I’ve been doing a bit of work lately,
I have a new Rom installed on my HTC Evo, the MikG 2.3 Rom with Sense 2.1+3.0
All my apps are reinstalled, but not yet configured, Thank you Titanium Backup for helping with that, just bought the Pro [...]
I’ve been doing a bit of work lately,
- I have a new Rom installed on my HTC Evo, the MikG 2.3 Rom with Sense 2.1+3.0
- I’ve added the poorly placed in the top left corner Google +1 button to the site
- I am going to flash a new Rom on my Notion Ink Adam here in about three hours
- Finally got my Xbox 360 setup so I can get audio and video on my PC monitor (HD TV) and my TV
- Reimaged my laptop, three times… still having issues with it, going to have to spend most of tomorrow on it I fear
- Finally ordered a replacement fan for the top of my Thermaltake PC case, it has been acting up for about 12 months now!
- Not to mention a bunch of housework
All my apps are reinstalled, but not yet configured, Thank you Titanium Backup for helping with that, just bought the Pro License, a bit pricey, but’ll just eat at home this week!
It was either that or the bottom left… haven’t figured out where else to put it with this theme, but I’m looking.
I have to go mow the lawn first, it looks so bad I’ve started singing “Welcome to the Jungle” every time I go outside!
Video has been working for a couple of months, but I couldn’t find the adapter I needed to do the audio, so I bought another yesterday, paid too much for that too..
I hope it fits, the manufacturer claims they are 230mm fans in there now, but when I measured it with my tape measure it was only 203mm (fan size) and about 214mm from end to end of the case opening and I’m afraid I’ll have to remove the Motherboard to replace it…
So, deal with the Google +1 button where it is, I’ll probably not get around to moving it for 3 -12 months (I say that as I have a baby due in less than 4 months), I’ll try and get another 5 or so Android apps posted up this week, a write-up on my Evo and Adam Roms, and maybe I’ll even finally get pictures put up for the apps pages! I did take 383 screen shots on my Adam using the ShootMe app, but they all came out as blank black screens… so I’ll try again later. I’ve also added and updated my Notion Ink Adam Roms page, a LOT the last week or so, now make sure you head over and take a look! Doubt I’ll do the same for my Evo though, as they seem to have things well in hand on their own.
I have been using the EdenX Rom continuously at this point and have tested many apps while using it, most with success, although not always perfectly. Also I have noticed a lot of apps do not launch well, I have to start them several times before anything happens, and [...]
I have been using the EdenX Rom continuously at this point and have tested many apps while using it, most with success, although not always perfectly. Also I have noticed a lot of apps do not launch well, I have to start them several times before anything happens, and apps that require internet access will not load at all, they flash on the screen very fast, maybe 300-600 milliseconds and then right back to the app launcher (learned this the hard way). Well, on with the list! It is a bit longer than the previous one, so I may not get this posted for a few days, then I will work on the Android apps page and try to get all of these apps listed there with download links to the Google Market and the Amazon market.
- Akinator
- This app is absolutely awesome, it can tell you who you are thinking of in an average of 20 questions. While there is room for improvement, as it frequently asks the same or similar question over again, and even goes so far to ask the opposite of a question you already answered in the affirmative. It did guessed me, my dog, characters from books I read when I was a kid (not the main character either), Felix the Cat (the first “person” ever on TV), Blu the bird from the new Angry Birds game: Rio, Cindy Brady, even The Great Pumpkin from Charlie Brown! and several others I tried, some times it had to guess more than once and some times I gave it wrong answers, but it always got them. There is even an option to edit the character’s name if not quite right, and add a picture if there is not one. the background image stretches to fit the screen, and the objects on screen are set to “top right” “top left” and “bottom” so it looks a bit funny, but works great (was a bit slow loading questions, but I think it is a problem I have been having with my wifi lately and not the app). It does play upside down in portrait
- AndExplorer
- my favorite file explorer for Android, although it does not show the sdcard2 and usb drive unless you go into the sdcard and then go up a level (I think the start screen is just bookmarks, you should be able to add them to that list, I just have not tried. No visible issues with formatting for the screen.
