Hey guys. I'm a bit new to the whole Android scene. I am an iPhone 3gs user, and I am looking to switch to the EVO 4G when it comes out. The thing is, no matter how many Android sites I visit, I can not really figure out how to switch to Android. Basically, what I'm looking for is a website or information about the basic things. What do I use instead of iTunes (if I need to)?, how do I back up my info?, what is this whole rooting thing?, how do I transfer my information and contacts onto the EVO? So any and all information is appreciated. If there is another forum dealing with this, a link to it would work as well. Thank you, and have a nice day.
First of all your posting in the wrong section, as your question is not about android developing and or hacking, ask your question in this part of the forum, also next time make a little search around the forum, these and many other questions have been answered 1000 of times, and btw welcome to the xda developers community, enjoy your stay.
Sincerly
Rafyvitto
pashok99 said:
What do I use instead of iTunes (if I need to)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Multimedia applications for Android
Multimedia apps for Android
My preferred one is Meridian Media Player Pioneer
pashok99 said:
how do I back up my info? how do I transfer my information and contacts onto the EVO?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know anything about how the iPhoney works, but the Gmail help page says:
We support importing CSV files from Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Eudora and some other apps. We also support importing vCard from apps like Apple Address Book.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hopefully you can find a way to export your contacts, if you have lots of them.
As far as backing up your contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. A Gmail account is required to activate your phone.
Any changes you make to your contact information, it will sync with your Gmail & your phone. Edit a contact via your phone, it will sync with your Gmail account.
Is this what you were asking for?
How to backup SMS?
I use an app appropriately titled SMS Backup.
I've got SMS backups going back over a year. They get uploaded to my Gmail account for easy archiving.
Back up your apps?
There quite a few. My personal favorite is Titanium Backup root (root required)
pashok99 said:
what is this whole rooting thing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A quick Googling yielded 2.6 MILLION results, with the terms "why root android".
Give it a shot.
I'm just gonna copy & paste from a very old thread.
* You can install a full Linux distribution, like Debian.
* You can run applications that require root, like Screenshot and Auto Rotate your Browser and or any other application.
* You can install the latest Android build directly from the Android source tree.
* Customize your boot image.
* Create full backups of the state of your phone.
* Create custom ROMs.
* Install Applications to your SD Card to save space.
* Use your phone as a tether to connect your computer/laptop to the internet.
* Turn your phone into a wireless router that provides internet access.
I hope I answered your questions.
Please make sure you seach. Bookmark alot of sh-tuff along the way, cause when you get your EVO, due to the fact you ARE HERE, you will probably be seeking root some short time afterwards.
SEARCH SEARCH SEARCH!
You'll get that answer 9 outta 10 times.
Best of luck to you, and Welcome to Android™
pashok99 said:
What do I use instead of iTunes (if I need to)?, how do I back up my info?, what is this whole rooting thing?, how do I transfer my information and contacts onto the EVO?.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Contacts are easy (if you are running a mac) you just sync your address book with your gmail account and it should get passed back down to the phone when you set up that gmail account on your phone. (i havnt done this yet because i dont have a nexus yet but should be getting one soon and the contacts are all showing up in gmail so it should work)
Guys,
Got my phone a couple of days before ... no case yet ... hopefully the S case will be here tomorrow.
Have been playing with it most of the time since I got it and now have compiled a list of queries. Am sure the geeks out here will be able to help
a) Setup the VOIP ,,, no probs, works great. The problem is that well, every time I press call, I've got to choose between cell phone call and internet call. I live in Kuwait where all local calls are basically free or really cheap. I would like the popup to appear when it is an international call only. If that's not possible is there a way to switch it off (as I normally make local calls) and then have an easy way to switch the voip on?
b) I downloaded skype from one of these forums ... could not get it in the market. The problem I have with skype and one other program is that it has no "exit" option. Its on and running all the time even when I am done using it. Any way to have an option to exit? Is it only possible to use something like a tasker or something and force it to close/ end service?
c) I have my bookmarks at home/office in Google Chrome. I seriously thought since both Android and Chrome are Google products (just as Gmail) the bookmarks in my Google Chrome would have synced with my android browser just as Gmail dumped my contacts on to the phone (which by the way I did not want to happen). Is there some way I can get my chrome bookmarks show up in my browser?
More queries will follow once I play a lil more. Thanks for help received from various nice guys here while I was in the process of getting the NS and then splitting my head on which case to get.
