Let's talk about DeX - Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 Guides, News, & Discussion

Moving from Tab S2 to S4 there were a lot of changes to get used to, some good, some bad. A good change was the S-Pen. At first I thought it was a waste of time. It was very awkward for me at first, but now I use it almost all the time.
I'm wondering if DeX is another "awkward change". I've played with DeX for a few minutes at a time on my TV with and without an external keyboard and mouse, but not much on the tablet by itself. Nothing has jumped out as superior in touchscreen / tablet mode. I'll say it does work better with a keyboard and mouse, especially for Microsoft Office products that utilize "right click". But here, I'm talking about touch screen / S-Pen, no external keyboard, mouse, or display.
Does anyone use DeX as their primary tablet mode? If so please post what you think is better for DeX vs stock Android. Why are you running in DeX!, and what are the advantages & benefits you are getting?
As an experiment, I'm going to try using the tablet in DeX mode for a week. I'm sure there will be times I have to revert to stock Android, but I'll post again next Saturday to say what I've learned.
Thanks,
Joe

I've been running SystemUI Tuner beta for about 10 days - since my Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 was upgraded to Pie. I missed the WiFi indicator. So I established permissions and had everything working. The SystemUI status app was always running because it is Samsung. In DeX, I had Moon+ Reader open but minimized, Firefox Beta downloading a file and was opening ES File Explorer when SystemUI went bat-crap crazy. It started opening instance after instance and froze the screen. After a few minutes it went blackscreen with the DeX logo. The power button wouldn't reboot it. After another 5 minutes or so,it popped up a message that SystemUI was not responding. Eventually it was able to reboot and I uninstalled SystemUI.
I'd really like to get the WiFi indicator back to the status bar, but I'm nervous to risk turning it back on. It was terrifying when I was locked an couldn't reboot. I sent an email to the SystemUI administrator.
Very scary experience only a few hours into my DeX marathon.
Joe

So I gave it up on day three. Too many things missing.
1) No widgets. We've had two thunderstorms with hail since Sunday. The AccuWeather widget is too important to miss. You can use Dex Max to float widgets over open windows, but not what I'm after.
2) No icon packs. I like my icons. My desktop wallpaper is admitantly busy - a photo of a brook in Maine. It is hard to read the white labels under the icons, and I can't see a way to change the text color.
3) Locked on the default Samsung keyboard. I'm a SwiftKey user.
4) One desktop. I'm a product development engineer at a semiconductor company. At work, I have four screens on my PC. not only does this give me the ability to have multiple open documents, it gives me four desktops. The only time I'm limited to a single desktop is when traveling with my laptop.
5) Can't use extended desktop with HDMI
6) Multiple apps have problems running in DeX without being maximized. Some of this may be due to forcing apps to resize.
7) I think there could be memory issues. When switching out of DeX, every app I used while in Dex. Would be open in the recent apps windows. After a long session there were more than 30 open apps, all that I had closed in Dex.
Anyhow, it took 2-1/2 days to lose patience.
Take care,
Joe

Yeap, the random stuck screen...I had that just recently.couldnt shut down or force shut down for some time.
Also some apps wont resize at all in DeX, which is a huge pain when watching a movie and doing emails as an example.
At this point I'm using the regular screen, bonded mode.
I like widgets.
I like my swipe up and down actions.
I like my easy to get to bluetooth and wifi toggles.
I like resizing the screens to what ever size I want.
I like minimizing process.
I hope DeX gets an update, right now its not very useful for me.
KC

DeX is not meant to enhance the tablet experience but rather provide the user with a desktop-like experience for those occasions where the user would prefer to work that way....say on a bigger screen with and external keyboard and mouse for limited business/professional applications or to develop in Linux.
Works pretty good for word processing, spreadsheets and photo editing. Media consumption, just use plain Android.

bill-e said:
Works pretty good for word processing, spreadsheets and photo editing. Media consumption, just use plain Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish I could use it for word processing, but I discovered that Word can't open two files at the same time and copy/paste from one to another. This made dex almost useless for me
Inviato dal mio SM-T830 utilizzando Tapatalk

gabripranzo said:
I wish I could use it for word processing, but I discovered that Word can't open two files at the same time and copy/paste from one to another. This made dex almost useless for me
Inviato dal mio SM-T830 utilizzando Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try Libreoffice under Linux on DeX. Works great and can have many documents open.

