Hey guys, new to Android. First time ever last night when I got the mytouch slide. So I have a few questions that may make veterans laugh...
1. Why does it seem like there are a bunch of things running on my phone that I don't want running or ever use? Is there a way to kill them like with Task Manager on WinMo?
2. Is there's a setting that stops things from always being connected and draining battery? Amazon mp3 store I didn't even ever open and I see it in Running Services. How is that possible? Maybe I'm not understanding something?
3. When you back out of an app, is it closed? Or still running?
4. Any way to COMPLETELY delete certain apps from the phone?
THANK YOU GUYS!
Yes there's a task killer check market,in addition you can go to settings,applications,manage applications and end services yourself.that answers your 1st 3 questions,on to question 4.you cannot currently uninstall preloaded apps but if and when the phone gets rooted you will be able to remove them through adb or terminal.in addition eventually after this phone gets rooted people will create custom roms that won't come preloaded with all that bloatware.
Jerzeeloon is right, but I'm going to add some detail since you said you were new to Android.
1. Why does it seem like there are a bunch of things running on my phone that I don't want running or ever use?
THERE ARE.
Is there a way to kill them like with Task Manager on WinMo?
SORT OF. ASSUMING YOU HAVEN'T ADDED ANY OTHER TYPE OF MANAGEMENT APP, YOU CAN USE ASTRO WHICH IS PRE-INSTALLED. OPEN UP YOUR APP DRAWER AND SELECT ASTRO. ONCE OPEN, HIT THE PHYSICAL MENU BUTTON AND SELECT TOOLS, THEN PROCESS MANAGER. FOR NOW, I WOULD ONLY USE THE APPS TAB AND YOU CAN CLOSE OUT RUNNING SERVICES THIS WAY. YOU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAD ADVANCED TASK MANAGER OR ADVANCED TASK KILLER WHICH WILL ASSIST IN THIS PROCESS. BOTH ARE GOOD, TRY THEM AND CHOOSE WHICH YOU LIKE BEST. MANY SERVICES MAY BE RUNNING THAT SEEMS TO BE NON-USED, BUT ARE ACTUALLY WORKING WITH SOMETHING ELSE OR ARE RUNNING IDLE OR IN BACKGROUND.
2. Is there's a setting that stops things from always being connected and draining battery?
WHILE A FANTASTIC PHONE, THE SENSE USER INTERFACE AND TMOBILE BOTH RUN MANY APPS THAT WE INDIVIDUALLY MAY NOT WANT OR USE. FOR INSTANCE, I USE HANDCENT FOR TEXT AND K9 IN PLACE OF THE STOCK MAIL (NOT GMAIL). SO I GO TO SETTINGS-APPLICATIONS-MANAGE APPLICATIONS AND ENTER INTO THESE APPS WHICH I DON'T USE AND IF THEY ARE RUNNING, HAVE A 'FORCE STOP' OPTION. AS LONG AS ANOTHER APP ISN'T SOMEHOW USING IT OR YOU'VE SET DEFAULTS TO A DIFFERENT APP, THEN IT SHOULD STAY CLOSED/NON-RUNNING. I ALSO DID THIS WITH FRIENDSTREAM, PEEP, FACEBOOK, ETC WHICH I DON'T USE ON THIS PHONE. YOU SHOULDN'T REALLY NEED TO USE A TASK MANAGER VERY OFTEN. YOU'LL GET DIFFERING REPORTS FROM USERS; SOME SAY THEY 'END ALL' SEVERAL TIMES DAILY, SOME SAY THEY NEVER USE IT. I PREFER SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE THOUGH I NEVER 'END ALL'. THIS JUST FORCES ALL THE APPS THAT NEED TO BE RUNNING TO RESTART WHICH IS NOT USUALLY NECESSARY. MORE LATER...
Amazon mp3 store I didn't even ever open and I see it in Running Services. How is that possible? Maybe I'm not understanding something?
I'M PERPLEXED BY THIS, TOO. BUT I'M NOT A DEVELOPER OR CODER, SO WHAT DO I KNOW?
3. When you back out of an app, is it closed? Or still running?
FROM WHAT I'VE READ, SOME APPS WILL CLOSE WHEN YOU BACK ALL THE WAY OUT. SOME WILL CLOSE WHEN YOU LEAVE THE APP (BY HITTING HOME). SOME WON'T CLOSE AT ALL; WHICH IS THE "MORE LATER". THIS IS THE SCENARIO THAT I USE TASK MANAGERS (TM). IF I'M IN AND OUT OF MULTIPLE APPS IN A PORTION OF DAY, I MAY OPEN UP A TM AND CLOSE SOME OF THOSE APPS, I.E. MAPS, ASTRO, TASK MGR, HANDCENT, ALOQA, ETC. BE CAREFUL TO NOT CLOSE OUT APPS THAT ARE SET UP TO SYNC, LIKE YOUR MAIL APPS.