Cheers
Can someone please help me??
I have managed to find out that we can exit Skype. I however use a program called "Stock India" and can find no way out.
Would appreciate help with the rest of those queries too.
Thanks
bump ... sorry
I'd help you if I could.
Normally I try to avoid non-answers like this, but I was starting to feel bad for you getting no replies. >.>
Alright, I just downloaded skype to see if I can answer your questions.
1. No clue. I don't use the voip feature. I looked under call settings and it has the options for when to use internet calling. Maybe that's it?
2. You can sign out when you're in the "My Info" tab. If you want to end the app then you got to do that manually or with tasker.
3. I'm asking myself the same question. There aren't any apps that make it easier either. I think there are apps that sync with google bookmarks, but that's totally different from chrome bookmarks.
Hope I helped you somewhat.
Not sure if these'll help you any but....
a. I've only messed around with the VOIP stuff for a couple of days, but there is an option in Settings->Call Settings->Internet Call Settings to let the phone know when you want to use it. Sounds like yours is set to ask for each call. Mine is set to 'For Internet Calls Only'. Try that.
b. Android - and Gingerbread in particular - is very good about managing memory and running apps. That said, if you really want to kill the skype process, look into downloading one of the many available task managers on the market. I can't suggest a good one for you, as I don't use one. Many people actually recommend against using one.
c. I wish. ;-) What I have found, though, and it's not a very good solution, is to use a different browser. I've been looking at Firefox for Android and it's actually pretty good. It also includes the ability to sync your desktop bookmarks to your mobile, which might make it worth the change for you.
Hey Zorak, not to worry ... guess I've got used to no replies Maybe the question was dumb and should have been found with a search (I normally search first) or maybe the guys genuinely don't know (in which case there is no point in blaming anyone).
Regards setting voip to "internet calls only", I did try that option. The result is that no calls are recognized as internet calls unless you copy and paste the number into a new field called "Internet Call" by editing the contact. Here, I've got a problem ... I use exchange for my contacts and if you use exchange, there is no option to add "Internet Call".
To test, I enabled my Gmail contacts and was able to enter the "Internet Call" and noticed that in gmail, the contact gets modified, the category being "Other:" followed by "sip:+9659935xxx". I copied pasted "sip:+9659935xxx" into one of the regular fields in exchange, but it does not work. The only option therefore seems to edit my entire Gmail contacts.
@DKYang & knytphal Yes, the now know that we can logout of skype ... thanks
Regarding android bookmarks, I found this solution ... guess there is nothing to worry about security. From whichever browser you use, 1) export the bookmarks to a html file.
2) Upload the html file to Rerware.
3) Install MyBookmarks from Appbrain
4) This software lets you overwrite your Android bookmarks with the one uploaded to the Rerware site.
This should help ... just not sure if after this is done if these new bookmarks would get saved on to our gmail or wherever in case we factory reset or change mobiles.
Hi,
just to be sure I got it right, does WP7 puts every contact on my phone to Live as soon as I add my Live account details to my phone? And there is no way preventing my phone from uploading every of my contact to a Microsoft cloud? Do I get it right, or am I missing something?
Regards,
m00h
Under People, Settings, Filter My Contacts you can choose to hide contacts from a certain account or all of them. I believe you have to have at least one selected or you can't save contacts.
Sent from my HTC Arrive using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Filtering contacts does not stop them from being saved to Live. Contacts must have a source, be it Windows Live, Exchange, Google, etc but they can't just reside on the phone.
Entegy is (mostly) correct. However, the important point here is that contacts which are already *from* another source - such as Facebook friends or Gmail contacts - will not get copied to Windows Live. However, if you import SIM contacts, those will get synced to your primary Windows Live account (assuming you've set one up, since it's necessary for much of the phone's functionality).
Yeah, that's a good distinction to make. While contacts require a source, they won't get merged into one account (say, everything auto-copied to your Windows Live account)
GoodDayToDie said:
However, if you import SIM contacts, those will get synced to your primary Windows Live account (assuming you've set one up, since it's necessary for much of the phone's functionality).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the answer I needed, in that case, my Omnia 7 is as good as sold. That's a horrifying thing if your phone forces you to sync all the sensitive, confidential data with an american cloud. How can you people be ok with that?
Before I bought a WP7 phone, I read a lot of stuff about it, either on forums or on reviews, and not a single review mentioned that I will be forced to give my data away, that's even more horrifying.
