Hello, I've been volunteering at a local community centre helping with their IT stuff, one of the programs that we run is setting up and providing tablets to elderly folks who live far away or are otherwise isolated from family, and the tablets we provide come with skype and a sim card/plan so that they can talk to their family more often and actually see them and not just hear them over a phone.
the most time consuming aspect of the whole process is setting up each tablet individually, increasing font size, increasing touch delay, replacing the default launcher with nova launcher and setting up nova launcher to maximise icon size etc. etc.
we are currently exploring cloning the tablets but that presents its own issues
I was wondering if there was an app, or maybe I could code an app(wondering if its even possible for one app to change the settings in another app) that could automate the set up process,
if it helps all the current tablets we are using are Galaxy Tab S's
any help would be greatly appreciated.
Related
Hey guys,
After being an avid iphone user during the past 4 years, I'm finally making the plunge into the android world today.
I've been eyeing the note 2 for quite a while as I've had people who've used note 1 and loved it.
I was wondering if any of you guys can help me with the transition?
I've already moved all my contacts and calendar to gmail.
Anything else I can do to get things ready for the transition? Also any apps/widgets you can recommend that go GREAT with the note 2?
I want to dive RIGHT in, but without much prior experience in android phones I feel that I may get lost... and would LOVE some direction. Thanks!
Pictures and files to dropbox is always convenient
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
Welcome to Android!
Android and Apple are very different animals!
You will find customizing, syncing, transferring and saving everything much easier. I recommend checking out the Note 2 screenshots and homescreen threads for widget ideas. Many people post their current setup and will gladly share.
The sheer amount of available customization and capability may seem overwhelming ( especially coming from the Apple ecosystem !) Spend plenty of time in your phone. Do not be afraid to explore. And remember: Always backup your phone before taking any plunge! It is so easy to backup your phone and restore it if something borks. The beauty of Android!
Soon you will be the one helping out the next New-To-Android guy!
Apps I'd recommend:
Adblock Plus - prevents loading of ads on wifi. if you root, it will work over 3G/4G too
Chrome
Contact-sync - syncs your facebook friends statuses and profile pics. the official facebook app syncs horribly small pics that look very blurry when you get a call
Disable Increasing Ring - the ring on the note 2 is very quiet for the first second and then jumps to whatever volume you have set. this disables that.
Drive - to take notes on and automatically have anywhere.
Dropbox - picture backup
Equalizer - equalizer for music that works over bluetooth. if you don't use bluetooth for music, the one that comes with the phone probably is fine.
Flashlight - uses camera LED, don't bother with ones that use a white screen
Gameboid - if you liked Game Boy Advance games
Grand Theft Auto
HD Widgets - many different home screen clocks and weather widgets to choose from and customize. it also allows you to get to your alarms, timer, calendar, etc from touching parts of the widget.
Minecraft
N64oid - N64 emulator
Swiftkey 3 - much better keyboard than stock imo - especially in landscape. all the buttons are bigger, it has smiley shortcuts, and you can change the time for long presses
Thanks guys for all your input!
Just one question... I don't have unlimited data... Will using dropbox take up a big chunk of my data usage? Could I have it set so that it syncs only when I'm on wifi?
And all these programs that you're mentioning that allows me to customize the ringtone etc... do they take up space in ram? e.g. are these things something that runs in the background or something that "unlocks" different options?
It's just so different with apple where phone settings are set.. and nothing can be changed. Thanks!
iamnamja said:
Thanks guys for all your input!
Just one question... I don't have unlimited data... Will using dropbox take up a big chunk of my data usage? Could I have it set so that it syncs only when I'm on wifi?
And all these programs that you're mentioning that allows me to customize the ringtone etc... do they take up space in ram? e.g. are these things something that runs in the background or something that "unlocks" different options?
It's just so different with apple where phone settings are set.. and nothing can be changed. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can set Dropbox to upload during wifi or wifi & data.
The ringtones can be changed in settings. Are you talking about a ringtone maker or trimmer?
Everything can be changed!
iamnamja said:
Thanks guys for all your input!
Just one question... I don't have unlimited data... Will using dropbox take up a big chunk of my data usage? Could I have it set so that it syncs only when I'm on wifi?
And all these programs that you're mentioning that allows me to customize the ringtone etc... do they take up space in ram? e.g. are these things something that runs in the background or something that "unlocks" different options?
