Android (as in phones) discussion

[King of Snake]

So... I recently caved and got my very first smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S2. I'm having a good time with it so far, though I'm still exploring the possibilities and options of the phone and OS.
I thought we could have a topic about Android phones, or smartphones in general here.
Post your homescreens, tips, app recommendations, maybe tell us how you use your phone?

For me, apart from being a phone, the idea is to replace my portable media player, an iAudio M3L. Since I encode some of my music in flac. I was glad to have flac support on the Galaxy S2. I bought a 32 GB micro SD card so I now have plenty of space (about twice the amount of my iAudio).
Album art can be a bit wonky I've noticed, in that sometimes Android seems to make it's own album art thumbnails which are quite low quality, and show these even for the large displays (which means ugly jpeg artifacts). Doesn't seem to always do this though...
I'm currently undecided between Winamp and Poweramp. Both work really well, but Poweramp isn't free but it seem to support gapless playback, even for flac (which Winamp doesn't yet. It is still in beta though). Sound seems to be good, though I haven't done a A/B check against my iAudio M3 yet. It definitely doesn't go as loud, but it's still plenty loud enough if you want to really get your Moaner on (I use a pair of big Sony MDR 7506 headphones)

The huge screen on the S2 is really nice for watching video's on the train, and again it seems to play the most common formats including DIVX and XVID. I'm definitely gonna be using that a lot (although it sucks battery time!)

Battery time seems to be ok so far. I think it could last for about 48 hours with moderate use. It will drain faster if you're watching videos or surfing the web a lot since the screen is the main power drain.

I've got a 1GB dataplan but tbh I don't really see myself using the internet that much. I've actually got my mobile data switched off most of the time (I imagine this will save me battery time) While the browsing is fast and smooth (and of course supports flash), a mobile phone screen is still too small imo to make it really useful, unless you really just need to look something up when you're out and about. Of course I get my gmail and calendar on my phone which is nice. Now getting to grips with the Swype keyboard type, which actually works amazingly well.

Other apps I've installed so far:

Dropbox
Recordoid (voice recorder)
Opera Mini
Astrid tasks
IMDB
Audiomanager (to manage the different volume settings)
Skype
JuiceDefender (not sure if that really does anything)
QR Droid (for scanning QR codes)
Launcher Pro (nice launcher replacement)
Extra Media Scanner (for some reason the track numbers in my flac tags were not recognised, this app helped to sort that out)
Smooth Calendar (nice clear calendar widget)
Battery Widget (show battery power with a percentage)

[Dirty Canuck]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Android.

Make sure to d/l an app killer. I have Adao Task Manager. Certain apps run unnecessarily in the background and will further kill your battery and slow down your phone.
If you plan on using your phone as an mp3 player I recommend PowerAmp. The sound quality kicks the shit out of any iPod.

[King of Snake]

I've read in numerous places that you should in fact not use app killers, having something to do with the fact that Android is Linux based.
In any case slowdown is not something I've encountered at any point yet with this phone.

[stimpee]

I would say you need the official Power Pack addon battery because Android phones are legendary for having shitty battery life.

http://www.mobilecityonline.com/wire...roductid=28200
http://mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/up...Picture-73.png

[King of Snake]

Actually it doesn't seem to be that bad. I've been going for two days on this battery and I still have about 33% left.

[Dirty Canuck]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

I've read in numerous places that you should in fact not use app killers, having something to do with the fact that Android is Linux based.
In any case slowdown is not something I've encountered at any point yet with this phone.

Thanks for the heads up. I just uninstalled it, and so far my keyboard is more responsive. We'll see how it goes....