Be Excellent To Each Other

I think Grim... has an Android phone, and I've got an HTC Magic, so I thought I'd start a wee thread.

I've gone utterly in love with my HTC Magic, TBH and I simply don't do that over phones. It is quite awesome, the touch screen is lovely (if a bit smeary thanks to my grubby fingers) and I've just about got the hang of typing on it. The trick seems to be confident and type quickly.

The integration into Google for email and calendar is awesome. Browser is lovely and nipping around the screen is slick. It could possibly do with a bit more grunt.

Still haven't got Wi-Fi to work at either work or at home. I suspect idiocy on my part. I just don't get on with Wi-Fi.

Battery life isn't great, but I do have it constantly checking two email accounts.

The Linux origins showed up with the need to mount an SD card before Windows would talk to it.

Apps of choice ShopSavvy, Skymap (thanks Grim), NetCounter. Been recommended at Advanced Task manager, but not quite getting what it is for. I don't like getting too geeky with my phones.

Is there any way of adding different alarm sounds? Is it a new app type thing?

In short, 824 bananas.

I was just about to do a search for this!

Anyway,

I've cancelled with Vodafone in anticipation of the HTC Hero coming out next week on Orange/T-Mobile.

I'm so sick of Windows Mobile 6.

There's a liveCD now to boot Android on your PC: http://code.google.com/p/live-android/

Battery life on the G1 is terrible, but it hasn't annoyed me too much yet.
I haven't tried this for Alarms, but you Ringdroid will allow you to edit mp3s that are on the phone and set them as ringtones/notifications.
You could also download Rings Extended which will popup every time you try to set any kind of notification and allow you to pick files from the SD card.

I've been on a bit of an install frenzy recently, so I'll have a look at what I've got and see if any of it's any good.

Right, here's what I've got - usefulness to be decided, but most of them sound practical.

Astrid - To do/task list organiser
Astro - File manager that lets you browse the phone/sd card - I'm sure this must be useful for something
cab4me - Choose where you are on the map (it'll try to work it out using network/GPS depending on your settings), then it'll give you a list of local taxi numbers. Grim... might want to install this one.
ConvertAll - A unit convertor that I'm probably going to uninstall in favour of handyCalc
handyCalc - ludicrously complicated graphical calculator that also does unit conversion
IM+ Lite - haven't really used this much, but it's the free version of an IM program that seems to support pretty much all the clients
Last.fm - Er, it's Last.fm
MapWeasel - Brings up a map of the uk with any traffic incidents highlighted, click on them for more details
Movie Finder - Local cinema listings with links to imdb pages
Nav4All - Someone on here (LaceSensor?) mentioned this. It's a satnav program, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet
Night Clock - Displays a clock on the screen, plays mp3s as alarm
Note pad - It's a pad. For notes
PktAuctions eBay - Links to all your eBay auctions (buying and selling)
Places Directory - Like Movie Finder, local listings for all sorts of stuff (banks, shops, parking, etc)
Power Manager - Uses different profiles depending on the power state of your phone (battery, low battery, ac, usb). The free version doesn't let you change the profiles
Ringdroid - Edit mp3s and use them as ringtones/notifications
Scoreboard - Supposed to keep you up to date with sporting results from pretty much any sports you can think of. I haven't tried it out properly due to lack of football.
Shazam - Play it music and it will tell you what it is. As has already been pointed out on here, this has to be the devil's work.
ShopSavvy - You've already got this, but for anyone that hasn't it allows you to search for products (either by typing in the name or scanning the barcode) and then finding the cheapest prices online and locally.
Shutter Speed - Supposed to offer a few more camera options, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet
SMS Popup - Lots of options to configure SMS messages
Sound Grenade - Just to amuse myself occasionally.
The Weather Channel - Weather
Twidgit Lite - A Twitter Widget, I only installed this yesterday, but it seems better than Twidroid
Twidroid - Twitter client
UK Traffic - Like MapWeasel, but just in text
Google voice search - Like Shazam, this use of technology scares me. The last time I saw any voice recognition software being used was about 10 years ago in PC World and it was laughably bad.

What's a progile?

That would be a typo. Thanks.

When an android phone comes out that has a better spec than my N95, I'll be having one.

