Category Archives: Android
Best place to buy Android Smartphones?
Hi everyone! I’m making this blog post since time and time again I keep getting asked the same question. Where do I go for my Android phones?
Having been a owner of two Android phones, a HTC Desire and a Sony Xperia Play, I always look for one of the cheapest place to buy the smartphones. I’ve always recommended going to the network provider themselves for the simplest process. For me, I find O2 the best Network provider for the UK having tested several others in the past few years, since around my area, mobile signal isn’t great at all. Mainly because they not only offer the best deals for Android (Pay-As-You-Go or Tariff) devices.
You can find the O2 Webstore here. It will guide you through the Android platform and also show you some of the best Android devices around today!
For example, they were selling White Sony Xperia Plays a couple of months ago for just £149.99! Obviously they got snapped up quick so you have to keep your eyes peeled and act fast!
I hope this article helps several readers who are looking to make the leap into the Smartphone world or who are looking for an upgrade from another phone.
HTC Desire Gingerbread Update coming this month?
On Friday, HTC announced from their Facebook page that they will start rolling out a release of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) for the HTC Desire at the end of July. It seems that HTC update their phones yearly since Android 2.2 ( Froyo) was released at a similar time last year. In order to check to see if the update is available for your HTC Desire simply access the Settings menu then scroll to the bottom to the “About Phone” option. From here you simply select “System Updates” and then press the “Check for updates” button. A notification will appear if you have a update pending.
Gingerbread brings several new features to your phone including the ability to download Applications from the market which file size is larger than 30mb, better application management viewer and cool development options such as being able to kill an application by holding down the back button on your Desire.
Enjoy your Gingerbread powered Desire!
A comparison of Android Launchers
There are quite a few popular launchers for your Android phone to breathe a bit of freshness into it, they all have different features it’s all about finding the best one that suites you! All of these can be downloaded from the Android Market and some also have the .apk available for those who don’t have a Market enabled Android device. The list below is a few that I have picked out that I personally think are worth checking out, so lets get started!
Launcher Pro
I’m currently using Launcher Pro myself and absolutely love messing around with all the features such as the 3D Drawer, Home Screen transition animations, define how many home screens/docks you want, which is a great option to include is it means you can make some really minimalistic interfaces just like mine:
Currently using the “wp clock light” live wallpaper on a single home screen and a single dock with just one button to open the applications menu. I have made it so that Launcher Pro can hide the status bar at the top but can reveal it by pressing the home button on my HTC Desire. Launcher Pro is free but you can pay for Launcher Pro Plus which will come with even more features and special widgets!
Download Launcher Pro from Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fede.launcher
OR
Download the APK: http://www.launcherpro.com/
Zeam Launcher
Zeam launcher is designed to be lightweight on your Devices resources, this is great for the more cheaper, lower spec phones since it should make browsing through the phone a bit more snappier! Customizing the launcher is slightly more fiddly than say Launcher Pro (Trying to customize the dock, for example) but defiantly a must-have launcher if you want one that is light on your device’s hardware.
Download Zeam Launcher from Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.zeam
ADW.Launcher
ADW.Launcher is very similar to Launcher Pro, although it does feature a few different compared to Launcher Pro, such as Horizontal scrolling in the Applications menu which is great for Tablets since it means you don’t have to keep sliding your finger all the way across the display. 
The Launcher has got a fairly big community behind it which release all sorts of themes for the launcher since ADW.Launcher has theme support.
Download ADW.Launcher from the Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.adw.launcher
Go Launcher EX
Go Launcher EX is another launcher that is worth checking out, the reason why I like this launcher so much is it’s built in “Task Killer” so it means you don’t have to download any additional task killers. You can access the built in Task Killer by opening up the applications menu and clicking the third button on the top of the menu.
Download Go Launcher EX from the Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gau.go.launcherex
OR
Download the APK: http://www.goforandroid.com/
Slidescreen
Slidescreen has got a very different interface compared to all the other Launchers, the layout means that you can access your Facebook stream, Twitter Feed, Missed calls, messages, emails and much more all from one home screen!
On the top half of the launcher you can quickly view any Missed calls, Messages, Emails and the Calendar. If don’t have any new missed calls, but have a lot of emails it can hide the missed calls tab to save space. On the Bottom half of the launcher you can have the following services: Google Reader, Stocks, Twitter and Facebook. Any of these services which are on the Top and Bottom of Slidescreen can be turned off if you don’t use them in the Settings menu, just press the menu button (Home Settings > Services).
There is a free version but it has advertisements on the bottom of the interface, though the full version is quite pricey since it’s $6.99 USD (around £4.23) for no other features other than there is no advertisements.
Download Slidescreen from Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.larvalabs.slidescreen
So there are 5 of the most popular Android Launchers to try out for yourself, if you have another suggestion of an Android Launcher that you enjoy using and think others should give it a try, suggest it in the comment box below!
Android Netbook & Tablet Wallpapers
Want some free Android wallpapers? Something Simple? Something clean? Something Android? Well I have got 3 free android themed wallpapers for you to use on your Netbooks or Tablets who have a resolution of 1024×600. Take a look:
This first one is for all you lucky Honeycomb users out there.
Don’t have honeycomb? Have these standard Android wallpaper.
Look Android AND Skateboarding? How about this for you?
If you do need them in a different resolution I am more than happy to make one to your required resolution, just specify which wallpaper you want and what resolution you want it at! Also, if you have made some awesome wallpapers and would like to share them with the rest of the world, I am more than happy to display them on my blog with a blog post each month dedicated to wallpapers providing you’ve made it and the resources you’ve used are free to use!
Slow Android Phone?
This is my first Android tutorial on my blog. Today, my younger brother got a new Vodafone 845. Which is Vodafone’s budget Android device. I noticed that the response of it was very slow, even doing the simplest tasks like scrolling through the Application menu was fairly sluggish. So I decicded to spend a few minutes optimizing his phone using these easy steps:
Remove widgets
The first thing you should do is remove all the widgets that you don’t use on the home screen. If you don’t use the photo gallery then get rid of it! Just simply hold down the widget and then once the “Trash can” icon appears drag the widget over to the icon to remove it. Doing this you should notice anything from a slight performance improvement or a drastic improvement when switching between the different home panels depending on how many widgets you have removed from the home screen.
Free up RAM
If your Android phone is low on RAM then there are plenty of great apps that will kill off all those uneeded applications running in the background. I would advise using Advanced App Killer to do this, I’ve used it on my borthers Vodafone 845 and even on my powerful HTC Desire. You can even place this program as a Widget so you can kill off all those uneeded programs by a click of a button.
Replace your home screen launcher
There are plenty replacement home screen launchers for the Android. For a low spec Android phone, I find Zeam Launcher to be the best one to use since it’s designed to be very lightweight on your Android’s resources. Once you’ve installed Zeam Launcher select it from the Applications menu on your phone and then set it to your default Home Screen Launcher, you can do this normally by clearing the defaults on your current Home Screen Launcher (HTC Sense for example) And then pressing the “Home” button on your phone, then a menu should pop up asking you if you want to use Zeam Launcher or whatever else you have on there, make sure you tick the Default box before selecting Zeam Launcher.
So there you have it, three tips on how to speed up your slow android device, I hope it helps you like it did for my younger brother’s phone. By default it only had 40mb of RAM roughly left, once I applied the tops above it meant he had around 72mbs out of 128mb to use, that’s almost double!!
Try it out for yourself and comment below how well it worked for you.
