Category Archives: Android

Android, Technology

Wiped

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On Sunday Sandy and I did some more yard work. We had a bush in the front yard that needed some serious trimming, and a lot of the branches were too thick for her to get when Kevin helped her with the weeds last week. So I used the chainsaw and trimmed the bush fairly easily. She also had some stubs of a few dead bushes she couldn’t pull out of the ground in front of the house. Her and Kevin had cut down these dead bushes and bagged them up last week, but they weren’t able to quite get that last roots of them out of the ground. So I took a shovel and worked around them, digging a little deeper and deeper around them until I was able to pull them out of the ground. After that I did a lot of edge trimming – around the mailbox, fire hydrant, telephone pole, around the house, and around the back fence. When we were close to being done, I pulled out my phone to check messages and found that it was in French and at some “Welcome” screen.

Oh crap. I knew right away what had happened. Apparently my moving around, bending and jumping on and off of the shovel and doing the edging was interpreted as multiple attempts to unlock my phone. After 15 of these attempts my phone went ahead and executed the system wipe function, effectively erasing not only my phone’s main storage, but also my entire SD card as well. I have both 512MB storage and 512MB for a total of 1TB on my phone. I didn’t have that much data though, that’s only the maximum I can store. I had nowhere near that much data on it, but it was still quite a bit.

I didn’t panic like I might have, had it happen a few years ago when things on smartphones weren’t so organized. I have wiped my phone plenty of times in the past, but never on accident like this. I knew what to do, and I knew that this time (as was each time up to this point) it would be much easier to do and would take much less time to get back “up to speed”.

The longest part of the process was just letting my phone restore all of its apps (over 400 in my case). This is a pretty automatic process. My phone had run an automatic backup just 3 hours earlier, so I knew it would be pretty close to complete. During the long impatient wait of roughly three hours when all of my apps were installed, I went through the restore of everything else–my contacts, text messages, etc., all of which are pretty automatic these days. They have this stuff down pretty good for today’s smartphones, and the process just keeps getting faster and faster as the phone processors keep improving. After all of my apps were done installing, I noticed a few key apps were missing for some reason–like my launcher of all things. I’ve been using Nova Launcher Prime on my phone for years, having brought it from phone after phone. I always try the stock launcher a new phone comes with, then sometimes a few others that don’t quite cut it, then I always end up coming back to Nova Prime. It just works the best for me.

So with Nova installed, I restored the most recent Nova backup I had, which is huge for me, because it restores all of my folders and customized shortcuts, icons, and apps, all organized exactly how I like them. Rebuilding those would be a huge nightmare and I’d probably never get it quite right for months, remembering little details and tweaks very slowly over a long period of time, month after month. So seeing my main format restored almost instantly was a big relief to say the least.

Several other apps–probably about a dozen–were also not restored, though it told me the exact number of apps it had to restore, and all of those did install, according to the results. Anyway, it was easy to figure out what was missing, since the old icon for each of the missing apps was still restored from Nova Prime, it just had a greyed-out look. If I clicked it to open it would tell me that the app wasn’t installed and give me the option to search for it. In all but a couple cases, this worked perfectly and it always found the right app and installed it, restoring the full-color icon and the app worked fine.

A couple apps gave me nothing when I searched for them, but I figured out what the issue was. In Nova you can rename your apps and icons to anything you want, and the few apps I had given more logical names were the ones it couldn’t properly find. Like my bank app – instead of it being named the name of my bank, the app always installs with the name “Personal”. The icon, however, includes the bank’s name and logo. I can never find it in my app drawer because I never remember to look for “Personal”. (With a standard launcher I’d be stuck with that name too) So I renamed it to the name of my bank. Now I can always find it alphabetically or by searching. But apparently this icon title is what’s used to search for the app, so those apps were slightly more difficult to find and install.

At that point I knew everything was back in place. Then–and this is no small feat in itself when you have over 400 apps on your phone–there is the tedious process of security. Most apps require you to login in one way or another, some now having 2FA (Two Factor Authentication), and each has as username and a unique password. Thank goodness for password managers! I can’t imagine life these days without a serious password manager. I also can’t imagine losing or forgetting my primary password manager password either! Ahhh, would that be a disaster!

Needless to say, I’ve been logging into apps one-by-one, as I use them, since Sunday when I restored my phone. It’s Tuesday evening now, and I’m pretty darned close to finished. I have re-downloaded my entire “Liked” song list from Spotify (7,500+ songs) and a few of my recently unfinished Audiobooks. What I haven’t finished yet is restoring my entire photo collection. I keep a copy of all 60,000+ photos on my phone and I update it about once every month or two, just to have a fairly recent collection of everything wherever I am. I use a couple of my home screens on my phone as photo slideshows that constantly flip through every photo on my phone, randomly, whenever I flip to one of those home screens. It’s pretty handy and interesting, often bringing back memories or giving me ideas. I use a Windows App called “Bulkr” which downloads my entire photo collection from Flickr very easily, and as long as I keep a copy of this collection on my PC, it quickly updates each month by only downloading the new photos and videos I made since it last backed up. The trick to getting 60,000+ photos and videos onto my phone in a decently-short amount of time is by removing the microSD card from my phone temporarily, placing it into an SD card adapter, plugging it into my PC, then copying the updated folder from my PC to the microSD card and telling it to ignore matching files. It quickly skips the thousands already there and just adds the new stuff. Then I re-install the microSD card back in my phone and I’m good to go. This is all done, of course, with my phone powered off.

So that’s it. In a nutshell: Late Sunday afternoon all three of us–Sandy, me, and my phone–were wiped out. And all three of us needed a serious recharge.

Android, Technology

Speaki – Android App Review

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I was hooked on using Verizon’s Message+ app for texting for the longest time, until recently. The primary feature that kept me using it was its “Speak your text messages” option. I found this very handy, and I couldn’t find a better texting app that did this, so I stayed with it. Then I read an article online about apps that will read your texts and notifications to you, and everything changed. I realized how great it would be if not only my TEXTS were read to me automatically, but what if my Ring and Home alerts could be read to me as well?! That would be amazing.

So right away I set out to take a new look at texting apps. There were a few that had many more features, scored great in reviews, and had some great options that Message+ didn’t have, so I started trying them out, just for a change. I settled on an old favorite – ChompSMS. Tons of customization options and I liked almost everything about it when I used it years ago. Now on to Notification Speech.

I recently found a nice Android app called “Speaki” that allows me to have my phone speak my notifications. This means when there is motion on any of my Ring cameras or an alarm from any of my smart devices at home, instead of my phone just making whatever notification tone I have for that alarm type, it will actually TELL me what the alert is.