bill-e said:
Try Libreoffice under Linux on DeX. Works great and can have many documents open.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but it's a bit complicated. I have Office 365 and I wish I could use it both at work (Windows) and when I have my tablet with dex. I think Samsung and Microsoft should work together to make android a platform which can really be used for business, which unfortunately it is not yet, even with dex.
Inviato dal mio SM-T830 utilizzando Tapatalk

I think Office on DeX is much more usable than the stock Android version. If you have a mouse. I don't understand why right-click copy / paste is anathema to stock Android. I totally agree that you should be able to open multiple documents for all the Office programs. And multiple Abobe Acrobat pdf files. It's crazy you have to open files in two different apps to have two of a type open.
Hooking up to a TV is clunky - you need the power, adaptor, bulky HDMI cable, not conveniently done. And no extended desktop. The S4 is big enough I've stopped using my laptop to remote in to my PC at work - Microsoft Remote Desktop works fine on the S4. DeX should be as good.
I've kept playing some with DeX - Desktop Browser by the same developer who does Desktop Hub, lets you open multiple browser windows - awesome feature, worth a couple-three bucks for the paid version. I may get the Pro version of Desktop Hub too, to try the start menu feature - is anyone using it? It is more expensive than the browser... $10 I think...

It has been a few months (well, more than a few months), but I have some more observations.
Quirks and oddities
So first, I now have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. It is interesting to me that the mouse seems locked to the DeX monitor, but the keyboard is active on both the DeX monitor and tablet. I have video playing on the DeX monitor and the mouse is locked to it, but I am typing this message on a browser on my tablet. It seem the keyboard follows active input windows.
Second, I found a nice perk. So I like to read on my tablet while sports is running on the TV. Typically, this is casting the Indians onto the TV via Foxsportsgo and chromecast. Browns games are harder. To get the Browns I usually need to got to streaming sites that are stuffed with pop-ups and ad bait. The best way to get video going is to use a good ad-blocking browser, and I haven't found one with built in cast. So you either need to mirror the screen (and not run other programs) or run it on the tablet. Some video sources let you run in split screen mode, others don't. So best case I end up with the game on the top third of my tablet and the book two-thirds of the screen below. Relatedly mirroring the screen, unless things have changed, is garbage -- either casting or HDMI. Casting gives the message "not optimized for mirroring".
So I tried today connecting via DeX and running Firefox Beta with ad blockers streaming an NFL game on the TV, and reading my book on my tablet, and voila! Works well!
Let me know if anyone else has found anything new.
Joe

This all may only be interesting to me, but I'll keep posting anyways ?
So two new observations :
1) DeX for Windows does _not_ work with the Tab S4. Of course, they say it only currently works for the S10, but I tried it anyways.
2) New feature in Outlook for Android inside of DeX - you can open multiple emails in separate, independent windows. Very nice festure.
Joe

Related

Word processing and samsung keyboard dock

What is a good/the best program to use for word processing? Id like to use the tab as a substitute to my laptop for a lot of my word processing.
What is a good/the best program to use for word processing? Id like to use the tab as a substitute to my laptop for a lot of my word processing.
Also, has anyone tried the Samsung keyboard dock? It is a bit pricey. Does it offer anything beyond the keyboard, such as ports, etc? Any real advantage to it over a Motorola Bluetooth keyboard, or even a universal Microsoft one?
What type of features are you looking for in Word Processing?
Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk
Comparison of the major word processing apps available:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1017187
As for the dock or bt keyboard, I'd probably go for the bt setup. The dock seems to be a bit cumbersome to be carrying around everywhere.
Is the docks only added benefit is that it charges the tablet?
cdf3 said:
What type of features are you looking for in Word Processing?
Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As close to Microsoft office as I can achieve. Compatibility with office is important as well.
BlueGoldAce said:
As close to Microsoft office as I can achieve. Compatibility with office is important as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use Documents To Go, and Quick Office HD.
I can pretty much open and create any word document, that will in turn open up just fine on my computer.
The same pretty much applies for documents that were created on my computer.
I have come across a few documents created from a computer that had advanced features, that did not work too well.
For the most part, it can handle all of the basics.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk
I noticed today using quick office hd that on large documents there is severe lag when typing.... Real serious. Is this a problem with the app or lack of power in the tab?
So it appears that this is a problem with docx files, and present across apps and devices. A 25 page docx file causes unusable lag, while a 120 page doc file is perfectly smooth.