It's just so different with apple where phone settings are set.. and nothing can be changed. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The ringtone program takes up ram and is running, but is like 350KB or something like that and takes no noticeable amount of processing. We have 2GB of ram o it really doesn't matter. It also will stay up as a notification, but if you hold the notification and hit "app info", you can then uncheck the show notifications box and it will be invisible.
iamnamja said:
Thanks guys for all your input!
Just one question... I don't have unlimited data... Will using dropbox take up a big chunk of my data usage? Could I have it set so that it syncs only when I'm on wifi?
And all these programs that you're mentioning that allows me to customize the ringtone etc... do they take up space in ram? e.g. are these things something that runs in the background or something that "unlocks" different options?
It's just so different with apple where phone settings are set.. and nothing can be changed. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You never jailbreak your iDevice? As someone who has owned an iPhone 4, it was the greatest thing I have ever done with my phone besides switching to Android.
Please read forum rules before posting
Questions go in Q&A
Thread moved
Thank you for your cooperation
Friendly Neighborhood Moderator
Hi guys, I’m new to the forum and fairly new to Android devices in general. I’ve googled a good bit before posting, and searched this forum for some keywords, but haven’t come up with a solution to what I need to do.
I have what seems like a fairly simple need: Set up an android device the way I want it, and then clone this image to multiple other devices.
I work with an organization that conducts a lot of epidemiology surveillance in foreign countries. The surveys are done on android based devices with a collection of off-the-shelf apps, plus one we had custom built for our purpose. Data is sent to us via whatever mobile networks happen to be available in the country being surveyed (we buy our phones unlocked, and get the SIM cards in-country).
As we continue to expand, installing all those apps and getting all of the settings just right becomes a very tedious, repetitive task, when you consider doing 100+ phones a month. .
Ideally I would like to stick with the factory rom, just add/remove some apps and configure settings. The cloning process needs to be fairly straight-forward, and not require a bunch of apps to be installed on the target phones first, because that kind of defeats the purpose.
For the time being, we’re using Motorola Atrix and Atrix 2. We also have some XT720s but we’re phasing those out.
Not sure if this is relevant, but below is roughly what provisioning currently looks like:
1. We receive a batch of phones, say 100 at a time
2. First, do a factory reset, and go through the initial setup
3. Remove as many of the factory installed apps as possible
4. Set up WiFi
5. Log into Google Play account and install the 6 apps we actually use
6. Make LauncherPro the default desktop, set it to only use 1 dock and 1 desktop, set a plain boring background, hide all except the app drawer icon, and have and icon for our app, and an airplane mode widget on the desktop.
7. Finally, enter the server connection settings in our survey app (this part we’ve gotten to a point where all we do is drop a config file to the SD Card, and it picks up the settings for this particular app)
8. Turn off the phone, and do it all again on the other 99 devices…
Any thoughts on how to automate this?
Hi all,
I'm in the process of preparing a number of Acer Iconia 210a tablets (JB) for use in the school where I work.
They're going to be 'shared' devices used by up to 5 different users each day, from a user base of about 800. This presents some issues, some of which I have addressed already.
I started trialling the tablets this week and have realised that just using an AppLock-style app to keep the users away from the settings isn't enough: they can set the wallpaper from within the Gallery app (I had a wonderful array of inappropriate images to remove yesterday afternoon!)
I was hoping there might be some bright ideas from this forum as to what might be the best way to prevent the wallpaper being changed. I have root on the devices and already have a shell script that runs on boot that could be added to, if that helps. I am also using ADW launcher, in case that makes a difference.
I have contemplated a couple of approaches:
If I knew where the 'current wallpaper' file or setting was stored, I could just copy this to a read-only filesystem and copy it back into the correct location on a scheduled basis or on the device booting. I did wonder if it was stored within ADW and copied /data/data/org.adw.launcher to another location and overwrote it back after changing the wallpaper. This just reset ADW to default settings, except for the unwanted wallpaper!
There are a couple of threads on the forum that state the location of the wallpaper and suggest that changing the permissions of the file would solve this but they must be for older versions of the OS because the file in question does not exist.
I think Tasker can change the wallpaper, so I could go down that route and get Tasker to 'reset' the wallpaper every 5 mins but it might be expensive with the number of tablets we have. (If Tasker can set the wallpaper, surely I can find a command/simple app to do so??)
I was using a live wallpaper and my first thought was that I might be able to just start that process using the 'am start' command but I couldn't find the correct syntax/activity name to test that idea..