4. Any way to COMPLETELY delete certain apps from the phone?
NOT THE PRE-INSTALLED ONES. STOCK-ANDROID IS THE SAME AS LINUX ON YOUR PC. HAVING A CUSTOM UI IS AKIN TO WHAT COMPANIES LIKE REDHAT TRIED TO DO WITH AN OPEN-SOURCE OS. SO WHILE THERE ARE MANY NICE FEATURES, APPS, WIDGETS, ETC PRE-INSTALLED, UNFORTUNATELY YOU DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO UNINSTALL THEM...YET. THIS PHONE WILL BECOME ROOTED. THIS WILL GIVE YOU THE OPTION OF ADDING CUSTOM ROM'S WHICH WILL ALLOW YOU DIRECT CONTROL OVER WHAT IS ON THE PHONE. THE NEXT THING WE ARE WAITING FOR IS THE NEXT OTA UPDATE, FROYO (2.2). THIS WILL BRING THE ABILITY TO RUN APPS FROM THE SD CARD (APPS2SD) WHICH WILL KEEP THE INTERNAL ROM MEMORY SPACE MOSTLY FREE. FOR ME AT LEAST, THIS WILL HELP ALLEVIATE THE CONSTERNATION I HAVE TO NOT BEING ABLE TO REMOVE THE BLOATWARE. FOR NOW, CHECK OUT WHAT IS ALREADY ON THERE AND IF THERE IS SOMETHING YOU LIKE, SEARCH THE MARKET TO SEE WHAT OTHER SIMILAR APPS ARE AVAILABLE. I WILL TELL YOU THAT THE ONLY ADD-ON APP I HAVEN'T "REPLACED" WITH SOMETHING ELSE IS THE SENSE WEATHER. AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, I USE HANDCENT FOR SMS, K9 FOR OTHER MAIL, SEISMIC FOR TWITTER, ADVANCED TASK MANAGER, SHOP SAVVY FOR BAR CODE, DOLPHIN FOR BROWSER, AND NEWSROB FOR RSS.
Man, you guys are awesome. Informative and friendly.
I HAD two questions but figured on e of them out so here's the one I'm still stuck on...
- Is there an app that will allow me to assign a specific ringtone to specific notifications? SMS, email, voicemail, etc?
Thanks guys!
You can do that by going into the setting in the app.. Example, go into the sms app, hit menu button (3 lines button), settings, notifications
Well that would certainly add a song to notifications for you but it wouldn't allow yo to pick a different song for SMS, MMS, emails, etc.
Are you looking to add different notifications for different people within SMS, email, etc or just to the different apps?
Within each separate app, you will have a 'settings' app, usually navigated by the Menu button. Within this you can set the notification settings. You can easily create your own sounds using Ringdroid and use them also. For example, I used the embedded voice recorder for one of my email accounts linked to my Amazon Seller account. So now when I receive email (via K9) to that account, I hear, "Cha-Ching!...Money!" (this makes me happy 10-15 times a day when that account syncs.)
tinpanalley said:
Man, you guys are awesome. Informative and friendly.
I HAD two questions but figured on e of them out so here's the one I'm still stuck on...
- Is there an app that will allow me to assign a specific ringtone to specific notifications? SMS, email, voicemail, etc?
Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
fl_jeep said:
Is there a way to kill them like with Task Manager on WinMo?
SORT OF. ASSUMING YOU HAVEN'T ADDED ANY OTHER TYPE OF MANAGEMENT APP, YOU CAN USE ASTRO WHICH IS PRE-INSTALLED.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since when is Astro pre-installed? It certainly isn't on my phone...
fermunky said:
Since when is Astro pre-installed? It certainly isn't on my phone...
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Click to collapse
I guess it is possible I installed it from my SD. I was in a tizzy with my new phone.
fl_jeep said:
Are you looking to add different notifications for different people within SMS, email, etc or just to the different apps?
