Facebook for android 1.8.0 review - Desktop, finally!!

This is the review of Facebook for android 1.8.0 update which was released on December 1st 2011. Facebook app for android was a focus of criticism for long as it lacked the ease of use provided by its desktop counterpart.

Thanks to the developers at Facebook, its android app now looks and walks like its desktop version.

Home

Opening the facebook app still loads the news feed. But there are lot of additions to the previous news feed. The developers have beautifully combined the old newsfeed screen and the Home screen with icons into a new, desktop like interface. See it below.

 

New Home screen now has Friend Request, message and notifications alert on the top panel as seen in the desktop version. Profile, friends, places, groups, events, facebook chat and photos are included in the top left button with the three horizontal lines.

The entire left panel of the desktop website is included in that one button. The contents are grouped into Favorites, Groups, Pages, lists, Apps (This contains the chat now) and settings.

One additional feature you get with the facebook for android 1.8.0 app is that you can select the type of content you want to see in the news feed. If you are in mood to watch videos, you can choose to view only videos in the news feed. Just click on the button on the top right corner (image on the right), and you will be asked to select the preferred content from all the stories to photos or videos alone.

    Believe me 'Video' is there at the bottom

Chat


Facebook Chat was one of the most non-dependable section of the app previously. It was buggy as hell. It took a lot of time to show availability and many a times availability wouldn't load at all

At first you may think that the chat is removed from the base facebook app as there is a separate messenger app for facebook  now. Location of the chat is now a little deeper. it is located within the left side menu button and at a lower level. Apart from the location, new chat functions, at times, slightly different. If you keep the facebook for android app open long enough, it will load the availability of chat friends in the background which result in snappy loading.

There is no multiple chat option as available in the facebook messenger, but still works good for me.

The "None of your friends are available to chat" error also occur in this version of facebook. But always it was a temporary message and chat loaded within no time.

Friend Requests, Messages and Notifications



These are accessible from the top panel. The number of unattended notifications will be highlighted in red color on the upper right corner of each icon.

Taping on icons open up a small window to view the contents, with the newsfeed in the same place. So you won't have to navigate again if you stopped reading your newsfeed to attend to a notification.

Settings

Now you can set your privacy as well as account settings using the facebook  from the android app itself. All the settings available to a desktop user is available to the app user too. I don't know why they included the privacy settings as separate menu item as it is available in the account settings too.

























Photos

With the new update, photos cannot be uploaded to a specific folder which is a big drawback. All the photos will be uploaded to 'Mobile Uploads' folder.

With the newest update you don't need to stop your browsing while an upload is in progress. Uploads will occur automatically in the background and the progress can be viewed in the notification panel. But you won't be able to stop an upload once it starts.

The Drawbacks - RAM, Force closes and Sluggishness

Not everything is neat n' shine with the newest update to the facebook app. The app is a RAM hungry beast. Once I noticed it taking up 55MB of RAM which was quite large even for a desktop app.

Update: The app is determined to break records. It actually reached to a point where it was using about 102 MB of RAM leaving the phone quite laggy. See the video below of the android task manager showing the Facebook app's RAM usage.

I think the app is trying to live upto its new desktop dress in all areas including RAM usage.

There are force closures as usual and sluggishness of the app itself forced me to close the app many a times.

Despite the drawbacks this is one update I would go for. Though it present us some glitches, functionality is improved by a great deal. So, happy facebooking.

Samsung Galaxy Ace Review Part 2 - The Connectivity

This is the part 2 of the review of samsung galaxy ace phone. This post tests different connectivity options available on the phone including GPRS/EDGE, 3G, WiFi, and GPS.

Download speeds are calculated based on the time required to download a sample 5 MB file from thinkbroadband.com website.

Another speed test was carried out using the speedtest.net's android app

Naming conventions used in this post:

Kbps- Kilo bits per second

KBps - Kilo Bytes per second - 1KBps is equivalent to 8Kbps

I am converting most of the values to KBps because of the ease to understand.

GPRS/EDGE

Galaxy ace is rated class 10 for bot GPRS and EDGE. Class 10 device should be capable to offer speeds upto 8 KBps downloads in GPRS networks and upto  32KBps in EDGE networks.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace was able to provide 4.4 KBps continuous speed in a GPRS only network (GPRS only networks are not a rarity in our country).

In EDGE networks, the phone gave me about 28 KBps average download speed which is very close to the advertised speed. But this was for the downloading of the 5MB file.

