Have you been impressed by the startup boot animation for Android ICS – I wonder if other Android 4.0 devices have the same startup animation?

Damien Saunders

Android Mobiles are taking over the world … and that seems to be supported by the latest statistics or trends. If you’re thinking about mobile marketing .. and wondering ‘what is all the fuss about Android’, then this presentation is for you.

Only the latest Android Insights and Statistics

• 10 billion app downloads (December 2011)
• 200 million activated devices (November 2011)
• 400,000 Android Apps (December 2011)

We can only wait for the next Google I/O conference to confirm how these numbers are growing!

Damien Saunders

Looking forward to some Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now I got me a new phone. The Google Galaxy Nexus arrived today and all I can say is BIG SCREEN.

I think the next year will see me managing projects involving NFC, mobile payments, banking and hoping for some great Internet of Things apps.

Damien Saunders

Is Revolutionary the easiest tool? (answer – no) If you’ve been keeping up with the world of custom rom’s to root your Android you may have heard about this. Revolutionary doesn’t get much of a mention as it’s still an Alpha release, but it does bring together to great development teams.

Revolutionary is only for Linux or Windows users and really supports the newer range of Android devices like the HTC Sensation

2 reasons to root your Android Smartphone

For me, two key reasons to root my phone are

• Ability to take screenshots (which you still have to be Superuser / Root for)
• Ability to make back-ups of the ROM

Of course there are other reasons like being able to install new ROM’s like Cyanogenmod (not yet ready for the HTC Sensation)

How to root your HTC Sensation

Rooting your phone is a personal choice and it has it risks which may invalidate any warranties.  Here’s a quick guide

1. Download Revolutionary and install it
2. Download HTC’s windows drivers
3. Install Clockworkmod from the Android Market
4. Turn off your phone and lift out the battery – write down the serial number
5. Backup everything from your SD Card or phone (in case you decide to wipe your SD Card)
6. Connect your phone to the PC and choose HTC Sync
7. Run Revolutionary
8. Wait 5 mins and it’s done. Your phone will cycle through a number of reboots but then it will be done!
9. You need to download Superuser from the Android Market as well

See also this great guide from Android Authority

Always Keep your SD Card clean

Keep your SD Card in good health Always, always, always before messing with your SD Card – copy its contents to a safe place.

If you’ve just rooted your phone – backup all folders like Clockwork and the files like update.zip to your PC / Mac incase your SD card ever goes faulty or you wipe it.

Then think before you wipe your SD Card

Run Clockworkmod Rom Manager – format your SD Card and partition

Damien Saunders

I’ve been writing about Android for some time now. Here are 4 of the best Android apps for Wifi. These apps allow you to find public wi-fi networks, turn your phone into a wifi hotspot and a bit more.

HTC Wifi Hotspot

This app can’t be downloaded from the market – its part of HTC build for Android 2.2 Froyo

I’ve used this loads of times – its great for getting my laptop or iPad on the Internet when needed, but the main point to remember is it kills your battery very fast. So keep your charger handy.

WeFi

WeFi has long been a favourite of mine … it’s improved over the past 18 months alot. Except it (annoyingly) keeps asking me to add details of my private home network to its database hmmm

Want it? Get it from Google Play

WiFinder

WiFinder has been my personal favourite with its not bullshit, layout it will be popular for the techies and not the marketers or anyone into user centred design.

Want it? Get it from Google Play

Y5 Battery Saver

A newer app to try – it apparently saves your battery so that your phone doesnt keep trying to find public WiFi networks to connect to.

Want it? Get it from Google Play

Damien Saunders

Have you updated? – the first release candidate for Cyanogenmod v7.1 has been pushed out today. This update adds (more) support for Android 2.3.4 a number of Android devices from Samsung, LG, Motorola and the HTC Incredible.

