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Ohhh, you brave souls... haha
I was in the o2 shop this lunch having a play with their live unit (well, except it had no SIM or web connectivity. for this type of phone that's pretty limiting!)
some questions i was unable to get help with, i am hoping you have more experience of, before i consider the device further:
1. SMS display. i much prefer the look of iPhone's SMS "dual conversations" - its very clear which side of the chat is which and generally more friendly and usable. can the x10's change to this type of layout? rather than listing each reply above or below each other. found no options in the main settings area from the home screen (not sure if the context-specific settings under messaging is any different...?)
2. mac compatability. is this possible? can it sync properly with itunes? does it use a 3rd party app to do so? could this be "culled", ala blackberry/palm syncing with itunes? does the x10 appear as a mounted usb volume? (in this way, i could use applescript to manage the library - horrible, but it might work). someone with actual experience here with a mac would allay my fears, rather than commenting it might be possible (sorry if that seems abrupt in advance...)
3. other syncing needs. i guess most other aspects for sync'ing are removed/negated with an android handset - are we as users supposed to follow the "cloud computing" google-masterplan? do others sync with desktops and for what purpose?
4. browser/app zooming. the device doesnt have multi-touch (plenty covered on this, and other forums!) but, the iPhone has other methods of navigating around the browser and apps. i.e. double tapping a block of text, which i would consider a single fingered gesture. as the test unit i was playing had no web connectivity i couldnt test it out - can someone comment?
here's hoping for advantageous answers
jingo_man
1. use Handcent SMS , can make it look 100% like iPhone sms
jingo_man said:
...............
1. SMS display. i much prefer the look of iPhone's SMS "dual conversations" - its very clear which side of the chat is which and generally more friendly and usable. can the x10's change to this type of layout? rather than listing each reply above or below each other. found no options in the main settings area from the home screen (not sure if the context-specific settings under messaging is any different...?)
...............................
3. other syncing needs. i guess most other aspects for sync'ing are removed/negated with an android handset - are we as users supposed to follow the "cloud computing" google-masterplan? do others sync with desktops and for what purpose?
4. browser/app zooming. the device doesnt have multi-touch (plenty covered on this, and other forums!) but, the iPhone has other methods of navigating around the browser and apps. i.e. double tapping a block of text, which i would consider a single fingered gesture. as the test unit i was playing had no web connectivity i couldnt test it out - can someone comment?....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Well, probably the handcent sms thingy, never tried it tho.
or you could go into contacts and find the contact there. When you go there the sms messages are listed in a simmular way as on the iPhone.
You on the right hand side
and you friend on the left..
3. I have just used the Cloud sync method to be honest, haven't really bothered to do it in any other way. But there is probably a way to do it.
4. The zooming is no problem to be honest, the double-tap to zoom thing works good enough. So I have to say that I kinda like it Even tho the multi-touch zoom was handy every now and then..
1. handcent works fine on this phone, and has customisable colours and themes.
2. can't comment on mac, but it is APPARENTLY possible to sync with itunes for the PC through iTunes Agent. I know this won't help you but it might help someone else reading this later.
3. cloud seems to be the way forward, and it works great on the x10. when you first plug it in to the usb though you get the option to install some sony ericsson syncing software, which is the same as i used for my c902 to transfer all my contacts to gmail for this phone. it is pretty simple to use.
4. the default zoom on the android is nice to use. browsers like dolphin (available from the market) come with their own zoom, but i disabled this cos the x10 seems to handle it nicely natively.
hope that helps
1. handsent sms. hmmmm... that does look more along the lines that i was thinking for layout/design. but i'm guessing this wont play nice with the timescape app, which seems pretty central.
i thought i went into the individual contact at one point, and it had the same appearance as when displayed under the general. i may make a return visit to the store to check that out...
i dont think i would mind using separately bought apps, but 1 of the biggest selling points seems to be the timescape so not sure i'd want to miss out on using it. though might change once i have used it for a while...
