Sorry to make a whole new thread about this, but just curious if anyone else has been having this 'issue'
ive flashed quite a few of the roms on the forums, and for some strange reason, i cant seem to find a rom which just WORKS
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
i've used the Energy roms, the Chrome roms, Da_G's clean rom, NATF's roms
i've been through pretty much all of the rom's on here and they ALL break once the SMS count gets in the 3000+ region, and i appreciate its simple to just 'delete' the messages, but this isnt particularly practical, at the moment i'm having to hard reset every month or so and this really takes the piss
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
I guess no one send and receive 4000+ SMS' per month except you
that's why nobody tried to check with this issue
but the phone should be able to handle it! i mean, one of my older nokia's can handle the 4000+ with ease
The microsoft SMS program just cannot handle that many of messages. Either back them up (remove from inbox) periodically, or delete them periodically.
you may want to disable sms conversation (threading).
just out of curiosity, why do you need 4000+ sms a month ?
one question... where are your messages stored? in phone memory or on the storage card?
Pampilius86 said:
one question... where are your messages stored? in phone memory or on the storage card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the email, the attachments are stored on storage card
otherwise, i never knew we could change where SMS's are stored?!
the 4000+ sms's are just what i use tbh, thats on a good month tho, usually hovers around that mark however
i remember back in the wizard/hermes time clean rom's were all the rage, now, since we've got the devices with huge amounts of ram/rom all we're seeing is bloated rom's!
bursucul said:
you may want to disable sms conversation (threading).
just out of curiosity, why do you need 4000+ sms a month ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the thing is, i use the threading facility a LOT, back before wm6/6.1 i actually had an application i would install on my ppc to have the SMS' threaded
but to be honest, why should the tp not be able to handle that many SMS's without slowing down?!
duke_stix said:
Sorry to make a whole new thread about this, but just curious if anyone else has been having this 'issue'
ive flashed quite a few of the roms on the forums, and for some strange reason, i cant seem to find a rom which just WORKS
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
i've used the Energy roms, the Chrome roms, Da_G's clean rom, NATF's roms
i've been through pretty much all of the rom's on here and they ALL break once the SMS count gets in the 3000+ region, and i appreciate its simple to just 'delete' the messages, but this isnt particularly practical, at the moment i'm having to hard reset every month or so and this really takes the piss
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont think this would be the ROMs fault. You see the more messages you store in your fone the less memory and stability it has. Instead of having old messages in your fone why not delete them? Talk about practicality, whats practical about having old messages in ur fone just to take up excess memory? So someone texts u one question, u answer it and have no intentions of messaging them back, yet its more practical to keep these messages in ur fone and then complain that u have to hard reset instead of deleting a few messages due to having all these redundant mesages that u really dont need? Seems to me an intelligent person would rather delete a few messages rather than hard resetting their device and lose everything. Maybe u can make a fresh ROM with no extras and nothing more than a fone and an email device. I mean, why have a PDA if all ur gonna do is text and email? Seems to me u can save a few hundred bux and just get a cheap lil fone that has no customization whatsoever to leave all the room for messaging? Sorry if I sound like I have an attitude, honestly I dont, I just think that the chefs u mentioned have awesome ROMs that keep getting better and better yet u diss them cuz ud rather hard resest and lose everything rather than simply deleting a few hundred messages that u dont need anyway.
It's like if you don't clean your house regularly and just throw your rubbish everywhere, then you complain that you're living in a pig sty and your house fills up with rubbish so fast you can't move around the house as quickly as you used to. Then after a month, you need to fully renovate the whole interior of the house again so that you have space to walk...
My suggestions :
1) start learning some housekeeping(make that little effort to delete the sms yourself)
2) get a bigger house (new phone with more ram and faster CPU)
3) get a cleaner to come in to clean your rubbish once in awhile (there might be some sms program out there that can auto delete your sms on a regular basis)
4) or reorganise the layout of your house so that it's more efficient (forget about sms threading and use the conventional format, I'm sure it'll speed things up a bit since it doesn't have to load the entire conversation everytime)
duke_stix said:
but the phone should be able to handle it! i mean, one of my older nokia's can handle the 4000+ with ease
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is your older nokia using sms threading and displaying the whole history of the conversation everytime you enter the inbox?
I highly doubt it.. so you've got your answer there already.