Which would be this one, then:

my HTC Hero turned up today.

it's lovely. I got the exclusive graphite one from Orange and it looks really nice.

Android seems good although I get the feeling it's the XNA to iTunes' XBLA.

That Samsung looks lovely. A shame then that my D900 has been nothing but a cunt.

Is it possible to get a reasonably priced, unlocked Android phone yet?

Android looks interesting, but why do HTC only put their nice 800x480 screens on Windows Mobile phones? I'd love a phone of that resolution (two and a half times the pixels of the iphone's screen) for browsing, but haven't heard much good about Windows Mobile and would rather go with Android.

I'd add:

Locale - Adjust phone setting depending on your environment (location, time, battery life, etc)
SkyMap - Google maps, but for stars. Knows what you are pointing it at and stuff
GPSTracker - tells people where you are
Wikitude - AR app that tells you stuff about what you point your phone at
BeebPlayer - iPlayer
RecordIt - Sky+ intergration
GPS Speedo - Records average and top speed (as well as current) for a journey. Deadly

Expansys do the HTC Hero for £399

The Magic is the same price.

TonePicker has been the best ringtone manager I've found so far.

I do wish there was a way to assign a different tone to an incoming SMS, than for an email.

SMS Popup can.

Are you not getting wet?

Android vNext "Donut" running on a G1: http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/26/earl ... ing-on-g1/



I increasingly want an Android tablet.

Anyone got any games yet? I've got some good Tower Defence ones (Robo Defence and Retro Defence).

None that are particularly good.

Asteroids
Doom
Labyrinth - guide the ball round the maze by tilting the phone
Monkey Jump
Mystique: Chapter 1 - trapped in a room puzzle game that me and GJ were supposed to go back to and try and finish, but haven't got round to it
Nine Hole Golf
Pacman
Papi Jump - ball bounces up the screen and you have to tilt the phone so he lands on platforms
Papi Pole - Don't think I've tried this yet
Papi River - Or this
Snake
Solitaire
Sudoku
ThrottleCopter - Not as good as the powerpoint version that must have come close to getting me fired
Wixel - Word puzzler with more words than the dictionary (that's not a good thing)
WordWrench - Another word game that doesn't make you swear as much when it tells you what "words" you've missed.

There's a version of ScummVM as well, but I've not tried it.

Shoulda been called Word Wench.

Ultimate team up attack: Mr. Dictionary and Word Wench!

I'm trying to buy the full version of Robo but it's not on the Marketplace and the free version has no links to it.

Hngh!

Today's games are Buka, in which you have to protect a talking planet (I think) from asteroids and stuff. Cute, and not bad.
Also Crystallight, a tower defence game with a campaign mode which you mix crystals together to make weapons. Quite good so far.

A couple of new apps I've found.

Car mode - Just a simpe toggle that automatically outputs calls through your speakers when it's turned on.
lcviewer - converts pdf files so you can view them (there are a few programs that do this, so there might be better ones)
missed call - Flashes the led when you've had a missed call
Task switcher & task killer - These two are a bit weird. Task switcher is supposed to allow you to switch between your running apps, while task killer is supposed to show you what's running so you can switch between or kill tasks. They don't tend to agree on what I have running though.

If you like comics, I liked Atomic Robo and Dynamo 5 (although I've been waiting for an update for that for a while).

well, this is the thing.

I really like the Robo Defense demo. I can't buy it though. I tried but it's not on the Market over here in the UK. I checked out the dev's blog, plenty of people asking how they can buy it. No response.

I dl'd a torrent of it and found AppInstaller on the Market which lets you run .apk files. Ran the file, now got the full version on my phone.

Hmmm....

Odd. I bought it no problems.

wierd. it doesn't show up on my Market thing. I even tried scanning in a barcode to download it and it didn't work.

I wonder if I'm set to some stupid version of Market then. No idea how to fix it if I am.

EDIT:

oh... because Orange didn't sign something or other with Google, the Hero on Orange is treated as a dev phone and won't allow many paid apps.

http://androidforums.com/htc-hero/7171- ... oblem.html

Well that fucking sucks.

maybe the dev phone status is what's letting me run a torrented version.

very odd.

More stuff.