[NST][Home replacement] EpubBrowser [11/04/2012]

Hi,
I did up a home replacement for my Nook simple touch, thought I would share it. This is an initial release, no doubt there are bugs, incompatibilities, etc, you were warned. There are no checks for other devices at this point, NST only.
Thanks to the nook community for the noogie.img file, touch nooter, and relaunch for source code ideas and various threads regarding quick refresh and e-ink support.
Disclaimer: Now, what I am using currently is the bare minimum, I have tried quite a bit of the work in this forum and it works well, but I wasn't satisfied or 100% confident and I wanted less installed. So, I restored my nook to stock, used noogie and copied over a rooted ramdisk. That was it, no touchcolortools, nooktouchtools installed, adw minimal this or that, or button saviors. I am sure they are great programs but I don't know enough about them or have the interest/time to do research on them to want to keep them installed.
For me, the point is to keep things simple and maintain battery life. It's an e-reader not a tablet after all. I just want to read books, check email, check a website or two, get some more use out of wi-fi since I don't live in a B&N supported nation.
​To install:adb install EPubBrowser.apk
Optional:
I also installed Email.apk and set up my gmail from there, no certificates required or a million google app files and plucking a chicken on a Tuesday after jumping on your left foot crap. No offense to those who like chicken plucking.
adb install Email.apk
Done and done.
I can do up a CWM zip upon request, but last going off I have a continuous reboot after installing the latest version and if you know enough to get the Nook's CWM installed you should be able to use adb.​See attached files.
What is not working:
Since Android doesn't really know about multiple external storage locations (at least for the Nook's 2.1 and/or my knowledge of android) EPubBrowser is unable to detect when the internal storage has been remounted, there is no notification of that, just notification of external storage. So if you plug in your usb cord to the computer the list of books will be empty even when you remove it. So if you don't have an sdcard you will have to hit the back button and launch home again to refresh.
Also, B&N books are not listed, whatever is in My Files will be scanned only. That applies to internal and sdcard storage. You can still use B&N's Library to access those.
I don't have any option of uninstalling apps either. adb uninstall works fine or you can just delete files from /data/app via adb shell.
What is working:
Launch of EPubBrowser via nook's home button, without use of nooktouchtools, it duplicates how the B&N home app works.
The notification icon for resuming reading goes through the app. As long as the book was launched from EPubBrowser it can remember the last book, otherwise the main display will show up. Reason being that for whatever reason the last page read doesn't work with the B&N home screen if it's not a book bought from B&N. But if you are just using the B&N Reader app it's not a problem.
When you are prompted which home you want you can select EPubBrowser and hit default. This may not stay set and will go away the next time you reboot.
How to use:Left / right swipes to go to the next 6, previous 6 books, no indication of the current page is displayed, (e-ink and aesthetics).
Touch a book cover to launch a description of the book, swipe up and down to scroll through the description, touch the cover displayed there to start reading. Hit back button on top of screen to exit without launching a book.
To bring up the list of apps installed, swipe a clockwise circle starting at 10 O'clock. Touch an app to launch it, left or right swipe to go back to main screen.​That's it for now.
If you have any ideas for improvements, bug reports, please provide as much detail as possible, and when you have done that add some more detail.
Cheers!
Updates:
2/19/2012:
Added screensaver for last read book. (Jpeg 75%) Settings->Display->Screensavers->EPubBrowser
11/4/2012:
Added src project
Looks nice! I'll give it a shot later when my Nook's charged.
Thank you for making and sharing, i am going to try tomorrow and tell you,
Improvements
First of all, thank you for creating this cool launch screen. I love the simplicity of it. Here are is brief list of improvement that you can perhaps easily implement.
-When on the homescreen with the covers of all the books, I am not sure if I am suppose to scroll down or to the right to view the rest of my books.
-When on the page with the details from the book, there is no back button to take you back to the homescreen. I end up using the button savior back button.
-The circle gesture that takes you to the apps does not feel very responsive to me.
Anyhow, great job. Can't wait to see how you plan on improving it
OW MY EYES
I installed this, and everything just kept flashing. GO Locker and GO Launcher are both broken, and the only way I could fix it was by getting into ADW and closing the task. Did I install it incorrectly? I put it onto an SD card and used ES File Manager to install it.
ChunC said:
First of all, thank you for creating this cool launch screen. I love the simplicity of it. Here are is brief list of improvement that you can perhaps easily implement.
-When on the homescreen with the covers of all the books, I am not sure if I am suppose to scroll down or to the right to view the rest of my books.
-When on the page with the details from the book, there is no back button to take you back to the homescreen. I end up using the button savior back button.
-The circle gesture that takes you to the apps does not feel very responsive to me.
Anyhow, great job. Can't wait to see how you plan on improving it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback.
You swipe left to go to the previous page of books. You swipe right to go to the next page of books, assuming you have more than 6 books. Personally, I know what books I have on the device so it's not a problem knowing how many are left to see for me.
The back button should be on top of the screen in the middle, not sure why it wouldn't be there on yours. I will give it a think, maybe remove the scroll control in the book description and just use gesture detection and scroll the text via code.
Responsiveness and speed will likely improve over time, I am using the gesture library, maybe there are some optimizations there I can do.
Cheers!
Googie2149 said:
OW MY EYES
I installed this, and everything just kept flashing. GO Locker and GO Launcher are both broken, and the only way I could fix it was by getting into ADW and closing the task. Did I install it incorrectly? I put it onto an SD card and used ES File Manager to install it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Noted, so it doesn't work with GO Lancher/Locker. Never tried GO stuff, so that wasn't tested. It was tested with ADW and relaunch, and I had all the rest of your typical touch nooter install there without problems, android market, etc.
I have run it with Home.apk renamed to Home.apk.bak and that works fine as well.
As for your other question, if it is installed it is installed, there are no configurations to modify, however you get it there it should be fine.
Cheers!
WANT
Noted that it does not work with go, will have to get rid of that first.
From the screenshots, I can already tell you put time into polishing! Good job!
NFHimself said:
Hi,
Noted, so it doesn't work with GO Lancher/Locker. Never tried GO stuff, so that wasn't tested. It was tested with ADW and relaunch, and I had all the rest of your typical touch nooter install there without problems, android market, etc.
I have run it with Home.apk renamed to Home.apk.bak and that works fine as well.
As for your other question, if it is installed it is installed, there are no configurations to modify, however you get it there it should be fine.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll try it again without the GO software, but it was making everything just keep flashing, like the lock screen.
@NFHimself, any plans for taking this to github? It is very close to what I always wanted but I was also looking for:
- some kind of usage of Calibre data
- library filtering for series, highly rated, etc.
- tracking of books that are clicked to maintain sort of recent read filter
- sorting options by rating, series, and other Calibre properties
- option to display 6 or 12 (smaller) book covers.
I hope it already does use intents for selecting a different epub reader for those who have no defaults and multiple ones installed.
I know its a long list, and I have some Android experience. I am sure there would be other developers here so a combined effort might help.
Screenshots looks good, but on the Nook - only flashing screen like Googie2149 said
tazzix said:
@NFHimself, any plans for taking this to github? It is very close to what I always wanted but I was also looking for:
- some kind of usage of Calibre data
- library filtering for series, highly rated, etc.
- tracking of books that are clicked to maintain sort of recent read filter
- sorting options by rating, series, and other Calibre properties
- option to display 6 or 12 (smaller) book covers.
I hope it already does use intents for selecting a different epub reader for those who have no defaults and multiple ones installed.
I know its a long list, and I have some Android experience. I am sure there would be other developers here so a combined effort might help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I use Calibre as well, I just connect via adb and calibre picks up the nook and I copy books over and it converts on the fly, cool program. Using Calibre data is an idea worth looking into, if I can fit it into the theme of no preferences, no extra buttons or config. There are plenty of those kind of home apps already. Relaunch for one is great, just missing a graphical front end, I was going to mod that, but decided that I didn't really need so much stuff and I wanted to learn more android API.
I did up the app using pretty straight forward epub standards (note the plural), it works with most epubs I have run across, not sure if looking for extra xml is a good functionality vs performance tradeoff. I haven't been using EPubBrowser for very long myself, so when I add more books and find something annoying I will probably make changes to fix it. I want to keep things simple, if I need a preferences menu, it is already going the wrong way.