The screenshot below was taken during the 5MB download in an EDGE network. You can see that, except for a couple of dips, the download mostly clocks just below 30KBps.

Network speed test using speedtest.org app provided a little bit different result. The numbers were only about 3 KBps in GPRS networks and 22KBps in EDGE networks. However normal browsing followed the speedtest.org's results as it peaked at about 20KBps.

3G

3G networks in India is fairly underpowered. Though speeds upto 21Mbps are in offer, none actually reach that standard in practice.

Network speed in Galaxy ace with 3G networks peaked around 1Mbps which actually is far lower than the theoretical capability of the phone (7.2Mbps). But I think it mostly is due to the limitation of network, not the phone.

WiFi

The phone was very quick to find available connections even when the network available was a new one. Usually I was prompted with the available connections within 10 seconds. But familiar networks were connected within 5 seconds of switching on.

WiFi has a good range too. It maintained at least 1 bar until about 25mtr indoor.

Wifi Error - Wifi wouldn't turn on until you restart. Frequency of this was reduced considerably since the update to android 2.3.4 but still occurs once in a while.
The same problem affects wifi hotspot too. Clicking on Mobile AP box(see below) won't turn on anything.

See a demonstration of Wifi error in galaxy ace

Bluetooth

Bluetooth in samsung galaxy ace is rated class 2.1+ EDR ( Enhanced data rate) which is capable of transfers upto 262KBps. A closer speed was achieved during my test with a similarly spec-d laptop the transfer speed normally hovered around 230 KBps which I think is not bad.

However transfer speed with another mobile of the same specs was around 100KBps tops. I don't know what made the difference there sure was something.

Bluetooth audio got disconnected at about 8mtrs from the galaxy ace. From this I assume that galaxy ace is equipped with a class 2 bluetooth.

Speed reduces considerably when multiple bluetooth devices are connected to galaxy ace. Transfer speed from my laptop dropped from 230KBps to 150KBps when I started streaming music to my bluetooth stereo headset

GPS

GPS was working without any problem in the original android froyo. It began taking forever to lock after the update to gingerbread 2.3.4.

In the android 2.2 days, without using any additional software I could get a lock within 20 seconds. But after the upgrade 3-4 minutes was usual even under clear sky and if I was travelling, it didn't connect at all.

Then I found a solution to the GPS locking problem on galaxy ace. I installed an app called GPS Status from the Android Market. The app worked like a charm and now GPS is working without any problem.

Note: You won't need data connection to just get a lock on GPS. But A-GPS needs data connection to work as it needs to download location data from the internet. GPS status also needs use of internet connection as it uses A-GPS to improve locking.

I tested GPS in different conditions. The locking time was as follows. (A-GPS was enabled during the test)

Stationary, clear sky - 5 seconds

Stationary, cloudy - 20 seconds

Moving at 60 KMPH, clear sky - 20 seconds

Tethering

USB tethering icon

USB tethering icon on 2.3.4 gingerbread

WiFi Tethering icon

Tethering is a method to channel the mobile data connection to other devices such as laptops. Galaxy ace supports 2 methods for tethering viz, USB and WiFi.

USB and WiFi tethering in galaxy ace is enabled from Settings >> Wireless and connectivity settings >> Tethering and portable hotspot

  You can secure the wifi hotspot by assigning a password. Coverage of WiFi also was good getting similar results as of the Wifi test.

The phone offers a variety of connectivity options and also do justice by living upto expectations.

Take screenshots in Samsung Galaxy Ace without rooting (Update: Video)

Screenshots or screen captures allow you to take photo of visible content on a screen. This post describes a method to take screenshots in Samsung Galaxy Ace running on android 2.3.4 without rooting.

Below is a video tutorial for taking screen shots on galaxy ace.

There are a lot of apps in android market that take screenshots and all of them need rooting the phone. But rooting your phone voids the warranty (Checked with the samsung website. Rooting really does void your warranty)
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Samsung has included in its Galaxy Ace phones a built-in method to capture the screen. This method is different from the stock android method of pressing the power and volume down button together. The stock method is replaced with the new one by the TouchWiz UI.

This built-in method also requires usage of two buttons, the back button which is a touch sensitive one and the Home button which is a hard button(one which needs to be pressed down). For taking the screenshot, you need to hold the back button and then press the Home button.