Either way, thanks for the answers.
Regards,
m00h
Well, an awfully large number of millions of people use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or any of a handful of other webmail providers, many of which are hosted in America (or <other place you dislike goes here>) and all of which contain far more private info than just contacts.
For that matter, a truly stupendous number of people use Facebook, which not only stores vastly more "private" info than simply contacts, it also has somewhat poor security and a terrible privacy record. Oh, it's based in the USA too.
Next to all that, a list of contacts names and email addresses being stored in a Microsoft-controlled server that generally has quite good security and is not accessible to anybody except yourself, not even MS employees, unless those employees want to face immediate loss of their jobs, truly massive lawsuits, and quite possibly criminal charges... this is "a horrifying thing"?? I mean I don't care for this "cloud" BS either, but contact info is way, way down on the list of things I'm worried about getting out - I'm pretty sure I'd be more annoyed to lose access to my contacts than to have them leak.
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course. If you either run your own mail server or use a different mail account for each contact (so no corporation can build a contact list for you by checking their email logs), and have no information on any social networks, it's even consistent with the way you live your life. Or is it just the "American" aspect that is so uncomfortable to you? If so, I must in good conscience warn you that XDA-Developers is registered through a US company and WHOIS gives a registrant address in Arizona.
m00h said:
That's the answer I needed, in that case, my Omnia 7 is as good as sold. That's a horrifying thing if your phone forces you to sync all the sensitive, confidential data with an american cloud. How can you people be ok with that?
Before I bought a WP7 phone, I read a lot of stuff about it, either on forums or on reviews, and not a single review mentioned that I will be forced to give my data away, that's even more horrifying.
Either way, thanks for the answers.
Regards,
m00h
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most modern smartphones sync your contacts now......
GoodDayToDie said:
Well, an awfully large number of millions of people use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or any of a handful of other webmail providers, many of which are hosted in America (or <other place you dislike goes here>) and all of which contain far more private info than just contacts.
For that matter, a truly stupendous number of people use Facebook, which not only stores vastly more "private" info than simply contacts, it also has somewhat poor security and a terrible privacy record. Oh, it's based in the USA too.
Next to all that, a list of contacts names and email addresses being stored in a Microsoft-controlled server that generally has quite good security and is not accessible to anybody except yourself, not even MS employees, unless those employees want to face immediate loss of their jobs, truly massive lawsuits, and quite possibly criminal charges... this is "a horrifying thing"?? I mean I don't care for this "cloud" BS either, but contact info is way, way down on the list of things I'm worried about getting out - I'm pretty sure I'd be more annoyed to lose access to my contacts than to have them leak.
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course. If you either run your own mail server or use a different mail account for each contact (so no corporation can build a contact list for you by checking their email logs), and have no information on any social networks, it's even consistent with the way you live your life. Or is it just the "American" aspect that is so uncomfortable to you? If so, I must in good conscience warn you that XDA-Developers is registered through a US company and WHOIS gives a registrant address in Arizona.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't get me wrong, it's in no way about the USA or any other country, I'm just not comfortable with the idea, that one big corporation, in one big country is to decide for me how to store my data.
It's like Microsoft would say, that every document on my PC has to be stored on their Live cloud, and you, as a functional member of the tech-society are dependant on their OS. Even Apple is not that barefaced to force me to store my mothers cell phone number on their sync service. It's all about the choise, you know?
Btw., for those who use Android, is it the same way there? Am I forced to sync my contacts with something? I want to go safe this time
Regards,
m00h
m00h said:
Don't get me wrong, it's in no way about the USA or any other country, I'm just not comfortable with the idea, that one big corporation, in one big country is to decide for me how to store my data.
It's like Microsoft would say, that every document on my PC has to be stored on their Live cloud, and you, as a functional member of the tech-society are dependant on their OS. Even Apple is not that barefaced to force me to store my mothers cell phone number on their sync service. It's all about the choise, you know?
Btw., for those who use Android, is it the same way there? Am I forced to sync my contacts with something? I want to go safe this time
Regards,
m00h
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
android syncs your contacts with your google account, unless you turn off auto sync.
I don't see the issue though, you're just being overly paranoid now. If you have an email account I'm sure there is much more personal things in it
scoobysnacks said:
android syncs your contacts with your google account, unless you turn off auto sync.