Within each separate app, you will have a 'settings' app, usually navigated by the Menu button. Within this you can set the notification settings. You can easily create your own sounds using Ringdroid and use them also. For example, I used the embedded voice recorder for one of my email accounts linked to my Amazon Seller account. So now when I receive email (via K9) to that account, I hear, "Cha-Ching!...Money!" (this makes me happy 10-15 times a day when that account syncs.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, what I'm trying to do is have one ringtone for emails, another for notifications (appointments), another for text messages, and so on. If I can actually assign a ringtone to different email accounts, that would be even better!
The problem is, when I go into settings for my email account, in the notifications settings all I get is, email notifications on or off, notification sound on or off, and notification vibrate on or off. No choice to select an actual ringtone.
tinpanalley said:
Yes, what I'm trying to do is have one ringtone for emails, another for notifications (appointments), another for text messages, and so on. If I can actually assign a ringtone to different email accounts, that would be even better!
The problem is, when I go into settings for my email account, in the notifications settings all I get is, email notifications on or off, notification sound on or off, and notification vibrate on or off. No choice to select an actual ringtone.
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Click to collapse
The stock Mail app might not have the option, but Gmail and SMS do. If you want a different notification sound in general for email and voicemail just hit menu, settings, sounds and display. There you will see the option to change notification sound.
So can you guys tell me which are the best email clients that exist for Android then? The most feature rich maybe? Well, best functioning is more important.
And secondly, if I use another email program, then does the email page all the way on the left become completely useless? Does it get populated with the emails from your new client? Can you delete the page?
Thanks!
I'm assuming you mean a widget?? If so you just touch and hold it down.. it'll turn red then drag it down to the trash. Gone! Then I would go into the mail app and sign off so its not constantly checking in the background and stuff. As for another feature rich mail app, the only experience I have with one is K9 and it worked quite well and has great reviews. Look it up in the market.
If you want to get the widget back for what ever reason you long click once again in the empty area, select widgets then mail.
Ok, cool, I thought it was a whole page, I didn't think it was just a big massive widget. This is more customizable than I thought!! Loving this phone more and more each day.
turboyo said:
Then I would go into the mail app and sign off so its not constantly checking in the background and stuff.
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Click to collapse
What do I have to do to make sure the HTC Mail app doesn't keep working in the background? Just kill my email account?
Is there a better SMS app?
first off, take off all widgets that are not necessary.. only widget i keep on is power control and clock. secondly, disable all sync that is unneccessary for you, under your accounts and sync menu in settings. that should save you a good deal of cpu usage and battery
I love K9 for my non-primary Gmail account. They also just updated it giving it some great new features such as viewing your mail from all accounts in one stream. They also have some nice batch options that I like and it's easy to dump trash along with compacting and expunging the messages from cache.
That indeed gives you the ability to assign different notifications for each account.
Hey,
I tried K-9 but right away, I got a picture in an email as an attachment that opened up all corrupted. Doesn't happen on the stock email program and I tested the same email there and it worked fine. I cant rely unfortunately on an email program that shows my picture attachments like this so I had to uninstall K-9. Anyone know why this happened? I got a few bars of the image across the top and the rest of the frame was black, almost dark grey.
Not sure how many of us here drive an Audi, but figured I'd give this forum a shot. I posted this question in the car forums, but apparently no one uses Android over there, let alone an Evo. I'm not quite sure if this is a phone specific problem or an Android problem.
So Audi's 3G Multimedia Interface (MMI), uses bluetooth to connect/sync my phone contacts from my phone and displays them on my car's Nav screen. From there I can select names, make calls, etc.
The problem is, I believe that the car is pulling "All Contacts" instead of just "My contacts" from Google. This makes it extremely cumbersome as I have an extra 100 contacts to sift through while I'm driving.
However, my phone itself is setup correctly, as I selected "Only contacts with phone numbers".
I realize Audi's management of phone sync may be different from other car makers, but it may also be the similar. Any ideas?
I'm not sure that there's anything you can do. Mine syncs the entire phonebook also (Audi A4). Sorry to break the bad news.
Yea, that's a bit disheartening. Thanks for the reply though, good to know. Who could we contact to try and get this changed? HTC? Google?
nvius said:
Yea, that's a bit disheartening. Thanks for the reply though, good to know. Who could we contact to try and get this changed? HTC? Google?
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Click to collapse
I am working on the same issue - temp solution - download just the contacts you want into a vcard format, then put them on an SD card and sync. It is much cleaner, but only allows 100 contacts. It worked better for me with addresses also for the nav.
I work for a competing automaker as a dealership technician. We run into this problem and many others with our wireless to vehicle integration system. The best workaround for your particular problem would be to swap your contact lists. Backup all of your contacts to Google. Then delete all of the contacts you don't want sent to the car. Then redownload your phone book to the car. Next, restore your contact list from Google. And finally, reupload only the contacts you want Google to store to the Google cloud.