Three audio-visual clues of screen capture will happen, on a successful attempt. These are a shutter sound, a small graphic appearing from all the sides and notification box displaying "Screen captured. Saved as image file"
You can see the semi transparent white graphic appearing from all the sides and the 'capture successful' message

You can also take screenshots of the lock screen with this method. But there won't be any visual clues. Only the camera click will be present.

The screenshot will be saved to 'ScreenCapture' folder in the memory card. If there is no folder under that name, one will be created. The screenshots will be saved as .png files with date and time of their capture as file name.

But taking screenshot in some apps, like opera mini, is difficult. In these apps, holding the back button will execute the back function and the screen goes back to the previous one - with out the screen shot taken - ultimately closing the app. So you won't be able to take the desired screenshot using the previously described way.

If you want to take screenshots in such apps, you need to press the back button and the Home button at the same time. Pressing both the button at the same time will not execute the back button and the desired screenshot will be captured.

Update : See the comments for another variation

This is a little awkward as one is a touch sensitive button and the other is a hard button, as we have a natural tendency to apply same pressure on both fingers when doing simultaneous press'.

Note: In Samsung galaxy ace running on android 2.2.1, there is no white graphic appearing from the sides, but all other things including the methods are applicable to android 2.2.1 also.

UPDATE : Latest update with samsung galaxy ace- the 2.3.6 version- changed to combination to HOME and POWER button. You can press these buttons together to take screenshots.
The added advantage is that you don't need to worry about getting the back function executed.

Solve SD card installation error in Samsung Galaxy ace

Finally there is a complete solution for an installation error in samsung galaxy ace and pop phones. The error resulted in unsuccessful installation of apps to SD card or USB storage, showing an error, "Couldn't install on USB storage or SD card".
The solution is to update the phone to the latest Gingerbread update. Before the update I was getting the same error at least once in two installations. But after the aforementioned update its completely ok. So I suggest you to do the update to permanently escape from the error.

Top 5 widgets for Android 2.2

This is a list of top 5 widgets for samsung galaxy ace running on android 2.2.  All of these are available for free download in the android market.

Widgetsoid2.x

This is the best system widget I have used so far. It brings virtually every setting to the home screen as a toggle widget and is customizable in a lot of ways. Read the full review of widgetsoid2.x.

Battery Widget

Battery indicator of android phones in general and samsung galaxy ace in particular is erroneous.
Battery widget provides a way to see the actual battery power remaining in exact digits rather than assessing from a graphical representation. Read the review of Battery Widget.

Power Control

One of the best comes-with-the-box widget of samsung galaxy ace. Power control widget provides easy one click access to GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth, Sync and Scree Brightness.

Program Monitor

This small widget gives info on all opened programs and their processor usage status.

 

Flashlight

A small widget which enable to use the mobile screen or the flash as a torch light. It is a nice and simple widget that does the job perfectly. 

DNBT Series - Panasonic Cordless 3600 phone review

Learn about the Do Not Buy This series here


Product : Panasonic Cordless Phone 3600


This is a basic and the cheapest cordless phone from Panasonic. Here is a quick round up of Pros and cons of Panasonic cordless 3600.


Cons: ( This is a do not buy series remember)

1. The base unit has no battery: This is the most tiring of all problems. In a country like India where there is no guarantee of continuous power supply, this is a big problem. You won't be able to take a call during a power outage and if the power goes out while in a call, it gets immediately disconnected.
2. No LCD display: There is no LCD display on the handset so you cant be sure about the numbers you are punching in. Of course no basic phone has this funcationality but it feels kinda awkward on a handset may be because of the resemblance to cell phones.
3. Ring volume too low : there are very few incremental steps for the ringing volume and even the topmost one isn't particularly loud.
4. Virtually no feedback on the buttons : keyboard feels more like a cushion than a button. No clicks,
5. no sudden resistance nothing.
6. Loudness of the headpiece: speaker in the headpiece is not much loud. You might get trouble hearing clearly in a busy room or outside home.

Pros of this product include its low price and good build quality.


If you are planning to buy this phone, do yourself a favor and find another one. I got mine as a gift from EBay so I didn't lose any money on it. I think panasonic cordless 3600 does not qualify as a product you can spend your money on.



Price of Panasonic cordless 3600 in India ranges from 1300 to 1700 INR.

6 tips on improving battery life of an android phone

Android phones are notorious for their poor battery life. They do the intended job exceptionally well but at a higher cost.

