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2.1 .apk's

T

Timaphillips

Android Enthusiast
So I downloaded some of the 2.1 .apk apps ported over to the Droid from N1 over at www.droid-life.com this morning. The music app is marginally better, and is the only one that I have kept installed. The launcher app slowed my phone down very noticeably and had some other minor annoyances as well. Loading my text messages sometimes displayed the wrong names or took a long time to load the threads. The gallery app is MUCh improved over the original's, but again, a bit slow.

Right now I'm chalking up the speed of the .apk installs to them being apps and not built into the OS. They are overall improvements to the current Droid OS, but just aren't necessary replacements for me, at least, at the moment.

Note: The .apk's are also installed alongside the current apps, so when you initially open the new music app, for example, the OS gives you the choice of which you want to run. Pro: no rooting required. Con: Slower.

I do recommend if you are at least curious to see what all the fuss is about, to go and download them yourself. Installation is SUPER easy (make sure you have Astro File Manager installed). Uninstallation is just like uninstalling a market app.
 
I had a few of those on my phone before I rooted and I felt the same way; they were slow and not worth using for me. Rooted though, with the 2.1 apps included, they fly, and I can now see what the fuss is about.
 
Your phone is slowing down because you're not rooted. You have the other "duplicate" programs and they are taking up the system space, which is very small. I only have 14MB on that portion left. When you remove the previous version off the phone you gain much more back. I had them all renamed to .bak instead of .apk to have them as a backup, and I was down to 2.93MB left, so I sent them to my SD card instead for backup. The Launcher2 is ok personally. It just seems too plain for my liking.
 
Now I've deleted all .apk's of 2.1. Looking forward to the actual update. The apps are improved across the spectrum, but just not right for unrooted phones.
 
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