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There's an app for that? (Read 219975 times)

slackline

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#450 Re: There's an app for that?
April 29, 2012, 11:53:08 am
Discovered Mobile Odin Pro this morning for flashing rooted devices with ROMs (or your choice of partition within a ROM).  Has a nice 'EverRoot' option which will retain root when flashing new kernels.  :2thumbsup:

Pretty cheap (£3.86), and the guy who publishes this also produces the CF-Root stream of rooted kernels.

Going to play around this afternoon with a few different ROMs using this device to do the flashing.

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#451 Re: There's an app for that?
April 30, 2012, 12:09:28 pm
Discovered Mobile Odin Pro this morning for flashing rooted devices with ROMs (or your choice of partition within a ROM).  Has a nice 'EverRoot' option which will retain root when flashing new kernels.  :2thumbsup:

Pretty cheap (£3.86), and the guy who publishes this also produces the CF-Root stream of rooted kernels.

Going to play around this afternoon with a few different ROMs using this device to do the flashing.

Played yesterday, gets the thumbs up from me  :2thumbsup:

Piece of piss to use, save a ROM or individual files from a ROM tar-ball to your phones internal or external SD card, fire up Mobile Odin, choose the file (or the whole tar ball) and it then updates.  Checks that the right file is going to the right place so you can't flash the wrong partition, preserves root on your phone (at least on the update I did). Absolute bargain for the price, the only downside is that you have to have a rooted phone (oh and I'm sure others may find the fact that its limited to Samsung devices a bit annoying).


Also discovered Voxer yesterday, turn your phone into a walkie-talkie.  People you want to contact have to have it installed and be registered too, but works fine, albeit with a little lag as its transferred over the net (WiFi or 3G connection).  Available for other smart phone systems too.

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#452 Re: There's an app for that?
April 30, 2012, 06:23:16 pm

Not seeing the point of Mobile Odin Pro really - once you've rooted the device once with normal Odin, then all the ROMs I've subsequently installed come with CWM which lets you do all that stuff from the boot recovery menu for free.

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#453 Re: There's an app for that?
April 30, 2012, 08:45:51 pm
The advantage from my perspective is that I can't use Odin (no Linux version, hell Samsung don't even release a Linux version of their desktop Keis which is pretty crap).  Instead I'm using the opensource alternative Heimdall.  When I attempted to flash Android 4.0.3 last week it failed to verify the upload of two partitions with the most recent release (1.3.2).  Had to roll back to Heimdall-1.3.1 in order to re-flash successfully.

I'm also not that bothered about using the custom ROMs, there's tons of space so removing apps isn't a facet of custom ROMs that I'm that bothered with, so I was using a stock firmware which didn't have a rooted kernel (with ClockWorkMod included).

I could have easily worked round this if I had faith in Heimdall, since you can choose which partitions you flash, so I'd have taken everything from the stock ROM tar-ball, except the kernel, instead using a CF-Root, but I'm not that confident that future updates to Heimdall will be reliable.  Mobile Odin also lets you pick and choose partitions to update with specific files, so you don't have to flash with a whole ROM (although doing anything other than the kernel could lead to a world of problems I'd imagine).

Horses for courses though, only works with Samsung phones so its not for everyone.  I also thought the person who put the hard work into making the rooted ROM I've been using deserved a pint for his hard work and updates (which he seems to stay on top of whenever new kernels are released) :beer2:

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#454 Re: There's an app for that?
April 30, 2012, 09:34:38 pm
I'm also not that bothered about using the custom ROMs, there's tons of space so removing apps isn't a facet of custom ROMs that I'm that bothered with, so I was using a stock firmware which didn't have a rooted kernel (with ClockWorkMod included).
Removing apps isn't the primary reason I'm using a custom ROM, but it is nice to be rid of all the carrier/Samsung apps, Touchwiz, etc that I'll never use.  The phone is noticeably more responsive with the custom ROM than with the stock ROM, even though the ROM I'm using is based on a Samsung release.  The ROM author is currently releasing updates that are based on the AOKP release which has been based upon the ICS source code released by Google.

I also like the dark themed Google apps my ROM has, and things like the built in automatic call recording, T9 dialler, etc.

I'm still running the Siyah Kernel which is under constant development. This kernel actually allows you to dual boot 2 ROMS but I haven't tried this yet.


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#455 Re: There's an app for that?
May 01, 2012, 06:49:45 am
Theres some subtle things about touchwiz I quote like, e.g. under contacts slide right to call someone, left to message (certainly not something HTC's did).

I tinker enough with computers and routers and haven't got the inclination (yet!) to do similar with the phone, might check out the kernel you suggest though.

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#456 Re: There's an app for that?
May 01, 2012, 02:18:29 pm
The advantage from my perspective is...... blah blah lots of really complicated stuff about phone tinkering that Jasper doesn't understand.


I tinker enough with computers and routers and haven't got the inclination (yet!) to do similar with the phone

 :-\

slackline

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#457 Re: There's an app for that?
May 01, 2012, 02:28:10 pm
 :lol: Its the fucking it up with Heimdall that I want to avoid.

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#458 Re: There's an app for that?
May 01, 2012, 02:47:39 pm
I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but not sure I want to dig through 20 pages. Anyone recommend a good app for making cheap / free overseas phone calls mostly to SA and Oz? Not bothered about any face-to-face stuff.