- Anytime Pool
- installed fine, will not load at all, pops up on the screen for about 800 milliseconds then goes away.
- Bank of America App
- installed in EdenX, so there is hope, but will not launch, I got the accept and decline option with a properly displayed user license, but after I clicked accept it went away and I could not get it to relaunch at all.
- Armored Defense II
- Looks good, plays great, just a bit skewed on the graphics and a touch low on the resolution for the graphics, but completely playable, one of the better tower defense games out there. Just make sure you are online when you first run it, it has to phone home and activate.
- Backbreaker
- no good here, it installed, it launched, some of the graphics did not load at all, it was completely unplayable, you could only see the outline of the player, and I had no idea where the opponents were. Had a good time playing this on my Evo it’s fun, easy to play, and something you can do with only a couple of minutes of spare time.
- Baseball Superstars 2011
- Plays great, absolutely no issues; however I haven’t played 2010, I had a great time playing the 2009 version, but I do not understand the changes they made in the 2011 edition, I cannot bat any longer, they changed the batting system and I cannot figure out to control the swing
- Castle Crusade
- will not launch, this is a shame, as I loved playing it on my HTC Evo
- Castle Warriors
- Fantastic Game, I played it straight through the campaign without getting up from my seat once. I just wish there was some elements of RPG in it, something that got better or at least carried over between levels. The lack of such greatly reduces replay value, maybe needs some upgraded graphics a touch, but it works without it
- Dungeon Hunter HD
- Another great Android game, and a special HD version, although it could use some increased polygons. But looks pretty darn good, no lag but I do have three issues, the character’s “light source” is not working very well me thinks, as it looks crappy and barely lights up the area the player character stands in. The second issue was the controls, it appears you have an 8 way virtual control stick; although I can almost never get the diagonals to work, am often stuck walking into walls while pushing the opposite way on the controller. And finally, the auto targeting is a bit funny, you can be surrounded by 4-6 enemies and your guy tries to go running off to attack another enemy that isn’t even on the screen yet, completely ignoring the other enemies.
- Dungeon Defenders HD
- All I can say is Wow, this has to be the best tower defense game conceived. I have not really run into any major game play or graphical issues, although I cannot beat the 4th wave in the first mission, “Deep well” even though my character is now level 4. I’m trying to figure out if there is a way to quit levels early and keep all that was earned on the levels completed. It even has a tablet “mode” you can turn on in the options menu, although it started with it turned on by default after installing on my Adam *** update *** significantly past that level, learned the hard way you can use multiple characters to set the traps between waves; however you are still stuck with just one character during the level. Thankfully any character can repair another’s traps.
- Finger Physics
- mostly works, it is playable, although there are some big black squares on screen, and the game does not stretch to fit, so you can see exactly how the graphics were designed. not made for larger display, but if you really like the game, it will work. personally not one of my favorites. it is one of those that you play once or twice and get rid of.
- Grave Defense
- installs and runs well, graphics are below sub-par and even look bad on my HTC Evo, the play field pans and actually goes farther than the actual map. This is not good, as once you go past the edge of the playing field the graphics mess up. I’d recommend skipping this one until they do a graphical overhaul. The devs do a great job adding new content and keeping this game alive, but if they don’t improve the graphics then I don’t see this app lasting into the new era of high res devices.
- HiFiCorder
- Like many of the Android Apps I have tested on my Adam, this one launches, allows me to accept the license agreement, then loads the app and disappears, attempting to re-launch it gives you a few thousand milliseconds to glimpse the app and then it is gone again. For all of these apps, I really do not think it is the app itself that causes this; however it is the Eden user interface or the chosen launcher that is causing it. I think part of the problem is that there seems to be no way to “hold down the home button” to get your last 6 or 8 apps to appear on screen so you can go back to them, this is one of the most used features of Android for me and will be the reason I leave EdenX. I’ll try to remember to check some of these apps on another rom to see if they work better (many of these are not apps I regularly use and only installed to test them on my Adam)
- Homerun Battle 3D
- looks good and plays fine, if you can figure out how to use the sideways accelerometers. I could get it to move up and down, but not side to side.
