Hello.
I apologize in advance if this is not the right forum to post in, or if it's not the right site at all, but a friend whose specialty is Android led me here, and told me to post my problems here.
I am a long-time iOS user. But I am also disabled : I have 1/20th vision on my left eye and nothing on the right one. My eyes are easily blinded by light, and as such I find it painful to read text on a screen when it's black on a white background. In Windows, for instance, I change the Windows theme back to Classic Windows so I can edit the different colors that make windows, buttons, and menus so they are easier on my eyes. In OSX, I use the 'Invert Video' feature on a shortcut key, so that when I press it, the screen suddenly inverts all colors, makign it much easier on my eyes. (Sadly, it also inverts colors on pictures, but that's okay, I can live with switching back and forth if needed.) On Chrome (any OS), I use the Stylish extension to force every site's CSS to follow my own and keep backgrounds dark and text light... You get the idea. On iOS, a similar feature to the one in OSX exists, and you have to press the home button three times to switch it on or off.
If I'm posting on this forum, this is because I have questions regarding Android's features for disabled people like me.
From my understanding, and from what I briefly tried on my sister's Acer E330 (Android 4.0.4) there is no such feature. A friend with a Nexus 4 confirmed this too.
I was wondering if there was some kind of plugin, addon, extension, app or whatever that would allow me to redefine Android's interface (a theme perhaps?) or even better, some kind of 'Invert Video' feature just like on iOS. I'm asking about this because I'm considering buying a Android device since I realized I was starting to have problems with some displays used on recent iPhones, iPads, Macbooks or even on regular PC laptops like MSIs' or Samsungs'.
The problem I have has been unresolved so far as there is no way to tell what part/setting of recet LCD/LED displays make my eyes sore after about 5 minutes of use. I did a lot of research without being able to find out what caused this exactly, but a lot of people seem to have the same kind of problem while having a normal eyesight unlike I do.
So, right now, two things prevent me from being sure if I should buy a Android phone or not :
- I need to make sure the display is fine with my eyes.
- And the reason why I'm posting this here, is that I want to know if it's possible to have the same kind of feature on iOS/OSX for changing colors of the whole screen by the press of a physical button on the device several times (this seems like the best solution, as a system setting switch would be a bit painful to use. FYI I really overuse and abuse this feature because it allows me to quickly switch to a dark background on white pages, while restoring the normal colors if the next page I'm visiting has a black background.)
So there it is, again, I apologize if that wasn't the right forum or anything. I hope someone here can help me with this problem. I'm not a die-hard Apple fanboy : I just happen to use their devices because they are the simplest to work with considering my disability.
Thanks in advance.
Related
So I decided to write this little review to try talk about/point out/explain certain things that I thought other major reviewers (Engadget, The Verge, etc) didn't mention or didn't explain well enough, as well as things I do and don't like about the phone. (Don't let the Great Wall of Text scare you) Here goes!
The first thing I have to point out is how well this phone feels in your hand. I never want to put it down. Ever. That cold aluminum body feels amazing when you pick up the One and really drives home the flagship status of this phone. While this is great, I am terrified of dropping this phone. It feels like it would scratch very easily on a rough surface (I have yet to see a scratch, but I have been babying it until my case arrives). The aluminum feels very similar to the Macbook Pro case. While a lot of people are complaining about the false "zero gap" manufacturing, it virtually is zero gap. I have the slightest of space between the top aluminum strip on the front and the white band circumventing the phone. I would be hard pressed to fit even an eyelash in this gap, however. So far all intents and purposes, I think we can call it zero gap Anything larger than this, and I would consider returning it or waiting a few weeks for HTC to iron out the issue. Just ask to see the phone they give you before buying it and you can avoid this problem all together.
Sense 5 is a welcome upgrade and I don't miss CM 10.1 as much as I thought I would. My most missed feature is quick reply from the notification shade, but I'm living without it. This software flies through animations, opening apps, responding to input, scrolling, everything. Slick as oil. And the aesthetics of Sense 5 aren't too bad either. Not everything is rosy perfect though. Adding apps from the drawer to the homescreen is annoying. You have to tap and hold the app as you normally would. But then instead of transitioning to the home screen automatically so you can place the app somewhere, you have to first drag it all the way to the top left where it says "shortcut" and then it transitions to your homescreens. Gets old when you're setting up your home screen. Also, let's say you open an app by searching for it in your app drawer (not from the home screen). If you exit that app by hitting the home button, it does not send you home. Rather it sends you back to the notification drawer with all your apps. That's annoying. Pressing the back button also does not send you out of the notification drawer and to your homescreen like it normally does. You must hit home once again to enter your homescreen.