It can also read you text messages out loud when they come in. Everything is optional too–it’s based on which apps you choose to have talk. Only those apps will speak their notifications. As a result of this, I have changed all other notification sounds on my phone to Silent, or have turned them off completely. Now my phone is mostly quiet until there’s an alert I want to know about, then it tells me exactly what it is so I no longer have to pickup and check my notifications every time I hear a generic tone.

It works really good once you tweak it a bit. It has an “All Apps Name” option turned on by default, which speaks only the name of the app that you receive a notification for, just so you know, then it speaks further details for the apps you specify. I found this annoying so I turned it off so I only get speech for the apps I specifically selected. Everything else can wait until I have time to check my notifications.

It can be a tricky process getting it to work 100% though. There are a ton of notification options, both global and on a per-app basis in Android, so you have to take the time to experiment with exactly what works best for your specific device. I found that I needed to set the “Audio Stream” option in Speaki to “Notification”, so it uses that stream to play the speech, then turn OFF all the options in android to for Notifications – both the default sound and the notification sound for the specific apps that I want to talk. Setting the notification sound to “Silent” works as well.

I tried several other apps that speak your notifications as well, and they all approached it differently with different options. Some just turned all speech on and off for every notification you get without any options for choosing which apps – it was either ALL or NOTHING. Those I uninstalled right away and moved on. This one, so far, seems to give the perfect balance of ease of use while still having decent options for specifying only the few apps you want to speak.

Android, Technology

Watch this. Smart, eh?

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instaweather-watchfaceI have an old first-generation Moto 360 smartwatch.  I got it after the 2nd generation came out and the price dropped dramatically on this one.   When I first got it about a year ago, I had a lot of problems with the battery dying way too quickly–after only a few hours sometimes.  But this was due to both the newness (me enjoying toying with all of the features and options to see what I like the most) and to the firmware, which was a bit buggy.  These days I’m pretty happy with it.  After try out hundreds of watchfaces over the months, I’ve settled on one I like the most — Instaweather.  In particular, the “Hourly Forecast” version, which is shown in the photo.  One flick of my wrist and this screen pops on, showing me the 7-day forecast, current time & temp, each day’s high and low, and much more.  I can also click the graph to switch to different ranges of the forecast – anything from a 6-hour range to a 7-day range, or switch to a “dew point and humidity” view instead of temperature, etc.  The colored ring around the rim of the watch even shows my total daily distance goal for walking (currently 2 miles per day).

Android, Entertainment, iPhone/iPod Touch, Technology

Go Pokemon Go!

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Last week Pokemon Go was released to the public. Kevin and I have been playing the Field Test version for a couple months, so we had a good head-start on it. Our accounts were reset though, so we had to start over when the public release came out, but at least we had a lot of time to learn the basics and watch it turn into the cool game it is now. Boy has it taken the world by storm though!! It seems like almost EVERYONE is playing it, with crowds of people found at Pokestops and gyms all over the place, meeting up and playing together.

It’s fun knowing where this all came from, and knowing we, as early Ingress players, played a big part in it. It seems a lot of Pokemon Go players have yet to learn how it all came to be. When I talk to Go players I explain what Ingress is, and that Ingress is kind of a “Pokemon Go Origins”. Niantic (creators of Ingress) and Nintendo got together and shared their gaming data to create a new sort of Pokemon/Ingress hybrid game. They used all of the basic GPS mapping data and features and Ingress “portals” to create all of the Pokestops and Gyms in Pokemon Go. Having a good knowledge of the entire area’s portal locations from over 3 years of playing Ingress gives us “old school” gamers a distinct early advantage in Pokemon Go, but with so many more people playing, virtually everywhere, and many of them much stronger and better Pokemon players than us, the overall favor still tips things in their way it seems.

Most of the portals that Ingress started with were created by Niantic using the data from the Historical Marker Database on the Internet (http://www.hmdb.org/). But they were few and far between when the game was first released. So we, as early Ingress players, were allowed to submit hundreds of locations players might find interesting while playing Ingress, and after a sometimes-very-long acceptance process by Niantic, each portal was either rejected or accepted. If accepted, it became a “portal” when Ingress players could go to build it up for their faction, either for the blue team (The Resistance) or for the green team (The Enlightened). Personally, I am responsible for the creation of nearly 200 portals in the game, all in and around the Kenosha, WI area and near my work in Waukegan, IL. I have also made it to the top Ingress level, L16, so I feel I know Ingress fairly well.

Ingress is sort of a capture-the-flag GPS-based game with two factions fighting against one another, worldwide. Niantic would periodically hold “anomaly” events in different cities around the globe, which would draw in hundreds or thousands of players from all over the area and around the world to participate in close one-on-one and team-on-team battling for a day.

I had thought Ingress had gotten pretty popular itself, until seeing the effects of this past week’s Pokemon Go release! It’s almost like having an “anomaly” event every day at the moment… hundreds of people flocking to clusters of portals (known as Gyms and Pokestops) to Pokemon Go players… It has already been on the front page of the Kenosha News, all over every TV news program, and even on TMZ! It’s getting everyone up and out, walking around, being social, and getting some exercise, playing with their kids, and getting active. Many say so many adults are playing because they grew up on Pokemon, and are sort of reliving their childhood at this point. Whatever the reason, it’s getting people out exercising and socializing like never before, and playing a game with their kids again. I can say, personally, that it has had the same effect for me. Kevin, my son, now 18 years old, played Ingress with me a few years ago, reach level 10 after about a year and got bored of it and stopped playing. Since Pokemon Go came out, he is now excited to go back out and play with me, and we’re often out playing together again!

Kevin and I heard about this game’s “Beta Testing” a few months ago, way before it’s public release last week, and we signed up to “Field Test” the app. Luckily we were both accepted for the field testing… From what I heard, many others in the area that also signed up never got accepted, so we felt quite fortunate. We actually got a chance to play some very early versions of the game, and watch it evolve a little until the final version was released to the public. We saw some pretty interesting changes come and go in the game–some of which gave us great insight into how the data from Ingress is implemented in Pokemon Go. But perhaps I should leave those nitty-gritty details for another article…if anyone is interested.

Anyway, Niantic (creators of Ingress and an app called Field Trip) got together with Nintendo, and together they created a new version of Pokemon for smartphones, and all of that data for “portals”–most of which was created by us, it’s players–was used in Pokemon Go to create all of the Pokemon Gyms and Pokestops in the game. This includes the photos we took of each location. So based on Ingress gameplay, we created several “farm” areas all over the world. These are small geographic areas densely-populated with many portals, which groups of 8 or more of one of the two teams would often build up to the strongest level for their respective team and then “farm” that area’s portals for top-level gear.