- PewPew2
- installs and runs great, I don’t really understand this game and cannot complete even the second level, I guess it is just not for me, looks good and works fine on my Adam though.
- Platinum Sudoku
- also installs and runs fine, but is forced to a very small display in portrait mode. It looks to me to be about 320×480, game play is great though all functions worked.
- Prince of Persia
- only seems to work in landscape mode 480×320 and runs about 5x normal speed, pretty amusing to play, but completely worthless as you cannot get past the first level or so without falling in a hole.
- Sound Hound
- No issues here, it even figured out that I was attempting to sing I love rock and roll, in falsetto, quietly… not quiet enough, as I did get a couple of funny comments after I finished.
- X Construct
- playable although the graphics are poor and the screen is zoomed in really close without the ability to zoom out any, also although the menu will rotate between portrait and landscape mode for the level select, nothing can be done in the game after you start a level. Additionally, the start button to send the train across your bridge is sometimes located on top of the battery button that is used to minimize the task bar.
- Zenonia 2
- no issues here, all looks and seems to work good, actually had a pretty good time playing it on my Adam.
- Solitaire megapack
- I did not even realize this was installed! I accidentally ran it while trying to swipe through my app list to try and get to something else at the time. It runs great though and is fully loaded with what seems to be close to 100 variations on solitaire. Good stuff here, will definitely keep this for boredom. Also has the ability to upload your character save to their servers, so you can download it again after a Rom flash, or even to another device. The only issue is that the download wipes any saves you currently have on that device, and it deletes the save from the device when you upload the saves.
well, it took me a week to get through all of these apps that I had not yet tested and to get this written up, but I’m done, so here it is! Next I’ll get to work on the app pages and get the links to the markets put up. then I’ll come back and add links in to this and my previous post.
The week before the Evo launched I read about the SD card error, which I immediately wrote off as “idiots trying to use a class 2 SDHC to write 720p video” when any photographer could tell you you should use at least a class 6 card to do HD video. So, I was not worried I had already planned to spend the money on a 16GB class 6 micro SDHC card. then they started complaining about battery life, the lack of an AMOLED screen, then it was confirmed it was shipping with a 8GB micro SDHC not the rumored 16GB card. Then there was the extra $10 fee to “unlock greater than 5GB data usage per month” NOT for 4G access like everyone kept saying, please read the fine print people! Next came a charge for tethering, then you needed a special HDMI cable to do the HDMI out, next was the supreme compression level of the 720p video and the 8mp images, the final issue was the monthly charge for Qik!! I could not believe how badly Sprint and HTC has fucked up the perfect cell phone. At least they promised to give Froyo to the Evo before years end, that was the only bonus to look forward to…
then I started using the phone, I installed 259 apps that I had preselected using appbrain.com (also an android app called “AppBrain”) that uses the Android Marketplace to search for and “queue” apps to install on your phone. what you do is go on the website, find apps you want to use, and then you click install and it loads them into a queue on the website. then when you get your phone (as was my case, since I did this 3 days before the Evo launched), the first thing you do is go to the market and install “AppBrain” then unfortunately you have to launch the app and login, then it will check the installed app database and compare it to what the website says you want/have installed. DO NOT CLICK THE SYNC BUTTON AT THIS TIME!!! I did not on my phone, but when I upgraded my wife’s Samsung Moment to Android 2.1 I used AppBrain and hit the “Sync” button, instead of updating the phone to match AppBrain’s database, it made the AppBrain Database match the phones (which at the time only contained AppBrain), and I had to go through the marketplace and manually locate and install everything again.
Ok, back to using AppBrain on my Evo, I clicked the “Install” button to add the 259 apps to my new Evo, this sucks, the only thing AppBrain is capable of doing (I think it is a security limitation set by google) is to:
1. open the Android marketplace
2. insert a search query for the apps you selected on their website, one at a time.