At first, I thought blink feed was gimicky. Just some marketing technique to set HTC apart in the consumer's mind. But after playing around with it, it has grown on me. The selection of news sources is small, but hopefully that will grow or allow you to add your own custom websites. I do find myself occasionally scrolling through it when waiting in line, the drive thru, waiting for someone, etc. Which was the original purpose anyway. I have not noticed a hit on battery life from this feature.
An annoying feature of the gallery is that in throws in all your Facebook Friend's photo albums into your gallery. Yes you read correctly. Jimmy Bob's recent Everglades field trip WILL show up in your gallery as well as other friend's albums. So far I have not figured out a way to remove this besides unlinking my phone from my facebook account (aka logging out of the app). While your photos have their own area/folder apart from these Facebook albums, it's still annoying to see the faces of people I never talk to in my own gallery.
Now onto the camera. There is definitely some truth behind the "UltraPixel" marketing. Compared to an iPhone 5 and Note 2, the One most definitely takes better pictures in low light settings. Even in extremely dark settings (night time with some light filtering in through closed blinds), the One is able to make out rough pictures, something the iPhone and Note 2 could not do at all. While the One is able to take pictures in very low light, this does not mean the pictures come out amazing or noiseless. Don't expect to just run out into the pitch black night and be able to photograph anything. In very low light settings, the pictures are still grainy and sometimes crappy. But most definitely better than the two phones mentioned already. All these comparisons were done with the flash off. Even with the flash on, the One still managed better photos in my opinion. They looked more natural and less like the came from a camera phone. Slightly lower than ideal lighting is where the One is able to shine. The other phone's flashes sometimes washed out or harshly lit up the scene while the One didn't even use the flash and took a great photo. Can't wait to use it more.
Zoes are pretty cool, another feature I initially thought was gimicky. The short clips appear as normal photos in your gallery, but then begin to randomly play like the photos in a Harry Potter movie. Looks pretty cool in person. A feature I haven't been able to try out is the "Event" categorizing of my photos. Basically the phone looks at the time and location where you took pictures, and tries to group them into "events". Think of these as different albums in your gallery. When you open an event, at the top there will be a highlights reel: basically a slideshow of your photos, zoes and perhaps videos (not 100% sure about the videos). It adds music, transitions, Instagram-esque filters and automatically starts playing. Watching your whole photo gallery come to life is pretty cool.
Other tid bits: there's a permanent power saver notification in your notification dropdown. Always there no matter what. There's an app that lets you remove it if you're rooted however (the app is somewhere in these forums). The front facing camera is a big upgrade from the HOXL one. Did I mention how amazing this phone feels? Finally, 32GB on an HTC flagship. 24.4GB available to you. Although the camera lens is slightly slightly slightly recessed, I still feel it can get scratched.
In the end, this is definitely the best Android phone I have handled and used (yes, including the S4 yes I said it). And I used to work in Best Buy Mobile until very recently, so I have handled my fair share of smartphones. I would highly recommend this phone to anyone and everyone.
Well this turned out a lot longer than I anticipated. Hope this shines some light on the One from the perspective of an everyday owner. Let me know if you have any questions!
TL;DR. Read it! This took [email protected]#$ing forever to type.
Congrats on getting away from Best Buy!
are we going to have one of these at 15 days 30 days etc etc ?
Great review! I would like to point out though that you can get rid of the power saver notification by long pressing it, going to app info, and force stopping it. It reappears when your battery gets low since it automatically turns on, but you can avoid looking at it most of the day!
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
Excellent review. I've had it 4 days and I guess I haven't opened my gallery since linking my Facebook account, cause that annoyance was new to me... Thanks for pointing it out!
One other thing that I feel isn't getting the attention it deserves is the addition of IR. I haven't had IR in a smartphone since my Treo, and I missed it. The first thing I did when I got my One was setup all my TV's/Receivers to be controlled by my phone.
Wallaby8 said:
Great review! I would like to point out though that you can get rid of the power saver notification by long pressing it, going to app info, and force stopping it. It reappears when your battery gets low since it automatically turns on, but you can avoid looking at it most of the day!
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
Thanks for this tidbit.. It would be nice if the "show notifications" option allowed you to select/deselect...
The chassis is zero gap. the speaker covers are add-ons to the chassis.
To add apps, widgets and shortcuts to your screens long press any blank area for your home screens and the popup will allow you to select said icons to which ever screen you want by highlighting it with a tap 1st. It will put the icon in the first available space starting from the top left but you can then move it.
I haven't setup Facebook yet but I have read there is a setting in the gallery to un-check this option. *Edit* My bad. The only way to stop pic syncing from Facebook is by not allowing Facebook to sync in the 1st place. Not an ideal solution but all there is atm.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2197998
Lastly, with pics/camera. Set sharpness to -1 and there will be much less post processing. (Credit hamdir) I think you'll like the pics even more!
Hope this helps.
Thanks!! it was helpful.
