[lukeh]

Thanks for all the browser knowledge. Chrome is a pleasure to use, best out of the lifehackers top 5, but no flash support.

Probably 'cause of HTML5s increasing prominence and use coupled with Adobe discontinuing flash for mobile.

Yea, a solid reason behind it, but sadly I seem to come across flash too often to ignore it yet... most notably the bbc.

[tommytwotone]

So having got my Nexus up and running, despite it meant to be coming with fifteen quid of Play credit I don't appear to have it.

Anyone managed to track it down word?

[slackline]

Of interest to some....40 tips & tricks for Nexus 7

[Jaspersharpe]

New Swype Beta:

http://forum.swype.com/showthread.php?6389-Next-Generation-Swype-Beta-June-2012-Details-inside

Freaky shit. It learns the sentences you write and predicts the next word. Also names etc, I wrote Boris in a text and it offered "Yeltsin" or "Johnson".

The whole thing is much smoother than the preinstalled version on my S2 (which wasn't exactly shabby itself). AMAZING. 

[Paul B]

whilst its no doubt great the swype beta gets on my nerves a bit taking up ~30% of my internal memory and forcing you to upgrade. If this one does the same I'll have to ditch it as it just won't fit.

If anyone saw my XBMC thread, the official XBMC remote is amazing allowing you to control "now playing", "playlists", volume etc. on your XBMC system. With clever add-ons and more than one instance of XBMC you can have sync'd music playing throughout the house/flat.

[Jaspersharpe]

whilst its no doubt great the swype beta gets on my nerves a bit taking up ~30% of my internal memory and forcing you to upgrade. If this one does the same I'll have to ditch it as it just won't fit.

Not massive, 17.75MB. The "proper" preinstalled version is almost twice as big.

[Paul B]

now looks at the installer too...

[Jaspersharpe]

Installer is 500KB? Whole thing still way less than any one of the four versions of Angry Birds I have on my phone purely for child quietening.

Swype is indispensable and the new one is another level.

[Paul B]

It was 13mb last time, I had to remove things, use it, remove it etc. I understand this is completely a limitation of my dumbphone, roll on March.

[butters]

The installer and the SWYPE package are two different things.

From memory the old US spelling version comes in at a smaller size (11.5MB?) as it doesn't have the Spanish variant included as well but it the down side is the really annoying Americanized spelling instead. No idea about the new variant as I am out of space on my HTC Desire - roll on end of month and a new shiny phone with a fuck load of app space. 

[slackline]

Putting this here as it requires a rooted Android 4.* phone and isn't a straight-forward app to install.

Google Now for rooted Android 4.* (ICS) phones

[chris j]

Ok, I'm a complete android luddite, just knowing enough to be dangerous, as exemplified by managing to soft-brick my Samsung Galaxy Tab while trying to upgrade from the Android 3.2 it came with to a semi-official 4.0 (the Odin update program crashed halfway through and left two partitions unformatted so I couldn't reinstall anything). Unbelievably Carphone Warehouse have been good enough to replace it so my question for anyone is can I backup a copy of the drive, similar to saving a PC hard drive image, so when I inevitably f*ck it up again I can just reload the image and start from scratch? If anyone can explain in English rather than the techno-babble they seem to use on the android forums then that would be awesome!

Cheers!

[Paul B]

yes, you need Clockworkrecoverymod installed, that allows you to make a system image just as you would a PC.

Unfortunately to install it you need Root access, this may or may not be straightforward. A quick google suggests Z4 root from Marketplace should do the trick.

[chris j]

Thanks for that Paul. Seems straightforward now I've had a chance to look into it. Bit weird every device seeming to have its own version of the software given most of them have probably got 90% the same hardware inside...

[slackline]

Thanks for that Paul. Seems straightforward now I've had a chance to look into it. Bit weird every device seeming to have its own version of the software given most of them have probably got 90% the same hardware inside...

Thats because each manufacturer has their own Android overlay (Samsung == TouchWiz; HTC == Sense etc. etc.).

If phones/tablets come from carriers such as Vodafone, T-Mobile/Orange, Three etc. then ontop of that the carrier places overlays and often make it awkward to root your phone and then do what you want with it.

Its a good reason to just buy your devices out-right yourself.

[chris j]

Its a good reason to just buy your devices out-right yourself.

I've done that for a few years, but more because I'm tight and on a sim-only deal for £7 a month since I realised phones last longer than a year and I really don't need to be paying the network £xx a month for the privilege of a 'free' upgrade every year. (but that's a whole different thread...)

[Bubba]

May be of use to someone. I've just been playing with this and it's handy if you want to play some Android games on your PC or to use particular apps.  I suspect it's of limited use apart from games but I've found it handy to run my interval trainer app on the PC, freeing up the phone for other tasks when training.

Bluestacks Android emulator  Works on PC & Apple (ha! run Android apps on your Mac!) and possibly Linux via Wine (have not investigated any further than seeing a reference)

Once installed on the desktop, it's pretty easy to install the companion app on your phone and sync any required apps to your computer.

It's still in beta so don't expect the most polished thing ever...

[slackline]

Bluestacks Android emulator  Works on PC & Apple (ha! run Android apps on your Mac!) and possibly Linux via Wine (have not investigated any further than seeing a reference)

Native solution (for the hordes of Linux users!)

[Bubba]

That looks more like a development emulator - Bluestacks allows you to run apps fullscreen rather than just on an picture of your phone

[slackline]

Ah, ok.  Will post details if I find anything similar.

[slackline]

XBMC ported to Android 

[slackline]

XBMC ported to Android 

Runs ok on Samsung Galaxy S2, not tested/played with it extensively yet though, but it picks up my NAS and other media servers, streams music & video (although one thing I did notice is if media sound was already muted whilst you could control the volume within XBMC it didn't restore levels, minor though).

[slackline]

Anyone with a Samsung device that has an Exynos processor (see the article for a list of devices) might want to use Chainfires Exynos App to patch the kernel exploit (at the same time it roots your device, although its simple to unroot from within the application too).  More background information here.

[tomtom]

Anyone with a Samsung device that has an Exynos processor (see the article for a list of devices) might want to use Chainfires Exynos App to patch the kernel exploit (at the same time it roots your device, although its simple to unroot from within the application too).  More background information here.

It didnt make any sense to me in Afrikaans either..

Enigiemand met 'n Samsung-toestel wat 'n Exynos verwerker (sien die artikel vir 'n lys van toestelle) wil dalk Chainfires Exynos App te gebruik om die kern ontgin (op dieselfde tyd wat dit wortels jou toestel te pleister, hoewel sy maklik om te uitroei van binne dieaansoek ook). Meer agtergrond inligting hier.

[slackline]

There's a bug in the kernel for devices with these processors that is easy to exploit (particularly if you used cracked apps).  This fixes it as Samsung and all subsequent carriers are dragging their heels.