Any tips from Droid users?

Advanced task killer in the market. It kills apps you have running so they don't waste your battery. I have the lg ally but I'm holding out on both my upgrades till spring when the 4g phones come out. Verison is rolling out 4g lte now and the 3g phones won't. Be 4g capable they will work but not as well as the 4g ones.

Anyways the task killer I highly recommend and I like slacker radio. Also I belive the droid 2 is flash compatible so I would download adobe flash plyer in the market so whenever your away from a computer you can go on casttv.com and watch tv shows or movies. If I think of anything else ill let ya know. Enjoy your phone I think you'll like droid better as an os compared to blackberrys rim software. I found it a lot better I had a curve before.

ANGRY BIRDS!

Keychain app is pretty awesome, it keeps all those annoying cards for stores on your phone, and then they can scan it
I will ask Gary when he gets home for any apps he would recommend, he has the Droid X.
I have the Iphone and these are the apps I use, and a lot are for droid too:
Shazam
Weatherbug
UYH Gold (use your hand?)
Kik Messenger
Urban Spoon
Wikipedia

Did Motorola not have that one pre "optomized" for social networking? I know my Moto phone is...

If you have a similar home to what mine defaulted with I would suggest replacing that. LauncherPro offers more customizing yet is lighter on resources than ADWLauncher - though that one is themeable.

A file manager is nice if you don't have one. I have Astro, but you may like one of the other ones. If you plan to use you phone to listen to music replace the default player with a proper one like PowerAmp. If you run into issues playing music there is a known problem with some services that run in the background. Add on task killers can affect it, too.

If you like old games get Nesoid and Snesoid. You'll have to find the roms yourself and load them to your sd card. Like wise, loading up music from you computer will give you the option to use songs as ringtones.

I forget the ringtone app I had. I think it was ringlert. That was a good one and having 2.2 should automatically add the ringtones to your sd card.

I use weather bug too I found that more relaible or accurate than others. Also in the task killer. Say your using your fb or web browser radio whatever. When you bring up your task killer to kill something but not what your using there is a check box where if you uncheck something it won't kill that. My reasoning for the app killer is that a lot of the useless bloatware verizon installs on their phones will just up and start running without your getting into it. So I need to run my app killer a lot because these droid phones are already bad enough on batteries.

Oh and if someone didn't already toss this one. Get a car charger if you didn't already. When you are away from home they come in handy. I love these smart phones but geez they could make a better battery haha.

I'm still getting the hang of my android phone that i received last week so i'm no good at the moment I've got the anvanced task killer downloaded though

What are you doing on it? Mine isn't supposed to be the greatest battery life wise but a bit of web use, texting, or listening to music on it barely puts a dent in the battery. Gaming, which keeps the screen on and really pulls on the cpu, can drain it down in 3 to 4 hours. You mentioned that your phone is a year or two old, though? So maybe your battery is starting to go.

I have the X, too, and I'm STILL learning! Did manage to get the task killer though.

I just got it in august. I do a lot of minor web browsing like eonline tcs etc on here because I have a cap on my actual computer web usage so I use the phone for basic browsing and watching tv shows and stuff I do on the computer. I am disappointed in my phone because I was under the inmpression it would get the froyo update but I'm still waiting for it to get flash player so I can watch the shows I'm into but not omg crazy about on my phone and not wasting my computer usage on the unimportant shows lol. We don't have cable where I live and sattelite is too expensive so my computer is my tv. I wish we would have sucked it up and gotten a droid x or droid 2 but we got the ally cuz we loved our previous lg phones and liked this keyboard better but its too late to go back now.

This coming spring summer verizon will be releasing 4g lte phones so we are gonna upgrade then to 4g phones that will be released with either gingerbread (2.3) or already be flash compatible froyo phones. The droid x,droid2, lg ally and incredible will be caput in march of 2011 and that's when all the new phones will start rolling out. I'm pretty geeky when it comes to cell phones I could care less if its the newest doodad but I'm crazy anal that it have all the things I want on it and it has to be able to handle everything I do web wise. That was a big drawback on continueing with a bb or switching to droid. My bb couldn't load pages or emails properly plus I couldn't send pms off my bb not to mention the rim software is in the dinosaur age compared to apple and droid. Hopefully the ally comes out with 2.2 (I'm stillllll waaaaiting verizon) and I can get flash on it ill be one happy camper then rumor is december is the magic month but they also said that about sept oct and nov....I won't hold my breath haha.


Oops down another battery level lol. I am really hard on my phones no wonder I kill them so often thank heavens for insurance.

Ok, the way you were talking about upgrading so soon made it sound like you had your phone longer.
What you could do is read up on flashing/rooting and when the two of you can upgrade flash a custom rom onto your phone- this way if you brick it you would have a back up plan. Or you could go ahead and if you seriously mess it up pretend to not know anything and say "it suddenly wouldn't turn on"

I'm on AT&T.. so I have a 2gb data limit - I use my own and "borrow" wireless as much as possible. (Note to readers: don't use WEP to secure your wireless and don't leave the password as the router default)
I'd tell you to tether, but Verizon is wise to it and usually catches people.