I used to be a project manager, I would send about 500 emails a day at work easily. After a month of working it would take FOREVER to open outlook. Thats because it has to load the entire contents of 10k + emails. Its the same with your phone. Back up and delete or don't complain. Flash a stock ROM and open your windows folder, and then flash a custom ROM and do the same. you will see the speed increase there. Also, if you leave SMS open and just hit end key it wont have to reload everything every time you open a message.
I have the same problem that your talking about since i average about 7-12K a month of sms.. Like everyone said the only way to deal with it is just to clear your inbox or put it to unthreaded.. Our phones just werent meant to hold that much sms i suppose..
duke_stix said:
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe most of the problem here is that you don't precisely understand what's going on behind-the-scenes. Your CPU/processor is only capable of running a single instruction at once- and thus only process a finite amount of data per unit time.
When designing an algorithm (in this case, the algorithm that reads SMS/E-mail database entries and displays them onscreen), tasks which apply to more than one or two items are usually completed by either iteration or recursion. For a task such as enumerating SMS messages onscreen, the process would be iterative; for example, if you were to break it down into simple steps, those steps might be:
1. Read the current SMS message from the database.
2. Display it on screen.
3. If there's another text message after this, repeat this process for it.
Step 1 itself actually is composed of several detailed steps, which take the time to perform a second algorithm, which tries to locate the current SMS message in the database, usually based on a unique identifier and a hashing algorithm. This takes time, but is faster than the alternative- which is to check each SMS and ask "is this the one I want?". Instead of having to check each message, the device usually only has to check a few until it finds the right location.
You can think of this as the device automatically categorizing messages into virtual 'boxes'- you have to spend a hell of a lot less time digging through a box to find 1 document out of 10 then by searching through a much larger heap of 4000 documents.
Step 3 is also composed of several steps, as the device has to figure out which SMS message is really next. As the user is capable of configuring the way in which the messages are sorted (by date, sender, etc.), the message that's next in the database is probably not the next message that's stored in the database. Time has to be spend finding the message, usually by yet another algorithm.
The problem is, each of these steps, and each of their sub-steps, and each of the sub-steps required to run those (all the way down to the machine code level) take time, and each have to be executed for every message the application would like to display.
Thread-view further complicates the matter by creating additional relations between the messages, and requiring the OS to look for even more posts during each step.
And this process isn't all that's going on at once- the operating system is trying to do something called TDM, or Time-Division Multiplexing (Multitasking), which allow you to run more than one program at once on a single CPU (which in turn can only do one thing at once). This basically lets the individual processes take individual turns so quickly that they seem simultaneous.
Because of all this, computer scientists rate their algorithms by degradation. We actually have a measure called Big-O (asymptotic) notation that tells you how well an algorithm handles load.
A good algorithm generally has performance of O(N) or better. This means that for every N elements (in your case, e-mail), it takes approximately N iterations to complete. Note the assumption that each "base iteration" executes in a (roughly) fixed time.
Assuming the WM message app uses a sensible algorithm (and it would be difficult for it not to), we can assume its efficiency is approximately O(N)- as it is simply O(N) for non-threaded, and it is O((N/S) * S) for threaded, which simplifies to O(N). This means that for every 4000 messages, it will need to iterate 4000 times.
Considering the application can't store 4000-messages worth of data, it spends a lot of time during each iteration moving messages in and out of memory.
Given all of this, the Windows Mobile message parsing algorithm is the cause of your 'slowness' and 'hangups'. These periods of non-responsiveness are simply WM trying to run through the algorithm for all of the huge quantities of messages.
Hence, the problem is that Windows Mobile simply wasn't designed to bear the load you were forcing it to bear. This means the problem isn't related to the implementation in any given ROM.
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A ROM isn't going to be your solution- every ROM uses the same core Windows Mobile messaging applications.
It is possible that a combination of a data structure and message parsing algorithm (with the addition of hash and cache optimized for the way you specifically use messaging) could handle all of these messages without any considerable degradation; but it would run far less efficiently on small amount of messages than the current WM scheme. (And think: how many users have as many messages as you?)
Since no one really needs as many messages as you seem to, consider your options:
1) Implement a database optimized for large amount of messages. Implement a program that hooks all messages and places them in this database instead of the WM one. Write your own message reading/writing application and use in place of the WM one. Note that no one will do this for you. It's not a public interest: if you want it, you'll have to write it. We can help you- but we're not here to do the work for you.