Yeah I haven't had a chance to test out the IR but I've heard its pretty cool. But it may not work on cases that cover the button and I wish they allowed you to hit "hide notifications" it almost looks like they went our of their way to block that setting lol
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
If you long press on the 'Power Saver' notification and go to App Info, you can force close that app. Then the notification will no longer be there. Each time the phone reboots, you'll see it and need to do it again, but I did it once and haven't had to reboot for any reason. Notification Gone!
So I decided to try developing for the Edge screen (hey, why not) and whipped together a quick sample app with Look API backed in. Unfortunately, even though I have the feed enabled in settings, it doesn't seem to actually show up in Feed Mode. Has anyone poked around the sample app Samsung posted? I can see that they have separate Providers for each Edge feature, but it seems like there's a Service which the Feed doesn't use, so I didn't implement it. Any thoughts on what could be the cause?
russianzilla said:
So I decided to try developing for the Edge screen (hey, why not) and whipped together a quick sample app with Look API backed in. Unfortunately, even though I have the feed enabled in settings, it doesn't seem to actually show up in Feed Mode. Has anyone poked around the sample app Samsung posted? I can see that they have separate Providers for each Edge feature, but it seems like there's a Service which the Feed doesn't use, so I didn't implement it. Any thoughts on what could be the cause?
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Nice initiative, I have begun development on it as well! I feel like there's plenty of untapped potential here, that we can take advantage of.
Using the example, I was able to make my own Feed that displays. I can send you what I got so far. I got discouraged because it didn't display either, right away, but you gotta give it a little bit (the default refresh timer is rather high). Try restarting your phone, and see if it works then. Might be helpful to disable all other feeds except for the one you want! If not, yeah, I can just share my source
I am currently probably 55% done with a "Quick Shortcut" feed, to add whatever apps to tap, and it'll wake up and launch. Simple, but brainstorming we could make more, better, ones!
I was one of the only devs for the Samsung Continuum (cute little thing with a ticker ahead of its time), so to have a new something to play around with, with the possibility of working together with other people, has me excited.
trailblazer101 said:
Using the example, I was able to make my own Feed that displays. I can send you what I got so far. I got discouraged because it didn't display either, right away, but you gotta give it a little bit (the default refresh timer is rather high). Try restarting your phone, and see if it works then. Might be helpful to disable all other feeds except for the one you want! If not, yeah, I can just share my source
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Click to collapse
Thank you for this tip! I was wondering why nothing was showing up on my feed panel. It finally started working after I restarted! As an aside, Samsung's example layout is pretty deceiving since it can cut off content depending on the orientation of the device. Anyways, I think I like the possibilities here. I'd use this feature all the time if the gesture weren't so difficult to pull off on a table!
Please do share any features that you create as I'm sure MANY people would like new options available to them. (But, most do not have the ability to do so).
Can't wait to see what functionality you guys/girls come up with. I wish I could do this stuff, but never really learned myself. Keep up the good work!!
Hey guys!!! Was hoping there would be an update here but I know you're all busy. I was wondering if there was a chance that you might be able too. . .
1) Make changes to Samsung edge ticker that allows it to turn on automatically if
- Phone is screen up
- Screen is off
- Text message received or missed phone call listing
2) Set time frame for ticker/edge feature above ^^ to work for. This way it doesn't consistantly display info for over 1 hour from last text/missed call. Also make it able to set how long the message is displayed for before turning off and then back on.
Got the OTA update to L on my 6833. Yes, it has made the already smooth animation slightly smoother but otherwise what is there? The power widgets are gone, I had to install third party Power Toggles app. The new notification swipe down is annoying, having to swipe up when waking device is annoying. The status bar colors are inconsistent. The menus look childish looking.
Without being dramatic, did Sony take all this time to make sure it ran without crashing? Because I notice very few changes (not even improvements, just any changes) on the UI. I must be missing something.
more than that:
can only set one volume at a time.
either portrait or auto, you can't force landscape like in KK.
animations are fluid, but the functionality isn't. My opinion is, if the device has extra power that it can use to make things animate, slide and fade all over the place, better to put that extra power into making the device perform faster. Anyone here who prefers prettier animations instead of faster functionality?
low resolution screenshots in the recents screen. wat. Seriously... wat? Also, the way they've made it it is faster to just go to the apps screen and open whatever app i want, instead of waiting for the recents screen to load and then scroll awkwardly through the programs... Also, you can only see three recent apps. On a device with 6" of screen. three. think about it.
Also... what is the point of having screenshots, anyway? icons are faster, easier to distinguish, take fewer resources and smaller area on screen.
I agree fully on the recent apps screenshots. The blurry images are embarrassing and don't at all go with the clean/sharp theme of everything else. I don't understand why they've made it low res, can't be for performance given no restraint or need anywhere else. Bizarre!