And yes, I'd say you really hammer your battery.

From what I've gathered, though, the really high end LG phones are good. The lower to mid are not... which is much the case with a lot of brands, really. Samsung is the same way.

To others that are confused/learning. Think of your phone as a computer, it might allow you to draw some parallels to what you've learn while using your pc.

I was debating on going with samsung for my next phone or going with a 'real' droid. I'm still up in the air but when verizon starts releasing the new line of phones for testing etc ill be doing a lot of research prior to purchasing. I thought about rooting my phone but I'm worried that without having someone walking me thru it step by step ill mess up. If I root tho can I get flash player on my phone? That would be awesome. I know the one forum has the steps to root your phone but I know zkp about the process and what you can and cannot do with it. Id love to delete all the bloatware that's for sure.

I think I've seen an Ally guide somewhere. Your best bet would be to find a good community with a lot of people that like to hack their phones and ask for help. This is the most popular mod and would probably be what you need for what you want to have your phone do. Again, see if you can find someone who can give you some feedback on how the Ally takes it.
Everything I've seen for rooting, flashing, sideloading and such all seems really simple to me. I'm use to doing that sort of stuff.

As for what to go with, don't get another hampered phone. Go as high as you can afford and what fits you. I could have went higher end but I do not carry a purse, wanted a keyboard, and am on AT&T. I plan to use my phone as it is for a bit and eventually flash it if I need newer build support for anything and don't want to wait for AT&T - this will also give people time to actually try it out on the phone I have since this thing just came out in October.

And we've gotten O/T here, I bet we're spooking the new android users with more technical talk.
Though I have one simple suggestion for everyone. If you have your own wireless network at home, use that for downloading as much as possible unless you have unlimited data.

Not sure if you have problems getting up in the morning or not, but we have an alarm clock that is amazing! I think its called Alarm Clock Plus V2. It has this high pitched really annoying (at least to me) alarm that I can hear across the house (but that may just be because of the pitch) and instead of just hitting snooze or just turning it off, you have to do 1 math problem to snooze and 2 in a row correct to turn it off. Not sure how good you are with math, but its annoyingly hard first thing in the morning! (you can do different alarms I believe and it has regular alarms as well, but those usually get turned off while we are still asleep)
Google Maps VERY handy navigation app!
Layars is pretty awesome to play with
Drop box is very handy if you use any files on multiple computers
Alchemy is another super addictive game
Forget where you park often? Theres an app for that. The name made me giggle! Carrrr Matey

Your phone isn't almost junk....nowhere close imo. Its the way of the cell phone world every 6 mths or so something newer comes out. Honestly I think the droid 2 and x are probably the best available right now and will def stay up to date as time goes on. When it comes to the new software updates and your phone becomes un updatable (like the htc eris and potentially lg ally) that's when its time to worry. I believe the 2 will be updatable for a few more droid os updates like gingerbread (2.3) and whatever 2.4 would be so you'll get atleast 2 years out of it or more. I wish I would have said beh and gone all out and gotten the droid x or droid 2 but I didn't so now I've got to live with the ally till summer. We actually have an ugrade in dec and one in july but I won't let bf upgrade till the new line of phones come out. Lol I use my phone more than him so he is banned from getting a new phone till I can.


Don't worry your phone is a good one. Check out androidforums.com for info about your phone and any questions you might have can be answered there. I pop in there a lot to get potential updates about new software for the ally.

I don't have a droid but here's a link to an article in today's New York Times on-line that gives the author's 10 favorite droid apps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/te...t.html?_r=1&hp

Hope it is helpful.

I'm still getting used to my Android I to have angry birds and stuck on a level same with bubble blast 2 lol

I put a virus checker on mine because I started downloading music I also have a bar tender app as well for work just incase I forget how to make a drink

Android is linux. Any malware on linux needs root access to run and by default you're not root. I highly doubt you've rooted your phone..
You could potentially give your windows computer a virus, but using a virus scanner on your windows computer and scanning your media before copying it over is better. Your computer has more cpu, ram, and power than your phone. All you're doing is adding an app to slow your phone down.

It may be something you have to set up in your settings. I dont use FB but I would imagine that in your FB settings (it should load it up the same way as a computer or youll have to look around for the settings link) and in there it should have the things to set up the notifications. Wayyyy back when I did have FB it was set up on my BB and I had to go into the settings on the phone to set up the sounds etc but I also had to go into the FB settings to set up the mobile notifications. If I remember correctly you can also set this up logged into FB off your computer in the mobile settings.


With your email, some emails are not compatible with Google. Its not the Droids themselves its Google that makes it all funky. One email accounts that Ive heard that has a lot of problems setting up is hotmail. I had yahoo set up easy pesy on my Ally but eventually I just sat down one day and transfered all my email stuff from yahoo to Gmail.