2) Try a third party SMS reader/writer like Vito SMS-Chat. I don't think these will fare much better (in fact, they may fare worse), but if they implement any database of their own and any type of localized caching (especially of recent messages), they may work a bit better.
3) Remove your older SMS messages. This is probably the best option. If you don't need those messages anymore, a Microsoft applet called InboxExtender adds buttons to delete all messages (and to mark them all as read.)
4) Don't use threaded mode. This will decrease the time each parsing iteration takes.
---
This isn't a bug; nor is it a glitch, nor is it WM being crappy. It's much the same as if you tell photoshop to open an 8GB file on your desktop. Your computer may slow to a halt and take forever doing it- but the cause isn't that your computer is crappy, but rather that you're trying to open such a huge file.
Wow! Talk about a detailed explanation. Great explanation ktemkin, u obviously know what ur talkin about. Im actually a part time computer programmer. The biggest problem I see/hear about is people sayng their systems are getting way too slow. No surprise that the biggest reason for this is the used space in their computers hard drive for out-of-date programs, used cache space, ...basically all of the things theyve used before and just never cleaned out. I install 1 program, free their computer up of its junked up memory and update their programs. On this I get credit to simply sit on my butt and delete a few things, lol. Id suppose regardless of the device/computer its all the same. IE, the more room u have to work with, the faster the device's responsiveness is.
Best advice for these PDAs and smartphones for emails is dont leave all of your emails in your inbox folder. Make different folders, then as u go through your emails simply move the selected ones to the selected folders. Then DO NOT sync all of your folders to your device. Only sync the inbox to your device. Then if u ever need a message, u will know which folder its in, then sync that 1 folder, download the message(s), then after ur done, remove that folder from your sync list. When u organize your emails this way u will have a much enjoyable and longer life experience with your device. Hope this helps.
panthersdzynes said:
I dont think this would be the ROMs fault. You see the more messages you store in your fone the less memory and stability it has. Instead of having old messages in your fone why not delete them? Talk about practicality, whats practical about having old messages in ur fone just to take up excess memory? So someone texts u one question, u answer it and have no intentions of messaging them back, yet its more practical to keep these messages in ur fone and then complain that u have to hard reset instead of deleting a few messages due to having all these redundant mesages that u really dont need? Seems to me an intelligent person would rather delete a few messages rather than hard resetting their device and lose everything. Maybe u can make a fresh ROM with no extras and nothing more than a fone and an email device. I mean, why have a PDA if all ur gonna do is text and email? Seems to me u can save a few hundred bux and just get a cheap lil fone that has no customization whatsoever to leave all the room for messaging? Sorry if I sound like I have an attitude, honestly I dont, I just think that the chefs u mentioned have awesome ROMs that keep getting better and better yet u diss them cuz ud rather hard resest and lose everything rather than simply deleting a few hundred messages that u dont need anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The fact of the matter is, that a lot of the messages on my handset DO need to remain on there for at least the remainder of a fortnight following receipt of said message.
the only 'qualm' i was having was that my older wizard and hermes devices seem to have managed that number of SMS' and more perfectly fine, but my Raphael begins to struggle.
lukesky said:
It's like if you don't clean your house regularly and just throw your rubbish everywhere, then you complain that you're living in a pig sty and your house fills up with rubbish so fast you can't move around the house as quickly as you used to. Then after a month, you need to fully renovate the whole interior of the house again so that you have space to walk...
My suggestions :
1) start learning some housekeeping(make that little effort to delete the sms yourself)
2) get a bigger house (new phone with more ram and faster CPU)
3) get a cleaner to come in to clean your rubbish once in awhile (there might be some sms program out there that can auto delete your sms on a regular basis)
4) or reorganise the layout of your house so that it's more efficient (forget about sms threading and use the conventional format, I'm sure it'll speed things up a bit since it doesn't have to load the entire conversation everytime)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have already tried disabling the SMS threading and although it speeds it up a little, i then also lose track of what message has come from whom.
i understand that 'doing a bit of house keeping' is what i should be doing, however, i barely have time to do said house keeping, and when i do attempt to delete a large volume of messages in one go the phone hangs on me again!
panthersdzynes said:
Wow! Talk about a detailed explanation. Great explanation ktemkin, u obviously know what ur talkin about. Im actually a part time computer programmer. The biggest problem I see/hear about is people sayng their systems are getting way too slow. No surprise that the biggest reason for this is the used space in their computers hard drive for out-of-date programs, used cache space, ...basically all of the things theyve used before and just never cleaned out. I install 1 program, free their computer up of its junked up memory and update their programs. On this I get credit to simply sit on my butt and delete a few things, lol. Id suppose regardless of the device/computer its all the same. IE, the more room u have to work with, the faster the device's responsiveness is.
