Thursday 27 August 2009

G1 Themes & Cyanogen ROM

Yesterday I found another cool thing for rooted phones, themes.

Being the kind of guy who likes making things 'mine', I wanted to change even more about the visuals of my phone, I found a Theme HERE which you see below, it changes the look of some basic aspects of your phone, like a nice black bar along the top that blends nicely with my generally 'black' theme.























My screens, screen 1 is currently empty, mostly using it
to try out widgets.

Screen 2 = web apps mostly

Screen 3 is in the middle, calendar and weather is THIS ONE
Handcent sms just added a widget that shows the number of new sms messages, which is handy, so I'm using that for now.

4th screen, most of the apps are on here.

5th screen contains all my little notes using 'sticky note', (they just added a transparency slider, which I like alot).

At some point I'll get around to making a theme myself if it's not too techy, just way too busy with work at the moment.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Rooooted!

Ok so I finally did it, sitting around the other night at 2am, rubbish on the TV, so I rooted my G1.
What is rooted? - it s gaining 'root' access to the phone, like 'admin' rights on a computer, it means I can do anything I want to the phone without the usual safety measures.
Why rooted? - in my case I wanted speed and more features, which means a new ROM (a version of the Android operating system) put together by, someone else.
Which rooted? - Cyanogen ROM, basically because I saw it having consistently very positive reviews online, it looked good, so I did it.
How rooted? - some instructions HERE, which uses some software via an exploit that has been announced as fixed, I received an update on my phone last week (tuesday 18th august 09) that people were saying fixed this exploit, but I rooted by this method in the early hours of sunday (23rd august 09) so it seems it's still doable.

See the above instructions on how-to, and use the latest cyanogen ROM, currently 'CyanogenMod-4.0.2'.

So far I've noticed the phone is a little faster, which I like, has more settings to fiddle with, and now has 5 home screens (which is cool as I was struggling with 3).

Below are screenshots of my current screens.


Firstly the wallpaper, one of my photos, no you can't have it.

The far left screen isn't shown as it's currently empty, I've been using it for testing widgets.

2nd screen (1st shown here) is my 'web' screen, google searchbar, links to some websites and some web-based apps for travel, as I travel every day for my work.

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3rd screen (2nd shown here) is my main screen, being the one in the middle, I'm using Weather Forecast Widget & Pure Calendar, which fits 2 or 3 days of calendar agenda plus weather forecast onto my main screen, below that my most used links to sms (handcent), gmail and email. And Powertime Widget for monitoring battery life with a prediction of how long it's got left.

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4th screen (3rd shown here) is an apps screen, with the 'retro date' widgets at the top and some commonly used apps below, and a link to the market (for more apps!).


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5th and final screen is full of notes by 'sticky note', you tap them to open fullscreen and I have notes for a few things there, as I have a rubbish memory!

The icons on the screens are mostly from the Glasklart icon pack, some I made and some I modified. They were changed using Bettercut.

So far I'm liking the more responsive interface and extra home screens, also apps are now on the SD card which means I won't run out of room, more internal memory available means more of my emails can be held there. More digging may find more good stuff.

Problems?
I had to download and apply the update to the Cyanogen ROM manually as something went wring using the updater, I think I just didn't know how to apply it when it rebooted so I put it on the SD card, rebooted and did it manually.
Also the autorotate doesn't work, I saw some 'fixes' online but when I tried them to delete some files they were 'not found', so I've turned it off for now and it rotates when I open the keyboard and then back again when it closes (the problem was it'd rotate into landscape and get stuck there).
Someone warned me that battery life could be adversely affected, so far I've not noticed a change, will see how the week pans out in a normal useage pattern.

Friday 21 August 2009

August Update

Update time...

I've been using the Anti Glare screen protector from Boxwave for a while now and it's brilliant, it cuts down reflections on the screen enough to make the phone quite useable even in strong sunlight, it also eliminates those subtle greasy streaks your fingers will always leave on the screen, not a big problem but I'm happier they're gone as I was forever having to wipe the screen, those smudges bugged me!

As for the Invisible Shield from Zagg, I'm disappointed, firstly at the less than perfect fit, which I could live with, and secondly at the peeling edges, a couple of areas of the phone have a few mm's of the shield peeled back, probably caused by the pouch I keep my phone in. I'll be contacting zagg and see what they have to say about that.

Rooting, I've not rooted my phone yet (rooting is 'hacking' the phone so you can run custom versions of the operating system (roms)) but I'm seriously considering it mostly as a performance boost and features gain, now that I hear there will be no more major updates for the phone I still want fancy things!
At some point, when I have the time to transfer my contacts to my old nokia as a backup (just in case! I need this thing for my work!) I'll be having a go at rooting and acquiring a new ROM.

More app reviews coming up when I get the time, my regular work is keeping me pretty busy, and as I'm self employed I have to exploit busy to the full!