I know its a lot of steps, but it should provide you with the solution you require. One other thing to keep in mind, if you have an automated phonebook download option in your vehicles interface, it should be deactivated. If it isn't, there's the distinct possibility that the next automatic update will pull all the contacts you just eliminated.
Same issue, using SD instead
I don't know if you found a solution. I am facing the exact same issue on Audi MMI with Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I have been searching up and down and found no clean solution. I am using the SD import workaround. I re-paired my phone and denied the phonebook access so MMI can't download from my phone.
nvius said:
Not sure how many of us here drive an Audi, but figured I'd give this forum a shot. I posted this question in the car forums, but apparently no one uses Android over there, let alone an Evo. I'm not quite sure if this is a phone specific problem or an Android problem.
So Audi's 3G Multimedia Interface (MMI), uses bluetooth to connect/sync my phone contacts from my phone and displays them on my car's Nav screen. From there I can select names, make calls, etc.
The problem is, I believe that the car is pulling "All Contacts" instead of just "My contacts" from Google. This makes it extremely cumbersome as I have an extra 100 contacts to sift through while I'm driving.
However, my phone itself is setup correctly, as I selected "Only contacts with phone numbers".
I realize Audi's management of phone sync may be different from other car makers, but it may also be the similar. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got a 2012 S4 and just bought the Galaxy S4 (my first android phone, switched from iphone5) and i had the exact same problem. i spent the first two days of ownership of the GS4 googling my heart out trying to figure out WTF.
I have found a permanent solution that works for me but, may not work for you all. reason i say that is, if you rely on google or other accounts to manage your contacts, this will not work for you. the problem is gmail/google, by default any and all emails you send/receive are stored as "contacts" in google. regardless of what settings you have on your phone, when you sync your contacts with audi MMI, it pulls all contacts from both phone and google (possibly other email accounts you have syncing to your phone).
what i did was...
1) go into my google accounts (i have two) and went into the settings and told google that i would "manually add" contacts.
2) i then deleted all contacts from all my google accounts.
3) then i turned contact sync "on" on the phone and synced the phone with google.
4) turned contact sync back off.
the following is within the audi MMI... (the audi MMI does NOT store the contacts synced with your phone, it refreshes the contact list every time it connects to the phone, this is why you cannot access the list immediately after ignition is on).
1) unpaired the phone from MMI.
2) deleted all profiles within the NAME/DIRECTORY menu in MMI (if you get to a point where it asks you for your ID PIN (something along those lines), you will need to enter the last 7 digits of your VIN number.
3) i then repaired the phone, and when the prompt on the phone popped up asking for permission to access contacts, clicked yes and selected to not be prompted again.
after it redownloaded the directory from the phone, only contacts i add to the phone showed up.
WARNING, by deleting the profiles, you will also delete any manually added addresses/locations stored from the MMI as well, i personally can live with this.
Android BT Fix for Audi
Hey there...
New to this forum. Here is a fix for the Phonebook sync for Audi MMI / Android phones. It's an app called Bluetooth Phonebook from the Play store. Download it to your phone and voila...it works.
Hope this helps.
lazernet said:
Hey there...
New to this forum. Here is a fix for the Phonebook sync for Audi MMI / Android phones. It's an app called Bluetooth Phonebook from the Play store. Download it to your phone and voila...it works.
Hope this helps.
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Click to collapse
Quick question, do you gate The contact picture to show on The mmi with tour galaxy?
I have some issues with the address book after installing [BETA 0.11][03.06] ICS for Desire[ALL HBOOTS][4.0.4].
I am unable to add new contacts and cannot add a number from call history to people.
This is what happens:
Add New Contact
Click People icon from the main menu.
Click the + icon at the bottom Right Corner
That gives me an option of adding the Contact to my Gmail Or Hotmail that I have configured. But does not give me an option to add it to Phone Address Book.
Add from Call History
Click the Phone Icon to go to Call histoty.
Press on the number I want to add to People.
Gives me three options, Add to Contacts, Call Number, Send Message.
Select Add to contacts.
That gives me an option of adding the Contact to my Gmail Or Hotmail that I have configured. But does not give me an option to add it to Phone Address Book.
Read on some other forum that, the work around for this is to Press and hold the unknown number. A menu will pop up allowing you to send a text to the number, edit it, save it to contacts But here also the same, Can add it to Gmail or Hotmail. Not Phone Contacts.