In the Nokia era, a phone lasting 4 or 5 days was a normality than a deviation. We had to think about batteries no more than twice a week. But that golden period of long lasting batteries is gone. Now in the smartphone era a phone which can squeeze the juice to stand a second day is considered relatively good. Android is the most blamed OS among all for its poor battery life.

Best feature of an android ecosystem is its seamless connectivity. Android phones loves to be online. Some might consider it as an agenda being injected to us. But connectivity is the deal of the decade so I don't care, its just freedom for me. Problem with this continuous connectivity is the heavy drain that the connectivity produce on the battery.

The following post is a guide to improving battery life in the least inconvenient way.

Use the android power widget

Power Widget in android 2.2

 Power widget is the most useful widget in terms of power saving in an android phone. The power widget controls Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and brightness.

• Wifi - Switch it on only when you need it. Otherwise it will search for a wifi network every 10 seconds or so. This will dry the battery in a matter of hours.
• Bluetooth - Not as strong a battery drainer as others but keeping it off will definitely improve battery life
• GPS - The ultimate battery killer. Never leave it open unless you want a dead battery in 4-5 hrs or less.
• Account Sync - This syncs all or the chosen account with the server. The power widget toggles the mail sync.
• Brightness - Controls the brightness in three steps. Lowest one is more than sufficient and is healthy for the eyes in an indoor setting but in outdoors you might need a brighter setting.

Keep the number of home screen widgets to a minimum

Widgets are small snippets of programs that are continuously running in the background. They provide additional information and make easy the use of phone. They are decremental to the battery life as they use the battery whenever there is a need to fetch data to the home screen. 

System widgets like the battery widget will access only the system's internal resources but things like weather widget needs connectivity frequently to fetch the data. So I suggest limiting them to essential minimum. Also keep the update interval to the maximum possible. You don't want to get updated on national news every 5 minutes, do you?

Use a reasonable screen timeout with a soft-key screen turn off button

Keep the automatic screen time out to 5 seconds and you will find yourself getting irritated by repeatedly switching on the screen even during a single task. And every time you turn it back on, you are draining  the battery.  Keep it to 5 minutes and you will find the phone staying far too longer in the 'on' state which also drains battery. How would you tackle this problem?

I suggest keeping the screen timeout to 1 minutes and using a screen turn off button. Make it a reflex to turn off the screen as soon as you complete the task in hand. You can use the Power button (not the widget one, but the actual hard button) for turning the screen off. If you are reluctant to use the hard button for the fear of damaging it with frequent use, I suggest use of an on-screen toggle for screen turn off. You can use widgetsoid2.x to create a screen turn off toggle.

Say NO to task killer

Don't be amazed because use of a task killer will actually decrease your battery life. From 2.x android is very good at task management. The system keeps apps in memory only if it feels a recent requirement. If you kill the app using a task killer, the system has to restart the app from scratch when required which actually puts more pressure on the processor and drains more battery than when it is keep in the memory in idle state.

Use APNDroid - The second power button

APNDroid is a simple but powerful app that turns off the network on a single click. This offers a large boost on the battery life but has the disadvantage of losing connectivity. But as you can get online using the APNDroid toggle button in 3-4 seconds, I think it doesn't matter much.

Airplane mode

I agree that airplane mode is not a normally intended state of cell phone, but if you are in a situation where a call is not allowed, I suggest keeping the phone in this mode. Keeping the phone in airplane mode is almost same as switching it off, but has an advantage of getting back to connected state in seconds.

Use Battery Friendly Apps

Some apps use battery way more than others. Also system upgrades might cause some apps to drain more battery than before. In my case an app, network monitor, drained battery way more quickly when I upgraded my samsung galaxy ace to gingerbread. I suggest you to read reviews carefully before installing an app.
The apps with greatest chance of killing your battery are those that have to be run all the time. For example, anti virus apps. Select ones which causes the least burden on the battery life.

Solve Error in SMS Unread Count - Android

Scenario 1 :  SMS unread count shown on the SMS app is a wrong number.

Scenario 2 : You got notification for a new SMS, you went to inbox but no message inside inbox bears an unread marking( in red on my samsung galaxy ace). SMS unread counter in the SMS app still showing an unread SMS (number in a red circle). Even if you open up all the threads, the unread count will remain the same.
If another message comes the combined number will be shown unread. If you read the latter the number goes back to the 'stable' one.

