Non-game Android Apps Recommendations Catch-All

Yeah I just thought you needed a gmail account to use the market.

Stele wrote:

Yeah I just thought you needed a gmail account to use the market. :?

Remember, the Fire isn't a "google" device. It's a fork of Android 2.2.

Google has to approve your device for you to legally sell it with Market access (or any of the google apps).

On top of that, Amazon blocks some stuff and tries to keep the device locked to their market.

MannishBoy wrote:
Stele wrote:

Yeah I just thought you needed a gmail account to use the market. :?

Remember, the Fire isn't a "google" device. It's a fork of Android 2.2.

Google has to approve your device for you to legally sell it with Market access (or any of the google apps).

On top of that, Amazon blocks some stuff and tries to keep the device locked to their market.

Bingo. I can log into the market just fine. But when I try to get an app, it tells me I have no devices associated with my account. To associate a device with my account I either need to: 1) give the market the device's phone number, or 2) load up the market app from within the device. With the Fire neither is possible. Well, to be technical I could sideload the market app and then load it up, but that would require getting the market app's APK, which puts me right back where I am now

And Tigerbill, my buddy doesn't have an android phone after all, he's on blackberry. If it's not too much trouble for you to kick the APK over to me I'd surely appreciate it.

Teneman wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
Stele wrote:

Yeah I just thought you needed a gmail account to use the market. :?

Remember, the Fire isn't a "google" device. It's a fork of Android 2.2.

Google has to approve your device for you to legally sell it with Market access (or any of the google apps).

On top of that, Amazon blocks some stuff and tries to keep the device locked to their market.

Bingo. I can log into the market just fine. But when I try to get an app, it tells me I have no devices associated with my account. To associate a device with my account I either need to: 1) give the market the device's phone number, or 2) load up the market app from within the device. With the Fire neither is possible. Well, to be technical I could sideload the market app and then load it up, but that would require getting the market app's APK, which puts me right back where I am now

And Tigerbill, my buddy doesn't have an android phone after all, he's on blackberry. If it's not too much trouble for you to kick the APK over to me I'd surely appreciate it.

PM me the contact info and I'll send it over after work today.

Does anyone know if I use Titanium to back up my install of Dolphin HD on my phone; will the preferences be saved as a separate file? I don't want to inadvertently give any of my personal info/passwords/etc away.

I found RingDimmer in a list of recommended apps on Android Police. It claims to adjust ring tone for ambient sound level, so it's always loud enough to hear but never loud enough to alarm you or others nearby.

I only put it on yesterday, so too early to tell if it makes a big difference to my life, but I like the concept anyway.

Sounds interesting. I have lots of times I don't hear mine.

Tigerbill wrote:

Does anyone know if I use Titanium to back up my install of Dolphin HD on my phone; will the preferences be saved as a separate file? I don't want to inadvertently give any of my personal info/passwords/etc away.

You have the option of app or app+data. I'm assuming that app is just the apk.

Ok, I sent off the file.

It installed on my Fire just fine by side loading it through Dropbox. It started up fine but I did zero functionality tests (it did not copy over any of my personal data).

Took me a bit to find the right file in Titanium as it wasn't labeled Dolphin, it was labeled Tunny_Browser.

If anyone else wants a copy for a non-Market device let me know I can email it out to ya.

Worked beautifully Tiger, thanks a ton!

I seem to have lost my iPod Nano today... perhaps in a snow bank somewhere. Since I'm the unlikely new owner of a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, however, I think I can make up for the blunder.

Can someone recommend me:

a) A good music player (unless the default one is the best)
b) A good podcast app (I've heard of Stitcher, but don't know how it stacks up)
c) A good accessory to use my phone to play music/podcasts in the car. (I have an iPod FM transmitter for the now-lost Nano)

Thanks!

a) I've been using MixZing and it's been the best I've found so far. Unfortunately they added ads to the free version but I still like it a lot.

I really like Pocket Casts for podcasts. I think it's also an iOS app.

The stock Android player has traditionally been pretty average, but the new Google Music player seems pretty good to me. Even though the Google Music service isn't available outside the US, the actual player itself still works fine, and I'm pretty sure that that it's the standard player on the Galaxy Nexus.

For podcasts, I use Google Listen, though it's a little confusing and sometimes messes up my downloads. I've heard better reports about Doggcatcher, but so far, Listen hasn't annoyed me enough to make me pay for an alternative. Development on Listen seemed to be dormant for a while, but there have been a couple of minor updates in the last month or so, so hopefully that's a sign of renewed interest in it.

I'm afraid I'm of no help with music, as I use Subsonic. As far as podcasts go, I'm lately using Pocket Casts and it's worked well enough. BeyondPod is also a good app.

I really like PocketCasts myself, but if I recall, it's not free (been a while since I got it). You could try out Stitcher, but I haven't done so myself. Music is for my Zune, not my phone. And my car has an aux input, so... I'm practically no help at all.

I've been using the Amazon player for a while. Ever since I bought one of those 99 cent CDs to get my extra GB of cloud storage and uploaded a ton of my songs. Even so it works just fine for on-device music too. Can adjust volume and skip tracks with lock screen on still. Seems good enough.

Think I installed WinAmp at one point too since I still use that on home PC. But can't really remember using it on my droid lately.