There is over-prettying. For example, the stupid screen swipe up to unlock (after hitting the power button already), the sparkles are just so unnecessary, it is one of the few places the phone actually seems to struggle pulling off the effect.
At the moment my biggest problem is with Yahoo Mail. The account does not seem to auto-sync despite all the settings being correct and even when I force the sync manually the notifications don't show. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, most likely Yahoo to blame, their webmail is always breaking but never ever had a single issue before with KK. This is problematic because it is effectively no longer push email, I have to manually check 50 times a day.
My biggest annoyance is the inability to reclaim the Google search bar area in the Home Screen. I don't want that search button, why can't I use that space, and why a stupid dot to represent the pages of the Homescreen when I only have 1.
Is there actually anything different/new on the backend? My issues aren't severe enough to go back to KK (yet) but seeing what I see, I would have no problem whatsoever buying an Xperia Sony will not upgrade beyond KK.
jess91 said:
Got the OTA update to L on my 6833. Yes, it has made the already smooth animation slightly smoother but otherwise what is there? The power widgets are gone, I had to install third party Power Toggles app. The new notification swipe down is annoying, having to swipe up when waking device is annoying. The status bar colors are inconsistent. The menus look childish looking.
Without being dramatic, did Sony take all this time to make sure it ran without crashing? Because I notice very few changes (not even improvements, just any changes) on the UI. I must be missing something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with you about small changes. I even face some strange problems in my WiFi. the mac address haven't change, but I can't connect to my work WiFi protected network. Sometimes it connects in limited status. One of my friends which updated his Ultra has this problem too.I could connect it to my laptop adhoc wifi netwrok, but for one time. it even can't connect to that network anymore. I rolled back to my stock 14.4.A.0.133 backup. and a'm waiting to fixes from sony.
Agree with you guys. And that stock greenish blueish greyish statusbar color pisses me off! Anybody knows how to change that color?
Quite pathetic attempt by a mod to bury this thread by moving it to this section. If negative feedback on L bothers you so much, delete the thread and censor it outright. Sad day for xda.
Hello!
My issue and need for the app:
I am working the lights at the theater in my school.
In the light booth, it can be difficult to keep up with the script because the booth makes sounds quieter.
If I lose track of the script at the wrong time, I could miss crucial cues for lighting.
I need an app that allows my stage manager to click a button on her phone, and I get a pop up on my screen; or perhaps the button she clicks will light up on my screen; just something of that nature that would allow her to give me instant directions, which means these "cue notifications" would need to have a name or label. It would essentially make her my ears on stage. We would probably also use it to let me know when were going live soon, etc.
IOS availability would be super convenient, as my stage manager has an iPhone.
I've searched for something like this, I just don't know what something like this would be called.
We have a show tonight, and this would be a life saver.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks
I have a strange situation that keeps happening. Every so often the wallpaper on my Pixel 6 will change to a solid color (that resembles the theme of the wallpaper I had active - for example sometimes it is gray, other times brown). From that point I can't seem to get rid of the solid color unless I reboot the phone. After a reboot the correct (previously active) wallpaper is shown. When the solid color is there it is almost like it is on top of the wallpaper because in the wallpaper settings the pixel thinks that the wallpaper is set properly and if I change the wallpaper there the solid color just persists and I never get an updated wallpaper.
Does anyone know how to fix this? It seems to happen most after I have used Android Auto, but happens at other seemingly random times too. I appreciate any help as I have tried many things with no success.
Not sure about you but I have a IFTTT applet that changes my desktop to black if my battery gets low. Well I know that now. I forgot about it though after setting it up. Drove me ****ing bonkers. I spent the better part of my free time in the evenings for a several days coming back to the mystery after work. I was digging into some deep reading in developer forums and official studio documentation after a full stock fresh start and it was still occuring.
Are you using any theming, root, power saving, optimization type apps? Or remote access, docking? Could be a setting or feature of what you're connected to. Can you reproduce it at will? or is it genuinely random. Did you change any settings related to freeform windows, overlays, hardware acceleration, Or systemUI mods, tweaks, or any hidden settings. If you have root, do you have any modules you haven't really tested for compatibility? Does it happen at certain times? only with certain events or places? Do you have assistant set up? automation, tasking? Set up any routines to run in the background that might be failing to do something with the wallpaper and just defaults to best possible match. Have you changed anything to do with locations of your media, where apps are installed, or what folders they have access to? Are you casting to wireless screens? enabled any "second screen" features or settings? Have you modified the DPI beyond stock ranges. Maybe your accidently putting the screen on something with similar conductivity with skin and have smart lock enabled and your getting random input while not using it.
Could be a lot of things.
Identify specifics, change something, track results; rinse repeat.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried some and will look into others. Based on lack of activity this does not seem like a widespread issue, so it is likely just some software causing this issue. I will continue to investigate and hopefully find the culprit. Thank you again!