Best advice for these PDAs and smartphones for emails is dont leave all of your emails in your inbox folder. Make different folders, then as u go through your emails simply move the selected ones to the selected folders. Then DO NOT sync all of your folders to your device. Only sync the inbox to your device. Then if u ever need a message, u will know which folder its in, then sync that 1 folder, download the message(s), then after ur done, remove that folder from your sync list. When u organize your emails this way u will have a much enjoyable and longer life experience with your device. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my emails are already pretty much organised, and i've only got it syncing the last 7 days for me, emails to be honest are fine its moreso the SMS side of things.
I was not complaining nor targetting any particular chef, i was merely voicing my concern that a device as powerful as the raphael seems to baulk at the prospect of a few thousand messages when the older wizard and hermes seem to manage perfectly fine.
i'm not exactly expecting an instantaneous loading of my inbox, i'm not entirely thick, i appreciate that having such a large number of SMS' will inevitably slow the handset down, however, i do not see why the handset should HANG when i try to open the messaging application, or why, when i try to go and open the messaging application it just doesnt register that i've asked it to open the application, just stops and i have to 'tap' it a few times before it opens.
duke_stix said:
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
4000+ sms' send AND receive???
so that means:
8000 per month / 30 days in a month = 266,667 per day
266,667 per day / 960 minutes (16 hours * 60) awake a day = 0,278
so say you are 16 hours awake on a day than you send/receive a sms every 15 seconds?? don't you have a real life?
TheWeird1 said:
4000+ sms' send AND receive???
so that means:
8000 per month / 30 days in a month = 266,667 per day
266,667 per day / 960 minutes (16 hours * 60) awake a day = 0,278
so say you are 16 hours awake on a day than you send/receive a sms every 15 seconds?? don't you have a real life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not all of the messages that are sent and received are single SMS' long!
majority, if not all will be 3/4+ messages long and the replies can be twice as long
duke_stix said:
The fact of the matter is, that a lot of the messages on my handset DO need to remain on there for at least the remainder of a fortnight following receipt of said message.
the only 'qualm' i was having was that my older wizard and hermes devices seem to have managed that number of SMS' and more perfectly fine, but my Raphael begins to struggle.
I have already tried disabling the SMS threading and although it speeds it up a little, i then also lose track of what message has come from whom.
i understand that 'doing a bit of house keeping' is what i should be doing, however, i barely have time to do said house keeping, and when i do attempt to delete a large volume of messages in one go the phone hangs on me again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 thing's for sure, the wizard and hermes are definitely non-threaded sms. But it's hard to compare apple to apple. Did you have 4000 in your Inbox and Sent folders on your Wizard and Hermes too?
I don't think the phone has hung, it's probably doing the processing for you. Have a little patience and let it sit there for awhile and do it's thing and see if it's really hanged.
duke_stix said:
my emails are already pretty much organised, and i've only got it syncing the last 7 days for me, emails to be honest are fine its moreso the SMS side of things.
I was not complaining nor targetting any particular chef, i was merely voicing my concern that a device as powerful as the raphael seems to baulk at the prospect of a few thousand messages when the older wizard and hermes seem to manage perfectly fine.
i'm not exactly expecting an instantaneous loading of my inbox, i'm not entirely thick, i appreciate that having such a large number of SMS' will inevitably slow the handset down, however, i do not see why the handset should HANG when i try to open the messaging application, or why, when i try to go and open the messaging application it just doesnt register that i've asked it to open the application, just stops and i have to 'tap' it a few times before it opens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should try Da_G's test ROM.. the feedback is that it's very fast. If that doesn't work for you, it's time to get a new phone.. maybe consider one of the 1GHZ models...
i have 8000 plus messages on my tp n it doesn't slow down
thing is, i don't use threaded sms. can't get used to it cos i've been using wm since wm5 n it doesn't have it. i guess i got used to the older stuff
On PalmOS I had an app called "Blue Moon" that was great, it would record the last time you did something, how many times you've done it, show the days since you last did it, even show you if you were overdue on doing it again, etc... I used it for things like changing my contacts, air filter, etc.. Stuff you do irregularly but need to be reminded about.
