This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

[Striker]

I was shocked at first by Google wanting access to our contacts list. Then I decided maps probably wanted it so it could access those addresses when you were searching for directions.
Then I thought about how Google already had access to our contacts list anyway.

As for WebMD, I got nothing.

 

[Mercutio]

The maps-addresses link is kind of awesome. Maybe four times in the last couple months, I've gotten in my car and driven somewhere with no clue where I was going. I just tapped a button on my phone and drove clear across one or more states.

 

[LunarMist]

I disable the phone GPS. It's none of their business to know my exact location.

 

[ddrueding]

I disable the phone GPS. It's none of their business to know my exact location.

My paranoia is at a point where I think they know your location anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

They do. They can triangulate to a fairly accurate point based on the cell towers your phone is using; for smart devices there's probably a decent map of 802.11 networks nation wide that can correlate to a location as well. There are also traffic information systems and the regular habits of your debit and credit purchases.
On that level, no, privacy is not an option. I'm more picky about corporate data mining. That's the part that I actually resent.

 

[mubs]

It should be an option if I want to let G-Maps read my contacts list. For the record, even though I have a GMail account, it is dormant. My primary email a/c is Yahoo. Besides, of the 700+ contacts in my phone, only about 20 are in Yahoo Email's contacts list. So no way am I going to let G-Maps walk all over me. At least I know in advance the permissions each app wants (that is, if they are telling the truth). I will not install an app that I think is asking for unreasonable access, it's functionality and utility be damned.

And you guys in the US are practically naked, but it's not so bad elsewhere primariy because technology isn't used as extensively. Some day it will be as bad here as well, but it isn't right now.

 

[Chewy509]

I will not install an app that I think is asking for unreasonable access, it's functionality and utility be damned.

My wife and I are the same... If the app requires something that it doesn't need, then it's not going to get installed... (A good example is a lot of games aimed at children, a lot of these games require access to GPS, contacts, local awareness, etc... all for a tic tac toe, memory or guess who type game).

 

[Striker]

It should be an option if I want to let G-Maps read my contacts list. For the record, even though I have a GMail account, it is dormant. My primary email a/c is Yahoo. Besides, of the 700+ contacts in my phone, only about 20 are in Yahoo Email's contacts list. So no way am I going to let G-Maps walk all over me. At least I know in advance the permissions each app wants (that is, if they are telling the truth). I will not install an app that I think is asking for unreasonable access, it's functionality and utility be damned.

And you guys in the US are practically naked, but it's not so bad elsewhere primariy because technology isn't used as extensively. Some day it will be as bad here as well, but it isn't right now.

You're using a gmail account to download the apps anyway probably and it's probably syncing all those contacts to google whether you know it or not.

 

[mubs]

Thanks for the heads up.

I just checked - zero contacts in my GMail account. I remember saying No, don't share contacts when the phone was first set up (and before signing in to GMail thru the phone the first time). Am glad that at least this much integrity is maintained.

 

[Mercutio]

QuickOffice has returned as a free Android App after being locked away for just Google Apps customers. Also, if you log in to your Google Account through the app before September 26, 2013, they'll give you an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage for two years.

 

[Handruin]

Neat thanks. I was hoping quickoffice would manage PDF docs a little better but it still has a hard time with my Pathfinder core rule book. Its chuggy to scroll through. Maybe it's just PDFs in general that stink.

 

[Mercutio]

As far as I can tell, PDF is just a lousy format on mobile. 150MB gaming rulebooks with multiple layers of images can take a couple seconds to page-turn even on the internal storage of my S4, even in Adobe's own native Acrobat app.

 

[Mercutio]

Firefox for Android has a really interesting "Guest Mode" now, which lets you suspend your browsing entire browsing session (plus potentially sync'd tabs, bookmarks and passwords) so that someone else can use your mobile device in a clean and presumably non-incriminating environment.
This is distinct from Private browsing on Firefox Mobile because private tabs mix freely with normal ones and don't suspend the rest of your environment.

I'm still waiting patiently for multi-user support in Android to drift back to non-tablet devices but that's a really handy feature, even just as a person who has to take screenshots and make documentation.

 

[Handruin]

As far as I can tell, PDF is just a lousy format on mobile. 150MB gaming rulebooks with multiple layers of images can take a couple seconds to page-turn even on the internal storage of my S4, even in Adobe's own native Acrobat app.

I'm being over ambitious with my PDF rule books. The performance is as you've described with my Nexus 7 with it saved on the internal storage.

 

[Mercutio]

Don't get me wrong: You can have perfectly acceptable performance reading PDFs on Android. But layout-intensive stuff seems to be bad all the way around. Unfortunately, RPG rulebooks are ridiculously layout intensive. 50 pages of plain text with no image layer and everything is hunky-dory. 300 full color pages with background and foreground image layers, regular text and irregular extra text? Ain't no tablet got CPU for that.

