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Android Apps/Mods

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Beautiful Widgets:

Beautiful widgets is actually a pretty awesome app, it comes with quite a few widgets, but for me the best part is that it allows me to pretty up my primary home screen. I like having my primary screen clean with my messaging apps, while my phone, maps, mail and browser sit below in Helix Launcher.

cap201004211157.jpg


However, it's not just a clock, each one of the areas has a function. For example, clicking on the date brings up Calendar, the Clock brings up the Alarm clock and the weather brings up a pretty easy forecast.

cap2010042111571.jpg


They have close to 200 custom themes, I use the clear theme (called naked droid) because I liked my background, but if you want something more in your face, they probably have something for you. it costs like 2-3 bucks, worth it for me.

Beautiful Widgets - Android app on AppBrain
 
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What's not to like about that background? :biggrin::biggrin:

The more apps like this I see the more I want to get a Android phone. I just need to decide if I want a Nexus One($60 month and I can cancel data at anytime) or if I want to get out of my parents plan and join VZW and get the Incrdible ($77 month).
 
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CentralMOBuck;1694012; said:
What's not to like about that background? :biggrin::biggrin:

The more apps like this I see the more I want to get a Android phone. I just need to decide if I want a Nexus One($60 month and I can cancel data at anytime) or if I want to get out of my parents plan and join VZW and get the Incrdible ($77 month).
Click to expand...

I am going to try and do some app reviews with screenies every day or two, we'll see how it works out. The flexibility of Android, combined with the power of the Linux kernel does give the phone a ton of uses.
 
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CentralMOBuck;1694034; said:
OCBF, are you a fan of the sense UI? What exactly is it's purpose?
Click to expand...

Sense UI isn't on the Droid, it's a customized Android home environment. It brings a bunch of new widgets, customized menus and other stuff. It's proprietary to HTC, they have their framework-res.apk and services.jar pretty hard coded so it's tough to port to any other phone, though people are trying.

I don't really care for it, most of the people who I know who have a phone with it tends to yank in favor of a custom rom. Mostly because it consumes more memory than most home replacements.

You get more functionality out of Helix, but Helix can be a little unstable at times.
 
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Talked to a vzw store rep yesterday, lingered in the store for 30 min as a mildly interested buyer. The price for the droid and incredible was 199, but as I lingered he tacked on a free month of data (30) and 50 towards 50+ in accessories.

Going to see if best buy will match any of that for a pre-order.



Tried out some emulator action today. It's a little hard to control with a touchscreen (mostly the arrows), but it is also a little cumbersome with the droid d-pad)


It is fun but you would have to be patient with it. I think it would be especially hard to do precise diagonal zig zagging.

The droid keyboard is growing on me, I just wish they had used more than 40-50% of the phone size for the key area. I have adjusted to the painfully flat keys.




If best buy won't wheel and deal, I think I'll have my vzw store rep hold an incredible for me, see how it feels and then decide launch day morning. He won't be locked from selling it for long, and I won't be stuck with something that's not for me.
 
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Best buy sells you a 50 buck gift card and puts your name on a reserve list for launch day. You can either use that for the incredible and pick it up or change your mind and now you have a gift card.

When I told him about the data plan offer and accessory discount he said that would have to run through Verizon.


Ill give big red a call, but I'm guessing I'll be going with the local store. He seemed like a nice guy and it was a brand new branch so that would feel better than giving best buy (which I loathe for their markups) or a user-less website my business.
 
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MixZing (Ad Supported Version free, Paid version 7 bucks??!?)

I have used MixZing for a long time, it does a few things really well, it lets you add some life to your home screen with pretty widgets, and it also plays and controls your music. The widget comes in three sizes, a small widget that just shows your play/pause buttons, a medium size widget that shows the allbum art with play/pause and fast forward button (see below) or a large widget that takes up a full home screen.

cap201004220926.jpg


Some of the great features include a id3 tag editor, a home screen widget that will allow you to control your music, and automatically downloading album art. Controls are relatively simple, finding music and setting up playlists is much easier than the default media player.

cap2010042209261.jpg
cap201004220927.jpg


Downside: For an android app 7 bucks is pretty pricey, people are currently trying to get them to lower it to about 3 bucks. App brain shows they have sold 500 copies (1 to me in fact) for that 7 dollar price tag, but overall, most android apps run under 5 dollars.

There's a ton of Media player applications, this is the one I use, I am comfortable with and helps me customize my home screen to something I enjoy looking at on a daily basis.

The Paid version has some free music downloads, but I will say I have never heard of any of the artists in there last time I checked, and what I did download, well, let's just say there's a reason they are giving it away.

If you want to check it out, download the ad-supported version and see what you think, you'll miss out on a couple of features and won't be able to download their [sarcasm]awesome[/sarcasm] selection of free tunes, but I am sure you will manage to survive.

MixZing Media Player - Android app on AppBrain
 
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CentralMOBuck;1696168; said:
Facebook Chat is a piece of crap on anything. I have trouble with all the time on any pc I use.
Click to expand...

I agree, however, since Facebook ties into the Droid, making it possible for you to have an interactive address book, so when someone adds their number, or removes it, it syncs on the phone. As much as people may have opinions about facebook, I don't think it's going away any time soon, and I think it would only help both products to have all features working on the phone.
 
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The newer versions do not seem to work any longer, but this works great in portrait (vertical) mode for one handed text input.

It seems to be having issues with horizontal input however.
Instructions to Install Swype Beta on Android Phone


  1. Navigate to settings -> applications and check the “unknown sources” box.
  2. Tap and download Swype apk file onto your phoneDroid.Swype.Beta.5612.apk
  3. Tap the downloaded file to install Swype on android.
  4. Navigate to settings -> language & keyboard and check the “Swype” box.
  5. Navigate to a text message, long press in the text box and choose “input method”.
  6. Select “Swype”.
Click to expand...
  1. Note: I wasn't able to download this file from my phone. Instead I downloaded it and emailed it to myself (and downloaded the link thru my browser viewing my email).

    Here is an alternate link, though I'm not sure how long it will stay up:
    Download Droid.Swype.Beta.5612.apk from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way
 
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