Problem: This is an annoying bug in the android OS SMS app. The actual unread message remain hidden in the inbox so opening up the threads and deleting the messages won't work.

Solution: There is a specific free app for resetting the unread message counter developed by Kamosoft.
This app shows the unread messages and lets you mark them as read. The unread counter will be reset.

In my case the app identified the unread message and brought it to the surface. but the counter was showing unread count even after marking it as read. But a restart solved the problem completely. If just marking as read does not solve the problem for you, do a restart and you will be fine.

The reset counter app is completely free and you can download it from the Android Market using the link below.


Reset Unread SMS Counter - Android Market

DNBT (Do Not Buy This) Series Introduction

I like the Amazon system of buyer feedback. It focuses on the product rather than the seller. Buyer's connection with the seller is a short lived one starting at the order and ending at the receipt. Knowing the quality of the seller beforehand is great but not at the cost of knowing about the product.

In sites like ebay we leave a 80 character feedback for the seller which are usually at one end of a happiness spectrum. Most of the comments are like "You are too good" "Pleasant transaction" "Good Product" blah blah blah. On the other end negative comments are more informative. Usually negative ones specifically says the problem the buyer had with the overall transaction like product not according to description, poor choice of shipping or damaged product.

Why this kind of feedback is inefficient and insufficient?

Because its the product we have a long relation with. Most of the sites has a huge overlap of products. Same product is sold by lots of sellers. But there is no common board to place reviews, whether they are seller reviews on specific products or product reviews. So we are left with no choice but to trust the seller and hope for a quality product.

I will try to explain this further.If a seller has 10 electronic products and you are buying a memory card from him. Before buying you will want to know experience of people buying that specific memory card from him along with the performance and usability of the product. Why? because descriptions cannot match real life performance. 

Ebay sellers are giving loads of info on most of their products which are usually copied from other websites or product pages. Often there are clues of the origins in the text itself. For Eg. Certain mobile seller copies all his description from GSMArena site leaving a trace of copy in all pages in the Memory field. They memory field always has a buy memory link in his descriptions. I am not saying this is wrong as every seller making his own descriptions will be ridiculous. But there will be certain amount of partiality because seller will always be a SELLer.it

How do you get the info you want from the above scenario of seller reviews?. Like finding a needle in a haystack, its difficult to locate a seller review on a specific product. And one thing I forgot to emphasize. A feedback once left is final. You, seller or ebay can't change it. Even deletion can be done only by ebay.

reviews

Why Amazon system is good?

Amazon system allows user to give a rating and review specific products they purchase. The reviews can be updated further with additional info they obtained during continued use of the product. Its good because we would have a clear picture of the product its performance and problems to be expected.

So why this series?

This series is dedicated to those products which floods the markets with cheap price and a pathetic performance even their cheap prices can't stand. I had a fair share of these useless products. So I am dedicating some space to give info to people before they make a purchase. If even one person restrain from purchasing a product, I am satisfied.

Comments will be allowed to these reviews but they will be moderated. Anonymous commenting will not be allowed. Please use the comments to express your views on the product.

Charging Samsung Galaxy Ace

Default charge indicator in samsung galaxy ace can be used as an example for words like inaccurate and unhelpful. Its highly inaccurate in showing both the current charging status and the progress.

Charging the phone

First time charging - In previous generation batteries, a first time continuous charging of 6-8 hours were needed to attain full battery capacity. But in new generation batteries such as the one used in Samsung Galaxy Ace, you need to charge only up to the full charge point. No need to keep it in supply for longer time.
This is a screenshot from the galaxy ace phone manual that clearly states that there is no need to keep it for a longer period

There are two methods for charging samsung galaxy ace. One is via the AC adapter and other is via USB cable. Charging via AC adapter is faster of the two methods. for details check out my review of samsung galaxy ace.

Native battery indicator dose not show actual battery level in numbers it just show a graphic indicator. This indicator is difficult to interpret so I installed battery widget from geekygouup which is just a 55kb download (Read Review of Battery widget)

Suppose you are charging from 10%, the charging indicator will rise quickly to 53 or 54 within 5 minutes ie, 10%per minute. If you think you have half the capacity by this time you are wrong. The battery will quickly go back to 10% if you start using the phone at that point. The first time I stumbled on this, the battery went back to 15% with 10 minutes of voice call.

From 54% the ascend is slow until it reaches 88% which is a unique level for this phone as the indicator will directly jump to 100% from there.

