The default calender itself works well enough for me, so I haven't bothered looking for a replacement. The widget I posted upthread is freakin' great, though, if you're like me and like having your calendar hanging out on your main homescreen.
It really is great. I love all the add-in's. I am loving android alot, but I miss alot of the UI goodies that windows Phone has sprinkled through out it's interface. It's lockscreen was much nicer than the default screen, but this widget takes all the pain away. I'm hoping to find a good dialer and a good calendar next :) Oh yeah, and a good weather widget
Has anyone tried the Google Now widget on their 4.1+ phones yet? It requires 4x4 grid space. For some reason despite taking up an entire screen it only displays one card at a time. Right now it's the Stocks card but only shows one stock. Before that it showed the local weather. Does anyone know how to get the widget to show more than one card to justify taking up so much screen space?
I haven't tried it, because while I like Google Now a lot for searching and voice stuff, I find its cards to be very low-utility so far. It's a good weather app, it's nice for giving me warnings about traffic going home, and during the NFL season, it's better than the official NFL app for getting score updates. But beyond that, it's mostly still promise. I've never even gotten a package tracking card out of it, despite using Gmail and even making a couple of purchases from retailers that use Google Wallet for payment. If you're the payment processor and you're my mail provider, and you still can't tell me about a package, man, when can you? Unrelatedly, my Nexus 10 got 4.2.2, and it seems to have resolved those niggling stability issues. I've only been using it for a few days since it came out, but not a single problem so far.
Once I had the Google Now widget out, I could long press to resize it to 1 card. I'm trying to get it to display more than 1 card - which it just started doing after taking it to work for 2 days. It has now started displaying traffic. I got it to display NBA game info for a bit, but I can't figure out how to display local events. Even with emails about an event and searching for it with Google Now, I wasn't getting any card data. So it feels somewhat mysterious to me at this point.
I find google now to either be utterly useless due to the paucity of database information outside North America - or utterly stalkerishly creepy. It struggles to tell me accurate weather but can still give precise driving directions to the electronics store I looked up hours ago! I did end up driving to the store though and got a Nexus 7 dock. It's really nice and the google currents / daydream thing it does while docked is fun. This is another thing though that Google and Asus have not done well - why can I only buy the accessory like a year after you released the tablet? Why is stock so limited? Why is your "official" travel cover so average (No magnet on off?) They really could have done a better job on the accessories. Meanwhile, I need to figure out how to get more live wallpapers. I like them, but I am sick of the stock 3. Are they really bad for the battery?
I like this koi pond live wallpaper, because if you touch the screen the water ripples. :) I don't actually use it because it sucks up battery power, or I think it does, anyway. https://play.google.com/store/apps/...wsMSwxLDEsImZpc2hub29kbGUua29pcG9uZF9mcmVlIl0. The same company has a bunch more, both free and paid.
I made google now a little better by putting in my home address - it now will always tell me the traffic and transit time to get home whenever I'm away. Additionally, during commute times it will display the card. About the live wallpapers - I've been using the burst (?) one that comes with the nexus 4 since I got it, and I find the battery life to be pretty acceptable. I'm sure I could eke out some more, but the battery life has been good enough for me.
So the Galaxy Note finally got the Jelly Bean update. How does Google Now work? Is it actually an app? I can't find anything for it. When I add the Google Now widget to my home screen it just says "Get Google Now". Someone mentioned entering their home address. Where do you do that? I'm wondering if I'm getting screwed because I live in Japan.
Ok never mind, I just needed to hit the Google Search bar. Before I was using the voice input and nothing popped up for that.
Once you've turned it on, you can get into it by swiping up from the home button (with an on-screen button phone) or long-pressing it (with a cap/hard button phone).
I still can't get the Google Now widget to display one card that's one row deep. It kind of defeats the purpose of a having the widget.
If you're using an external keyboard with your Android tablet this is very nice -- it lets you remap keys, and doesn't require root. I used it to turn CAPSLOCK to Ctrl (as should be default on all keyboards, but which never is), Esc to a proper Back, and the vestigial Win key to Home. It costs money, but worth it to me for the Ctrl-remapping alone.
This has been bumming me out: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...-limit-another-twitter-client-bites-the-dust/
I've been satisfied with the regular Twitter client since they redesigned it. I don't do anything terribly fancy with multiple accounts or lists or anything like that, though.
It is passable on phones, but downright horrible on tablets. Falcon Pro has a fantastic tablet interface as well as in-line loading of almost all content. It even strips out anything non-text from news articles that are linked in tweets. Anyway, more bad news: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...loads-petitions-twitter-to-raise-token-limit/
task lists apps: are there any simple ones that let me drag a task higher or lower in priority? i don't want to tag it or mark it or do anything other than write a task so it appears in a list and lets me drag it higher or lower in the list as i deem necessary. gtasks does this but you have to press and hold on the task, then an area on the task appears that you can use to drag the task up or down. surprised this isn't mentioned on other task lists as it seems like a ui feature well suited to a touchscreen.
I don't even use their full client. The Falcon Widget does everything I need a twitter client to do in a small footprint, which is important on a space-constrained phone (mine is ancient). Apparently they decided to reset all their user tokens on the theory not everyone with a token is still an active user. I wonder how much time that buys them.
I know the S4 is coming very soon, but I got a decent deal on a Galaxy S3 last night. I'm loving it! But what do I do with it? I want to make my money WORK for me.
