Database Info

[Q] Apps,Enabling GPS and others Q's

Hi
I know I'm well behind but recently I got my first smartphone and I can't believe how I've been without it since they were made available. I've plumped for the HTC wildfire as it fits my budget and its small size makes it very pocketable.
I've been playing around with various apps and installed "Where's my droid" so that if it gets lost/stolen I can turn it off silent and hopefully track it. However, reading something yesterday I became aware that changes to Android means that apps can no longer directly change system settings meaning that if the GPS is off, I can't track it. (Edit: yet it seems google navigation can do this?)
Is this correct and is there any other way I could implement a safeguard such as this in case the phone goes missing?
A few other queries I have:
> Can the messages widget be used as a more traditional inbox/outbox/drafts? I'm struggling to get my head around it!
> And I've been playing about with swype on another users phone but it won't work on mine due to the QVGA res, I've settled for slideit demo for now but it doesn't seem to work seamlessly, does anyone have anything to add to this?
> Lastly, my Dad (who isn't great with tech) purchased the same phone, apart from the user manual is there a "HTC for Dummies" youtube tutorials channel or anything similar I can point him at? I don't fancy adding another item that I need to maintain to the long list.
Hopefully at some point I can also work out a good way of utilising a speed camera and POI database for google navigation so I can replace the bulky tomtom unit!
Thanks in advance.
Paul

[Q] Some G-Tablet Questions from a Noob...

Hi All, I am a Noob to the G-Tablet and I have a few questions that I thought that someone might answer that also has a G-Tablet. I am running 3389 with the TnT Enhancement pack. (3.1.4) I am thinking about rooting the device, but want to be sure that everything works correctly before I do.
Here goes...
1. My screen needs to be viewed from slightly above the unit (landscape) in order to make it look even. If you turn to portrait, it needs to be viewed slightly to the camera side. It looks like the backlight is on the camera side and is thus brighter there. Is this normal? or might there be a problem.
2. The Camera seems to be very poor especially under indoor lighting. Poor enough that I don't know that I can video conference with it indoors. again, is this normal?
3. I have installed the Enhancement Pack and have the Marketplace. However, I only see a small number of apps in the Marketplace. Is this because of the Stock TnT? Apps that are missing are as simple as the Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger client. Trying to figure out what makes the marketplace decide what apps to show and if rooting the device will resolve this.
Thanks in advance for any answers to these questions!

kmclaren said:
Hi All, I am a Noob to the G-Tablet and I have a few questions that I thought that someone might answer that also has a G-Tablet. I am running 3389 with the TnT Enhancement pack. (3.1.4) I am thinking about rooting the device, but want to be sure that everything works correctly before I do.
Here goes...
1. My screen needs to be viewed from slightly above the unit (landscape) in order to make it look even. If you turn to portrait, it needs to be viewed slightly to the camera side. It looks like the backlight is on the camera side and is thus brighter there. Is this normal? or might there be a problem.
2. The Camera seems to be very poor especially under indoor lighting. Poor enough that I don't know that I can video conference with it indoors. again, is this normal?
3. I have installed the Enhancement Pack and have the Marketplace. However, I only see a small number of apps in the Marketplace. Is this because of the Stock TnT? Apps that are missing are as simple as the Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger client. Trying to figure out what makes the marketplace decide what apps to show and if rooting the device will resolve this.
Thanks in advance for any answers to these questions!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1.) Yes, unfortunately this is normal. It doesn't bother me too much though.
2.) Yes, I also find it to be pretty poor however it works for me for most things (such as reading QR codes off of a PC screen for apps).
3.) For me, it seems different apps show when I change the properties file on my gTab to mimic other devices. I guess there is a filter on the Market that only displays what it thinks your device can handle?
I am running VEGAn rom beta 5.1. I absolutely LOVE this rom and can't wait for the next version of it based on Gingerbread source.