AK Notepad - Looks a bit more like the iPhone notepad, allows you to set reminders and share your notes with other people (email or text)
Andoku - Sudoku game with a few varieties (X-Sudoku and Hyper Sudoku)
Gameboid Lite - Gameboy Advance emulator. Seems ok from what I've tried, it's got savestate support, but you can't load states in the Lite version - haven't checked to see if it supports normal battery saving yet
Gensoid Lite - Megadrive emulator by the same author, again seems to work ok, but I'll assume it has the same savestate restrictions
Mathdoku - Sudoku with a maths element (a bit like killer sudoku, where there are shapes with a number and the numbers in there have to reach that total, but in this case there's a mathematical symbol as well, so it's not just the sum of the numbers)
Nesoid Lite - NES emulator. Same Author. Has light gun support if you used to play Duck Hunt with the gun pressed up against the tv.
Snesoid Lite - SNES emulator. Same Author. Pilotwings on your phone
TrafficSyncUK - Traffic incidents from the UK in map or list form, seems to have far more incidents than MapWeasel, which I used to use. However, it seems to insist I have my GPS turned on for it to get any updates which seems to make no sense at all.

CrystalLight (which I mentioned last time) is shit. Bubble Defence (with free teeny-tiny ad-supported version) is like Boons Tower Defence, and so is good.
Mystique is a first-person survival horror-type game. It's a bit too dark, but it's a good waste of 30 minutes.

I will try TrafficSyncUK.

Well, it's the first day of the (proper ) football season, which means it's the moment you've all been waiting for...

The Android Live Football Scores Application Pro Face-Off!!!111

So far, we have three contenders:

Scoreboard - Pointlessly installed on my G1 for most of the summer, its day of glory has finally arrived, and I go and install some alternatives to see if I can find anything better.
Covers events rather than sports (although everything is categorized by sport), so it seems to be missing things you'd expect to see. Depending on your choice of sport, you'll either find everything down to the kids playing in the park, or maybe just one or two options. Anyway, this is all about football, and there's plenty of it. You can select your favourite events which will be displayed when you open the App. Everything down to League 2 is available for England, as well as the League and FA cups.
A quick look at today's fixtures shows that Stoke are playing Unknown Unknown, who will also welcome West Ham today. Seeing as Man Utd are also playing Unknown Unknown tomorrow, it looks like they're having some slight issues with the newly promoted teams (incidentally, the Championship fixtures don't have this problem with any of the newly promoted/relegated teams, so hopefully it will be sorted soon).
Fixtures are shown by day and the days can be scrolled by flicking the screen left and right (is there a technical term for that?).
Last, but not least, you can put a widget on your desktop (is that the right word?) which allows you to setup your favourite team(s), so you can get their score updates on your desktop without having to go into the App.
You can have notifications off, kick off and full time updates, with added half time and goal updates.

Soccer Live Scores - Purely football (not soccer, thanks very much) related and appears to have pretty much every league in the universe. Options are pretty limited though to filtering which leagues you want to see (by country) and whether you want to just display live games or all games (it seems to show the last couple of days results). No widget though, so that's not a good sign.

SportsTap - Horrifyingly American, football can be found under the Futbol option (it might be a giveaway that the options before it are NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAA and Auto). A much more limited choice of leagues, but should cover all the ones anyone is likely to care about (sorry Belgium, oh, and Wales). So, it's a little more long-winded than Soccer Live Scores (choose sport, choose league, rather than just having your filtered results there), but... it has a widget! (Oh, I should probably mention at this point that choosing the English league just shows today's premiership fixtures. There are dates at the top to view future fixtures, but it looks limited to top flight football only, this appears to be the case for all the available leagues). Anyway, back to the widget... Unfortunately, the favourite team section doesn't extend any further than the American sports listed at the start of the review, so, for the purposes of this test, the widget is completely pointless.

So, in conclusion, looks like Scoreboard might be the way to go whether you're just interested in one team, or the results from the whole league.

Exciting Live review update!

Scoreboard has the Chelsea Hull score and claims to be about 2 minutes behind what Sky Sports is showing live. There are no fancy options though, apart from being able to see what the half time score was.

Soccer Live Scores has the score, and, impressively, claims to be about 5 minutes ahead of Sky Sports. Now I've stood in the bar at Edgbaston and been able to see the cricket on the tv at the same time as it's happening live, and while there's a slight delay, it's closer to 5 seconds than 5 minutes. Clicking on the match tells me who scored and when and yellow (and presumably red) cards.