Indicator in samsung galaxy ace stays at '100% and charging' for a very long time and then only shows up the little blue notification of charging full. There is a long 30+minutes wait for this to happen.

This is the usual charging graph of samsung galaxy ace. The image is basically a stitch of output from a battery graph app. You can see the quick rise to 60 % and the quick jump from 88 to 100%. The phone showed fully charged status about 40 minutes later which I couldn't include in the graph due to space constraints. 

Descend in the battery level is much more decent. The charge decreased almost according to the usage. But the descent below 20% was a little bit slower. This might be because of the aggressive power management kicking in.

At 15% charge, the battery low warning will be shown. When the charge is below 10% the screen become very dim to push the death of the battery as far as possible.


If you know 2 things you wont have much problems with battery level indicator of samsung galaxy ace.

1. Indicator at the half line does not always indicate a half filled battery.
2. Battery isn't full until a full charge indicator appears in the notification.

Also install battery widget to know the actual battery level values.

Update : The power management improved a little bit with the 2.3.4 update giving longer period with full charge but the charging graph still follows its previous path.

Battery widget for android user review

A perfect definition for battery widget for android would be "A simple battery indicator applet with additional power control options".

The battery widget for android is created by 'geekyouup' and is available for free in the android market. As of writing this, the app is just 55.94kb in size.

Functions

Besides being a good battery level indicator on the home screen occupying only a 1 x 1 space, the app provide additional buttons to control wifi, bluetooth and GPS. The picture below shows the options available for the app shown when you tap on the battery widget on home screen.

Of the above buttons only wifi is a toggle button(wifi on/off button) others are links to their settings menu. Battery button provides link to see which all app used the battery from the point of disconnection from the power source. GPS button opens the location and security settings and BlueTooth button named as BT open up the wireless and network settings.

Battery Use

This app uses negligible battery. There was no apparent difference in battery life with and without battery widget.

Popularity

This is one of the most popular apps in Android market. By the time I am writing this the app has received 99,820 ratings and is at more than 4.5 stars rating.

Compatibility

This app is compatible with almost all android phones including Samsung Galaxy S, galaxy S II, HTC incredible, EVO 3D, galaxy ace etc.

Widgetsoid - Best free system widget android 2.2 and 2.3

Widgets are one of the greatest features in Android phones. They are small apps designed to work from the home screen. System widgets makes the innards of android phones easily accessible.

Widgetsoid2.x is the system widget I use most. This app provides more toggles and more customizability than any other apps out there. And the best part - its free. Two versions of the app is available in the android market. Widgetsoid and Widgetsoid2.x. the first one is aimed at devices running on android version 1.6 and below. The 2.x is for those running on android 2.0 and up.

The app provides an option to toggle almost every toggleable setting available on android phones.
 
Update:

Complete Feature List of Widgetsoid2.x

These are the complete list of options with their descriptions available on widgetsoid2.x. The list is based on the latest version of widgetsoid2.x ie, 3.2.4

Network

1. WiFi
2. Portable Hotspot -Share your internet connection over wifi
3. Bluetoot
4. Mobile Data - Toggle mobile internet (2/3/4G)
5. 2G/3G - Switch between 2G and 3G
6. 4G - Enable/Disable 4G
7. Data Sync - Chose whether your online accounts(Gmail, Facebook) needs to be synced with the device or not
8. Data Sync Now - Force a data synchronization immediately
9. Tether USB - Share your mobile internet over the USB cable
10. USB storage - Turn on/off USB storage mode
11. Airplane - Disconnect all your wireless connections which includes cell coverage bluetooth, wifi, gps, radio

Screen

1. Screen Timeout -  Two sets of screen timeout options are available. You can either toggle between 15s/1m/5mts or 30sec/2min/5min
2. Lock Screen - Turn off the display and lock the device
3. Lock pattern - Change the lock pattern
4. Auto lock - Doesn't like to unlock the phone everytime?. This options disables the device lock so that you can use the phone right away.
5. Orientation - Determine whether you want the phone to rotate the screen on device rotation.
6. Brightness - Switch between brightness levels
7. Always on - Screen stays on
8. Stay awake - Screen stay awake when phone is being charged