 

[Handruin]

I'll have to forgo the idea of using those PDFs of this nature for gaming. They are barely usable. Fortunately the web works better but doesn't work well if I'm without network connectivity.

 

[sechs]

If they optimized their PDFs it would probably help enormously. But why bother when you can just dump it to file and charge money?

 

[ddrueding]

A friend's Android phone doesn't have a native app for managing files. In particular I'm looking at moving stuff from onboard memory to the SD card. If it could retain app functionality while moving music/video/pictures that would be awesome.

 

[Mercutio]

I think the Samsung My Files manager is probably more user friendly that AndroZip, which is what I normally use. I'll send you a link to it.

 

[Mercutio]

CyanogenMod has a one-click installer on the Play Store now. Basically you install a piece on your desktop and run the app on your mobile device and magic happens. Which seems like a lot less of a hassle than getting the Android SDK and futzing around with unlocking bootloaders and such.

 

[ddrueding]

CyanogenMod has a one-click installer on the Play Store now. Basically you install a piece on your desktop and run the app on your mobile device and magic happens. Which seems like a lot less of a hassle than getting the Android SDK and futzing around with unlocking bootloaders and such.

Awesome info. So tempted.

 

[Handruin]

That looks like a nice way to get into CM without a lot of hassle. I'll have to try it to have an informed opinion. I'm curious if it really has that much more to offer over and above Jelly Bean or now Kit Kat (which I need to upgrade to).

 

[Mercutio]

It's at least debatable, depending on your appreciation or tolerance for hardware-provider bloat/features and Google data collection practices. I haven't felt like I need to root my current phone because Adblock works in Firefox, solving my biggest single mobile annoyance, and because I really do like Samsung's S-Voice app. On the other hand, having a fully customizable mobile experience that gives access to things like the hosts file and protected storage to the end user is definitely powerful and worthwhile.

 

[timwhit]

What's the difference between CM and stock Android found on devices like the Nexus 5?

 

[Mercutio]

Cyanogen has a lot more hooks to hang customizations from, where stock Android is pretty barren. It's a bit like the difference between the Bios of a name brand machine vs. a white box.
They're both very speedy but if you want say six rows of smaller icons on your home screen, Cyanogen is more useful to you.

 

[Handruin]

Looks like it was pulled...

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-removes-cyanogenmod-installer-from-play-store/

 

[Howell]

Is there an app that will make my S4 less laggy and crashy? Music plus nav plus charging sometimes makes it crash. Overall transitioning between apps is not as smooth as my older iphone.

 

[Stereodude]

I'd like to reiterate my dissatisfaction with the Android version of Firefox. It's "interesting" but in all the wrong ways. It's a little bit better than it was when I first installed it since they've updated it twice, but it's still pretty terrible. Yes, it supports plugins like Adblock Plus and NoScript but that's about the only redeeming feature. About 25% of the time it doesn't fully recognize the link you've clicked on. It will seem to recognize the click based on the GUI changes, but it does nothing. Clicking again will usually get it to following the link. Also, it seems to have a knack for not clicking on the link you want. Chrome seems nearly psychic and does the little zoom box when it's unsure. Firefox seems to intentionally follow the link you didn't want if there's one remotely near where you clicked. And we can't forget about the text box. Text input is nearly unusable. It still doesn't auto-capitalize words after periods. Trying to move the cursor to a specific place to correct an error results in the desire to throw your mobile device. By the time you get it where you want it (no simple task) and then start typing about half the time it will delete a word adjacent to the cursor. Trying to select some portion of text and delete it with the text selection tools is effectively unusable. If you somehow perform a miracle and get what you want selected, it will inevitably delete more than what you selected. Oh, and it's definitely slow and sluggish compared to Chrome.

 

[Stereodude]

Is there an app that will make my S4 less laggy and crashy? Music plus nav plus charging sometimes makes it crash. Overall transitioning between apps is not as smooth as my older iphone.

The 4.4 KitKat upgrade?

 

[Howell]

Svoice is much better at voice recognition than the one built into the default keyboard. Is there a way to swap it out? I've not tried swype very much yet.

 

[Howell]

The 4.4 KitKat upgrade?

Maybe. 4.3 was just made available recently so I doubt it will be any time soon.

 

[Mercutio]

Svoice is much better at voice recognition than the one built into the default keyboard. Is there a way to swap it out? I've not tried swype very much yet.

The full, paid version of Swype includes Dragon Dictate's voice recognition engine. It's really quite good. I notice that it can transcribe radio content with accurary. I believe S Voice uses Samsung's voice recognition, which is the same one found in the Samsung keyboard (which is "swipe-able" but has a row of number keys so all the keys are smaller on-screen). I don't really have an opinion of the stock Android keyboard's voice recognition because I don't ever use it.

Is there an app that will make my S4 less laggy and crashy? Music plus nav plus charging sometimes makes it crash. Overall transitioning between apps is not as smooth as my older iphone.