2. here's hoping eventually a mac user stumbles across this thread and is in a giving mood about their experience.
3. cloud syncing. suppose i can get onboard. not a massive issue not to rely on desktop software. i guess this means no-one really sync's it with a desktop then?]
4. glad of the double-tap zoom, atleast thats something. and its generally how i start to zoom on iPhone (in the browser) but how does this work in other apps? i.e. google maps cant double tap, as there's no "frame border" to sync the tap too...
this could a deal breaker for me, for this product. not a massive app user, but love web browsing on these devices when out-and-about. fine control offered by pinch/zoom far more refined and easier to use than the clunky zoom button, which just didnt seem to refresh fast enough to make it smooth...
maybe wont get onboard with all these bits until i consistently use the device, but not paying best part of £500 to find out!
please continue with more insights if you got 'em
2. mac compatability. is this possible? can it sync properly with itunes? does it use a 3rd party app to do so? could this be "culled", ala blackberry/palm syncing with itunes? does the x10 appear as a mounted usb volume? (in this way, i could use applescript to manage the library - horrible, but it might work). someone with actual experience here with a mac would allay my fears, rather than commenting it might be possible (sorry if that seems abrupt in advance...)
hi, Mac user here. Yes it mounts like a USB-HDD, and turns off in the phone. So you can transfere files, and then just unmount it. Transfered 7 GB of musik files, no problem.
jingo_man said:
1. handsent sms. hmmmm... that does look more along the lines that i was thinking for layout/design. but i'm guessing this wont play nice with the timescape app, which seems pretty central.
i thought i went into the individual contact at one point, and it had the same appearance as when displayed under the general. i may make a return visit to the store to check that out...
i dont think i would mind using separately bought apps, but 1 of the biggest selling points seems to be the timescape so not sure i'd want to miss out on using it. though might change once i have used it for a while...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
even with that installed, the other messaging app still runs. handsent simply becomes the default. this means that when you load up timescape, it pulls in the messages from the standard messages app and works like a charm.
its a shame we cant just use the screen under the contact to send a message, that looks pretty good. click onto a contact, and scoll along at the bottom, past call log, onto messaging. that is a sweet screen.
jingo_man said:
2. mac compatability. is this possible? can it sync properly with itunes? does it use a 3rd party app to do so? could this be "culled", ala blackberry/palm syncing with itunes? does the x10 appear as a mounted usb volume? (in this way, i could use applescript to manage the library - horrible, but it might work). someone with actual experience here with a mac would allay my fears, rather than commenting it might be possible (sorry if that seems abrupt in advance...)
3. other syncing needs. i guess most other aspects for sync'ing are removed/negated with an android handset - are we as users supposed to follow the "cloud computing" google-masterplan? do others sync with desktops and for what purpose?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Salling Media Sync for iTunes sync http://www.salling.com/MediaSync/Mac/
Adress book and iCal has support for google sync, just enable it in the prefs and then everything syncs from google.
Just enter your gmail details.
the web browser on this thing is amazing really. renedering is smooth and pages launch instantly. i am very impressed with the web browser and with the added extra of using dolphin you be on to a winner. web browser on this is better than my N1
you mean like this...?
jingo_man said:
Ohhh, you brave souls... haha
I was in the o2 shop this lunch having a play with their live unit (well, except it had no SIM or web connectivity. for this type of phone that's pretty limiting!)
some questions i was unable to get help with, i am hoping you have more experience of, before i consider the device further:
1. SMS display. i much prefer the look of iPhone's SMS "dual conversations" - its very clear which side of the chat is which and generally more friendly and usable. can the x10's change to this type of layout? rather than listing each reply above or below each other. found no options in the main settings area from the home screen (not sure if the context-specific settings under messaging is any different...?)