So, after clicking install you are provided with the marketplace search screen and after a few seconds it pulls up the app you were looking for (if it is available in your country/OS version, while there is a filter on AppBrain’s website for OS version and country, you may still find and select apps that are not available to your phone, personally I selected about 12-15 that were not found in the marketplace when I tried to install them). from this point on it is almost like doing it yourself, you have to click the install button (or buy if it is a paid app, but I recommend doing th efree version first to make sure it runs well on your device. I ran into several apps I wanted to buy after trying them on my wife’s Moment, only to find out they REQUIRE a physical keyboard, or a ball, or a D-Pad), the install button gives you the warning page of the access that the app wants (if any), just the same as if you did this without AppBrain, select OK and it will initiate the install. NOW, to get to the next app in my huge list to add to the phone (by the way, after 8 days I still have not narrowed the list down to less than 200, but I am working on it) you MUST HIT THE BACK BUTTON on your phone, some apps when they start downloading the MarketPlace will automatically take you back to your search results (which by the way, AppBrain searches by the Unique Identifier for the app, so only the correct app will come up in the search, or no apps), some apps will leave you on the details to watch the progress meter go by while it downloads and installs, if yo uare on the details page, press the back button to get to the search results, once you are on th esearch results page, press the back button again to get the next app on your list. This seems to be the only way to do it, so yes, I had to do this process more than 200 times to get all those apps installed on my phone.
The only benefits I found to using AppBrain, was that I was able to use my laptop to interface with the marketplace and I did it days before I hand my phone in my hands, saving me hours after I got the phone. Now, one more limitation on AppBrain, their website can only show you 50 pages of 10 apps each per category. this means that the maximum number of apps you can browse from AppBrain without doing a search is about 15% of the current android marketplace. So to compensate for this without doing specific searches (yes I looked at all 50 pages of almost every category) they place a “similar apps” and “others by this developer” list on the right hand side of the screen when viewing the details on an app, very handy.
Not too long after I started this process (at exactly 8:00am) my Evo received the now famous SD card patch OTA update.
Alright, so within 2-3 hours I had all 250+/- apps installed that were found, time to start loading them and testing them out, several were duplicate apps that I could not decide which I wanted to use without having actually used them. To this day, I still have not loaded all of the apps on my phone, I have purchased 3 or 4 total, 2 or 3 of which were planned purchases before I even got my phone, I was just waiting to make sure the demo’s worked first (that means 1 was not a planned purchase and just plain surprised me when I found it). There are others that I intend on buying, but need to wait until my next paycheck to afford it, as Android apps on average cost 2-4 times as much as comparable iPhone apps AND the graphics on almost every single Android app looks like an 8 yearold designed it. I really feel that google needs to step in and regulate some quality controlls over the apps, not content, but quality. I am sick and tired of loading an app and finding stick figures, or a plain black background and hand drawn squares and circles and teardrop shaped drawings (see a couple of pictures below for examples, what is sad is those are some of the games I really like too, but won’t buy because they are $2.99 or $4.99 and the graphics are a blank screen with “stick figures”). If you really want to understand my frustration with the graphics, go find someone who is an Apple lover, and has owned more than one iPhone, and ask them to show you some games, then you will understand. some of my favorites are the rogue trainer, field runners, rocket bears (I think that is the name, it’s a teddy bear looking brown bear that is under attack by zombie panda bears), and pocket god (I’ll have to check out my friends iPhone and see what some of the others I like are called, so you can go check them out. trust me there is a huge difference and almost everything he buys is either $0.99 or $1.99 sometimes he waits for it to go on sale before buying, but never pays more than $1.99 for an app).
People complain about the “fart” apps on iPhone, well I think there are more on Android than iPhone, AND Android has a ton of freaking jigsaw puzzle games, I cannot understand that, why is there not 1 or 2 apps, and the rest could be download add on packs that give you more images to use in the jigsaw app…
right, next post will be about the phone itself, I’ll post it in a few minutes…
Twitter: finndo77
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