Phone junk

This is a post about mobile/cell phones. I hope someone new to Android finds it useful.

1) I had an iphone 3g which worked but my contract was up so I wanted new phones. We got iPhone4s which dropped about 50-70% of our calls (even with cases)--data dropped a lot too. AT&T was expensive and incompetent at every turn. They were returned.

2) AT&T retentions encouraged me to give them one last chance with a Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S family of phones). They have a 30 day policy, so I figured I would use it. Call and data drops are less frequent, but still happen. They will be returned. We will move to the Sprint Epic 4g next week.

Here is my experience moving from iPhones to Android.
iPhone pros/cons: iPhones were far easier to set up and have better basic email functions (except connectivity). They had tons of cheap accessories. When jailbroken, they could do a lot, but many system functions were still not accessible (e.g., cannot change the notification noise). I find iTunes to be horrible and convoluted (e.g., no simple file access to move data on and off of the phone, would delete data during syncs without warnings).

Android pros/cons: Android was difficult to set up. It needs a hack or configuration for nearly everything. I found that its versatility makes up for the fact it took lots of time to figure out what and how to set it up. The breadth and quality of capabilities is astounding. It lacks the "locked down" feeling. The hacks and configurations on the Galaxy S are the main purpose of this post.

Things to do when I take back my Captivate and get the Epic 4g (aka "list of the best Android apps"):

- Set the lock pattern as a screen lock
- Switch to default Android keyboard (or Swype) from the awful default one)
- Configure mail accounts, including separate Yahoo mail app
- Put new ringtones in by downloading drivers from Samsung and mounting as USB mass storage. Put stuff in these directories:
\sdcard\Media\audio\Notifications
\sdcard\Media\audio\Ringtones
\sdcard\Media\audio\Video
\sdcard\Music
- Make shortcuts to most common calls (family), add widgets

FREE APPS to download from the Android Marketplace
(* indicates that I use them a lot and have them on my home screen)

UTILITIES/SYSTEM STUFF
*fring (uses all IM clients and does video calling)
advanced task killer (uncheck fring and those that auto-restart)
image shrink lite (send picture here THEN to email)
astro filemanager (better than the default one)
battery indicator (add % number to toolbar, change to F from C)
doubletwist (better than stock media player)
rockplayer (plays most DivX files)
tts service extended (it talks to you...needed for Google maps)

GOOGLE APPS (all have a prefix of "Google"):
*listen (like itunes app for podcasts) Pro: subscriptions Con: lacks 2x speed feature
*maps (this is a reason for getting Android in itself!)
finance
earth
sky map (awesome - hold up the phone, see a dynamic starmap)
translate
*latitude (my wife and I use it to see where we are...it works!)
buzz widget (just for a home screen)
gesture search (fun and useful way of searching everything on the phone)
voice (use this for voicemail, it is fantastic--does international calling cheaply too)
*gmail
*calendar
*marketplace
goggles (it interprets pictures in entertaining/insightful ways and displays related results)

USUAL APPS:
*facebook
yahoo mail
myversion bible (web 2.0 bible)
dropbox (easy file transfers--device independent)
twitter
opera mini (one always needs an alternative browser)
*the weather channel
pandora
epocrates

APPS I FIND VALUABLE
gstrings (Excellent musical tuner. It may be the best one I have ever used)
publicradiolive
random number (who uses dice anymore?)

PREINSTALLED APPS
*gallery
*camera (well-made)
*messaging (blah program, but it works)
allshare (This allows you to stream to from any DLNA device)

NOT SURE ABOUT THESE:
Layar (Superimposes wikipedia-like geo-coded info on top of a video stream from camera. Fun, but not sure if it is useful.)
Photobucket (it has the option of automatically uploading when a picture is taken)
Qik (like fring, but appears to not work as well)
GV Call Free (call using GV only)
picasatool (easy pic uploads to picasaweb)
craigsnotifica (yes, that is the name--notifies with new CL terms come up)
wordup (like boggle, but more settings)

This my most popular YouTube video ever. It was a REALLY difficult battery cover to figure out how to get off, until you figure out the trick.


I hope this is useful to more people than just me. I wish I would have had this list when starting to configure the Captivate. It would have saved a bunch of time.