I don't see the issue though, you're just being overly paranoid now. If you have an email account I'm sure there is much more personal things in it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I'm paranoid, I'm just not in common with the idea. But thanks for the answer with the Android, good to know that I can turn the auto-sync off.
Regards
Eh, all of my contacts from all of my accounts put together still constitute less private info than some single documents on my PC (tax returns come to mind, or letters to certain people). That said, so long as I can keep local copies of my docs too, I *am* generally OK with storing them on SkyDrive. If there was anything particularly sensitive I'd encrypt it first, but short of the aforementioned tax records I can't think of any such thing.
Of course, I'm still not sure how your attitude works with email. I mean, you obviously ahve an email account, or you couldn't be on this site. That account goes to a server somewhere. 99% chance that server is owned by a corporation. That corporation is possibly logging the server's Internet traffic. They're almost certainly making backups of your mailbox automatically all the time, so that if something goes wrong they can restore your mail. They have admins who can access your mailbox whenever they feel like it, with nothing stopping them except employment contracts and/or local laws.
That mailbox is a treasure trove of personal info. It hs your contacts (in the form of people who you've exchanged mail with), it has your purchase history (at least, for things bought online or shipped by freight services that send email), it probably has a list of every site that you visit which requires an email address to log in, it has the full transcriptions of any privte conversations you've had with friends or loved ones via email, it quite possibly has pictures of you and/or your family, it probably has your home address and phone number (because you sent them to somebody at least once), it even contains informtion on the hours you keep from the timestamps. If it's Gmail, they (Google) probably also have your IM conversations and possibly your calendar too.
Next to all that, you're worried about a huge corproration, one which is under constant surveillance and would be subject to immense lawsuits if it ever misused customer data, posessing a copy of your contacts list. Honestly, I'm just confused.
GoodDayToDie said:
Eh, all of my contacts from all of my accounts put together still constitute less private info than some single documents on my PC (tax returns come to mind, or letters to certain people). That said, so long as I can keep local copies of my docs too, I *am* generally OK with storing them on SkyDrive. If there was anything particularly sensitive I'd encrypt it first, but short of the aforementioned tax records I can't think of any such thing.
Of course, I'm still not sure how your attitude works with email. I mean, you obviously ahve an email account, or you couldn't be on this site. That account goes to a server somewhere. 99% chance that server is owned by a corporation. That corporation is possibly logging the server's Internet traffic. They're almost certainly making backups of your mailbox automatically all the time, so that if something goes wrong they can restore your mail. They have admins who can access your mailbox whenever they feel like it, with nothing stopping them except employment contracts and/or local laws.
That mailbox is a treasure trove of personal info. It hs your contacts (in the form of people who you've exchanged mail with), it has your purchase history (at least, for things bought online or shipped by freight services that send email), it probably has a list of every site that you visit which requires an email address to log in, it has the full transcriptions of any privte conversations you've had with friends or loved ones via email, it quite possibly has pictures of you and/or your family, it probably has your home address and phone number (because you sent them to somebody at least once), it even contains informtion on the hours you keep from the timestamps. If it's Gmail, they (Google) probably also have your IM conversations and possibly your calendar too.
Next to all that, you're worried about a huge corproration, one which is under constant surveillance and would be subject to immense lawsuits if it ever misused customer data, posessing a copy of your contacts list. Honestly, I'm just confused.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, confused is the right word, I'm very confused about your attitude having your privat stuff somewhere, on someones server without even having a choise not to store it there.
As for the part with the mail-server, no, I host my own mail-server because I take privacy a little bit more serious, and I surely wouldn't like to be on the list of your contacts if you deal so careless with your privacy. I'm in high dudgeon because I'm not given the choise here, that's what it is all about.
If you mention that you would encrypt your documents first, in case they would include some sensitive information, then you are talking about the choise even to encypt them, or not. The choise which I as a WP7 user obviously don't have, that's the point.
Maybe I'm a little bit old-fashioned, but for me it's very frightening that everyone around seems to be OK with that.
Anyway, since my question is answered, the is no point to continue this discussion, so, thanks for the answer.
Best regards,
m00h
Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Honestly sounds like a good idea..
Myself I decided to go for a while without any gapps and any other "store" installed on my phone.
My contacts are imported from a .vcf file which i update manually when needed.