Here’s a summary of nice features from the changelog:

Common: Support for revoking application permissions

Common: Latest Superuser app

Common: Control brightness by sliding on statusbar

Common: ADWLauncher- Transitions, catalog improvements, bugfixes

Common: Optional GMT correction for SMS/MMS timestamps

You can download it via the Clockwork Rom Manager or manually.

Being a release candidate this should be fairly stable. If you’re new to rooting your phone or concerned about updating to this RC then wait for the next proper release.

Keep a backup of your SD card

Always, always, always before messing with new versions of rom – backup your SD card to a safe place.

Even if you’re good at roms and mods – backup all folders like Clockwork and the files like update.zip to a safe place

Damien Saunders

It’s time to catchup on some missed out reading and get out in the sun. So here is a collection of 10 of the best Android resources that you love to read.

So I’m not going to second guess these related posts – I’m sure there will be stuff about Cyanogenmod, Wifi Settings and some best apps.

Damien Saunders

Have you seen this in your email? The new HTC Sensation is ready for pre-sales orders via Carphone Warehouse starting from £35 per month

Damien Saunders

Google recently announced some exciting new features for Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Most notably, Android 3.0 sees tablets and mobile devices merge to the same code base. This is kind of like having one OS for all devices. There are interface design considerations that need to be understood before launching your app on the big screen.

Android Apps run full screen – Interface Design

The key point to note is that Android apps run in full screen on tablets. That means there is no window or 2x indicator as happens on iOS non-universal apps.

Android apps full up the screen quite nicely and are very well behaved if you turn off rotation

As designers / developers, you have 2 options for Android Apps on Tablets

- Don’t support them until you’ve loaded them on a 10″ tablet

- Don’t support rotation until you’ve had someone review all the user interface designs.

There is a big difference between an Android app running on a 7″ vs 10″ screen (these screenshots are from a Samsung Galaxy tab)

Without Rotation Damien’s mobile website looks nice

But with rotation enabled – much of the page is lost to toolbars and headers

Recommendation – one app for Small Screen one for Large

Android developers will know that there are now layout options for extra large high density displays (like 7″ and 10″ tablets).

To make life easier, I’ve read that Designers / Developers will now be able to create 2 apps so that you can better support phones and tablets.

What this means is you can develop and improve your apps without really screwing-up things like getting messy rotation issues on small screen phones.

Operators & Device Manufacturers need to test and retest

The main issue will be convincing operators and manufacturers to go do testing and upgrades for all existing phones – in the case of Apple, the iOS ecosystem is managed by Apple and there is only 1 manufacturer so its all ‘their’ responsibility. Not an easy thing to understand for the average smartphone owner.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb – Features

Some details of other features:

• Multitasking is a primary feature, with easy access to all open- and recently open- apps from the home screen.

• Widgets can now be based on collections of data — so it’s like having apps in little windows, on your home screen. There are different kinds of widgets, too — stacks, grids, scrollers.

• Honeycomb has a new notifications system, which pops up Growl-like toast windows in the bottom right corner. Notifications can contain a lot of data, including profile photos if a friend is IMing you — and they can be used for quick access to running apps, like media players.

• Built-in video chat — with a front-facing camera, Honeycomb supports video calls off the bat (using Google Talk).

A lot of this will be good news for app developers and manufacturers – Android 3.0 Honeycomb ‘prevents’ greater fragmentation between styles of devices – like tablets, small screen and large screen phones.

What do you think about Android 3.0 Honeycomb? or Android device fragmentation?

Damien Saunders

Android in numbers – thankfully the Google I/O conference helped out by publishing statistics which give some insight to the growth in adoption of smartphones and also help to provide a hint of reality. But these are BIG BIG BIG numbers.

Android Smartphones, Tablets & Devices

• Over 100M Android devices activated worldwide with 400K activations added every day
• More than 310 Android devices from 36 different manufactures
• Android cellphones are on more than 216 mobile carriers in 112 countries

Android Market

• 200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market
• 4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market

So that’s that … 100 million Android devices activated … Of course numbers are meaningless – we need to find some context to them

Android Numbers compared to 2010

“The growth of the Android ecosystem continues to exceed our expectations,” said Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering at the Google I/O conference in 2010.