So now, in Pokemon Go, these farm areas are fast becoming hugely-popular meetup areas for vast numbers of Pokemon Go players! For us Ingress players, it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before (except for the rare anomaly events held in major cities). Go players will cluster around a group of Pokestops (which are also Ingress Portals), plug Lure Modules into them, and just stand or walk around and watch the wild Pokemon come to them so they can capture them. Lure Modules are pretty rare in the game, but you can purchase them with coins (and you can buy coins for the game with real money, or earn coins in the game without paying with real money). Lures will attract Pokemon to that Pokestop for a period of 30 minutes, and players seem to just continuously deploy new ones on these popular Pokestops when one wears off, giving everyone around them the benefit of catching many Pokemon with very little effort.

Having been an Ingress player for over 3 years, and watching it only get rare new players, it’s a little overwhelming to now see TONS of new players, constantly playing this new game. Pokemon Gyms, which players can fight and train on, and claim for their team, somewhat like portals in Ingress, are flipped to a different team so often, it’s hilarious! Players have the potential to earn 10 coins in Pokemon Go for each Gym they have a Pokemon deployed on, every 21 hours. This is known as a Defender Bonus, and is the only way you can earn coins to purchase items in the game’s store, aside from spending real money. I think, since most players know this, this is one reason it’s so difficult to keep ownership of a gym for any length of time. Until the game settles down a bit more, all gyms will probably be constantly changing hands multiple times every day.

In Ingress, players would try to locate remote hard-to-get-to portals and try to use them as “Guardians” so they could own them for several months to earn one of their badges in the game. This eventually led to some players harvesting Ingress data and analyzing it to determine how long players have been on each portal, which would tell them how close these players were to earning that badge, so they knew exactly which portal(s) were a particular player’s guardian portal. These players were referred to as Guardian Hunters, or “Gunters”, to steal a term from the great book (and soon-to-be movie) “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One

I’m sure the “newness” of this craze will die down over time, and things will then start leveling off to a level a little closer to where Ingress is. Then again, with how much more popular this game is compared to Ingress right at its start, who knows! If they improve the performance of the app and keep adding better features and options like they did with Ingress, it might just gain much MORE popularity! I can’t imagine how that would be possible, but I guess we’ll see. I envision having “ops” much like we’ve had in Ingress, with groups of players from each faction planning massive attacks to take over gyms throughout an entire geographic area, and a nice world map like Ingress’ Intel Map so we can see how our team is doing, region-wide and worldwide compared to the other two factions.

Hold on to your Pokemon, people…this is just the beginning!

Oh, and just to throw in a shameless plug for our Kenosha group and my team of choice… Please signup to join our Slack Team at KenoshaGo.com. All teams are welcome! There are several public channels there for everything Pokemon Go, from news, gyms and meetups, to just general game discussion. Or you’re free to create a private channel just for your friends or for your own team to private discuss plans or meetups. Go Team Mystic!

Android, Technology

My Samsung Galaxy S6 Debacle

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The battery died on my Galaxy S6 last night, and I tried pretty much everything possible to get it working properly again, including soft reset, hard reset, factory recovery, etc. etc. etc., but nothing worked.  It seemed to “reboot” to the “SAMSUNG” screen most times instead of the “GALAXY S6” logo screen that normally appears from a power-off state. In fact, it REFUSED to even power off! Holding down the power button for a few seconds–which normally brings up the menu to power off of restart the phone–simply made it reboot back to the “SAMSUNG” screen (which is not a normal reboot, as previosuly mentioned).  Doing things in some apps – like trying to export my OnTrack readings and e-mail them to my wife, which I do daily, caused the same reboot, as well as just trying to open the built-in “Themes” function in Settings.

About a week ago I upgraded to Android Marshmallow, and everything worked great with it up until now. I’m not sure exactly what triggered this to happen except for my battery going dead while I was trying to use my phone. Pretty much everything is backed up to the cloud–all my apps, photos, etc., and the rest I have backed up manually (my OnTrack test results, SMS backup, and screenshots of all of my home screens, folders, and all of my app drawer icons–just to remind me of what was installed, for future reference). So my phone is primed to be wiped, but I can’t even get it to do THAT at this point.

I tried all of the instructions I found online for “How to hard reset the Galaxy S6”, but no luck. I even set the security settings to wipe the phone after 25 failed attempts at entering a PIN! I didn’t realize, however, that this little function was so time-consuming! What it does is let you enter the wrong PIN about 5 times, then reminds you about the wipe after 25 attempts and gives you a 5-minute delay before allowing you to try again. After trying again, maybe a few times, it reminds you again and increases the delay to 10 minutes. It repeats this process all the way up to 25 attempts, until it only allows 1 attempt before increasing the wait time between attempts. Finally, after the final attempt (and a whopping 1 HOUR delay), it tried to wipe the phone, showing “Deleting all data…” on the screen for several seconds, then did it’s reboot to the “SAMSUNG” logo, and returned to the login screen. When I tried to login once more with a bad PIN, it then showed “-1 attempts left – try again in 60 minutes” and the “Deleting all data…” message stayed on-screen as it once again attempted to wipe the phone. This time, however, the “Deleting all data…” message stayed on-screen forever. After waiting about 30 minutes with nothing changing, I pressed the power button and it went to the “SAMSUNG” startup screen again, rebooting.

After all that, I got desperate. With the only other option being to bring my phone into my carrier’s store, and having them first go through all of the same time-consuming troubleshooting steps I already went through, I started thinking about those buttons. For a warm boot you press 3 buttons. For a hard reset you press 3 buttons, but use the opposite volume button… and neither of those work for me. So what if I press ALL the buttons at once? There are a total of 4 on the phone: Volume Up, Volume Down, Power, and Home. So I did it and held them for about 10 seconds. Sure enough, my phone rebooted…CORRECTLY! Showing the GALAXY S6 screen instead of the SAMSUNG screen it kept rebooting to every other time! It just rebooted back to the login this time, but at least I could now consistently get it to properly reboot. So with this in mind, I did the 4-button reboot, and then immediately switched to the 3-finger combination used for a normal “hard reset”, figuring it would think it’s coming up from a power-off state and actually reset. After a couple failed attempts, the third time was a charm and I was able to switch buttons quick enough at the moment the GALAXY S6 screen appeared, holding the 3 buttons down, then the ANDROID logo appeared! SUCCESS! The next part was pretty amusing too… The little Android robot proceeded to fall over on it’s side, dead, with a big red circle with an X in it on he Android! I laughed pretty hard at that, which took away a lot of my frustration with this whole mess.

After a short time, the recovery menu appeared and I knew how to navigate this one–by using the VOL UP and VOL DOWN to select menu items and the POWER button to select them. With those I chose Factory Reset, and after it worked for several minutes I was FINALLY back to a brand-new phone! Everything is setup once again and working properly now. I know it’s good to refresh your phone every 6 months to a year, but this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be done. It was, however, good practice, and maybe this posting will even help someone else who might end up in the same situation. I have no idea what actually caused the issue or what became corrupted, I only know that my battery went dead quickly. If I’m not near a power source when it gets low though, I tend to push it right to the edge, so maybe that’s not such a good idea. It starts warning me at 15% battery, which is a sign to start charging or shut it down–SAFELY. Since I didn’t do that, it could have been in the middle of writing something critical when the power ran out. All I know is that it wasn’t a “CLEAN” shutdown, it was instantly dead. When I last glanced at the battery, it was at 1%.

