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Old 2010-08-28, 14:02   Link #1
synaesthetic
blinded by blood
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Oakland, CA
Age: 39
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The Smartphone Thread

There's been a lot of various threads about smartphones popping up here and in General, but I figured for the sake of brevity, it would be nicer to just centralize all smartphone discussion into one thread.

So yeah. Talk about your phone here. All smartphone owners are welcome--whether you use Android, iOS, WinMo, Symbian, Blackberry, whatever! Talk about the hardware, the OS, the apps, everything.

Anyway, I own an Android smartphone, a white T-Mobile myTouch 3G (rev. 1).

It's pretty "old" by smartphone standards--using an ARMv6 processor and having only about 192MB of RAM. I've long since rooted it and flashed Cyanogenmod 5.0.8 (Eclair/2.1 based) and have installed a great deal of performance-enhancing measures.

It runs quite well now, though it was actually a lot faster on stock Android 1.6 than it is on CM5. I guess Android 2.1 has a lot more overhead than 1.6.

I use a number of apps to maximize performance, but other than that my app list is fairly small. I can't really go crazy with apps because so many of them are just useless to me, but there's a few I really like and definitely recommend to anyone using an Android phone.

My app list (su means it needs superuser access/rooting)

AdFree (su)
ADW.Launcher (upgrade, but it's also embedded in CM5)
Android Comic Viewer (this is great for manga!)
Adobe Reader
AK Notepad
Auto Memory Manager (su)
Barcode Scanner
Compass
Engadget
File Manager
Flashlight
Google Translate
Hello Expense
Meebo IM
T-Mobile My Account
RealCalc
SetCPU (su)
The Weather Channel

I don't have any games on here. The phone is not really fast enough to handle SNES emulation without problems, and Android pretty much sucks for gaming compared to iOS.

Not listed up there, but I also use an alternate virtual keyboard, the HTC IME mod as found on xda-developers. It's a hell of a lot nicer than the stock Android virtual keyboard, but nowhere near as nice as Swype. I did manage to get the Swype beta during the open beta, but sadly my phone just isn't fast enough.

I had a chance to play with a Samsung Vibrant demo unit at T-Mo when I went to pay my bill, and I'm totally convinced I want it as my next phone. The AMOLED is totally gorgeous, the larger screen size makes the lack of a physical keyboard a non-issue and it comes preloaded with Swype (however, the HTC IME mod may make a reappearance since flashing CM6 on it will likely wipe... Swype... away). It sounds good as a music player, though GPS is still broken (being fixed in an update) and battery life is kinda bad (hi there fast CPU and big pretty screen).

Still though I haven't seen much else I'm interested in since I really wish my phone could pull double duty as a media player. The Galaxy S is pretty much made for this, so it's a win-win. The upcoming T-Mobile G2 and myTouch HD are both HTC products and HTC has traditionally considered media playback as an afterthought... every HTC handset I've ever listened to music on has been a big ol' hissfest.

Anyway, post about your smartphone and let us nerd out over our tiny computerphones!
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