The only time I observe any "lag" in switching between applications is for apps that rely on internet content that might need to be refreshed, like Google Drive or Amazon MP3. I understand that experience is subjective but the only specific app crashes I can recall have been games or from doing something weird like switching my keyboard program while composing an email (one or other of the keyboards will stop responding). My phone has definitely never had a system-wide crash or locked up.

I'd like to reiterate my dissatisfaction with the Android version of Firefox.

I find that I'm a lot more annoyed by rendering problems on Mobile Chrome than I am with tap-accuracy on Mobile Firefox. What I see on Firefox tends to be identical to what I'd see on the desktop version of the same content. The stock Android browser is a compromise between the two, so I find that I use it far more than mobile Chrome but sadly there are times I need all three because of the ridiculous number of logins I have on various services.

Ad blocking is still a must-have feature. I really don't want to lose any amount of screen real estate or battery time to ads if I can avoid it. Since Google doesn't allow ad blocking for its browsers, that's what simplifies the decision as to which browser I prefer.

Firefox is subjectively slower for me on low-spec devices that the stock browser (single core 1GHz), but like most things, once you have enough CPU (quad-core 1.7GHz) it's all about the same.

As far as capitalization, that's a function of the keyboard you're using, not the browser.

 

[Stereodude]

Wait, the stock Android browser isn't Chrome? I thought it was. I've been using the stock Android browser. I'm using the standard Android 4.4 keyboard. It doesn't work the same in Firefox as it does in any other application.

 

[Handruin]

Wait, the stock Android browser isn't Chrome? I thought it was. I've been using the stock Android browser. I'm using the standard Android 4.4 keyboard. It doesn't work the same in Firefox as it does in any other application.

I think it is Chrome on the Nexus 7 (Jellybean +). Perhaps it's not on other devices.

 

[Chewy509]

The stock browser on Android isn't Chrome, but is webkit based. (It uses the same renderer as Chrome)... However IIRC and AFAIK, the Google Nexus range is the only one that uses Chrome as the default... everything else uses "Browser"...

 

[Stereodude]

Okay, that explains it then. I have been using Chrome since that's the default Android browser on the Nexus 7 (2013).

 

[Howell]

The full, paid version of Swype includes Dragon Dictate's voice recognition engine. It's really quite good. I notice that it can transcribe radio content with accurary. I believe S Voice uses Samsung's voice recognition, which is the same one found in the Samsung keyboard (which is "swipe-able" but has a row of number keys so all the keys are smaller on-screen). I don't really have an opinion of the stock Android keyboard's voice recognition because I don't ever use it.

Under My Device > Language and Input I have several language and input methods. When the Samsung Keyboard is the Default the microphone is not an option unless "Google voice typing" is selected (checked) in the input methods. If been trying to test the limits of the default keyboard before I switched to something different, maybe I've reached the limit. Whatever version of Swype included on my phone has voice recognition included. I'm going to try a couple of things to get the default to work better and then give Swype a try. I never thought the keys were small but you are right, the swype keys are bigger. Of course the area around the keys is less so the total screen real estate taken by the letters is the same. From what I can tell each row is a standard unit height so the default keyboard loses one row on the swype keyboard to the number row.

The only time I observe any "lag" in switching between applications is for apps that rely on internet content that might need to be refreshed, like Google Drive or Amazon MP3. I understand that experience is subjective but the only specific app crashes I can recall have been games or from doing something weird like switching my keyboard program while composing an email (one or other of the keyboards will stop responding). My phone has definitely never had a system-wide crash or locked up.

My phone locked up hard and then rebooted itself 3 times in 45 minutes on a recent road trip but then magically had no problems the rest of the day. As far as lagginess, It's not a studder; I'm just used to a more immediate response. When I select a person's text messages to view it waits maybe a full second before changing the screen. I actually don't see any of this in Chrome. I have noticed it in other default apps but just on initial startup.

 

[Mercutio]

There are two releases of Swype. One of them was packaged with a lot of devices by default, including my Galaxy S4. It does offer voice typing, but the for-pay enhanced version that I somehow have (probably from one or other device on my Play account) has a different Voice Typing symbol and uses a different speech recognition engine. There's also a now-expired Swype beta release that I suspect is still on a lot of older devices.

I don't actually do any text messaging so I really can't comment on that (texts from whitelisted senders go to my email and the rest just aren't delivered, and I reply to those messages as email).

Since the most recent system update on the S4, which I got last Friday, I do notice that I get a system-wide pause when I switch off either from one WLAN to another or from WLAN to LTE. LTE to 3G or WLAN to 3G doesn't seem to have that issue. Sprint also just started offering LTE in my area in the last couple weeks, so I'm not sure if that issue is keyed to the phone update or to service changes.

 

[Mercutio]

I just noticed that if I use Swype to type the word "love", its predictive text says that the most common word for me to type next is "lamp." Also "tacos" is the fourth place word.

And because Lunar won't get it: it's a quote from the movie Anchorman.

 

[ddrueding]

And because Lunar won't get it: it's a quote from the movie Anchorman.

I haven't watched it, either.