Sports Tap just tells me the score and that we're in the second half. However, clicking on the match shows scorers, bookings, substitutions and team line-ups, so that's quite impressive if you're into all that. Doesn't seem to give any indication of how much of the match is left anywhere though.

So, if you just care about the score and how long is left, Scoreboard still seems to be the favourite. If you want more in-depth match info, Sports Tap looks nice (although Premiership only). If you want to know what's going to happen before it actually does, Soccer Live Scores would seem to be the obvious choice. Probably best used near a bookies

Edit - A goal. Time for a real test.
Soccer Live Scores was first with the goal, although it it had claimed to have been in the 90th minute for a good 5 minutes before it was scored.
Scoreboard was second a minute or so later and Sports Tap still didn't have it when I gave up.

The Sky Sports Live Score Centre thingy is pretty good on the iPhone.

Take your iPhone back to the iPhone thread.

*searches for Sky Sports Live Center*

Sorry, I was in the middle of something when I typed up that post. That's what I meant to suggest.

Did I really just type "center"?

I worry about me sometimes.

You typed it twice.

Well the second one was deliberate.
I've got to go out now, we can carry on this later if you like.

Well, there we go then.

Soccer Live Scores was good for finding out how shit we were with minimal delay
Scoreboard was good at reminding me how shit we were when I didn't want to be reminded.
Sports Tap was good for telling me exactly who was responsible for how shit we were.

Sky Sports told me that we won again and that we're still second.

http://www.i4u.com/article26382.html Ouch:

Bugger

Dicks.
I got an update yesterday, acutally. I wonder what that was...

I'll shout a T-mobile a bit.

Tried out a few apps to see what does the following things best;


Twitter - Twidroid is the best app but has no widget so Peep is still useful. Until very soon when Twidroid gets a widget.

Facebook - don't let your browser take you to x.facebook.com as it's shit. use m.facebook.com instead. Best app is Babbler so far. Has a widget.

RSS shite - tried PureRSS (was okay but occasionally fails a bit), BlueRSS (decent), FeedR (good as it doesn't fuck about with needing feed URLs, has a good search on it), Greed (for your Google Reader feeds). Greed/BlueRSS are the best options.

Hello.

I have spent all day battling with Sipdroid and I cannot get the fucking thing working with Sipgate with or without PBXes! I am very pissed off there is no working SIP/VOIP client for Android yet, what the fuck is taking people so long, especially Skype who have a fully functioning app on iPhone already!?

Other than that I would like to recommend:
Robo Defense - Hellishly addictive!
AK Notepad - Good notepad app
Taskiller - close background apps and free up memory
Snap Photo Pro - gives lots more functionality to the camera for a mere 60p
Quickpedia - Best Wikipedia App
Vegetarian Dining Guide - For the hippies, locate nearest veggie eateries near you via GPS
Flixster Movie App - same as the veggie app but for cinemas
Sky Map - Ace!
Toggle Settings - Best settings widget to turn shit on/off quickly
0870 - route 0870 numbers through their local number automatically, to save you dollar!
ScummVM - Hells yes!
Keeeper - Good passwords manager

Other than the SIP/VOIP thing fucking me in the head, Android is brilliant! I have never been interested in phones before, making do with a bog standard Sony Ericsson candybar for the last 3 1/2 years, but this thing can do all sorts of fun things - I loves it!

I thought that was rubbish last time I tried it - I didn't think there were any films on in Leicester Square, for instance.
I shall try it again, though.

Flixster is great on the iPhone, and it must be the same data source.

Cor, the Spotify app is good.
If you pay £10 for the gold subscription you basically get spotify for your phone. It's got a very simplified (but very nice) interface, but all the information is still there.
Music is surprisingly good quality, and plays quite fast over 3G, too. You can specify tracks to be stored offline for when you are out of signal, too (these will be downloaded over wifi, or 3G if you tell it to). It even recognises the 'play/stop' button on the G1 headphone wire.
So far, I'm loving it, and would heartily recommend paying £10 to at least give it a try.
The iPhone version comes with less of a recommendation, as you can't have it playing music while you do something else on the phone, which is a shame (nothing they can do about that, of course).

So yes, Spotify on mobile. Pretty damned good.