Check out the forums on Verizon Wireless website, alot of people on there can help you set it up also androidforums.com and even just googling Android Forums or help can give you some assistance. The handbook things that the phones come with now are pretty much useless some even need to be downloaded off the web. A friend of mine has the HTC Eris and her book was pointless (as is my Allys) and she needed to download it.

It will take some getting used to coming off a BB to Droid, they are soooo different from each other but I think that Droid as an operating system is wayyyy better and way more technologically advanced...but thats just my opinion.

I'm going to butt in here for a minute and ask a droid-ish question. I have the HTC Droid Eris, which I guess is like a very very simple droid phone, but it's good enough for me. My first smart phone, I don't do a whole lot with it, email, a bit of internet, only have a few apps, weather, 3 games, and a sticky note app, it's called Color Note. I live off that. Otherwise, I'm not very good with the technical stuff, with this task killer and whatnot, never heard of such things before! (and I'm not even 30 for another 24 days yet!)

Oh right, my question.. what's a good Calendar app? The calendar widget thingy (?) that was already on the phone is not right. Whenever an All-Day event comes up, whether it's something I've added like a birthday, or something that's already in the google or whatever calendar like Halloween, it is a day early! So, if I have the actual calendar up, with the whole month, Halloween will be on the 31st. If it's the 30th today, and I have my homepage up, with the calendar icon thing there, it will say "Oct 30", and to the right of the date say "Today: Halloween (all day)". Appointments that are not all day appear on the right date, likwe dr appointments, but the all day thing bugs the heck out of me. And I like my events to just be there on muy home page, or i'd never think to actually open the calendar everyday to see if anything's going on. I need it right there. But come December 24, it's going to tell me today is Christmas Day!

ANNOYING!

Sorry for taking over.. I'm done now.

make sure you have your ping or push notifications turned on. That was my problem. And also make sure to check when your email account checks for new mail.
I didnt have a smart phone, so my facebook sent messages to my phone on a regular basis, now I cant get them to turn off! I have unchecked it so many times on my facebook page! It works for about a day, and then they start coming back! GRRR!

As for a calendar app, I just use my google calendar for everything. It sends alerts to my phone that way!

Another thing I havent seen mentioned:
Regular gloves will not work with touch screens, just to warn you! But they do make touch screen compatible gloves now! (Gary got me a pair for Christmas )Or you can get some conductive thread and just sew a quick patch into a pair of gloves you already have!

There's Angry Birds walkthroughs available Just google Angry Birds 5-13 or whatever, and you'll find a youtube walkthrough.

And your phone is not "almost junk". They are always upgrading phones, and changing them, so no matter when you get a phone, it'll probably be replaced within 6 months!

Is your Facebook set up to email you when someone responds or whatever? If it is, then you may just need to edit the phone settings for it to check for email every 15 minutes or whatever, and notify you.

You've probably just got a reminder set up for the day before, or the date is wrong in there somehow. It's not the calendar itself

Erica- I have that color notes widget too....Im horrible at remembering to take a grocery list with me to the store and that thing has saved my life many a times. Bf was ready to kill me when he would ask what I need and Id tell him Ill let you know when I find it..LOL He is a list person and Im not...Im a walk thru the aisles till something pops to my attention...lol As for the calender thing, it may be the settings in the calender also that it notifies you the day before. When I set my calender I have to make sure to go thru all the settings or it will notify me the day before instead of my usual hour prior.


Does anyone else have an Ally?? Im only wondering because since I got my new update over Thanksgiving week my touch screen is goofy. Sometimes its hyper responsive and other times it doesnt recognize anything. Supposidly the Ally is getting all these new updates to make the phone more Froyo ready but Im not holding my breath. Another question in regards to Froyo and rooting. If the Ally gets Froyo will it be Flash compatible. Im hearing mixed responses about this. Also if I root my phone (Ive been doing a little reading up on this) what other benefits is there to rooting besides just being able to get rid of all the bloatware, like City ID, FB, Myspace, Twitter etc....My main concern is being able to get Flash Player on my phone and when we bought them we were told numerous times that it would get Flash.......now Im just getting cranky cuz I feel jipped.

Do you have any Flash support at all? You should at least have something like Flash Lite 3 on there as other phones running 2.1 and with comparable stats have it.

If, when, you get the 2.2 upgrade you could have flash. You'd have to look through all of the custom roms out there to see what exactly each one has, but I'd imagine they all have worked in some sort of flash support - or at least the well known ones would have (CyanogenMod, Raptor, and Velocity- seems to be Ally users favorite)
Just remember that Adobe's Flash (and Adobe products in general) has several bugs itself. Some people never encounter them and others get frequent crashes. If you go the rooting/rom route, back up and frequently make backups after in case anything happens (buggy app crash).
Other benefits are speed, performance, and complete control of your phone. For people on a carrier like AT&T there's even more benefit as the phone then isn't restricted.

ETA: Look into skyfire if you don't have it. Hopefully your phone can handle it.