“Every day, 100,000 new people start using Android-based handsets. There are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed over 50,000 apps to the Android Market.”

Staggering Growth

So the Android Apps ecosystem has grown around 300% in the past year – I guess there is room to grow here.

Daily activations are now up to 400k per day – I’m dubious of this figure – without knowing what is a new activation, we’re left to assume its new phones – which could be used by a replacement for an existing  Android smartphone owner – or a brand new device for an Android newbie.

Damien Saunders

I’ve been writing about Android for some time now and Best Android Apps for Wifi is a very popular post.  So here is a refreshingly new look for 2011 at some of the best wi-fi apps for your smartphone.

Auto Wifi Enabler

This was a fav app for a month – til I realised I only ever needed 2 wifi hotspots – the one at work and the one at home. This is a good example of how to use network enabled location – so that Wifi automagically switches on when you’re in your area.  I always leave wifi enabled but my phone is not trying to connect to every public hotspot so I guess I fell out of ‘need’ for this app.

Get Auto Wifi Enabler from the Android Market

Wifi Fixer

This is a new one to me – but if you find your having problems like blocked connection or disabled or disconnected – then try this app.  Though I think if you can figure out how to flush your DNS or something then you won’t want this.  Don’t leave it set too aggressively or it will be trying to connect to Wifi every 30-ish seconds.

Get Wifi Fixer from the Android Market

HTC Wifi Hotspot

This app can’t be downloaded from the market – its part of HTC build for Android 2.2 Froyo

I’ve used this loads of times – its great for getting my laptop or iPad2 on the Internet when needed, but the main point to remember is it kills your battery very fast. So keep your charger handy.

WeFi

WeFi has long been a favourite of mine … it’s improved over the past 18 months a lot. Except it (annoyingly) keeps asking me to add details of my private home network to its database hmmm.

Get WeFi in the Android Market

WiFinder

WiFinder has been my personal favourite with its not bullshit, layout it will be popular for the techies and not the marketers or anyone into user centred design.

Get WiFinder in the Android Market

Y5 Battery Saver

A newer app to try – Y five – wifi … get it?  It apparently saves your battery so that your phone doesn’t keep trying to find public WiFi networks to connect to. You set networks that you want WiFi to be on and it does the rest.

Get Y5 Battery Saver from the Android Market

Damien Saunders

Are you suffering from Android Market download issues? Have you just rooted your Android with Cyanogenmod and found you can’t download Google Maps?

If you can’t download Google Maps it’s because most Android phones have a download cache limited to 3MB and Google Maps is a whooping 5.4MB.

How to Download large files after rooting your Android

The answer to your problems is S2E simple2ext – which moves your download cache off the phone to your SD Card.

You’ll need to reboot your phone just the one time and then you can go download Google Maps.

WARNING - This app can damage your SD Card (at the least) — at least its not a hazard to your health

Keep your SD Card in good health

Always, always, always before messing with your  SD Card – copy its contents to a safe place.

If you’ve just rooted your phone – backup all folders like Clockwork and the files like update.zip to a safe place

Then *think* before you wipe your SD Card

Run Clockworkmod Rom Manager – format your SD Card and partition

Once you’ve done that – go install S2E

Get S2E from the Android Market.

Damien Saunders

Have you updated? – the latest Cyanogenmod v7.03 has been released. As this fixes a security issue, it’s recommended that you update as soon as you can.

It looks like this is such an important security issue that the Changelog on Github has not been updated yet.

You can download it via the Clockwork Rom Manager or manually from the Cyanogen website

Damien Saunders

Have you updated? – the latest Cyanogenmod v7.02 has been released. Mostly it fixes bugs and ‘actually’ fixes GPS.

Being a point release its not focused on new features – but if you haven’t updated then you should. As always backup your current Rom before installing this update.

