Android Apps

Phil Lewis — Sat, 21 May 2011 03:09:16 +0000

Many people have asked about good android applications. I try to keep my phone with few apps but I have found another app I am a big fan of.

Lookout – Phone Locator

Lookout – This app is similar to the mobileme on the iphone. It allows a person to locate their phone and even send a loud alarm noise to their phone regardless of if the phone is in silent mode. Simply install the app on your phone and then login to the lookout website to locate / send alarm.

The extra services for Premium are interesting (antivirus, locking out features, backups) but not needed. The Chrome OS is good by itself for protecting against viruses.

Swype – A speedier way to type

Simply drag your finger over all the letters that you want in the word and the pattern is recognized. It can start out slow, but the learning curve is fast to overcome. Soon you can type faster and easier than the common keyboard.

Please refer to my previous post regarding swype.

PDANet- A Free Mobile Hot Spot

PdaNet – is a free version that allows you to use your mobile device as a modem for your laptop. No more paying for service at Starbucks or airports. Want to use your laptop on a roadtrip or in the parking lot? Now you can use it anywhere you have a mobile signal. Super cool.

Mobile service providers are charging a monthly fee for this service. They also have a bandwidth limit. You can use the unlimited data plan on your phone with PdaNet for free and at 4G speed. The only limitation on the PdaNet free version is no access to https sites.

Droid vs iPhone

Phil Lewis — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:34:58 +0000

Summary:

I returned the Verizon iPhone 4 and got the HT Thunderbolt Droid.

Both are good phones and will handle 99% of normal activity. This article is intended to share my results of the glaring differences. I was not able to find all of this data in one spot, so maybe this will save time for other people in the same situation.

In short, the iPhone is a good option if all you care about is using your phone as an ipod player and basic email checking. If you care about other features and benefits, please read on.

Benefits of HTC Thunderbolt

4G
Run multiple applications at once
Easier to install non-market applications
Sim card
Better Integration with Google

Drawbacks of Verizon iPhone 4

3G
Less customizable

The next section covers some of these benefits / drawbacks in more detail.

4G vs 3G

4G is 10 times faster than 3G. Granted there has to be a 4G signal transmitted for your phone to utilize the speed. However, loading web pages and video conferencing on 4G is a noticeable difference.

Easier to run Non-Market Applications

I believe this is one of the biggest reasons I went with the Thunderbolt.

iPhone

I for one hate being told what I can and can not install on my phone. I had a lot of issues with the iphone trying to find apps I wanted to install. I even went through the whole jail breaking procedure. As much fun as that was, I still had lots of trouble trying to reprogram the phone myself. I decided my time was better served doing something else vs becoming an Apple Hacker.

Droid

I already have two amazing apps that aren’t licensed as approved. Well, easy enough: Click Settings –> Applications –> Check the box that says Unknown Sources (Allow installation of non-Market applications). Thank you Google for making my life easy.

Swype – It’s a keyboard upgrade that lets you type faster than normal. It’s really slick.

Run Multiple Applications at Once

As far as I know, Apple’s iPhone still does not allow you to do this. How about using Google Maps while your talking on your blue tooth in your car? Or maybe playing a game of chess while you’re waiting on hold?

Sim Card

As far as I know, this is one of the first reasonable Verizon phones with a SIM card. For those that like to travel overseas like me, having a SIM card is a huge benefit. You can pull out your SIM card and put it in other phones. Not sure why it’s taken so long for the US phones to add this feature, but I gladly welcome it.

Better Integration with Google

The Thunderbolt is a Google phone. I run my business through Google Apps. I had a lot of problems integrating the iPhone app with my Google Account (It’s not gmail but it’s still a Google account). There are known issues with syncing groups from contacts and calendars. I have no issues with my Droid. Works like a charm.

iPhone less customizable

I got pretty frustrated with a few simple things on the iphone.

Extra click for mail

To select multiple emails at once to archive or delete, you first have to click edit before you can select multiple ones. This may seem trivial, but for someone that gets millions of emails and checks it frequently, this adds up and is annoying.

Disable text message alert pop up box

Seriously? iPhone enables you to hide the preview text, but not to disable the whole message pop up box. If you are tping an email or doing anything on your iPhone, a pop up box interrupts what you are doing. The pop up box indicates a text message from person XYZ, causing you to take an action by pressing view or close. How annoying. I searched everywhere how to disable this but was unable to find a solution.

Phone book

When I added my Google Account to the iphone, it brought in over 3,000 entries. My phone book only needs to show entries that have phone numbers. The droid is easy, choose the option that says ‘Show only contacts with phone numbers’. iPhone, no such luck.

To get around this for the iPhone, I exported all of my Google Contacts to an excel spread sheet. I then wrote a macro to:

Consolidate the numbers into 3 columns (I only need mobile, business and home)
Delete all the entries that didn’t have a phone number in any of the 3 phone columns.

I then manually cleaned up the ones I didn’t need or that were duplicates. Finally, I uploaded these new contacts to my Microsoft Address book (overwrote existing ones) on my laptop (ie, user –> Contacts). I don’t use Outlook, so I was able to use this as a place holder. I then synced my iPhone with my new cleaned version of Microsoft contacts. Half the problem was solved. My address book on my iPhone showed only contact with phone numbers. Great.

But I was still synced with data on my client machine. It’s better to sync with a web based service (Google) rather than a client based service (Outlook). Any device you have that uses Google will have access to your contacts. This is not the case for Microsoft contacts.

Miscellaneous

Battery Life

The battery life on the droids has always been a point of concern. It’s never been great. However there are few easy tricks that can be done to extend the normal battery life. Turn off the following services when they are not needed. I use a toggle switch to easily turn these on and off as desired.

4G
WiFi
GPS
Bluetooth
Background sync

Comments

I welcome all comments that aren’t SPAM. I tried to post the facts from what I know at this time for the Verizon iPhone 4 and the HTC Thunderbolt.

5th Quarter