For some reason on Sunday night my S3's battery drained from about 95% to 25% over the course of three hours. I think I left the WiFi and the screen was off. I plugged it into my computer to recharge and it stopped at 65%. I could only do a full recharge after plugging it into my monitor. I suspect it may have been Google Now constantly checking shit. I uninstalled the app and haven't had the battery drain as fast since.
Yeah. It's the Android OS, screen, and Maps that's using most of the battery. I don't know why the Maps apps is using so much since I haven't used it in the past few days.
Maps is notorious for using battery when you don't expect it by incessantly polling your GPS. Uninstalling Google Now might help, but other apps may cause Maps to do the same thing (e.g. Latitude). I suggest you install Backitude instead. It takes a while to figure out the configuration, but when you're done it will basically intercept the GPS requests and respond with a cached location. You can control how often Backitude updates its cache, and thus how hard you want to thrash your GPS. It dramatically improved my battery life.
I only turn on GPS when I actively use Maps. I had Location and Google Search left on for Google Now. I wonder if that was the reason. I liked Google Now but the widget is screwed up since it only shows one card one row big, which defeats the purpose of its default real estate of one screen.
Hey thanks for that app recommendation, magnet. I had been wondering why every once in a while I had a day where battery life was just inexplicably crappy on my Nexus 4. I just checked my battery usage for today and it's over 50% maps, despite not having used a map today. Installing!
So the HTC One didn't exactly set the world on fire, due to HTC using a weirdly small screen and doubling down on its much-maligned Sense UI mods. But last night's Galaxy S 4 launch was an apparent fiasco, with this acerbic Slate review being pretty well in line with the general reaction -- great tech specs, mediocre build quality, and godawful bad modifications to Android. And so here's where I go out on a limb: Is this the year Motorola comes back? I know Google has warned that Motorola's pipeline is still full of pre-Google devices, but honestly with competition like this, it wouldn't take much to make a standout phone. All they have to do is put in the standard hardware that everyone's including -- 5" 1080p display, Snapdragon 600, 2GB -- and then don't ruin the OS. Which, even if they haven't been able to turn Motorola on a dime, surely "just include regular Android on the phone" is something Google could have put in place, right?
Awesome link, thanks for that. Also, welcome to why people get annoyed with Android. Fuckin' manufacturers, man. Anyway, isn't what you describe pretty much a one-year refresh of the N4? (Don't get me wrong; the N4 is pretty much the perfect phone except for the apparent mag-lev properties of the glass back that generate so little friction my power cord can pull it off of my nightstand.)
So, I can't understand people when we talk on my S3. Before I just go switch it out, is this a problem anyone else has? Where people's voices seem distorted, like the phone is trying to cancel out background noise but instead cancels out voices?
The N4 -- and, I am assuming, all future Nexuses -- is going to be sold direct to users and won't work on, e.g., Verizon. Motorola phones can. I really really really want a phone that combines the Verizon network with modern hardware and a non-crapped-up OS. The Nexus 4, the Droid DNA/GS4, and the Galaxy Nexus each get me different pairs of that triad, but I want all three.
Just wait 10 years until CDMA gets phased the rest of the way out ;) I do have a question that one of you guys might have an idea about, though. I recently switched to Simple Mobile (which resells T-Mobile bandwidth) from AT&T, and my N4 bounces between towers all the damn time now. HSPA+ to HSPA, HSPA to a different HSPA, and occasionally even bouncing down to an analog signal. It's weird. I haven't had a T-Mobile phone in forever, though -- is this something that kinda happens on that network, or am I getting a little fucked because I'm with a reseller, or is it my N4, or something else dumb? I am at a loss. In any case it's not much of a problem; I just have to wait an extra second for signal lock to get my data stream running sometimes. Not a huge deal, but annoying from time to time.
I have to go with Samsung because everyone else has decided to tell me that I don't want a removable battery or a microSD slot. I WANT BOTH THOSE THINGS YOU FUCKERS.
I have a Galaxy S3 and have never experienced this issue. The sound quality of phone calls is just as good or better than it was with my iPhone 4 (which was also fine). Also, my workplace has supplied me with a cell phone and allowed me to pick whatever was available from the provider they use. I went all zany and got a Samsung Galaxy Note II because a) I wanted a pseudo-tablet for reading ebooks, b) wanted to play around with the pen interface (I am a chronic doodler), c) I am already familiar with the general UI and d) wanted to irk mkozlows by adding one more TouchWiz-based phone into the world. The two surprising things so far are how it actually makes the S3 seem a bit small in comparison and how crazy-good the battery life is on it. It's so good it makes me wonder again if there's something wrong with the S3 or at least its battery. Also, microSD card slot forever! I keep all my music on microSD cards. They work great and leave the phone's internal storage free for apps and other nonsense.
The Note 2 has a 3100 mAh battery compared to the 2100 mAh battery of the S3, so that 50% larger battery is probably going to make a big difference, even with the larger screen. (Interestingly, the GS4 has a 2600 mAh battery, so splits the difference.)
Durr, I remember comparing the specs and noting the larger battery then promptly forgot and went back to assuming they were the same. It still seems more efficient, though. Anyway, I look forward to the day (which I will probably only see by being cryogenically frozen and then thawed a hundred years later) when we no longer have to worry about draining a smartphone's battery over the course of a day or two of regular use.
I will say, as much as I am annoyed by/contemptuous of Samsung's software efforts, I'm kind of impressed with what they've done hardware-wise with the GS4. They've bumped the screen size up from 4.8" to 5", bumped the battery up from 2100 to 2600 mAh, and yet the new phone is exactly as tall, but less wide and less thick. Putting a larger screen and a bigger battery in a phone, but making it smaller, is seriously impressive.