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#459 Re: There's an app for that?
May 01, 2012, 02:58:14 pm
If they're not on a computer/smartphone themselves then the cheapest option is likely to bung a few quid into a Skype account and use that on your phone (ideally over a WiFi connection otherwise its going to eat into your data allowance).  If they do have Skype then its free of course.

If the recipient has a smart phone too you could try out Voxer which I came across the other day.  Basically works like walkie-talkies (you have to say 'over' at the end of each sentence for the message to be sent :clown: ).  This would be free too,

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#460 Re: There's an app for that?
June 03, 2012, 05:37:28 pm
Checked out the MetOffice Application today and thought it was pretty nice, selection of rainfall, satelite, UV overlays, got location pretty quick & accurately without GPS too (likely down to a decent phone signal giving location away).

Also going to try out Onavo for monitoring net usage by application, see if there's anything being greedy.

Both from Guardian : Top 50 Android Apps, although don't bother with the paid for version of train times, National Rail do one (both paid and free), adverts in the free version aren't intrusive, but nor are they displayed when you use AdAway (requires root though).

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#461 Re: There's an app for that?
June 07, 2012, 08:00:24 am
For those with Farcebook accounts who would like to use an alternative to Tasker there is On{x} from M$.

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#462 Re: There's an app for that?
June 14, 2012, 11:23:31 am
Tor for Android in light of the UK Gov blindly pushing forward with snooping.

Caveat : Tor can be sloooow!

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#463 Re: There's an app for that?
July 02, 2012, 08:37:45 am
TVCatchup (Beta) currently free, all terrestrial channels streamed to your phone, lags a few seconds behind broadcast, but not bad at all (tested on Samsung Galaxy SII
Android 4.0).

If you don't already have it, and wish to continue using it grab Adobe Flash before 15th August 2012 when it will be removed from the Play store (perhaps useful as many sites might be slow in switching to html5).

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#464 Re: There's an app for that?
July 07, 2012, 10:02:12 am
ClimbCoach (Android version on its way).

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#465 Re: There's an app for that?
July 07, 2012, 10:16:45 am
Why is it the majority of android apps don't have a close button/function?

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#466 Re: There's an app for that?
July 07, 2012, 10:33:44 am
Cos you never need to close things in android?

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#467 Re: There's an app for that?
July 07, 2012, 02:40:28 pm

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#468 Re: There's an app for that?
July 07, 2012, 07:26:57 pm
Google Maps also now allows you download maps in (IIRC) a 12mile radius of a given location.

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#469 Re: There's an app for that?
July 08, 2012, 05:28:41 pm
This might be of use to the cyclists on here:

http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2012/07/05/android-app-offline-maps/

Looks good, lots of functions to play with and really smooth so far.

I was using Sustrans's The National Cycle Network previously, which is a real pain to download maps on and is a bit glitchy, but seems to have more routes than cycle streets version.

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#470 Re: There's an app for that?
July 11, 2012, 08:55:43 am
Looking into lost/stolen phone tracking/locating applications.

Seems Avast Security includes such features (it does harvest a fair bit of anonymous information though).

Also came across Plan B which doesn't require installation before losing your phone from the blurb.

Android Theft looks simple.

Any one got/tried or even had to use any that can give any endorsements?

This might be of use to the cyclists on here:

http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2012/07/05/android-app-offline-maps/

Looks good, lots of functions to play with and really smooth so far.

I was using Sustrans's The National Cycle Network previously, which is a real pain to download maps on and is a bit glitchy, but seems to have more routes than cycle streets version.

Posted in Google Shit, but Google Maps now supports cycle routes

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#471 Re: There's an app for that?
July 11, 2012, 03:32:42 pm
Androidlost was the first to work since the tweaks to Android which broke Where's my droid etc. It seems fine to me.

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#472 Re: There's an app for that?
July 11, 2012, 03:54:29 pm
Cheers, will check that out.

I do like the suggestion I read of setting up Tasker to Rick-roll upon receipt of an SMS with a key word in thus shaming the whoever found/stole the phone into returning it.  That would however require me to purchase a copy of said song though which I can't bring myself to do.

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#473 Re: There's an app for that?
July 11, 2012, 03:58:06 pm
Cheers, will check that out.

I do like the suggestion I read of setting up Tasker to Rick-roll upon receipt of an SMS with a key word in thus shaming the whoever found/stole the phone into returning it.  That would however require me to purchase a copy of said song though which I can't bring myself to do.

I set up a tasker profile but when they changed Android the permissions were no longer present to allow it to work fully. Not something you want to discover once your phone has been nicked.

Androidlost has loads of controls, get your SMS, brick your phone, crank up the volume and play a siren, post polite notices "please give my phone back",track it, use the camera etc.

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#474 Re: There's an app for that?
July 11, 2012, 04:03:34 pm
Had a poke around under Avast which I've already got installed for antivirus at lunch time and its got a lot of similar things.  The one feature it seems to lack is being able to control things from a WebUI you have to set it up to use messages from pre-defined phone numbers as far as I can tell (shame as whilst possible I would not like to be reliant on using my wife or someone else's phone).

 

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