I also have installed AFWall+ and i blocked the internet access to pretty much all the other apps including the system ones.. (everything i could get away with basically )
This could be a solution as well but it's rudimentary one at the moment.
nutpants said:
Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already don't have Google apps on my device.
Everything blocked with afwall+ using profiles so things only get net when I'm using them on the net.
Fdroid is where I get 90% of my software and from the internet for much of the other 10%
I have a old phone with nothing on it personal at all. Which has play store for the 3 or 4 paid apps I need, it does updates for them and a few free ones. I copy the apks over to my daily driver.
I constantly hound developers on play store to support offline devices and not to implement features that break the app when there is no internet. Even app I don't use lol.
(I have 2 tablets and far too many old phones.only two devices are online(some are local lan only))
Someone should start a offline foundation. But being online it might be ridiculous..
I too removed contacts by using /system/app mover from f-droid. It was unintended as I wanted them as a user application but they wouldn't work like this and the icon vanished, that was fine with me for a long time. The other day I wanted contacts for signal (and telegram also won't work without them). I restored the application files from a backup,
For reference in /system/app/ the missing files were
SecContacts.apk
SecContactsProvider.apk
Other contacts programs like Simple Contacts can't run without a system permission called com.android.contacts and without those files in /system/app the permission doesn't get created at boot. The result being that no contact creation is possible.
What I would really like is a modified version of the system app that passes contacts data to the calling program depending on individual contact entry permissions with regard to each calling app; one list for telegram, another for signal etc. I gather that recent android versions above 6.0.0 have functionality to check calling application certificates so something along these lines should be possible. For earlier versions it might be necessary to switch between multiple contacts databases before starting the messaging app and also removing it from the autoboot list.
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/permissions/defining
With Android 11, Google seems to have taken yet another step in the "making Android increasingly painful to use" direction by disabling the ability for device-only contacts to be available via the standard Contacts Provider. Because of this, I have to use Google-stored contacts on my Android 11 device in order for these contacts to be available to my apps. Otherwise, my apps don't see any contacts.
I have a rooted Android 11 device, and I'm hoping that there is some way that I could disable the standard Contacts Provider service and that I could then install an alternate, custom Contacts Provider service which knows how to access device-only contacts, and which knows how to make these contacts available to all apps that need contacts ... and which never will try to store my contacts on any of Google's servers nor anywhere else in the cloud.
Is it possible to disable Android's standard Contacts Provider service? And does such a 3rd-party Contacts Provider service exist?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.
Well, I think I found a solution to the issue that I'm trying to solve. And it doesn't require any new Contacts Provider service to be installed, after all.
First of all, I made sure that contacts syncing is turned off.
Next, I installed the "True Phone" contacts and phone manager app from the play store and made it my default phone app.
Then, I used that program to make a local backup of my contacts, which is one of its capabilities.
Following that, I froze the Contacts app, but I kept the Contacts Storage app active. I checked the permissions for the Contacts Storage app, and I see now that it has no network-related permssions. So apparently, it just looks at the local contacts database, and some other piece of software is what actually syncs Google's cloud-based contacts data with the local database. And by turning off contacts sync-ing, it seems like I have indeed disabled that process.
Then, I went from my desktop computer to http://contacts.google.com with the same login credentials that are associated with my Android device. I then permanently deleted all of the contacts there.
(I rebooted my Android device between each of these steps and also after the final step.)
Now, my SMS and phone apps still see the contacts info in my local database. And I can manage the local contacts backup and restore via that True Phone app.
There are probably other phone/contacts apps which also could be used for this. But True Phone works well enough for me.
So ... it turns out that no OS surgery is needed to mess with the contacts nor to install an alternate Contacts Provider service.
PS: And I now have learned something. I was asking about a "Contacts Provider service", but I now realize that the standard Contacts Storage app itself seems to be the "Contacts Provider".
And because I found out that this app does not even have network permissions, it seems clear that this app simply gets contacts from the locally stored sqlite contacts database, and therefore, I don't need to replace this app with anything else.
And so all I needed to do was disable contacts sync-ing, because that is what would sync contacts between Google's cloud and the local contacts database.
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
blackhawk said:
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took me around a day of on-and-off playing around sessions to figure this all out ... with some input from a few other helpful souls.
I agree about cloud-based services. I don't even use gmail. I run my own email server, so I use that to manage all my email accounts. I manage my own web servers and my own DNS servers, as well.
It's more work for me to manage those things, but I don't mind, and I actually enjoy that work, most of the time.