Oh yeah, I tried PocketCasts and it was the best podcat app I have used but it still didn't meat my needs (I forget why) so I stopped using it. I just use MixZing for podcasts too, now. I manually maintain all of mine, which is a pain.

gregrampage wrote:

Oh yeah, I tried PocketCasts and it was the best podcat app I have used but it still didn't meat my needs (I forget why) so I stopped using it. I just use MixZing for podcasts too, now. I manually maintain all of mine, which is a pain.

Pocket Cast gets a lot of functionality upgrades frequently. I've even had several emails with the devs. The biggest feature I wanted it drag to organize the playlist, and they told me they're working on it.

I also bought the sound library that they have hooks into that allow for faster playback with tone correction.

I switched to Pocket Casts over Google Listen. And if you're using listen, Pocket Cast will now import your Google Listens/Reader subscriptions.

pneuman wrote:

I've heard better reports about Doggcatcher, but so far, Listen hasn't annoyed me enough to make me pay for an alternative.

Listen started to annoy me enough that I ditched it for Doggcatcher. I have really been happy with it.

I use Winamp for playing music on my android device, it works well. To transfer and transcode my files I have used Mediamonkey.

I haven't done any comprehensive testing - just Doggcatcher & Listen, but Doggcatcher has been wonderful so far.

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. I'll try some of these out this week.

No one has a good car accessory that they use to play music/podcasts? Do you just use headphones?

AndrewA wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. I'll try some of these out this week.

No one has a good car accessory that they use to play music/podcasts? Do you just use headphones?

Sorry, my car has the blue tooths (Mazda 3); it works great too, when I get out of the car it pauses the playback (at least Amazon's Cloud player). The only thing I hate is, in the car I have to jack the media player volume to keep the sound consistent with the radio/cd's; at work with headphones I need to turn it way down.

Tigerbill wrote:

The only thing I hate is, in the car I have to jack the media player volume to keep the sound consistent with the radio/cd's; at work with headphones I need to turn it way down.

You could use Tasker, or something similar, to automate the volume changes.

After some trial and error I've settled on BeyondPod and Winamp for my audio needs. Both are working quite well - and BeyondPod feels lightyears ahead of iTunes.

BeyondPod's user experience is quite fantastic. I may switch back to it after another version or two, although Pocket Casts is continually improving.

To expand, BeyondPod only had a few issues that caused me to switch to Pocket Casts and I think they were device specific. At the time I only had a 4GB mSD card so I wanted to store my podcasts on the 6GB of onboard storage that very few apps were able to use. BeyondPod had no internal support for moving the storage location, you were just supposed to move the whole folder and then when you launched the app it would find the new location. Sadly, in practice it kept trying to download new podcasts to the SD card instead of the onboard storage folder that the rest of the podcasts were in. I went around and around with this for months, never found a reliable solution.

It also couldn't keep podcast images straight, don't know if that was to do with my monkeying with storage and download locations or what, but that was a relatively minor issue compared to the other.

EDIT: As far as in the car, I have a 2004 Ford with the stock deck. I just use a cassette adapter. I know it's got some sort of aux input *somewhere* that I probably just need to hook up an adapter to but I haven't gotten around to that.

I am also with Pocketcast. Although I have sometimes trouble with update the podcasts and sometimes the podcast will stop playing. Not sure if this is pocketcast's fault or Android's. I think the latter.
Also trying Winamp on my laptop and android phone, to see if that syncs nicely or not.

Hey, all. I can't find any "social networking app" suggestions for the past few months of this thread, so I apologize if it's been covered before, but...

I have been using TweetDeck for quite awhile and, while I love it, the app doesn't seem to do "Facebook notifications" anymore, at least, not the way I want. Now, it only tells me when I get Twitter replies, even when it's supposed to (and used to) report Facebook comments. Perhaps it's a result of Twitter's buy-out, for all I know. Regardless, I'm looking for a replacement on my HTC Inspire. Here are the things I want:

1). I want it to integrate Twitter and Facebook (and Google+, but I don't think such a thing exists yet).
2). I want to be able to open pictures within the app, and have them in the correct size (not just a thumbnail).
3). I want to have a single widget that can display both feeds.

Thus far, I haven't been successful in getting many of these things. For example, I like Seesmic, but it doesn't open pictures to a full size within the app (even if I select "full size" in the menu). I have tried HootSuite, but it won't tell you who "Liked" your post (as Seesmic does): just that you got a certain number of "Likes." The Facebook and Twitter apps themselves are functional, but they are pretty slow...and, moreover, they are two full apps rather than one.

TweetDeck provides a single widget that lets me access both feeds quickly and easily, and it opens (most) pictures within the app, both from Facebook and Twitter. Does this not exist in any other app?!

Thanks for the help! I don't mind spending cash on a good app: just want one that does all these things!

Apparently Box is offering 50GB of free cloud storage for trying their app by March 23rd. I've never used Box but I'm going to jump on this while the offer stands.

http://phandroid.com/2012/02/23/box-...

Got a new job and it came with one o them new fangled smert phonez. Its an HTC Incredible 2 *droid sound effect*

So far I love it if only for the built in google maps!
The screen is nice and the typing works much better than expected with my large and in charge fingers.

EXCITE!

nice!