Anyone know an app for Android that'll do that? There are numerous ways I could do it, like making notes in Springpad or a todo in GTasks or something, but I don't so much want reminded as to be able to see when I last did it, and I'd like to have more information (how many days ago was it, how many times have I done it would be nice info, etc..)
FYI, here's a description of Blue Moon.
BlueMoon let's you keep track of when something occurred last and when it's due again. In addition to repeating events on a calendar, BlueMoon events can "float" - they are relative to when they last occurred. This makes them great for keeping track of things that happen at some specified interval but that usually don't happen on an exact day. You may want to remember to call a distant relative every couple of months, but you don't call on an exact date for instance. Another use of this capability is to keep track of when you last ate at a certain restaurant or fast-food place. If you have multiple children, this can really be handy! Keep a history log of when things occurred and some information about each occurrence. Sometimes things occur and we want to keep a log of each and every occurrence, or at least a count of how many times something has happened. Examples of these types of things include tracking medical symptoms (for allergies perhaps) or having information showing when you did some required activities (instrument calibrations and checks etc.).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
KeepTrack-Zagalaga
Man I nailed it, I had this same problem, searched forever with no leads, finally found the perfect solution
KeepTrack from Zagalaga
Works for everything you need, set it up exactly how you want.
Hope this saves anyone else looking for something like this a lot of time.
Cheers,
Taz
Current Samsung Note owner!
Trying it today, thank you!
Hey there, I've had an android phone knocking around for some time but only recently started really using it. The main reason I need it is to organize my self, my work and life.
So with this in mind I went and got Any.do and such apps but as I downloaded opened and discarded them I started to find that they all seem to run into the same grave limitations. I have a room full of lists on bits of paper and what I want is to keep them on my phone. But the apps I try offer the option of creating a list and that's it, about 70% of them I discarded because you cant even change the order of the items in the list which is useless to me as i need to write them in priority.
The next problem is that apps such as Any.do which is the best I've found so far can create folders such as work and play and then one long list of everything i will ever need to do at work. I have many tasks to do at work and those tasks consist of other lists of tasks and so on. For example I need to sort out transport up north for a group of people to do a job so I have a work list with the current jobs on it and on it is this job's name, on another bit of paper iis a list of things i need to do for this Job. One of the things I need to do is sort the van out so under fix the van is another list of things I need to do to fix the van, in that list amongst other things in insurance, so i have another list of things to do to get the insurance.
This is how it all works, breaking big tasks down into smaller and smaller tasks till life is all clear and doable. One folder labeled WORK with all these things listed is useless. Great for doing the shopping or organizing a party but no good for organizing your life unless your life is painfully simple.
Because the method of lists within lists is so old and simple and suited to an app I presumed they'd all be able to do it but I cant seem to find one anywhere and I've been at it for a while but then I can barely turn the thing on. So please anyone who knows where to look or what I'm doing wrong I'd appreciate some guidance.
yadnom1973 said:
Hey there, I've had an android phone knocking around for some time but only recently started really using it. The main reason I need it is to organize my self, my work and life.
So with this in mind I went and got Any.do and such apps but as I downloaded opened and discarded them I started to find that they all seem to run into the same grave limitations. I have a room full of lists on bits of paper and what I want is to keep them on my phone. But the apps I try offer the option of creating a list and that's it, about 70% of them I discarded because you cant even change the order of the items in the list which is useless to me as i need to write them in priority.
The next problem is that apps such as Any.do which is the best I've found so far can create folders such as work and play and then one long list of everything i will ever need to do at work. I have many tasks to do at work and those tasks consist of other lists of tasks and so on. For example I need to sort out transport up north for a group of people to do a job so I have a work list with the current jobs on it and on it is this job's name, on another bit of paper iis a list of things i need to do for this Job. One of the things I need to do is sort the van out so under fix the van is another list of things I need to do to fix the van, in that list amongst other things in insurance, so i have another list of things to do to get the insurance.
