How To Droid tips, tricks, and easter eggs

[SurgiclPrcision]

Found a cool way to share contacts with other android or mobile users.

Pull up the contact you would like to share. Menu key > Share > Barcode Scanner (i assume you need the app barcode scanner installed).

This will create a qrcode of the contacts info that can then be easily scanned to a second device using the barcode scanner app. You could create a contact of yourself for quick sharing of your own business info.

Coming from a blackberry I know they just added this feature to BBM 5.0 and it was a very cool feature. People would create the qrcodes and save them out and use them in forum postings and what not.

kg.

Great find, but after testing it out on some of my contacts, I've found that it doesn't work if you have a birthday associated with the contact. I'm guessing it's because while Google Contacts has a birthday slot, android doesn't! So Barcode Scanner tells me it could not great a barcode. =(

 

[CaptainRon]

Double click the "Alt" key on the QWERTY and it stays in Alt mode. This helps when you have a lot of numbers to type in. Double click again and you are back to regular mode.

The same techniques works with the shift button to make it a caps lock. BTW, you only need to single click to return to regular mode.

Also, pressing "ALT" and "DEL" will clear a field.

 

[Zerophi]

#1 you don't need to shut down programs in the background this is not a windows operating system where everything in the background is sucking up resourses. This is like a linux system and your actually hurting performance because you just have to wait until the programs starts all over, the programs in the background are not using any resourse, i've tested it and it works, i ran everything and the battery life and speed never slowed down.

#2 Task Killer will interfere with email accts when the go to automaticly refresh, i wasn't recieving any of my Yahoo or Hotmail until i uninstalled Task Killer and rebooted the Droid(i found this out through another Droid site)


Hope this helps

 

[DroidRX]

So just like in the storm, whenever you're typing, if you hit spacebar twice, this will insert a period.

 

[sukTHEfac]

Download "Advanced Task Killer" for free of the app market. When you open up the program, there will be a list of all programs with a check box next to each. Check the programs you want to 'Kill' and press Kill Apps button. Note that every checked program will stay checked, so u dont have to do that every time.

Now that you like this, the program will stay up in the task bar. Drag down the task bar and select "Switch to task bar"

i like this because it allows you to open that program in teh middle of what you are doing

 

[enduser]

You must have the barcode reader app installed.

Go into your contacts and select the contact that you would like to share with another android user. With the contact info on the screen press your menu key, then choose share, then choose barcode scanner.

This will generate a barcode on your screen that another android user could go into the barcode reader app and scan (straight from your screen) and it will allow them to add it as a contact.

As others have mentioned above it seems to choke if the contact has a birthday, or linked to facebook for that matter so still seems to be a bit touchy but an easy way to share info none the less.

kg.

 

[drumtrucker]

did that but it is to small habe a little box in middle of screen

if you are using act1 video player, there is a ZOOM setting that choice ASPECT will fill the screen (width or height) and the picture still looks great.

Just checked the built in player and apparently does not have that option.

 

[drumtrucker]

Double click again and you are back to regular mode

you only need to single click to return.

 

[Cruzatte]

#1 you don't need to shut down programs in the background this is not a windows operating system where everything in the background is sucking up resourses. This is like a linux system and your actually hurting performance because you just have to wait until the programs starts all over, the programs in the background are not using any resourse, i've tested it and it works, i ran everything and the battery life and speed never slowed down.

#2 Task Killer will interfere with email accts when the go to automaticly refresh, i wasn't recieving any of my Yahoo or Hotmail until i uninstalled Task Killer and rebooted the Droid(i found this out through another Droid site)


Hope this helps

Both of your points are correct.

However, when you're buying an Android device, you expect complete control & customizability. Whether having the Corporate Calendar process running hurts my phone's performance or not, I certainly want to be able to control whether it runs. Hence the task-killing programs.

 

[mriekena]

Being new to Android, it took me a while to figure out how to mount the USB drive in Windows/other OS's: You need to pull down the notification menu, select the USB Storage option, and select "Mount". Hope that saves someone some time.

There is a very handy mountUSB app in the market that makes mounting/unmouting a snap

 

[aguillon5]

I installed the dock runner app and low and behold locks the phone in landscape mode. Everything is functional even home screen and virtual keyboard. I do not use keyboard and makes my android experience that much better. The only drawback I have found is that there is the factory and the app symbols in the notification bar. If I find or anybody else finds a way to disable one or both of these notifications it would be appreciated.

 

[TexDroid]

I have been following this thread and haven't seen this, but forgive me if I'm duplicating. I used a cable to connect my droid 3.5 mm headphone jack into the aux jack on my car stereo. The music on the droid played through speakers and sounded great, so I decided to see what happened if I made a call. The caller's voice came through my stereo speakers and, even though I had the phone in the cupholder, they said they could hear me just fine! This rocks way better than my bluetooth!

 

[metalmenance]

I have been following this thread and haven't seen this, but forgive me if I'm duplicating. I used a cable to connect my droid 3.5 mm headphone jack into the aux jack on my car stereo. The music on the droid played through speakers and sounded great, so I decided to see what happened if I made a call. The caller's voice came through my stereo speakers and, even though I had the phone in the cupholder, they said they could hear me just fine! This rocks way better than my bluetooth!

Know what you mean, hooked up same way and used navigate and played music, was listening to tunes and when a turn came up the droid pauses the music and speaks through the car speakers, very cool.