kmclaren said:
Hi All, I am a Noob to the G-Tablet and I have a few questions that I thought that someone might answer that also has a G-Tablet. I am running 3389 with the TnT Enhancement pack. (3.1.4) I am thinking about rooting the device, but want to be sure that everything works correctly before I do.
Here goes...
1. My screen needs to be viewed from slightly above the unit (landscape) in order to make it look even. If you turn to portrait, it needs to be viewed slightly to the camera side. It looks like the backlight is on the camera side and is thus brighter there. Is this normal? or might there be a problem.
2. The Camera seems to be very poor especially under indoor lighting. Poor enough that I don't know that I can video conference with it indoors. again, is this normal?
3. I have installed the Enhancement Pack and have the Marketplace. However, I only see a small number of apps in the Marketplace. Is this because of the Stock TnT? Apps that are missing are as simple as the Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger client. Trying to figure out what makes the marketplace decide what apps to show and if rooting the device will resolve this.
Thanks in advance for any answers to these questions!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have You tried the Quick Market Fix Found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=885940
I am running the stock TNT and have all the Yahoo apps on my market.

Thanks...
Thanks to those who replied. The Market fix did in fact resolve my problem. It's an easy enough fix, but I guess you just need to know where to look.
Thanks also for confirming that these items are shortcomings in the G-Tab. The camera is understandable in a unit that is priced this low. It is a bit unexpected that the screen has limitations though, since Viewsonic is pretty much known for making flat screen monitors.
Thanks Again to everyone for their help.

Glad to hear you're enjoying your g tablet. I think everyone is in agreement that the screen quality is unusually subpar for Viewsonic, however, they OEMed this device and stuck their name on it. It is not manufactured by Viewsonic, as I understand it.

[Q] Has anyone been able to play Ravensword: Shadowlands?

I recently purchased a Shield to be my only & main Android gaming platform. The first game I spent money on was Ravensword: Shadowlands, but I cannot get it to launch using the controller. On startup, the game asks whether you would like to use a controller or not. If I select no, the game runs perfectly fine, but the Shield is unfortunately not designed with touch-only gaming in mind. When I do select yes, the game will make it past all the loading screens, get to the main menu as if it is running normally, but the menu itself wont load, just the background. It is animated and the sound does work.
I have scoured the internet for any sort of answer on this, and Crescent Moon Games (Developer) website seems to be down, so I cannot really contact anybody. I am sort of just looking to see if anyone else got it to launch, or if anyone else has experienced this issue with other games and discovered a workaround.

And thus it's not published as a game tile in SHIELD STORE.
i hope the game developers fix this.
This is definitely not a Nvidia issue!

I am really hoping the developers fix this; from what I have seen and played with the touch screen, the game is loads of fun (I did have pretty high expectations for $7.00 ) I would love to get ahold of the developers and inform them and help however I can, I'd like to think that would help. They might not even know that this game doesn't work with the Shield.
Anywho, has anyone encountered similar problems? At this point, I am willing to experiment to try and resolve this, but I am unfortunately a complete Android noob. I could post a video of the problem if that would help, but I do not know exactly how to capture whats happening on the Shield's screen.

policiacaro said:
I am really hoping the developers fix this; from what I have seen and played with the touch screen, the game is loads of fun (I did have pretty high expectations for $7.00 ) I would love to get ahold of the developers and inform them and help however I can, I'd like to think that would help. They might not even know that this game doesn't work with the Shield.
Anywho, has anyone encountered similar problems? At this point, I am willing to experiment to try and resolve this, but I am unfortunately a complete Android noob. I could post a video of the problem if that would help, but I do not know exactly how to capture whats happening on the Shield's screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al_tgDiSllFFdGhJQ3p3d1JDTU0wS3IyNjVxdDB6MVE#gid=0
Update your words in the above mentioned sheet
Or contact any one of them & request them to update...

