. Fortnite is working like charm. Even with the back screen two additional buttons is like a cheat.
Things which I could not solve until now:
- Outlook cant import o365 mail hosted by GoDaddy.
- It seems that, a lot of applications rely on google services for the push notifications. If the app (let say Viber) is not running, you may not have popup notification on the lock screen. (If anyone knows how to solve that I'll be happy)
So, that's all. At the end you can live with the phone. I'm happy with it.
I hope that answers your question. If you have other questions - let me know
br_other said:
Hi,
I'm using one phone like that, until some solution for the google services is found.
It's a bit uncomfortable, but it's working. In anther one post I have uploaded a picture how it looks like.
Here is the answers of your questions:
I'm downloading the applications from Google Play store, and then installing the apks manually.
YouTube app generally working, but closes when cant find the google services. Anyway I'm watching the videos from the browser.
Maps - you can install Chrome and then pin it to the home screen. Works like charm.
You can install Mesanger, WatsApp, Viber, Skype - they work.
I have download a Microsoft launcher. It has Cortana as voice assistant. Then Outlook app, which can import all the contacts and from your accounts (o365, Google, Hotmail, yahoo etc.)
With PUBG I had some issues installing it because except the apk has obb, may be I'll try later when I have some time. Fortnite is working like charm. Even with the back screen two additional buttons is like a cheat.
Things which I could not solve until now:
- Outlook cant import o365 mail hosted by GoDaddy.
- It seems that, a lot of applications rely on google services for the push notifications. If the app (let say Viber) is not running, you may not have popup notification on the lock screen. (If anyone knows how to solve that I'll be happy)
So, that's all. At the end you can live with the phone. I'm happy with it.
I hope that answers your question. If you have other questions - let me know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How about updating/syncing contacts? I mean after retrieving them and i added a new contact entry. How do i update/sync that contact into google?
And for photos? Do i have to manually backup to pc or cloud since there's no google photos and no google drive?
Any other concerns i might have forgotten?
Edit:
Link to this thread you mentioned?
I used aptoide - the only google apps that seems to work is Google Chrome Browser and gmaps. youtube did not work through aptoide as didn't all the other google apps i tried. I placed a youtube home page using the chrome broswer on the desktop. Whatsapp apk i downloaded from their official website and installed working fine. When I downloaded whatsapp through aptoide and the chinese market app it won't work and keeps saying date and time is not right even though it is - maybe because its not chinese date and time?
For Contacts i opened my pc with chrome broswer and downloaded the contacts VCARD which you can do and placed in root folder of Nubia X - picked all my contacts up - I'm not sure how to sync though to google accounts as you cant add a google account through the phone unless you root as per other posts.
Pretty silly how they just didn't let you install gapps without root - i buy a lot of chinese phones and its the standard now even if google isnt preinstalled - its been a long time since I've seen a phone that doesn't let you install gapps yourself if you want too even though they dont support it. I'm finding it hard to use the phone and it will probably end up in a drawer for a few months until the international rom is released with google. Its annoying, even switching the phone off the voice assistant starts in Chinese and i want to get rid of this.
I've deleted practically all the bloatware, yet can't get music player to detect music i placed in the music folder.
Should have done my reading before hand but oh well... I got it for less than £495 from geekbuying 128gb version but should have waited out for the international rom version
Most of my good apps I downloaded through the Amazon App Store which is also working so I have 3 markets on my phone at the moment.
I am trying to use a couple of my old Samsung Note 4s to record video. Ive reset them both, without signing into any account. Its been working perfectly. Recently I came across a plug-in app for OBS called DroidCam OBS. I was able to install the APK just fine without signing into any Google account (downloaded from PC, Transfered to phone, and installed). But Im wanting to get the "Pro version" and it seems to require that I log into google. Is there any way to log into my google account be restrict it to JUST Google Play Store? No access to gmail, contacts, or anything. I know I can "change" the settings, but thats after its already synced. I don't want it to sync at all.