This is how it all works, breaking big tasks down into smaller and smaller tasks till life is all clear and doable. One folder labeled WORK with all these things listed is useless. Great for doing the shopping or organizing a party but no good for organizing your life unless your life is painfully simple.
Because the method of lists within lists is so old and simple and suited to an app I presumed they'd all be able to do it but I cant seem to find one anywhere and I've been at it for a while but then I can barely turn the thing on. So please anyone who knows where to look or what I'm doing wrong I'd appreciate some guidance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry, but you are searching for an notes app, am i right?
i suggest you to try google keep, easy to use, reorderable, you can set alarms and its in the google enviroment.. so it is synced between devices and browser
.. or ask the nsa for help, if you forgot something
I'm searching using the terms: Organization, to do list, Productivity and things like this to try and find an App to help organize into one orderly document of easily assessable lists of what I have to do.
Google Keep is another one that you can make lists in but the list's can not reference each other so you can list everything you have and need to do and buy and so on but you can not group or nest the lists beyond the first level much like the other apps I've seen. You can list WORK,HOLIDAY,SHOP,PARTY and then within the WORK list you can list NORTHERN JOB, FRANK'S, TAX RETURNS. But then that's it. You cant list anything inside TAX RETURNS. It's to basic to organize anything beyond odd jobs and the shopping.
It is one of the ones that is reorderable as in you can move the order of items in the two lists and synchronizing and alarms and all that is fine but I just really need a simple but effective app that allows me to create lists to organize what I have to do and in what order.
I guess I can do it by using folders inside folders with names on them for jobs but it seems like a hell of a work around. Be easier to just live with all my bits of paper but I'm sure there are apps out there to organize things in a little more depth than things like Google keep, I'm sure just not looking in the right place? Anyone?
Greetings,
At my office, we rotate after-hours email monitoring but some of the older guys are apprehensive about getting cell phones, so keeping up on-the-go can be difficult. I am wondering about buying a ZTE Open off of ebay and getting a pay/mb data plan and we can pass that around as a dedicated email reader.
Up to that point, there is nothing to worry about, but what I am thinking of playing around with is cutting the OS down to only the email app and settings. I'd like to have it boot directly to email with settings available from the pull-down menu, if possible. I mainly want to keep it simple enough for cellular-phobic people and also take away the ability to browse the web and run up my cellphone bill.
I'm not super fluent in the in's and out's of FXOS beyond the app level, but I'm interested poking around, I'm just looking to gauge the difficulty. There are cheaper android devices that I could try with as well, but I'd much rather hack around in HTML/JS than Java. That being said, I have the option of just customizing the Andriod UI to remove everything except the mail app, so if tearing down the Firefox UI would be a lot of work, I'll just do that.
I have a Flame that I can run tests on before spending any money, but I appreciate your opinions before a throw away a bunch of time that could be used on something useful.
John
That's super doable and not very difficult I think! Only with one (obvious?) condition: you must have full root access to your device. ZTE gives a rooting tool, so if you stick with the Open C (or the flame) you should be good to go. Don't choose a Kliff for example, as they are not rootable yet.
First of all, stripping all of gaia (the top layer of firefox OS, containing all the UI) has already been done by JanOS (for IoT device), so you can get inspiration from them. They reduced it to only one js file and a folder, where you can put your own js that gets executed at startup. Your use case is a bit more complex though: you still want to access settings, and be able to go back to email when needed. Basically, you need the email app to replace the homescreen right?
Creating alternate homescreen is a possibility that firefox os gives you, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/Manifest#role
You can try adding the role "homescreen" to the email app, flash your device, change the homescreen in the settings and see what happens!
NB: when you change the manifest of an internal apps, you might need to rehash it by downloading https://github.com/julienw/config-files/blob/master/addpref and execute
Code:
./addpref rehash-manifest
while your device is connected (and usb debugging is on).
You might need to add handler in the email for the home button to work correctly, in a similar fashion as in verticalhome (which is the name of the folder containing the homescreen app, not "homescreen").
Good luck! Don't hesitate to ping me if you need any help.
---------- Post added at 11:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:46 AM ----------
Dude I just tried this and it's working like a charm. The thing that took me the most time was the configuration of the email account