I am not specifying any class, just a regular launch this epub file intent, so it should work with any reader. I like the stock reader myself, cool reader seems to dislike some epubs I have above a certain size, and I didn't want to deal with it.
I may github it, I am kinda time limited these days.
Cheers!
AgentSlash said:
Screenshots looks good, but on the Nook - only flashing screen like Googie2149 said
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
More details are needed to figure that out. What device do you have? What do you have installed on it?
Cheers!
I just wiped then manually rooted my Nook, and this works now. Although I'm having some trouble with getting to the apps page after the first time I did it. Could you possible change how you get to the apps page? Maybe change it so you have to click the menu key to get to apps.
Edit: Now that I've added my books, it shows me two books, one empty, and another book. Now it just flashes and removes/re-adds the last book. :/
Edit 2: I found that there are a few books that just don't like this launcher and cause the entire Nook to start flashing. I've been adding my books one by one to see which work and which don't and I'll try and find similarities between those that don't.
Great launcher replacement.
Running right now, but after the second page, I get sent back to the first, regardless of left-to-right or right-to-left swiping. Ideas?
Also, any chance for a page up/down use for scrolling through books?
I took a quick vid. It looks like when I swipe again from R to L, it tries to redraw the next books, but gets confused?
http://youtu.be/K1ukWFK0syg
ace7196 said:
Great launcher replacement.
Running right now, but after the second page, I get sent back to the first, regardless of left-to-right or right-to-left swiping. Ideas?
Also, any chance for a page up/down use for scrolling through books?
I took a quick vid. It looks like when I swipe again from R to L, it tries to redraw the next books, but gets confused?
http://youtu.be/K1ukWFK0syg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I'm busy painting the baby's room, but it looks like it is resetting, perhaps one of your books is crashing the app and it is being relaunched as the home screen. Or could be some other bug, how many books are involved, if you remove one or add one, does it go away?
If someone could open the e-pub (it's a zip file) that causes the error and paste the contents of the .odf file (it's an xml file) , that would help.
Cheers!
NFHimself said:
Hi,
I'm busy painting the baby's room, but it looks like it is resetting, perhaps one of your books is crashing the app and it is being relaunched as the home screen. Or could be some other bug, how many books are involved, if you remove one or add one, does it go away?
If someone could open the e-pub (it's a zip file) that causes the error and paste the contents of the .odf file (it's an xml file) , that would help.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've gone through and removed / added ebooks, and still the same problem.
Sorry, been kinda busy.
I need to be able to see the bug on my end to work on it. Maybe I've been lucky with the book selections I have made or converting using Calibre has set them all to have the same kind of format, vs the variety you might see in the wild from multiple sources.
Does the error happen with no books?
What happens when you have just one book?
How many books do you have on your nook? (If it's something like 1000 then yeah, maybe you'd have issues, no checks in the code for being out of memory.)
What firmware are you using?
Are there any hardware differences? (Can't imagine that being a problem, but I am using a NST, not the original Nook.)
What can I do to reproduce this error on my end? What are the steps?
Cheers!
NFHimself said:
Sorry, been kinda busy.
I need to be able to see the bug on my end to work on it. Maybe I've been lucky with the book selections I have made or converting using Calibre has set them all to have the same kind of format, vs the variety you might see in the wild from multiple sources.
Does the error happen with no books?
What happens when you have just one book?
How many books do you have on your nook? (If it's something like 1000 then yeah, maybe you'd have issues, no checks in the code for being out of memory.)
What firmware are you using?
Are there any hardware differences? (Can't imagine that being a problem, but I am using a NST, not the original Nook.)
What can I do to reproduce this error on my end? What are the steps?
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, it doesn't matter how many books I have, it's just a few specific books that crash, independent of the other books in my library, and some books are more severe than others (one makes the entire Nook start flashing (all software), others make only this app flash).
I have the same problem as the people above but I can't get past the first page. I can't seem to narrow it down to a certain book making it crash. It's a shame I love this home screen, but hopefully we can get this fixed and running great.