There are apps out there that will cycle through random wallpapers on a timer. I could use one of these and just have a 'pool' of one wallpaper for it to select from. I could then just hide the config for that app behind AppLock or similar. However, most of the similar apps I've looked at have a feature whereby you can 'easily add to your random wallpapers direct from the gallery app' - the exact thing I want to prevent. Maybe there is a similar app without this feature that would suit my needs better..?
Which route do you think might be best for me to investigate? Is there another direction that would be better?
Thanks for your toughts,
Tim
Hello,
I've been looking for this but no success. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.
I'll explain the system for the complete picture:
We've built a system for a healthcare organization which uses a SMS server, if a person pushes a button on an (wifi) alarm unit in his/her room a SMS is sent to a Samsung Xcover2 phone, a specially written app 'catches' this special SMS before the stock android SMS app will get it, diplays the room that made the alarm and from there the user of the Samsung Xcover can make a one-touch operation to make a direct connection to this room so you can speak to that person in the room. From the phone the call can be closed and the alarm unit in the room will be reset.
So far so good. We deployed a pilot project and it works really well.
Except for the Samsung Xcover. We used them straight out of the box, set the settings (no google account, wifi is not used) but from there the user is able to change ANYTHING.....and they do; different sounds, fonts, backgrounds, they make pictures......basically they make a mess of it.
And since we use a Private GSM system with nano cells there's no internal number displayed on the screen so we use a personalised wallpaper with our company's logo and the internal number (they are also used as normal internal phones for in- an outbound communication). They keep changing the wallpaper so phones get 'lost' since they can't see the number anymore.
What I'm looking for is something that basically lets us control what the user can or can't do. Preferably with the stock ROM, rooting and loading a custom ROM is an option but time consuming.
Anyone with a suggestion??
Hi! I'm a long time android user that is interested in trying out the Windows mobile experience. I'm an Insider tester so I started with just wanting to get a device but if I'm buying one then it will be my primary cell phone so I need a little convincing to make the purchase.
One of my sticklers is the low DPI on the 925. I don't like how most small screened phone tend to have low DPI and the 925 doesn't seem to be an exception, so is there a way that I can increase the DPI?
How is the integration between the phone and the desktop OS?
Is it snappy and responsive?
How is the rom/firmware/custom stuff selection for the 925? Specifically podcast, reddit and Google apps (Hangouts and Mail)
How's the app selection nowadays?
Thank you for your help! Help me become one of you! Otherwise i'm just going to buy a MotoG.
l1lypad said:
Hi! I'm a long time android user that is interested in trying out the Windows mobile experience. I'm an Insider tester so I started with just wanting to get a device but if I'm buying one then it will be my primary cell phone so I need a little convincing to make the purchase.
One of my sticklers is the low DPI on the 925. I don't like how most small screened phone tend to have low DPI and the 925 doesn't seem to be an exception, so is there a way that I can increase the DPI?
How is the integration between the phone and the desktop OS?
Is it snappy and responsive?
How is the rom/firmware/custom stuff selection for the 925? Specifically podcast, reddit and Google apps (Hangouts and Mail)
How's the app selection nowadays?
Thank you for your help! Help me become one of you! Otherwise i'm just going to buy a MotoG.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, DPI is a hardware issue, you can't just increase it.
For intergration, you can load your favorites and tabs from IE. It will load your contacts and calander from any email account.
Podcast is built in, if the particular podcast isn't found you can use the RSS link and add it, that works really well.
There are some apps for redit, thought I don't think there's a native app.
There are no apps that I've found that can handle google hangouts. I typcially just load them in the browser. I know this is a big stiking point for most people, but google will not support Windows anymore than it has to, which is pretty minimal. I use whatsapp for most of my messagineg.
Etaduck said:
So, DPI is a hardware issue, you can't just increase it.
For intergration, you can load your favorites and tabs from IE. It will load your contacts and calander from any email account.
Podcast is built in, if the particular podcast isn't found you can use the RSS link and add it, that works really well.
There are some apps for redit, thought I don't think there's a native app.
There are no apps that I've found that can handle google hangouts. I typcially just load them in the browser. I know this is a big stiking point for most people, but google will not support Windows anymore than it has to, which is pretty minimal. I use whatsapp for most of my messagineg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, would you recommend the 925 as a 'starter' windows phone? I'm on Tmobile and have about 100$ or so to spend. Is there a better one for that price? : \ Tmobile has a terrible windows phone selection and pricing compared to ATT.
I found apps that support multiprotcol IM and gmail checking; so that's covered. I can get past the DPI thing because it's not too bad with that resolution. Better than my old Galaxy SII anyway.