Sound

1. Ring Mode - Switch between ring and vibrate
2. Vibrate - Enable/Disable vibrate
3. Silent - Silent mode
4. Speaker - Audio speaker
5. Volume control - Change volume for media and sounds
6. Media Scanner - Initiates media scanner to find new files on SD card
7. Previous - Previous song
8. Play/Pause - 
9. Next - Next song

Other

1. GPS
2. Battery - Level meter
3. Temperature - Battery temperature not the climate one
4. Phone memory - Available phone memory
5. SD memory - 
6. RAM memory
7. Flashlight - use the flash as a continuous light
8. SD card - Mount/unmount SD Card
9. Lock Buttons - Lock for widgetsoid widget
10. Reboot - Reboot phone - requires root
11. Locale - Change the locale of the phone
12. Debut USB - Phone will change the mode to Debug upon connection with a computer

Shortcuts

1. Application - 
2. Contact - Call/SMS/email a contact
3. Bookmark
4. Tasker task - needs tasker to be installed

Some of the switches have further customizations avilable in the global preferences. For example The sub-settings in Mobile Data toggle will allow you to select the method with which the widgetsoid disables the data. You can use APN toggle, APN rename or Root toggle for disabling the mobile data network.

Extensive customization options to tweak the appearance of the widgets are also available in widgetsoid. And it performed well on every task I throw at it . Overall I think widgetsoid2.x is the best system widget available for android platform.

Nokia mobile phone price increased in india

I don't know why is Nokia doing this. They are clearly drilling holes in an already sinking ship. When news from other part of the world are coming out about Nokia lowering price of their handsets to stay in business (Read the news here : Daily Tech: Nokia slashes smart phone prices), they are increasing price in India.

I was a Nokia fan boy for a very long time but their disregard to improving usability especially that of touch devices forced me to shift my foot. The company had an undisputed reputation to provide good quality hardware at compelling prices and that too is now biting the dust.

When I heard about the price cuts in Europe, I checked their Indian website for any information on lowering prices in India. But the prices were still the same. To be honest, I believed a price reduction is coming to Indian market also. So I took a screen shot of the prices available at that time so that I can calculate the cut they are doing to stay up in the battle.

The screen shot included prices of the top level( I mean phones that are displayed in the top row - not the 'best in category' thing) phones ie, C7, C6-01, C6 and C5-03 ( Nokia phone that made me interested in this was C7).

The Prices were as follows

C7 - 17,734 ($ 399)

C6-01 - 14,299 ($ 322)

C6 - 12,499 ($ 282)

C5-03 - 8,899 ($ 200)

Nokia mobile price on 8th July 2011

When I checked back today, to my surprise the prices were higher than the previous ones. The following are the increased values.

C7 - 18,399 ($ 414)

C6-01 - 14,979 ($ 338)

C6 - 13,089 ($ 295) 

C5-03 - 9,319 ($ 210)

Nokia mobile price on 18th July 2011

Check the latest prices here

Nokia increased the prices from 3.5% to 5% for their phones. Too bad I didn't have a note on any other item in their inventory.

Is this price hike in view of the new survey result?

On July 11 The Mobile Indian released a survey on the most searched mobile phones by Indian customers. The survey was based on the searching preference of 670,000 users of 'The Mobile Indian' website in June. Nokia, to the surprise of many, topped the list by snatching 4 out of the top 5 including the top 3. In the top 25 list Nokia got 12 admissions.

The goal of the survey as they say was "to give marketers a monthly insight into changing consumer preferences". Just 1 week after the survey result came out, Nokia was found to have increased the prices ( 'Found to have' - because I do not know when exactly the change was made).

Three of the above mentioned handsets are in the top 25 list with the exception of C6-01. And all got a price hike.

Was that just a coincidence ? to be frank, I don't know. You decide.

Disabling Mobile Data Network in Android 2.2

Mobile data network simply termed as 2G/3G networks are one of the biggest attractions ( in view of carrier selectivity and customizability)  and the largest pocket drainers in android smart phones. Some mobile carriers charge you for a whole plan as soon as you transfer the first bytes of data. Eg. My friend gets charged 50 cents on his first data exchange on any day where 50 cents is the fees for one full day of unlimited data transfer.

This post deals with different methods of disabling data connection on Android 2.2 . The method described here is tested to be working on Samsung Galaxy Ace running on android 2.2.1.

Method 1. Install APNDroid - The easy way

APNDroid is a free app available in the market which does the job without you needing to learn any technical stuff. It also provides a widget with which you can enable or disable data network on single touch. APNDroid disables all the 2G(EDGE/GPRS) and 3G networks together.