Android, Technology

OK Google, figure this one out…

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I had an argument with my phone this morning in my car. I’ve been using the hands-free features more often, trying to get used to them, so this morning I woke up my phone with “OK Google, navigate to work.” This has worked many times in the past without issue. This time, however, I was instructed to make some strange turns at odd times, definitely going in the wrong direction, though the ETA looked about right. That’s the main reason I use it–just so I know about what time I’ll be at work–so I can squeeze in a few other things before work whenever possible. So I argued with my phone, tellling it a few times that “this isn’t right!” and “You must be joking!”, but of course, these arguments weren’t stated with “OK Google”, so they didn’t do any good for either one of us. I knew that, obviously, but my phone seemed to be having a brain fart, so I just argued with it to be just as ridiculous.

So once it was obvious I was going to the wrong location, I asked Google “OK Google, what is my Work address?” My phone then displayed my Home and Word Addresses. My Home address looked fine, but my Work address said “Lindenhurst, IL” with no address. It not only “forgot” my address, but also had the wrong city! This made me a little angry, but I was driving, so I said “OK Google, navigate to…” and I spoke the entire address of my work. That worked fine, and now I was navigating to the right location. When I got to work later on, I checked my “Edit work and home” settings in Google Maps on my phone and they were both correct! The exact correct address was stored for both locations! I’m pretty confused at this point. When I google the question “What is my Work address” I do get just “Lindenhurst, IL”, and it says “Contacts – Only you can see this result” at the top of the search result. I checked my contacts, and I don’t have an entry named “Work” though. Not even anything close. Where it’s getting this “Contact” information from, I have no idea. I just wish Google Maps would default to it’s OWN stored Home & Work locations instead of trying to be smarter by looking elsewhere.

Update:  Issue Resolved!  Apparently, there’s a Contact with my name on it that it checks.  So “Jim Trottier” has my Home and Work addresses, and Work said “Lindenhurst, IL”.  I corrected it.  <sigh>

Android, News, Technology, Technology Links

New Toy

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The Moto 360 smartwatch recently dropped another $100, which puts it at $149 now. We paid $300 for Kevin’s at Christmastime, so it’s actually a decent price right now, considering its features. I also had a $20 coupon for Best Buy, which was close to expiring, so for $130, I couldn’t resist.

Let’s get the worst thing out of the way right away: The battery life SUCKS. Just getting in an 8-hour shift at work without the watch dying is rare. It does only take 1 hour to fully charge from dead though, even using any wireless Qi charger, but it’s still a hassle. If it could somehow charge within a 2-foot range while still attached to my wrist, now THAT would be awesome… But I usually have to take it off and set it on top of my Qi pad for an hour to charge it up at work. Hey, at least it’s wireless!

The only other thing wrong with this watch is the “flat tire”. This is a small flat section at the bottom of the otherwise-perfectly-circular display. I have heard that this area is there to hold various sensors that the watch uses, so it’s necessary, but does tend to take away from the “perfect circle” display somewhat, and also hides useful information from watchfaces that take advantage of this area for displaying information. Several round-display smartwatches have since been released without this “flat tire” though, so one wonders whether they found a workaround for whatever sensors Motorola needed to put in that spot. Those watches currently cost a lot more than the Moto 360 right now though, so it’s a trade-off. Save $150, but get a flat tire…? I’ll take it!

But aside from those two things, I love the watch! It uses Android Wear, which is the universal software connection between pretty much every smartwatch and Android. This apparently opens up options for just about everything you could imagine, depending on what a developer wants to use it for. First, and foremost, is telling time. Yes, it tells time like a REAL watch. And if that’s all you want it to do, you might just be able to get decent battery life out of it as well! You can simply turn off all notifications and other features, find a simple watchface with only the most basic of animations (like just moving hands on an analog watchface) and the battery will probably last quite some time. I might have to try that some time, just to test this theory. But right now, I’m still playing…too many knobs and dials to try out…gotta play, gotta tinker.

Every option for telling time is available, even if you don’t see it in whatever watchface developer’s interface or app you’re using. Developers will only provide the features THEY want to, make their interface either easy to use or very difficult, and/or even make you pay for their watchface and/or design interface to make your own watchface. So, obviously, your experience with the watch may vary greatly. For myself, I like to try out everything, then I’ll eventually settle on a few apps or watchfaces I like the most and just use those. But then there’s always new stuff coming out, so I try those as well, hoping to find better things along the way. Being a geek, this is normal for me though.

Basic interfaces allow options for time, date, battery levels for the watch AND your phone, weather, etc., and some developers will also use nice animations, include calendar events, etc., but at the expense of battery life. Apps are another option altogether. Certain apps can be “installed” on the watch, though I’m pretty sure these are just tiny “stubs” or “mini versions” of actual applications that are primarily installed on your Android device, then simply feed data to your watch as needed. If an app installed on your android device is Android Wear-compatible, it is automatically installed on your watch and appears in the Apps list when you swipe right-to-left on the watch. One of these that showed up for me, surprisingly, Ingress! This is the MMO GPS game played worldwide that I play regularly (Resistance – Blue team). On the watch, when active, it alerts me to when portals are in range, and even allows me to hack the portals from my watch! This is neat, but after some use I find that it’s pretty limited and pretty much just a novelty. Your options are pretty limited, and–just as Ingress does on your phone–it’s a real battery juice sucker! Try hacking on your watch for an hour and you’re watch is DEAD, believe me!

Basically, the experience you have with the watch and how much you like it is going to come down to the quality of the developers and the apps and options they provide. For example, there’s an amazing app available called “Tip Calculator” for calculating restaurant tips, which you would think requires a calculator-type interface with all the number keys. This app manages to work flawlessly with only the slightest learning curve, has no “keyboard” at all, but only a few numbers (which are controls as well) in its center and a circular dial around the outside circle. It works great, doing exactly what it’s supposed to very quickly for you. It’s perfect for a round watchface. I hope more developers take a lesson from this one. The design is awesome, both in appearance and functionality!

There’s certainly no shortage of watchfaces for Android Wear. There are literally thousands out there to choose from, or you can just use one of the hundreds of different interfaces and design your own! There are so many good ones that I can’t even settle on just one and keep it that way, like Kevin does with his “Chicago Bears” themed watchface. I have a few different “Google Fit” watchfaces that show me my daily stats, including a constant view of my heart rate, my steps done today, and calories burned etc., and both my watch’s & phone’s battery levels as well as and “ambient” display that shows today’s weather forecast and temperature trend through the day. Another of my favorites is a “Military” watchface with no less than 6 different screens of details to flip between, and instant color-changing of them with a simple button push.

