Android stuff

I am looking into rooting mine as well. Worst case scenario I guess would be bricking the phone, having the warranty refused and then having to buy another phone.

 

yeah, bricking the phone is probably the worst case scenario, but from what I've read, 9 out of 10 times the user can recover the phone if they brick it.

Still, I'm going to wait until my warranty's up before I do so.


However, there's also concern of the talks of carriers denying updates or something to rooted phones, which really bites, but I guess they have the right, technically. But I can't recall reading anything that says they are going to do that, just the possibility.

 

I've rooted my captivate, and as long as you get a good rom, everything is hunky dory. I couldn't go back to vanilla touch wiz now. If you are interested check out the XDA forums and youtube for reviews. Most times a flash back to stock is available as well. Do it! Come on over to the dark side!!

 

From what I have been reading online (although most of the articles are probably out of date) that on the Droid 2 even after rooting the phone, you can't remove the bloat ware. It looks like the best option is to root the phone and then use another program to freeze the bloatware so the bloat can't bloat. Yeah.... Of course this is assuming 2.3 isn't pushed out soon.

 

That is what I am seeing too, by using that Titanium thing. I am looking at this one tap rooting, but then I think I have to install Bash and run the freeze commands from the command line (no big deal, I am running a dual boot of Xp and Mint Debian, so I am comfortable with the CL). I was really just looking at rooting the phone to "un-gray" the uninstall option that Verizon does in order to force me to not be able to delete stuff.

 

Root and rom'd is the only way to go.
So far I really like my Xoom. I've had mine since the wifi-only release date and I rarely use my desktop other than for media storage. My wife and daughter have laptops, but they aren't nearly as portable/versatile for what I use this for.
The only issues I see is a browser force close once in awhile on heavy content pages running in desktop mode.
Most of them have been with Firefox which isn't built for Honeycomb yet.
The Asus looks nice, but if I get one, I'll keep this Xoom anyway.

If I need to RDP to my desktop, I can do that....SSH.....anything I need.

 

Just played with the Acer Iconia Tab at Staples, pretty nice, I really like the aluminum back, and even though it's $50 more than the Asus Transformer, it's at least available

Working on a car thing right now, I might, just might, have a little bit leftover...somehow the loan I applied for is about $500 more than the car I'm looking at.....

 

Netflix for select Androids

Netflix app available for the Evo as of last night! There are four or five other compatible phones as well. Go to Marketplace for a full list. This is great news as I had heard the NF app would only be compatible w/ newly manufactured phones using updated processors. Not true. My Evo is over a year old; only caveat is you must be running version 2.2 which you should be by now anyway. Downloaded and intalled in seconds. Tested it via 3G a couple times and had only one brief buffer incident. Otherwise streamed flawlessly and looked great on the Evo screen. Only thing is you best have an unlimited data plan (like I do w/ Sprint) if you want to enjoy this app. It will suck up kbits if you use it too much. Nice job Netflix and Android.

 

Also sprach Zarathustra...

How to Install Netflix on Almost Any Android Device

I haven't yet tried this on my D2, but hopefully I'll have time to this weekend

 

Yeah I should have mentioned that, but the whole "rooting the phone" thing is a bit beyond me. I've investigated doing this once before for an app I thought I wanted. After reading through the very lengthy and confusing process I decided to pass.

But if you feel comfortable w/ rooting some say it might get you the NF app on a non-supported phone. From what I've read it may or may not work. Seems pretty ify to me. I'd hold off a bit longer...seems like they'll roll out more phones soon.

 

Thanks for this post. My HTC Hero is about 18 months old and the battery seems to be failing. I called sprint and they want way too much for a battery. Just bought a 3500ma battery for $.85 plus $8.50 shipping from HK.

I hope this does the trick as I dont want to buy a new phone just yet.

 

Mine came today for my Captivate.... Boy is it CHUNKY but the cover is a good fit at least. Definitely not an everyday kinda thing, but perfect if I plan on being out and about all day.

 

I don't mind a little chunky for under $10 delivered when sprint wanted about a hundred. I used to have excellent battery life and now it just seems to evaporate. I lived through huge phones back in the 90s, this shouldnt be too bad.

 

there is that. One thing I always find eating my battery is google maps. constantly having to go in and shut it down in the applications menu. it seems to have been broken a few months ago w/ an update to maps.

 

Hmmmm.... the Netflix app runs on my phone and I can get in the account. However, whenever I try to stream I get told that my phone is not compatible.

 

so, can you do everything but stream video? manage queue, browse movies, etc?

 

Well, I can go into my queue, I can search titles, I can add movies to instant queue, I can search by genres, I can do lots of stuff. I just can't stream.

 

well, that's at least something, should take care of about 91.3% of what I want the app for, anyway

 

True... I doubt streaming would work well if I didn't have wifi access, and when I have wifi access, I usually have a computer usable.