Summary from the changelog:

• Common: Fix issue with missing built-in themes
• Common: Update bundled ROM Manager to latest version
• Supersonic: Actually fix GPS
• Supersonic: Fix proximity and light sensor

You can download it via the Clockwork Rom Manager or manually.

Damien Saunders

Mobile apps can be fun to use – but during mobile app testing you might need to diagnosing problems and finding bugs can be complicated. At least with Network Info II on your Android you have a pocket-encyclopedia with all the important information you need.

At the basic level – Network Info II reports details on your mobile network connection, IP address, Wi-Fi connection, Bluetooth and details about your device and your sim card.

Powerfully too – you can refresh the info and save it – in recent testing we noticed a bug that some handsets seem to only report 6 digit IMSI’s (sim serial numbers). Thanks to Network Info – we were able to divine the root cause to the device and not a bug in the app.

Damien Saunders

Is z4root the easiest tool? If you’ve been keeping up with the world of custom rom’s to root your Android you may have heard about this.

z4root doesn’t get much of a mention – its key differentiator is that it is an untethered root tool – eg you run it from your mobile and not from your PC or Mac.

I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy Europa prepay on Vodafone UK – I needed to do screenshots and the only good way to do this involves running root first.

Clockwork ROM manager currently doesn’t support the Samsung – but I’m hoping to find a root user backup tool soon.

Damien Saunders

What shortcuts or widgets should you save to the desktop of you Anrdoid phone? As a marketing consultant I’ve customised my phone lots (thanks to Cyanogenmod) .. but my desktop stays the same.

I don’t have many widgets as they eat up battery life (and annoyingly want internet connection).

What’s on your Android Desktop?

Winamp – best music player for Android

Now that I have a larger long-life battery – I’m back to listening to music on my phone. Winamp runs on my Media PC / HTPC so with its WiFi device sync .. Winamp is the best choice. Sweet as.

NewsRob – best Google Reader app

NewsRob beats the pants off other apps and is better than Googles own Reader client because it has really great offline capability. When you live in London and travel on the underground / tubes then its great to have something to read.

AppBrain – Best App for finding new Android Apps

I’m late to discover AppBrain – I’m still not sure if its any better then the Market app. But it does have a good Recommend to me feature. I wish it would remember all my previous installed apps (even the free ones) and reinstall them for me when I reset my phone or delete my SD Card (which I do lots).

The other icons are pretty familar – With unlimtied SMS I use that lots and GTalk is great too. Camera app is linked to Dropbox and Titanium Media Sync so my snap happy pics are always stored somewhere.

Last.fm live Wallpaper is also pretty impressive.

What do you recommend to have as apps or widgets?

Damien Saunders

I’ve just discovered the (not official) Last.fm live wallpaper for Android. It’s a brilliant change to my boring background on my HTC Desire.

Last.fm is still there tracking my music listening habits – and doing a good job of that. This live wallpaper has a number of options and the free version allows you to create a wallpaper of your favourite artists for example.

The idea for this (app) is also brilliant – it needs no real user interface – and for a small price you get a premium wallpaper with options for weekly charts.

Improvements – rather than charging for the weekly charts – charge for a feature like randomising the wallpaper each day so you look at different artists each day.

Damien Saunders

Here’s a simple fix to problems of no Mobile Internet after installing Cyanogenmod rom on your Android. If you’re new to rooting your Android or just forgotten how complicated it can be to get online with your mobile phone – you might think this is a really useful tip.

Check your APN Settings

After you root your phone and install CyanogenMod you can find your have no wifi and no wireless internet connection. The solution is to check APN settings under the Wireless & Networking menu.

You’ll find that no APN has been set. You’ll need to choose the one for your mobile operator or worse – manually enter the APN settings.

After setting the APN you could need to restart your phone … panic over

Damien Saunders

I’ve just updated to the latest Cyanogenmod 7 release candidate 3 … it’s now looking very polished.

Noticeable extras – application shortcut menus have a link to the Android Market.

What have you noticed?

Damien Saunders