Basically, I’m happy with it. I consider it a geek toy, and it’s perfect for that. It tickles my wrist whenever I get any type of message, e-mail or text, and I can preview a bit of it or even read the entire message most of the time right on the watch. It helps me keep my phone in my pocket more often so I’m less distracted, and the automatic tracking of my steps and heart rate is just a health-monitoring bonus I could use. During my walks it constantly shows me my walking details and displays the music I’m listening to on my headset while I’m walking. And right now it’s analyzing my daily routine and it’s supposed to come up with a plan to help me stay (or in my case, “get”) fit based on my schedule. It should be interesting seeing how it progresses. It says it’ll take a couple weeks of gathering data.

Android, Family News, News, Photography

Sargeant Update (less important than a General Update…right, Captain Obvious?)

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Well, Rickochet is out now, so we’ve been working on our basement a bit. I guess it’s what they call a “partially finished” basement… We have carpeting down, and have one room down there paneled, but that’s about it–the rest is your basic basement, but it’s clean and dry, so we’re fixing things up a bit. We have a carpeting install coming for the one room down there, and once that’s in, we’ll be setting that up as Sandy’s “She Shed” (that’s the equivalent of a lady’s “Man Cave”). The rest of the basement will be for recreation, laundry, etc. We also gained some much-needed garage space, so we have some room to work on getting THAT cleaned up. It’s been waiting, with everything still in boxes, since we moved 3 years ago!

Matt helped us out recently by trimming the branches on our backyard tree. I picked up a nice, lightweight electric chainsaw from Menards, along with a tall ladder, and he able to get to nearly all of the branches we wanted removed–especially those overhanging our roof and one in the front yard that had our flag wrapped around it! The flag (still attached to our flagpole) got pretty damaged, but I was able to remove the branch from it after Matt cut the branch from the tree. It’s a little shredded on the end, but it’s flying free again, in time for the upcoming holidays. Thanks, Matt!!

We sold our big Ford Edge and switched to a Ford Focus Titanium instead. It’s a bit smaller and isn’t 4-wheel-drive, but we were able to cut our payments to less than half–even with the Titanium model, which has ALL the goodies on it–so it helps us a lot. The only regret I can see us having might come in the winter–a bigger, stronger 4WD vehicle can be a blessing in certain situations. But we’re well aware of that ahead of time, so we’ll work around it as best as we can and tough through the Wisconsin winters with it. At least it has remote start and a rear-view camera, which the Edge didn’t have.

Sandy, Ty, Kevin and I went to see Jurassic World yesterday. Awesome movie, they really pulled it off with StarLord as the main character. Chris Pratt seems to be great in everything these days. And then there was Vincent D’Onofrio, who played Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket… He played a military guy (go figure) looking to use genetically-engineered animals on the battlefield. I half-expected Lee Ermey (his unforgettable drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket) to make a cameo appearance, like Stan Lee always does in the Marvel movies. It was great though–not even any really slow points in the movie either… Every time things started to slow down, BAM! They hit you with something else and off it went again. I think they were able to successfully pull off this one, using the same old island group “Isla Sorna”, etc., and they’ll probably do some record-breaking numbers. I just hope they can keep it up with the inevitable sequels. I have already heard that Chris Pratt is on board for more of them. We’ll see what happens.

I got a new phone last week – the Samsung Galaxy S6. 64GB of memory & a 8-core processor, but it’s sealed–no SD cards and no battery changes. So far it’s nice–amazing speed and features. The only downside is the battery time. I get about 10 hours out of it, before I need to recharge. I have to keep my brick pretty handy–but my brick is huge, so I can actually recharge my phone completely about 3 or 4 times from a single charge of my brick, so that’s not so bad. Having 64GB of internal memory–which is a first for me–eliminates a long-time problem I’ve had though: Juggling all of my apps, music and data files. Now that it’s all in one place, I don’t have to think about where things are or specially-configure specific apps (like DSub for my music) so they put their files in the proper locations. Everything just works. The camera is awesome too–supposedly the best smartphone camera out there today. 16 megapixel photos, animated GIFs, as well as many other modes, and it’ll even record 4K video. I already recorded a couple to test it out. I’ll have to watch them at Matt’s house, as he’s the only one I know with a 4K TV right now. And for those geeks who are even more curious–yes, after the usual 1-day of use, I again dumped the stock launcher and installed Nova Prime. No stock launcher ever comes close to the features and ease of use it provides!

Android, Technology

Android Weather Apps

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weather_thumbnailHello. My name is Jim, and I’m a weather addict.  I drool for the latest and greatest weather gadgets and apps.  My Roku screensaver is an awesome weather app that gives me tons of weather information.  But the Roku app isn’t why I’m posting right now.  I found a new Android weather app that’s pretty cool. It’s called “Arcus“.  It’s very “granular” and provides weather information in very clear terms, broken down to the next hour, next 24 hours, next week, temperature and precipitation graphing, etc.  When it was mentioned on TWiG (this week in Google) they even said it will give you details such as “Rain will begin in 8 minutes.”  I haven’t seen anything THAT granular yet, but it does give me almost everything I could ask for in a weather app…except animation!  Those I get from Accuweather — another great weather app.  Both apps are available in free and paid versions, offering a few more features and faster updating in the paid versions, and no ads.  I highly recommend the paid versions.  Click on any of the thumbnails to see a few screenshots.

Android

Launcher Widget Issues

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I’ve used a lot of different Android launchers over the years, and even purchased several of them, but I always end up coming back to the stock launcher for one reason or another. Lately, EVERY launcher I try has failed miserably at the same thing: Displaying a 4×4 calendar widget I use very often. If fact, I have even purchased a second calendar app that includes a completely different 4×4 calendar, hoping that it might not actually be the launchers, but the calendar app I was using (Jorte). Well, THAT one has the same issue in every non-stock launcher!

So now I’m very confused as to exactly what causes the issue. All I know is that they both simply work in the stock launcher on my Galaxy SIII. They’re always there when I scroll to that home screen. With every other launcher, after a day (and usually less than that) I scroll to that home screen and I get the “Problem loading widget” error and no calendar. I always have to restart the launcher app to get it working again (on the launchers that DO include a restart option). Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’d be curious to know if it’s just the Galaxy SIII, or if the same issue exists for other phones using non-stock launchers. I had a different phone a year ago, but do you think I can remember if I had this issue then?? Ha! I’m 50 now…I’m prone to a lot of CRS issues.

Anyway, the two apps I use that both include a 4×4 monthly calendar widget are Jorte (free) and Business Calendar (paid). I always configure them to display all of my calendar events as text. On the launchers that allow resizing, I usually stretch the calendar to the edges of the screen to maximize the info displayed on the calendar, but I’ve tried just leaving it the default size as well as making it smaller–the same issue always occurs either way.