 

[myko14]

Actually i tried using MML but all it did was pull media from my phone to my PC. i couldnt find a way to actually sync my PC library to the phone, which was the main purpose of the program for me.

I can do drag and drop just fine though. Not a big deal for me.

By the way i am on Windows 7 x64. Some people mentioned it doesn't install on Win7, but all one has to do is run as administrator. After a reboot and some really slow driver installation, i was up and running.

After trying doubleTwist on my computer (running Vista) and having no luck transferring my iTunes playlists I downloaded MML. It works great.

 

[efdisaster]

Know what you mean, hooked up same way and used navigate and played music, was listening to tunes and when a turn came up the droid pauses the music and speaks through the car speakers, very cool.

to be accurate, it mutes the music while it gives navigation... it doesn't pause it... but I found that pretty cool, as well

Hmm I'm curious, was the Droid smart enough to switch itself to speakerphone mode automatically?

Not that I can tell. I had it in the dock with a tape adapter plugged into the 3.5 jack, and I could hear the caller fine (through the car speakers) and they could hear me fine... on another occasion, I didn't have the tape adapter plugged in, made a call, and I remember having to hit the speaker button, because I couldn't hear them.

 

[shotinthenads]

OK, if someone already posted this I apologize. I searched and could not find that anyone else posted it. A neat trick to help with blinding flash (I happen to finally have a camera that focuses great (green bracket and in focus-other than a little grain). If you take a tiny piece of scotch tape and place it over the flash (only the flash) you can diffuse the light and it is not so washed out for close shots. If you take a picture of a person (kinda close) in a low light situation, it kind of washes out the persons face. This is a cheap diffuser.

 

[jhughes23]

All i had to do to transfer all of my music from itunes was drag my itunes file using "finder" and drag it to my Droids desktop "disk drive" icon, it instantly started transferring all the music files over, with playlists!

I use a Macbook btw.

 

[optogeek]

#1 you don't need to shut down programs in the background this is not a windows operating system where everything in the background is sucking up resourses. This is like a linux system and your actually hurting performance because you just have to wait until the programs starts all over, the programs in the background are not using any resourse, i've tested it and it works, i ran everything and the battery life and speed never slowed down.

#2 Task Killer will interfere with email accts when the go to automaticly refresh, i wasn't recieving any of my Yahoo or Hotmail until i uninstalled Task Killer and rebooted the Droid(i found this out through another Droid site)


Hope this helps

I'm not convinced. When I kill all the running processes, it shows that my available memory increases. In addition, I notice that the animation on the task bar coming down is SIGNIFICANTLY improved after I kill all these "background" processes that were eating that memory. This issue needs to be addressed.

 

[alphabuild]

I'm not convinced. When I kill all the running processes, it shows that my available memory increases. In addition, I notice that the animation on the task bar coming down is SIGNIFICANTLY improved after I kill all these "background" processes that were eating that memory. This issue needs to be addressed.

*NIX systems handle memory differently. Just because an app has memory reserved does not mean it is actively using it. it could be available to other processes. this is an excerpt from OS X Activity Monitor

Here is an explanation of some of the information displayed at the bottom of the memory pane:

Wired: Wired memory contains information that must always stay in RAM
Active: Active memory that contains information that is actively being used.
Inactive: Inactive memory contains information that is not actively being used Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later.
Used: Used memory is being used by a process.
Used memory is the sum of wired, active, and inactive memory. If the system requires memory it takes free memory before used memory.
Free: Free memory is not being used and is immediately available.

 

[optogeek]

There's a free app called Locale that can do this.

Based on your GPS position, time of day, etc, it makes the phone behave differently (silent, loud, vibrate, etc.)

I downloaded it but I can't get it to get a lock on the GPS, never finds my location. Which is weird because Google maps/nav has no problems.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but a new update on Locale came out today that fixes the issue of the GPS not working on Android 2.0. Works like a charm!

 

[autobahn]

Dump Sirius/XM:

Here is one for you. I have been testing all week. Use Pandora, Slacker or Last.FM to play free and unlimited music commercial free. With a real network behind the 3G, I have had no problems dropping a signal. I am loving Pandora. Why pay for Sirius/XM?

 

[asilver]

I'm not sure if this feature works on the regular keyboard but it does work on the "better keyboard" app......when typing words the phone will suggest what it thinks is the correct word, the problem is that sometimes the suggestion is NOT what you want, such as trying to type the word "apps" and what I just found out is if you longpress the word you want it to use, it will remember it and it will stop using the wrong words.

my blackberry did NOT do this, I'm pretty excited that the droid does.

 

[shugknight]

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but a new update on Locale came out today that fixes the issue of the GPS not working on Android 2.0. Works like a charm!

Really? I'm glad to hear that. Did they add anything else to the update? Also, where can I find the list of things they fixed? If there is such a list...

 

[Impact9]

I saw that tip posted on a couple of sites. That hasn't been my experience, as none of my contacts are in that format. Additionally, if you call your own GV number and then hit 2, you can dial out.

I wish GV has something similar to GV mobile on the iPhone where you can dial out directly from the Google Voice app. The Droid app seems to either ask you to have GV always dial out, or to have to select either GV or Verizon each time you want to dial out.

You can add the GV widget to the desktop and it will toggle the different modes (never dial GV, Always, and Ask). The widget is installed when you installed the GV app from the market. You just have to add it to the desktop.

 

[lemodular]

This maybe be obvious but while typing using the "virtual" keyboard, suggested words will scroll at the bottom of the text box you can just double click the space bar to insert the highlighted word.