Not quite what I was hoping...

I use my 17 inch laptop (Windows 7) all day and wondered a long time if a tablet could work as an occasional laptop replacement for conference trips, working on documents at a cafe, etc. So far, the a100 has been great for email, netflix, music, calendar, fb, and the like. But it just comes up short for Word-like functions (typing, editing, PowerPoint and pdf's). I have bought Docs To Go, trialed Quickoffice, use Kingsoft, but they are all so clumsy and awkward. I don't think the formatting is very good on any of them. I use a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard, so typing isn't really an issue, but the apps are so limited. A tablet so far just hasn't been what I hoped for, or adequate to occasionally replace my laptop in the main use I wanted it for. Other than that, for the most part, I really like the a100.
Does anyone else share my experience/perspective?
Would going to a larger tablet help (don't really want to, but would be willing to consider it)?
Any opinions??
More simply, would a larger tablet work better typing Ms Word compatible documents? Anyone have this experience?
Ptackley said:
More simply, would a larger tablet work better typing Ms Word compatible documents? Anyone have this experience?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Larger or smaller, you'll still be limited by the quirky app workarounds, at least for MS Office. You CAN use the web UI for MS Office offered through MS's SkyDrive. Works great. Still isn't exactly like a full inatll of Office but it's really close... Much closer than the 3rd party apps.
Sent from my A100 using Tapatalk
I'll leave this right here.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/103876278794381402383/posts/JM1u4aokm1t
Tx Redneck,
i went to download Onlive Desktop and it says 'Your device isn't compatible with this item'. I think it requires a 10" inch screen minimum for compression. At least that is what I read by one user.
How did you get it to work on the a100?
I downloaded the apk from the website and works nicely. A greaaaat app.
Ok, I finally downloaded it and now to learn how to use it. Thanks for the suggestion!
If you are doing a hard core word, spreadsheet or presentation editing no tablet can satisfy you even large or small even with ipad premium apps. Maybe wait till a stable windows 8 powered tablet is released.
If Im in your place and I will need to make an occationally hard core editing I'll Just leave my 17 inch laptop on and connected in the internet then I'll just use Team viewer to remotely controll it and do the editing I needed.
Sent from my A100 using Tapatalk

Bluetooth Mouse functionality questions

For those of you with the 2014 edition who have used a bluetooth mouse, what does the right click do?
Hey all,
I posted the following question on another thread about a specific bluetooth mouse, and didn't get a response so I figured I'd give it another try with a general post.
I use my samsung devices (Galaxy S1, Tab 10 v1, Note 10 2012 edition, and lately an S4) for connecting to work using the citrix thin client. (In addition to all the other things that make the samsung devices great)
One of the problems I've had since samsung moved to jellybean and beyond is the mouse support. Ice cream and prior, when using a bt mouse, the right click seemed to be ignored by the os, or didn't do anything different than the left click unless you were in a app that supported it. Specifically, passing on a right click command in remote desktop to the session.
After JB, the right click on a mouse seems to have been mapped at the OS level to the 'back' function. This makes using a samsung android device as my thin terminal very difficult, as you still need right click on a lot of standard desktop apps. When I'm connected to my remote desktop, and use the right-click the applications prompts to exit. I don't think the right click ever even gets passed along.
(If you want to know irony, pre JB the mouse worked fine, but CTRL and ALT keypresses were ignored by the Os. try going without easy cut and paste for a day when you work with spreadsheets a lot. )
Anyway, my question is, for those of you with the 2014 edition who have used a bluetooth mouse, what does the right click do?
I'm sending in my 2012 edition to amazon for a trade in, and I'm seriously thinking about getting the 2014 10 or the new 12.2 monster, but if the 12.2 is going to be $1k, I might as well go with a surface pro device for now.
If you're still reading, thanks, I know I've gone on a bit. I've struggled with this issue for a while and it makes it very difficult for me to travel lightly. I can use my android devices in a pinch, but man does it drive me nuts when I need to right click on something and can't Try it sometime. You'll throw your mouse across the godderned room. If you happen to know of any other workarounds for this issue, feel free to make my day.
Right click brings me back, it is annoying when I'm browsing the Web and I want to open a link in a new tab.
I do use "jump" for rdp and it does pass the right click through the session. I have "pocket cloud" as well if you would like me to check that as well.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk
pozer69 said:
Right click brings me back, it is annoying when I'm browsing the Web and I want to open a link in a new tab.
I do use "jump" for rdp and it does pass the right click through the session. I have "pocket cloud" as well if you would like me to check that as well.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk
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Thank you, unfortunately I don't have a choice for my remote desktop client as it's a corporate thing. So it appears that the jump client you are using is blocking that default function and forcing the right click.. interesting. I would be interested to know if pocket cloud does the same, but only anecdotally.
I hate the 'back' functionality of google's mouse support. I cannot find any way to adjust it. Heck, turning it off would be an improvement.

NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Box Review Or: How I learned to dislike the Shield TV

I’d like to start off by saying some of these views are totally personal to me, and how I use these kind of boxes day to day. I have been looking at the NVIDIA Shield TV 16gb model, with the controller and remote.
The Shield TV is right at the top of list of Android TV boxes, it has the spec and the features to make it a future proof Android TV box. The Tegra X1 makes it incredibly fast and snappy. I found myself clicking around with ease, without a single stutter.
The initial setup was easy, once turned on, I did a couple of updates and was logged straight into the Shield TV home screen. This leanback launcher can only be controlled with the “dpad” on either the controller or the remote. There are various rows, including suggestions, Nvidia apps and your own downloaded apps. The suggestion row is bizarre, as I have no idea what the recommendations are based on. I can alter what sources are used (Youtube, Google TV/Movies etc), but the recommendation engine isn’t very good.
Installing apps is easy, but this may be due to the lack of apps you can download. I found very little of my daily driver apps to download, and had to resort to second or even third rate alternatives. This isn’t really NVIDIA’s fault, as this is more an issue with Android TV. Apps have to be compatible and made for the “leanback” generation. Apps like Solid Explorer, TTorrent, and Transdroid are always installed on any Android box, but I was unable to here.
There are ways around these app limitations, involving sideloading, and alternative launchers. But I just want to install an app and use it, I don’t want to have to turn around the box so it’s facing east, wait till the time includes a 9 and then chant whilst installing an APK file! This may be a slight exaggeration though.
Though I was happy to see Kodi and SPMC were compatible. Though SPMC is the only one which utilising the passthrough audio correctly. So I installed SPMC, and plugged in my external HDD and started updating. Now came another issue, I always delete the files via SPMC after watching, and set it to physically delete the file. This has worked on even the worst Android boxes, but on the Shield TV it didn’t. The app would “delete”, yet when I went back and updated, the show/movie came back. After some Googling I found this was a common problem for a lot of people.
I ended up installing one of the two FTP servers on the TV app store, and connected via FTP. Selected the file, delete, but just got back an error! This again was a widely reported issue, and I ended up having to install ES File Explorer (Ugh!) and delete the file that way. Finally I was able to do it. But this was after a couple of hours of research. That was one of the big nails in the coffin for me.
I even reported this to the NVIDIA support team, and they weren’t very helpful. I was passed around a lot, and was sent to level 2 support about 3 times, only to be told to do something I had initially told support I had done!
I am so glad I got the box with the remote, as I was getting annoying navigating around with the bulky controller. I would of liked the remote to be included, and the controller to be sold separately, though I can see why as there is the gaming element.
Now speaking of games, I was massively impressed with the SHIELD games app. There is a long list of games you can play, some for free and some have to be purchases, you check them all out here shield.nvidia.com/games/android
Playing Batman Arkham City, I didn’t notice a single bit of lag in the controls. They were quick and easy to pick up, and felt just like a console game. This alone is a great feature, and I would totally buy a lower priced box, if it just offered this feature and nothing else.
I was happy to see that the thumb sticks on the controller could act like a mouse, but only on some apps. This was my next issue, I use an app called TTorrent, as it does exactly what I want, but this cannot be navigated with the remote or the controller. So now I had to get a bluetooth mouse, which works, but I am now using 3 bloody controllers to navigate one box. Why not give the remote air mouse properties, and then everything would be great.
If they released just a console version of this, for £129 then I would probably buy it. But for what I used my Android boxes for, and how I use them, this box is just too restricted to work into my life. That’s not to say it won’t be awesome for the other 99% of the people out there, this is just my opinion.
http://droidhorizon.com/nvidia-shield-android-tv-box-review/
I cant tell you how many cuss word filled rants I've started typing in the google and nvidia feedback activities expressing many of these same feelings. Sometimes I even avoid messing with it altogether just to prevent the rage I feel about some of the implementations (or deliberate omittance of) by google who for whatever reason decided to cripple these devices with whatever nonsense ideas they have in their heads when they are making their decisions about what the "leanback" experience should be like. Maybe it makes a little sense to limit some parts of Android Auto but I cant believe what I'm seeing in my living room. Its absurd. Then I just delete it like a good end user and try to focus on the things that it does do really well. The device itself is awesome but being a tinkerer makes for a lot of frustration and it totally blows my mind seeing what I think is a perfect example of the direction I think google intends to take with the Android OS

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