Android, Entertainment, Technology

Amazing new discovery…and Ingress progress

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Coffee WarmerI just discovered this awesome coffee warming technique! It really works! When ripping DVDs, the fan runs at high speed constantly, blowing the heat out of the laptop. This is even more useful than the built-in coffee cup holder…which is only available on the laptop when I’m NOT ripping DVDs… 😉

This weekend we made a lot of progress in getting more “blue” on Kenosha’s Ingress map!  Before it was nearly all green, with the Enlightened consuming large chunks of area.  Last night we had a few large areas covered in blue, but this morning I see that most of our areas are back to simply links, so I’m afraid the Enlightened are becoming just that, and are working on re-acquiring their portals.  We have made great progress, however, and are working with a few other key Resistance allies in the area to build up our portals and hammer on the enemie’s as much as possible.

My daily walks really help our progress a great deal, allowing us to attack and gather from each portal we encounter, both on the way out and on the way back.  I’m only a few hundred points from level 3 now, and Kevin is well into level 2.  We are getting so addicted to the game, it’s ridiculous.

Android, Entertainment, Technology

Ingress

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Ingress_LogoKevin and I finally got our Ingress invites last week.  Matt got his a couple weeks earlier, so he sparked our interest.  Yesterday, while on our usual walk with Socks, we went through the training, built up some XM energy and learned how to hack a portal.  Ingress is a “walking game”, like “Zombies, Run!” but with a totally different concept to get you out and walking around.  In Ingress, you gather “XM” as energy and find portals, which are usually represented by real-life public objects, such as sculptures or monuments.  You learn how everything works as you start playing the game, gathering energy and finding resonators and other components to help with your hacking and taking control of these portals.  It looks like an interesting game, and so far we’re only a tiny bit into it.  The only problem I can see is that you have to keep your phone screen on to run the program, so you can’t just put on your headphones and put it in your pocket–it requires you to be viewing the screen most of the time.  This can be pretty dangerous when you’re out walking around in public–especially if you’re walking a dog or walking out in the street!  Constantly staring at your phone instead of watching where you’re walking could get you killed! For real–not just in the game.

I can see this is unlike other games in popularity already though–we’ve already noticed others in real life playing it.  One guy with a tablet at a monument in downtown Kenosha was actually hacking the same portal as us.  Turned out he was on the other side–one of the “Enlightened” while we are on the “Resistance”.  He asked what side WE were on, but I “mistakenly” said I was also on the Enlightened.  We found several portals near the lake–almost all of the metal sculptures along the new lakefront contains a portal.  This not only gets you out and about, but also informs you about the monuments and public displays around you!  It’ll even show you a photo of the object containing the portal, it’s name, and more, a little like the “Field Trip” does.  In fact, FieldTrip was created by the same company.

This week I’ve been hacking the portals that are located between home and work, trying to gather what I can and weaken those of the enemy.  It’s slow, but effective.  This week I also found a wealth of information on the web, including the global Ingress Map, which details every found portal, who owns it and it’s makeup, a great instruction page, and even instructions on how to SUBMIT a site as a portal!  I’ll be submitting a few preferred sites of my own soon.  This game is great–too bad it’s still only in beta.  You can only get in by invite, so if you’re interested, please sign up as soon as possible on their website.  It took Kevin and I a couple months to get an invite, but Matt got his sooner by other means–he found someone else with an extra key.

Android, Christmas, Family News, Holidays, News, Technology

Rick and Sandy made the paper…and other treats

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Rick and Sandy in Kenosha News - 12/22/12Wow, Christmas is getting close.  The holiday cheer is here.  Three nice things just from this morning: Rick and Sandy made the paper (see photo–click it to see it full-size in a new window), then, when I went to Flickr to upload it, Flickr presented me with a gift of 3 free months of Flickr Pro–that’s a whopping $6.00 more in my pocket… then when I went to Facebook to catch up on family and friends I found that Jelly Bean was released today for my Galaxy SIII!  I hit the trifecta today!

Android, Audiobooks, Entertainment, Music, Technology

DSub opens my eyes

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Today I discovered a weird convergence of the two big issues I posted previously.  It started when I discovered DSub, an Android Subsonic client that ROCKS!  The regular Android Subsonic client–called simply “Subsonic” was decent, but lacked some crucial features and functionality that made me lean more toward Audiogalaxy when they were both excellent streaming music server options.  DSub is (and looks a lot like) the Subsonic client on steroids!  It’s open-source, so I’m guessing it’s the same client at it’s base, just customized to be much better.  It’s like the “full version” of the Android Subsonic client!  It costs $1.99, but it’s well worth it!  Anyway, one of the big features of this app that just punched me in the face and woke me up today, is an option in its settings called “Temporary loss of focus”.  It has 4 options under it: “Always Pause”, “Pause and lower volume when requested”, “Always lower volume”, and “Do Nothing”.  I didn’t realize what this weird function was until I clicked on it and saw these 4 options…. then it hit me–THIS is the feature than an audio-heavy app needs, to know what to do when another sound plays on the Android device!

So now I was on a mission.  I set it to “Always Pause”, threw on my winter coat, and hopped in the car for a ride around the neighborhood.  I turned setup Google Navigation to take me to work, started up my DSub music, then drove around the neighborhood while Google Navigation kept interrupting my song to give me directions.  It was FLAWLESS!  DSub paused every time when the Navigation started talking, and all is right with my (Android) world again!  So next I started up an Audible book and drove around some more… Bummer.  Audible isn’t working that way, and keeps playing now, blending the two voices of the book and the navigation into something very confusing (and potentially dangerous if I were relying on actual directions while driving).  So I came back home and send a support e-mail to Audible.  They responded very quickly to another question I had previously, so I am anxiously awaiting their response to this one.  Here’s what I wrote:

I listen to my audible books heavily on my Android phone during my daily commute, along with Google Navigation. I’ve been having a problem recently, however: The audible application no longer pauses when Google Navigation speaks–they both talk at once, which can sometimes make me miss a turn or direction unless I’m constantly watching the GPS directions on the screen.

After some research on the web, and finding other apps that still work ok and pause for the navigation, I have realized that it might be something that has changed in the Audible app.

I also found this explanation on Audible regarding a slightly different issue:

“We have received reports from users of the Audible for Android application, that the Audible application pauses at random. Upon further investigation, we have found that other applications may ‘steal’ the audio focus for no apparent reason when running in the background. The Audible for Android application respects audio focus requests to pause or stop playback. At the current time, the only means of resolution is to uninstall the offending application from your phone.”

To me, it seems like the Audible application used to respect the audio focus change, but now it no longer does. Can I get this ability back? Maybe if I uninstall and reinstall the app?? Or was something actually removed in the app so that it will no longer auto-pause like it used to?