.....
here's hoping for advantageous answers
jingo_man
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont know about all the other questions, but did you mean something this? (Oh, crap! Where is my image? Ok, no image, dont know how to get one into this post)
I mean from it you see exactly who is on which side of the conversation
Does anyone else encounter similar problems with Quick Office's new update which allow us to type documents?
After the update, I have been using the word document function to a good extent but the app seems to be really buggy! The application will crash out of nowhere quite frequently and sometimes when I try to save my file, it'll say that it is saving and hangs there, and it didn't save.
As much as this is a highly anticipated update, its ridiculously halfbaked and just plain annoying to use. Would like to know if I'm just an isolated case or is this a common problem,
thanks =).
I've found it to be buggy as well, and I've only written one document with it. When I saved it it removed all the formatting including line breaks. All of a sudden my nicely laid out page with headings turned into one oversized paragraph in plain text
Fortunately I had copied the whole thing to the clipboard because I wanted to test something. So I deleted all the text, pasted, hit save and it crashed.
I then closed that document and opened a new one. Pasted the text, hit save, and it removed all the formatting again!
I tried a few more times, but every time it either crashed or removed the formatting *sigh*
I uninstalled and reinstalled Quick Office after that, but haven't tested it again. If it glitches again I'm just going to consider it useless.
Hows the ubuntu word processor? Is it any better? Have anyone tried it? Think i'm going to run Chroot ubuntu just to try it out..
I've been looking for the best app to take notes during class. It feels crazy that there's no Auto-Save in quick office.
One bug I've found to make it crash, when using the HP Bluetooth slim keyboard (if relevant) is, if I highlight a word, and type over it, it crashes. I lost like half my notes doing this. Now I just hit save every minute or two... and wish there was a keyboard (control s?) shortcut to do that.
I've also been trying Typewriter Beta... I really just want a Notepad esque text editor.. don't care about formatting really.
Fwiw, tapnote is the current winner. Least buggy of the ones I've tried.
. . NS4G . . CM7 . .
I found it to be generally useless as well. I just decided to use google docs (through the browser) for all of my notes. May try the office 2010 web suite as well.
Edit: Gdocs is working fantastically BTW, the only reason that I am considering using office is curiosity. Additionally, I have an app on my phone called camscanner so that if there are any handwritten notes, I can scan them with my phone (works surprisingly well), and share to Gdocs, and tie them to the typed notes I have taken.
I had the same issue. I tried to use it last week to take notes at a conference and it would lock up quite frequently saving to local storage. It happened often enough that I switched over to the built-in notepad app. I think I'm going to stick with that or perhaps even the email client for now with the hope/anticipation that when Android is on this puppy, I'll have significantly more options.
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. I second your idea. i did search for theme builder. nothing of that sort. on a different note , i did find an ancient theme builder for ancient symbian phones. i donot know whether to laugh or to cry. LOL
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, if you are asking if there is an App to build themes on a PC? If yes then the answer is sadly no.
However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well. http://www.genymotion.com/features/
the link doesn't work comes back as nothing found,fortunately this one does work https://cloud.genymotion.com/page/launchpad/download/
you wiull need to register and log in before download
ThemerSupport said:
However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done
The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.
Thanks so much for responding so quickly
Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
cbarnes913 said:
Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done
The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.
Thanks so much for responding so quickly
Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We might have a look at an online version in the future, but that will only be once Themer is a lot more stable and we have more resources to work with. Thanks for the suggestion though!
it could be awesome for pc users
I installed Genymotion. Getting it configured with Themer took some doing, but once it was setup I had everything I needed. Thanks so much for this suggestion.
For those who want to do the same thing, there are some things you need to know. First, you need either a Google account or a Facebook account to log into Themer. That means that after you install GenyMotion, you need to do one of two things: either you need to 1) flash a Google apps package over the GenyMotion VM (a 4.3 apps package that works with Cyanogen mod works best), then log into Google, then update everything with the Play Store, and then install Themer; OR (and I didn't do this, so it might be more complex than this) sideload Facebook and sideload Themer, log into Facebook, then setup Themer.