Sunday 16 August 2009

App Review: Pure Calendar Widget

I pretty much found what I was looking for in a calendar / agenda widget, Previous versions were not ideal due to only being 4 spaces wide (1, 2, 3, 4 high), the latest version adds 2x2, the same as the built-in G1 calendar widget. It has alot of customisable settings such as which calendars to show, duration, end time, date format, update frequency, text colour and alot of background to choose from, I made a set of my own which are simple red borders...

They are transparent with a slim red border at 100%, 75%, 50% & 25% opacity. Save them in the appropriate folder on your SD card.

I'm still using Pure Calendar Widget, the only feature it really needs is the ability to identify which entries are from which calendar as they are all currently shown in white, different text colour and / or a prefix would make this widget spot-on.
I'd also like to see 2x3 added to the sizes.

Saturday 15 August 2009

App Review: Laik Agenda Widget

I've been looking for a widget that will display my agenda in a nicer way than the built-in calendar widget.
Version 1.1.1 does that well but at a price, it uses up alot of system resources, memory mostly, slowing the whole phone down, as nice as it is and as pretty as it is I can't allow badly written apps to slow my phone down.
I'm keeping an eye on it for future updates that might address this but for now I'm not using Laik Agenda Widget.

(screenshot ripped-off from uk.androlib.com)

Friday 14 August 2009

App Review: PowerTime Widget


I blogged a while ago about a widget I wanted to have, something that could learn from battery drain and battery level and predict how much time you have left on your battery, sounded like a complicated thing to do, but I found a widget that does exactly that.

PowerTime is that widget, it's a simple 1x1 widget that shows your battery life in % and in Minutes (or seconds when it gets really low). I'm not sure how it figures this out, there is a calibration process where you start with a full battery and run your phone in normal use until below 50% so I guess it's a time / voltage drop thing, but I've noticed that it's smarter than that, pull your phone out of your pocket after little use for a period of time and you'll see the widget tell you that you've got hours left (because it's been in your pocket doing nothing), use it intensely such as GPS or suchlike for a few minutes and you'll see the time remaining change to reflect the time left if you keep-up this level of activity. Pretty smart, I like it alot.

Thursday 6 August 2009

App Review: Weather Widget

Weather Widget by Android Apps, there is a free version, I have the donate version as it allows
skinning of both the clock and the weather icons. I like it due to the information on it, a nice big clock, the date and weather current and forecast (tap it for the next few days forecast) and you can either set it's location or have it check via GPS every x hours. I like it alot.
Though I use it without the clock as even after a few updates the clock is still slowing my phone down, and I can read the time from the top of the screen or the watch on my arm.
A recent update adds an optional additional app for the forecast function, which is visually very cool.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

App Review: 3G Watchdog

3G watchdog,
which does a similar job to Netcounter, which I'm no longer using (nothing wrong
with it, I just now prefer 3G Watchdogs way of working). It sits in the
notification bar with a simple Icon and bar which changes form green to amber to
red depending on the data you have pushed through your 3G and EDGE, if you don't
have an unlimited data plan then you need something like this to help avoid
extra fees. The thing I like about this is it's information, you can set your
maximum data allowance, cycle (monthly etc), start date, and it monitors it
warning via an icon if you are using alot, tap the icon and you can find out how
much you have used (in % and MB), and it tells you how much you will have used
by your set date if you continue at the current useage rate, so you can see if
you're overdoing it as you go along. It's also free, I like it, I'm keeping it.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

App Review: Bubble

Bubble is a three-plane spirit level, I tried another more complex one which wasn't free but was rubbish, bubble is free, neat, easy to use, easy to calibrate, it's just damn nice for those odd occasions when a spirit level would be needed. As a photographer I do use it occasionally when hanging photos. Looks like the one I saw on an iPhone ad once so probably comes from there. Still using bubble.

Monday 3 August 2009

App Review: Handcent SMS

HandcentSMS is another sms interface/handler, has that iphone speech-bubbles thing going on but in a more customizable way, it does have settings for read-receipts, I like it alot, recent updates have given options such as background picture (I use the same as on the home-screens f consistency) and customisable profiles for different contacts (ringtones, notification light flash rate and colour, that kind of thing). Still using HandcentSMS

Sunday 2 August 2009

App Review: Chomp SMS

ChompSMS is an sms interface/handler a-la-iphone, I liked the look of it with the whole speech-bubbles thing but I saw no read-receipt settings nor any displayed, and thats a feature I like, also seemed to run slower than the stock sms handler. No longer using chompSMS

Saturday 1 August 2009

App Review: Digital Clock

Digital Clock is a screensaver looking thing that shows the time in a variety of colours with a variety of brightnesses, easily changeable. I tried it as a bedside clock and found it hard to set the brightness to exactly where I wanted it leaving me with either irritatingly bright or too hard to read. nice app but I'm no longer using Digital Clock



Digital Clock Widget
is paired with the above clock, but is a desktop widget (tapping it activates the above app), the small widget is 2 squares wide and the large is 4 wide. Displays the time and date on your desktop nice and neat in Black and White. I'd have liked to have seen customizable opacity and colours, as it is it's taking up too much space for little (and ugly) benefit. No longer using Digital Clock Widget.