Please let me know if there’s anything I, or Audible, can do to resolve this issue. I’m afraid I would no longer be able to safely listen to audiobooks in my car (with Audible) if this can’t be fixed, and I’d have to seek another alternative.

Thank you.

That’s it.  I’m pretty sure they took this ability out of their app, but we’ll see if there might be a way to correct it’s behavior and make it work.  It worked properly ever since I first subscribed to Audible and started listening to books in the car.  I’ll post the response I get.

UPDATE: 

Wow, Audible is quick. About an hour after sending that support message to them this evening, they responded. They gave me a $10 coupon for my trouble, apologized, and said there’s an update for the app, and I need to completely uninstall, delete the Audible folder, then install the updated version. So I did all of this, but was unable to completely remove the application, since it came pre-installed on my phone. I could only uninstall the updates. So I did that much and deleted the folder. Then ran Audible, signed in and downloaded a book. I played the book, then started Google Navigation. Sure enough, it worked great by pausing the book when driving directions were spoken, then resumed the book again right after. Next I installed the latest update from the app store and did it again. Crap! It went back to having the issue again by completely ignoring the driving directions and playing the book right through them. Back to the drawing board!

This definitely proves it’s something in the updated versions though, so it helps. I e-mailed support again, as a reply, so they have the entire history of the issue. I asked that, if they don’t want to have the auto-pause feature due to a lot of users having the “random pausing issue” they talk about on their help page, why not add it as an option that the user can toggle in the app’s settings? I’ll let you know what they say.

For now though, I’m back to listening to my books in the car–I just can’t update my Audible App beyond the version that came with my phone.

Android, Technology

App Crap

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What’s with all of the Android app issues all of a sudden?? First, Google Navigation–the absolute best (and totally free) navigation app available for Android–pretty much threw in the towel recently by removing the ability to control the voice volume for the navigation while integrating a very natural and human-sounding internal speech engine.  Now, whenever I use it I can’t hear any of the navigation announcements because my music volume is apparently louder than the new voice engine!  And since the eliminated the separate volume control for the navigation, there’s no way to control it!  Turning down the volume turns down both the Navigation volume as well as the music, so I end up having to choose a no-music (or audiobook) drive or a music-only drive without navigation at all.  Unacceptable, Google!!  I’m trying to work with Waze right now, which has made some big improvements lately, from what I’m seeing.  It does pretty good navigation and includes “crowdsourcing” features, constantly including traffic, accident and other updates instantly as you drive, from all of the “Wazers”.  You even earn points for everything to report in the app, to increase your Waze score and earn better ranks.  It has it’s issues, doesn’t look as “Pro” as Google Navigation, and the voice navigation is a bit muffled…but at least it has a separate voice navigation VOLUME CONTROL!!! Are you listening, Google?!?!?!? It works ok for me for now, until something better comes along (or Google fixes theirs).

Then today I find out that Dropbox acquired Audiogalaxy!!  Now Audiogalaxy isn’t accepting any new accounts, and their “Mixes” subscription service is ending on 12/31/12.  Yikes!! They go on to say “previous users with accounts can continue to stream their music collections”… but for how long?!?!  Audiogalaxy is the best Android music streaming server I have ever found, and nothing compares to it!! I sure hope they eventually decide to keep streaming and start accepting new accounts again, even if it becomes branded as a Dropbox Music Streaming app–as long as they DON’T start requiring everyone to upload their music collection to Dropbox though–THAT would suck!  I have such a huge collection of music, it would cost me quite a bit of money each month for a dropbox account big enough to hold my entire music collection.  Hmmph.  Time to start looking for something better anyway, I guess.

Android, Health & Fitness

Happy Holidaze

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The season is getting pretty busy.  Yesterday we finished up cleaning and emptying the final bit of stuff left at the old house, and we’re finally fully out of it.  The bank is finally making some headway, and we’re moving forward.  Today Sandy and I did some shopping during the Packers/Bears game.  It was the perfect time for it, since all of the area’s football fans were busy watching the game.  No lines, no waiting.  Afterward, Kevin, Socks and I took a walk with a twist: Matt recommended an app called “Zombies, Run!“, so we tried it out.  You play it like an audiobook while you walk and/or run, and the story unfolds as you progress.  You also collect items during your walk, and when you get back home, in the game you “return to base” and apply the items to your compound and level up the various sections of it, like the hospital, your housing, and the armory.

It’s a neat game, and encourages you to walk more.  In fact, I think today’s walk was one of my longest in  awhile at just over 1.5 miles.  At one point, walking on the sidewalk next to Towerline Park, Kevin picked up 4 different items together, all at once.  I didn’t get them, so I stopped and went back to where he said he picked them up… Sure enough, I also picked up the 4 extra items!  That doesn’t seem to work all of the time, but did work once, so there might just be something to it.  We’ll see as we move forward in the game.  The object is to build up your base to defend against the zombie hordes  I think.  As you walk, a story unfolds as you try to reach different destinations, like a hospital for supplies, etc., and hordes of zombies chase you at various times.  You can hear them coming as they approach, and as you walk for run from them, their distance increases until you lose them again.  It keeps you occupied, like reading a good audiobook.  We’ll see how it works out.

Just one week till Christmas–wow, that’s soon.  I hope everyone has a great holiday season!  Thanks for visiting!

Android, Entertainment, Technology

Black Knight for Android WORKS!

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I am so excited.  I just discovered that they fixed Black Knight for Android.  It’s part of Pinball Arcade, an awesome collection of real pinball machines for Android.  Black Knight has been available in Pinball Arcade for several weeks, but I was never able to get the Magna-Save magnets to work for the game, and they’re a critical element in the game.  Plus, the magnet buttons–which are right above the flipper buttons in the real game (which I mastered and personally owned for several years in my younger days)–were placed at the very top of the table, making it virtually impossible to actually use, even if they DID work.  But they didn’t even work, so I guess that didn’t really matter much.  I was very disappointed, and since I never saw any complaints from others I was beginning to wonder if it was just me having the issue.

Today I loaded it up to see where was was in the standings.  I was as high as #15 in the world for awhile, with my best game being about 3,500,000 points.  Now my same score is about #36 in the world, and dropping.  So I started a game, and was shocked to see that the magna-save buttons had been moved near the bottom of the screen, just above the areas you normally flip the flippers in!  Seeing this, I wondered if they actually worked now.  So I dropped a target bank and then tried using a magnet when the ball got near it… BAM, they work!  FarSight Studios has totally redeemed themselves–this game ROCKS!  I can finally unplug my Wii… I won’t be using it again… I can comfortably wait for the Wii-U this winter.