I'm on another ICS ROM: BCM 3.7U0 and it's the same. I'm guessing this is how the ICS built in People app functions.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
Hi
It seems that Google with ICS have removed the feature of storing contacts on locally on the phone:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1582586
Taken from the above thread:
Originally Posted by kafepuya
If you have ICS, you know that it is not possible to store contacts on the phone per-se, and rather ICS forces you to store them in one of your Google Accounts.
I'm still not a fan of this fact. I rather liked having them separated so that I could leave business contacts on the phone (actually the SIM, i didn't save any contacts to the phone itself) but ICS killed that. I'm not talking a backup to SIM, I didn't want the business numbers in my google account, period.
As to the question at hand, I leave it to Google and the account I made just for the phone, they already have hundreds of copies of the contacts on multiple servers. Anything else is going to be prone to error, incompatibility, corruption, etc. Also, google does the restoring & updating all on its own, no thought needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
/Michael
Solved
Alien2653 said:
I'm on another ICS ROM: BCM 3.7U0 and it's the same. I'm guessing this is how the ICS built in People app functions.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Go Contacts EX from Google Market, solved my issue. I can now store contacts on phone.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jbapps.contactpro&feature=search_result
I've had my G3 about a month now. Overall I love the phone but there are a couple small things that are still bothering me.
1. Contacts display nicknames with seemingly no way to turn that off.
2. ICE contacts appears to break contact sync. I know there is an app from the Google Play store that will fix it however I just want to remove it completely.
3. Why is it that Google Hangouts seems to have more functionality than the stock messaging app when used in conjunction with my LG G Watch? You can't reply at all with the stocks app. You can only open on phone. Should be able to reply by voice and use quick replies. Only reason I am using the stock app at the moment is because Hangouts is getting to bloated and you can't attach sound files.
Any body have any workarounds for these things?
I thought of another one to bump it. My iPhone was smart enough to know that if I wasn't playing music using A2DP then to use the mono phone audio connection for Siri and driving directions which would allow it to come over my car stereo regardless of which audio source was selected in my truck. And while on iOS 6 I used a jailbreak app called Aloud that would read and notifications to me over bluetooth when connected to my car stereo.
Anybody know of a tweak or app that will do the same. I have used Sound About but unless I am missing a setting it seems I can only pick one or the other and not conditionally based on whether I am currently using Bluetooth audio or not.
Ok, so another one.
It seems that when editing group membership of my Google contacts on the phone it will remove the contact from the Google default "My Contacts" group. Since this is the only group I show in my phone list it makes the contact disappear. I then have to log onto my GMail account and go to contacts and edit the contact there to put it back in the "My Contacts" which is a little trickier than it sounds.
I am really disappointed with LG's implementation of the way they manage Google contacts on this Android phone. This is three problems I have directly related to contacts. I really hope there is some sort of update to fix these issues soon.
Problem syncing contacts
I’m having a heck of a problem trying to get my new Galaxy Watch (46 mm/non-LTE) to properly sync my contacts. I first realized that I had a problem when I tried to use Bixby to place a call from the watch. Sometimes I woul get the message “contacts syncing” . Sometimes I would get the message that the contact was not found.
I tried resetting the watch and the Samsung Wear app but that didn’t work. I read that turning off Bluetooth and trying to sync over Wi-Fi helped. However, I cannot tell if that is really helping. Some contacts do work while others (most) do not.
It would help to understand from what source the watch gets the contacts. For example does the watch attempt to sync with my Samsung account? Does it attempt to sync with the contacts that reside in the phone memory?
On my phone, I have the contact app set up such that it only displays my Google contacts and I use my Google account as the storage location. I wonder whether that is the problem and if I should somehow either save everything to my Samsung account or save everything physically to the phone.
Naturally, Samsung customer support was worse than useless. The first person I spoke to had me do the hard reset and when that did not work told me to take the watch to a local Service Center. I tried speaking to another support representative today. This one insisted that the Watch would not dial contact numbers from Bixby because it was not LTE.
Any insights?
Hi! It may seem stupid, but give it a try if you haven't already.
In the Galaxy wearable app, go to the tab 'settings' and then 'Applications'. Scroll down till you find the contacts and then check in the settings from where the contacts are synced. The default should be from the phone, so try changing to your google account.
If you already did this, then I don't know for now.
I have purchased the Pro version but I'm still not able to place a phone call (the app says something like "I can't make calls yet", same as the non-paid version. Tried to uninstall and reinstall but it didn't work.
Galaxy Watch 3, Italian language.