The reason you need to do this is because in order to use Themer, you need to log in using either a Google account or a Facebook account, and Themer uses a list of accounts already on your phone (or in this case, the VM) to populate the dialog box that asks you to log in. That said, you want to have either a Facebook account or a Google account set up on the device (or VM) prior to launching Themer. Since I'd rather not ever use Facebook to do anything, that limits my option to Google.
It might be the case that if you exported themes from Themer and wanted to import it, that you might not have to go through any of these steps. However, if you want to be able to download existing themes from Themer and work with them as a starting point for building your theme, or even just pick them apart to figure out how they work in order to learn, you need to log in.
Someone correct me if I made this way more complicated than it needed to be.
As for developing a web client for theming, maybe this could be a community-led effort? I don't have the skill or time to do any of it, but if this is a popular request, perhaps we could organize a project and try to contribute to it. Is anyone interested?
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
Hi all,
Hope I'm posting this in the right place. If not, please move.
I have Remix_OS_for_PC_Android_M_64bit_B2016072603 installed as a virtual guest in Virtualbox 5.0.24_Ubuntu r1083 with Xubuntu-core 16.04 as the host machine. Using a Toshiba Satellite Pro L510. Took me four days to nut out how to get to this point, but installed and booting and stable now.
My issues:
1/ Location: When I try to run an app from Play Store it thinks I'm outside of Australia/New Zealand (the app I'm trying to run is specific to those regions). I'm in Australia, the app works fine on my phone (am logging in exactly the same way).
(* Update: I installed GPS Status and it tells me GPS is not switched on. Was hoping to then change the location with Fake GPS, which I also installed. It won't do anything with same message: GPS not enabled or similar.)
2/ Resolution: The screen defaults to portrait, as expected I suppose, but I have a 1366x768 monitor and it doesn't fit in the screen. Consequently, I have a scroll bar because as Virtualbox Guest Additions is not compatible with Remix OS at this point there is no mouse integration (I need to hit Right Control to use mouse in host and same to use in guest again). I need to press a bunch of keys to just scroll the screen up and get back to where I was going. :|
Other than that, all working great, Remix OS is great, thanks to the team that created it. The main reason I was wanting to use it is to use this one app on my computer (AFL Live) and plug my computer into the TV. I don't use my phone for anything other than that one app, SMS and the occasional call so I am by no means an Android junky. In fact, before this, I knew very little about it (but a lot about Linux/Ubuntu).
This install has been a quest, a learning curve, and these are my last two hurdles so I'm calling for help if it's out there. Trawled the net, tried some things, but have hit a brick wall with these two problems.
My first post so not sure of the protocol. If these two issues should be the subject of two separate threads, mods please advise and I will edit accordingly and create a new thread.
Tnx in advance.
(* Further update: Just having a read of this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/remix/remix-os/remix-os-installation-rooting-t3293769
Wondering if rooting the device would allow me to change any of these, in particularly, the location to Australia where it should be, or switch on GPS so my app can see where I actually am. I'm presuming it thinks I am in the Cocos Islands or somewhere else!)
(* And further update: The screen resolution was as easy as typing Alt+F1 to launch a terminal then 'wm size 1366x768'. That looked terrible, though, so changed it to 1048x768 (from memory) and it is good enough, though not perfect. I may be able to get closer with further tweaking. Now the last, and most important, hurdle to leap: How do I get Remix OS, and more specifically my AFL app, to know I'm in Australia. Frustration. It's taken about ten days, on and off, to get here and still not quite where I want to be, but hopefully my travails can help someone else along the way ...)
Gave up on it. If anyone comes up with a way of running Remix OS in Virtualbox and setting the location, please post. Guestadditions would probably fix it and maybe one day ROS will be compatible with it.
On the other hand, I did learn a lot more about Android than I cared to know, but am now thinking about buying my first ever Android tablet to do the job with a USB/HDMI adapter.