Android, Entertainment, Family News, Health & Fitness, News

Essential Android Apps

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We’ve been very busy the past few weeks since Sandy’s dad George passed away.  He left behind a great family of three kids (if I can call them that) and a pretty darned nice house, if I do say so myself.  We’ve been busy getting things in order, cleaned up, shuffled around, and legally situated, and we’re almost ready to “Git ‘er done!” as they (Larry the Cable Guy) says.  Since I’m not willing to discuss anything regarding this in detail yet, and I still feel like writing, let’s talk apps.

There are a few apps on my Android that I just can’t live without, and I’d like to discuss them.  The first one is Evernote.  Evernote is free, and it’s awesome.  It’s very simple to use, and you can use it just as a basic note-taking app if you want to.  Once you write and save a note in Evernote, it’s on your account and will automatically sync with every other device you have (if you have Evernote on that device) and this way your notes will be available to you everywhere you need them!  This has become priceless for me at work–I often take notes before going offsite to other faciltiies.  I used to write up a quick Word document, print it, fold it up and put it in my pocket.  Now I simply type it up in an Evernote document and I can head out the door knowing when I take out my cell phone, it’ll be there for me to read whenever I need it.  Evernote also does much more.  It lets you attach files, insert images, and documents such as PDFs and docs, and it’ll even OCR your images and will find the text within them instantly whenever you search for something!

Another must-have app–for me, anyway–is Cardiotrainer.  I won’t walk without it.  It GPS-tracks your walks (or hikes, rides or drives), providing you with an excellent map of your journey as well as complete calorie-burning details and much more.  It even allows you to set optional goals for you trip, such as a specific amount of time you’d like to walk, a certain distance you’d like to travel, or a certain amount of calories you’d like to burn off, and it will prompt you accordingly at the intervals you set, as you walk, so you know exactly where you are and how close you are to your goal all the time.  This is one of those smart talking apps too–none of of beeps and ringtones, it talks plain english to you.  It will even automatically play a specific playlist of your music as you walk, if you want it to.  I prefer to listen to my audiobooks on my walks though, which encourages me to walk even more–so I can get further through each book I’m reading.  Cardiotrainer is free for basic use, but the “pro” version is the version I use, which include all of the features I mentioned.   It’s $9.99, which is actually pretty pricey for an Android app, but believe me, it’s worth every penny!  Especially if it helps you live longer and healthier, as it has me…A one-time $10 fee is a no-brainer!

There are many more apps I could mention here, but it’s time for breakfast, so I’ll only mention one more: Handcent.  Handcent is an SMS texting app replacement.  It replaces your stock Android texting app with a fancy-shmancy “bubble-type” texting app, akin to the iPhone texting app.  It includes a TON of options, so you can pretty much customize it exactly how you’d like it for everything from popups when you get a text to exactly what ringtones you want it to play for a specific person or for the default text-received ringtone.  It even has “skins”, which opens it up to hundreds (maybe even thousands) of user-created and custom skins you can use while texting.  You can even make it look and act just like the iPhone–if you want to keep it simple.

So that’s about it for now… breakfast time!

Android, Photography, Technology, Technology Links

My first look at the Samsung Galaxy S III

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This is my dream phone. (The HTC Desire was my Nightmare!) For starters, the 32GB of memory is fully open to your apps, data, files, music, photos, whatever you throw at it. (The HTC Desire, after all of your updates from a fresh wipe of the phone, had about 80MB available. That’s about 1 or 2 apps you can install, since you’re “supposed” to leave 30MB free so the phone will run properly). With Andoid 4, like I have on my tablet, there’s no arbitrary 1GB or 2GB app memory limit, it’s wide open for whatever you want, giving you all of the memory in the phone, whichever way you need to use it. Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is very smooth and functional, and it means I can install the Apex Launcher and get all of the benefits I only previously had on my Motorola Xoom tablet on my phone now! With the same OS and launcher on both of my devices, it also makes things so much easier to deal with all the way around. If you end up getting an SIII yourself, save yourself a lot of frustration and re-learning, and install Apex Launcher as one of the first things you do. It’s really worth it! If you wait until later, you’ll end up having to re-learn how to use with the menus and functions, which are much different (and very enhanced and expanded) in Apex Launcher, and you’ll also have to completely setup all of your home screens from scratch, of which, by the way, you can have nine, and I always increase it to the maximum, just to I have an extra home screen or two to play around with, or view the wallpaper cleanly at any given time.

The camera has some nice improvements over my Electrify–it has a great HDR photo mode that takes awesome shots, has a 20-frame burst mode (the Electrify could only do a 6-frame burst), and a very cool addition to burst called “Best Shot” where it will take a burst of photos, analyze them, and suggest the best one for saving. You can even look through them yourself and choose one, but, as expected, the phone probably chooses the best one correctly every time…unless you WANT some blur in your phone. There are many more new camera features as well, but I leave it at that for now.

Siri is even included on this phone! Well, actually her name is “Galaxy” on this one, but it’s virtually the same as Siri. Double-click the only button on the phone and she makes a tone and says “What would you like to do?”, and waits for you to talk to her. She reminds me a lot of “Eliza”, the old artificial intelligence program that started the whole “AI” revolution just after PCs came out and started to do speech synthesis. She’ll make smart remarks to silly questions, just like Siri. She’ll give you the weather when you ask if it’s going to rain, and answer all those questions you would normally use Google for. I asked her “What’s the population of Kenosha, Wisconsin” tonight. She said “99218 people”. It’s like you’re talking to web. And that’s about what it is. If Google or Wolfram Alpha can give you the right answer, Galaxy can…while incorporating a little “AI pizazz” to make it seem more human.

The S3 runs on a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, which is even faster than my tablet. It has a larger screen size that previous Androids, yet it’s much thinner than all of my previous phones (a whole two of them).

Complaints? Sure, I have a few: Since it doesn’t have an NVidia Tegra graphics processor in it, I can’t play my Zen Pinball tables! I guess I’ll have to keep playing those tables on my tablet…aw shucks. I also have a problem with the location of the volume buttons in relation to the power button. They’re exactly opposite each other on the phone, and I tend to squeeze the phone when I need to power on, power off, or adjust the volume, causing the other side’s button to push as well. This results in me either turning the volume up or down when I try to power the phone on or off, or vice versa. I think I just have to get in the habit of holding the phone properly in my palm, so that my thumb is always higher than my other fingers. And, lastly, at US Cellular, the only 32GB Galaxy SIII that they sell is WHITE. It’s not my preferred color–far from it–but I put it in a nice blue case, so it looks much better to me that way. The area around the screen is white, the bezel and back are blue…now, if I can just find a way to add a RED touch to it somewhere… “U-S-A!! U-S-A!!”

So, even with those negatives out there, none of them are deal-breakers for me. I love the phone and highly recommend it. Price? I paid $199 (after a mail-in rebate of $100) on an existing US Cellular plan (no contract).