In my galaxy ace network was completely turned off when switched on after a power off. But I heard complaints of it not working in some phones when phone is switched off for more than 30 minutes. But given how this app work it is not possible unless the phone tries to download fresh settings from the network.

Here is a screenshot guide for APNDroid installation and usage

Open the Android Market and search for APNDroid. Install the first one. The on-off widget (Third search result) will also work but the app gives more control over the process thats why I recommend the first one.

After the successful installation go to the home screen and long press to open the widgets. Select APNDroid from the widget list.

Mobile Data Network - Off

Mobile Data Network - On

The widget will be added to home screen. The colour of the widget represents the on off status also. Green indicates that you can connect to the data network and red indicate that you are cut off from the internet.


Same kind of on-off button along with further customizations is available in the actual app also. Below is the screen shot of APNDroid home screen. You can toggle 2G/3G on or off with the first button. There is also option to keep the MMS enabled

APNDroid Home Screen

Update : APNDroid will not work correctly in roaming if you have enabled using packet data while roaming. In that case you need to select 'Disable all APNs' from the menu to completely disconnect from network.

Update 2 : APNDroid free was pulled from Android market. Only APNDroid Pro is available currently. So I suggest you use 'APN Manager' which has the same functionality.

Method 2. Disable the Packet Data connection

In android 2.2 there is an option to disable packet data which essentially turns off the internet connection.

Go to Settings >> Wireless and Networks >> Mobile Networks and toggle Use Packet Data to off. You will now be disconnected(hopefully!! - Explanation follows) from the mobile network. Some softwares may still be able to access internet if it was given privileges to change system settings during installation. So this method is not 100% efficient.

Below screeshots will give you a guided tour to the settings

Options >>Settings

Select wireless and network settings

Select mobile networks

In the above screen you can toggle packet data on or off. You can also selectively disable data usage while on roaming and 3G from this screen. Please make a note on the menu item 'Access Point Names' because we will be using it in the next method.

Method 3. Creating a new (fake) Access Point Name ( APN)

Access Point Name is like a website address. Difference is that you have to connect to this mother website first to access all other data in the internet. If you got the address of this mother website wrong you won't be able to connect to anything at all. This is the principle we use in the third method.

It is more safe as any software, be it a system one or a user installed one, will try to access internet through our fake APN which anyway would fail. If you want to connect to internet anytime, you can just change to default access point to the original one.

Here are the details of creating a new APN

 Clicking on the 'Access Point Names' will present you with a list of access points in your phone. Text in big white letters denotes the name of the access point in your phone and the small green one denotes the APN - the mother site name.

There are currently two items in my list one (bsnlnet) is for internet access and other as its name suggests is for mms.

Now we have to create another Access point like the one listed but with fake credentials. For creating a new APN, click on the options and select 'New APN'

You will be presented with long list of things to fill in . Don't worry we only need to fill in just two things here,  viz Name and APN.
For this example I gave values 'NewAPN' to the Name field and 'sampleapn' to the APN field. But you can add anything in these fields. Only thing to note is that you should not add an APN name same as that in your default list. (for me that would be bsnlnet)

I would suggest avoiding APN close to the default one also as there might be a test APN with that name( No, I am not a paranoid).
You need to fill in only the first two entries (This is the minimum requirement to save a new access point). So leave others as such. After filling the two fields, save the New APN.













Now select the new fake APN from the list as default connectivity point by tapping on the small circle on its right side ( Default APN is highlighted green here). Now you will be successfully off the internet.
If you want to connect to internet anytime, just change the default back to the real one. This change cannot be over ridden except in case of a settings restore so it is more reliable than the second one.









Note : No method described here interfere with WiFi connections.

Finally I want to add a note on advantages and disadvantages of disabling a mobile data network. It is the disadvantages that I want you to read closely as it might prove to be more valuable at the end of the day.

Advantages of disabling Mobile Data Network

1. Saves data costs.
2. Disables ads in free apps as they wont be able to access the ad servers.
3. Improves battery life (Androids are notorious for poor battery life).
4. Prevent entry of malicious software.

Disadvantages

1. You won't be able to access the phone remotely in case it is lost or stolen as it will be masked from the internet.
2. Google's kill switch to remotely wipe malicious apps already installed on your system won't work.
3. Whole point of owning a smartphone is the ability to get connected and stay connected. Its your call.