A Few App Inquiries (:

[alec92]

Hey guys,

Firstly, is there some sort of app which saves YouTube videos that you view to your memory card?

Secondly, is it better (for speed and battery usage) to store files on your memory card or on your phone's hard drive? I transferred my images from my phone to my new 32GB Sandisk MicroSDHC and they seem to load faster.. or perhaps I'm hallucinating?

Thirdly, I need a good mail app/widget - preferably as much like the iPhone one as possible. I have 2 gMail email accounts and a hotmail account which I use very often. I have my hotmail currently set up in the email app and my gmail ones in the gmail app but I find the gmail one doesnt show on your home screen how many new emails you have - you need to open the app to see if there are new emails or not. Any recommendations?

Fourthly, is there a way to add a shortcut to the camera so that I don't have to unlock the phone and then click on it? Perhaps something on the lock screen or a shortcut using the home and power buttons?

Lastly, the AccuWeather widget on my home screen takes up 8 tiles... Am I able to get one that only takes up 4 so that I can fit 4 other shortcuts on my first home page?


Sorry if any of my questions are stupid or basic, I'm new to Android and haven't discovered everything yet

Thanks a lot!!
-Alec

 

[kwalla]

I think I can address a couple of these... I use the Go Launcher and this lets me resize widgets -- so you could shrink down AccuWeather. I use WeatherBug, which gives me a 1x1 widget that shows info just for today. When I need/want more, just open it up.

I use the stock Gmail app on my phone and while it doesn't show a number count.. it does display an icon in the Status Bar when any of my three Gmail accounts gets a new message.

Lifehacker (which I'm partial to for advice on apps and things) likes K-9 to manage multiple email accounts. I've never used it.
The Best Email Client for Android

k

 

[chanchan05]

1. Tubemate is supposed to do this, but apparently there are some issues after the Youtube revamp a few days back.

2. Depending on the phone. If the phone's storage is running low, accessing the SD card with lots of empty space may seem faster.

3. Are you using a third party launcher? The new Gmail API had disabled the use of notification bubbled on third party programs. What I did is just put my Gmail into my Email app. K9 is also a recommended email app, but I'm fine with the stock one.

4. You need a lockscreen that allows shortcuts to be placed, or one with a built in shortcut to the camera. The most popular option here is WidgetLocker, but its not free. Ripple Lock has a free version but its not freely customizeable.

5. Look for a different weather widget then. I use Fancy Widgets which is basically a combination of clock, calendar, and weather (looks like the HTC Sense clock), and it uses data from Accuweather for the forecast. Tapping on the weather icon also reveals more weather details.

 

[alec92]

Thanks so much for your answers - I've got my phone mostly sorted now! Just wondering also if there is a way to backup my phone (contacts, messages, images etc etc) regularly?

Cheers

 

[prosan98]

For the YouTube question, it's an extra step, but I use Regensoft YouTube Downloader App on my PC- I save the videos as MP4, then move them over to my SD card. This worked perfectly on my Wi-Fi tablet, and I just tested it and it works great on my Evo Shift, as well.

There are a bunch of back up apps you can download- I just did this to move my contacts from my old phone (some of them weren't Google contacts, apparently). I just searched the market for "contacts backup" and there were quite a few.

 

[alec92]

Isn't there a way to back everything up as an image like the iPhone does?

Also, why does the 'log' in the phone app show messages as well?? Can I change this?