Update your words in the above mentioned sheet
Or contact any one of them & request them to update...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Done and done.
I will try and update this list more often, my Steam game list is massive (365 titles and growing) and it is the weekend. :laugh:

I don't have a shield but this game does this on my device when I try to load with controller.

nestorian said:
I don't have a shield but this game does this on my device when I try to load with controller.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the exact same issue with my Shield. hangs up at the start screen, with no buttons displayed, with that giant black spot in the background.

I have the same error on all my Android devices when I have a bluetooth gamepad connected. I think the developer has pretty much given up on the game at this point.

I've contacted the veleoper a few weeks ago.
He told me it isn't optimized for Shield...
"The game doesn't support Nvidia shield, sorry for the trouble."

[ TE=p oliciacaro;44405971]I am really hoping the developers fix this; from what I have seen and played with the touch screen, the game is loads of fun (I did have pretty high expectations for $7.00 ) I would love to get ahold of the developers and inform them and help however I can, I'd like to think that would help. They might not even know that this game doesn't work with the Shield.
Anywho, has anyone encountered similar problems? At this point, I am willing to experiment to try and resolve this, but I am unfortunately a complete Android noob. I could post a video of the problem if that would help, but I do not know exactly how to capture whats happening on the Shield's screen.[/QUOTE]
the first time I ran ravenssword in controller support mode I actually got it to work. it went to the game menu But none of the buttons on the controller work.the second time I actually ran it. it did the whole working background but frozen menu deal. with my experience with computers the only thing that I could say that would help is maybe you re installing the game

[Q] XT910 rooted, superuser issue?

Hello folks,
I am a newbie in this business and usually do not fiddle around this, due to lack of background knowledge and not being a geek.
I rooted XT910 using http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2257137 method. Worked without much issue. Now I am not too sure how I should proceed.
The goal behind this rooting was, to clean the apps Motorola installed, and I never use. Since the beginning this device had wi-fi connectivity issues and would get slow within a month or two of use. Nothing fancy was installed on this phone or was used for, except regular phone, email, text, photos and videos, whatsapp and Vonage. Hence, it was very difficult to understand why this phone slows down.
To address this problem, I thought it is best.
- if I could just delete the apps I don't use, as they keep running in the background.
- if there could be easy (for me to understand) tweak to address wi-fi connectivity issue.
- Honestly, I am not really interested in taking efforts of installing new ROM as from reading itself it sounds pretty daunting task.
I tried firing up SuperUser app but it is not self explanatory app and always gives me a pop up that it needs to be updated but doesn't update when I select so.
Any help in addressing this issues is welcome.
Thanks in advance.

How do apps like Dual Screen Browser and Floating Apps work?

Hello XDA,
I am an iPhone Jailbreak user, who has always been curious about the capabilities of an Android phone to see if it matches upto anything the Jailbroken iPhones can do in my own perspective. I've posted on other communities before to ask these questions but since I got no real good answer, I decided to buy an old Nexus 4 phone (running v5.1.1 i believe) to see what the Android can do myself.
Now, I've noticed that with these "Dual Screen Browsers", specifically the "Dual Screen Browser" and the "DualScreen" app has this capability of when you have a Flash Video playing, and if you go back to the Home screen, it continues to play the video in the background. My understanding was for Android, because it uses an OOM memory management system, playing videos as if it remained in the foreground should not be possible, but some how these two apps are able to do this.
I also realized the app "Floating Apps" also achieves a similar effect of playing any Flash videos in the background. although for this it seems like it leaves a tiny icon floating around the phone. which seems totally fine. i would assume this behavior can be made available to all apps with an option to disable this feature (including games)
Could anyone shed light to how these three apps works, and what allows them to do this? Can this behavior be mimic'd for things like a Game app?
Or could anyone point to a better forum to ask these questions?
Since I now have an Android phone I can actually try out whatever suggestions may pop up so this is exciting.
Thank you all in advance.