Android Thread

[derspiess]

I decided to be cheap and use my upgrade tonight for a "free" LG G2 on Amazon.

That's a nice phone.  My coworker got one & it runs a lot better than my GS3.

[derspiess]

Anyone have a Chromecast device?  I got one last year and it died a few weeks ago.  Got the pink LED of death (which the Google support dude said means it won't reboot).  The factory reset button didn't do anything, so Google is sending me another one. 

Regardless, it's a pretty cool gadget for $35.  It's a dongle that plugs directly into the HDMI port and can draw sufficient power from the USB port on the TV.  I have it connected to the TV in my son's room to stream Youtube & other stuff.  Plus it had a cool Santa Tracker app complete with games & stuff around Christmas time.  My only gripe (other than the thing dying) was that my phone would sometimes lose connectivity with the device while it was streaming a video and I'd have to reboot the Chromecast for my phone to see it again.

[derspiess]

Well, that was quick.  I completed the RMA request just yesterday afternoon and had my new one on my doorstep this morning.  A lot of fuss over a low cost device but I'll take it. 

And my GS5 should be here tomorrow.

[Phillip V]

I decided to be cheap and use my upgrade tonight for a "free" LG G2 on Amazon.

That's a nice phone.  My coworker got one & it runs a lot better than my GS3.

LG G2 is indeed functionally and aesthetically nice. My main qualm is the max volume is not loud enough for me compared to my last phone: the Motorola Photon Q, especially when I am using Google Maps while driving.

[derspiess]

I'm liking the GS5 so far.  What was a nice surprise was that I can remove pretty much all the Samsung and Sprint crapware without rooting the phone.  There is a root method available for it but I may hold off & root it later.

[derspiess]

I'm a little puzzled as to what Amazon is trying to accomplish with their Fire TV set top box.  The Fire tablet was a great idea-- it came in at a very attractive price point and carried some unique features.  But you're not really getting much with Fire TV that you can't get from a Roku box, Apple TV, or one of the Google TV devices, pretty much all of which are priced the same or lower.

Some are saying they intend it to be a gaming platform, and I can sort of see that.  They have an optional controller and a few games in their app store.  But from what I've read, the games designed specially for the device have been half-baked and/or rushed ports.  And they're promoting it as a media device, at least for now.  The game thing seems to be an afterthought.

[Grey Fox]

You pretend to not know and then proceed to explain it in the perfect terms.

That's what it is.

[derspiess]

You pretend to not know and then proceed to explain it in the perfect terms.

That's what it is.

I guess I'm not sure why they think it will succeed.  I could hook up a game controller to either of my Google TV boxes & it wouldn't make them bona fide gaming consoles.

[garbon]

You pretend to not know and then proceed to explain it in the perfect terms.

That's what it is.

I guess I'm not sure why they think it will succeed.  I could hook up a game controller to either of my Google TV boxes & it wouldn't make them bona fide gaming consoles.

Apparently they now have more streams of their content in US than Hulu - so perhaps just part of building an Amazon world.

[derspiess]

So the Galaxy S5 can utilize the new ART runtime which will replace Dalvik in future Android versions.  ART is supposed to be faster and have some benefits to battery life-- downside was that it used more memory but that's less of an issue these days.

So I enabled the developer options on my phone and switched over to ART.  Ran fine-- I didn't really notice any increase in speed but the benchmarks I saw convinced me of the benefits.  Problem is my phone will occasionally not recognize my Swiftkey keyboard and sometimes the screen won't turn on after it has been off (phone still works otherwise-- the screen just stays dark).  Only remedy for either is to reboot the phone (by pulling the battery in the latter case).  So at least on my phone ART is not ready for prime time, though to be fair it's still considered experimental & may be a case of some software not being ready for ART.

Switched back to Dalvik and hoping the problems don't persist.

[Arvoreen]

I went ahead and got the S5 myself also.  The screen staying dark problem isn't tied to ART, as I've had it happen to me this morning, and I haven't enabled ART.  My co-worker's wife had the screen go dark and it wasn't 'fixable' by rebooting/pulling the battery...she is going to get a replacement now.

Have you noticed any improvements with ART?  Or too soon to tell?

[derspiess]

I went ahead and got the S5 myself also.  The screen staying dark problem isn't tied to ART, as I've had it happen to me this morning, and I haven't enabled ART.  My co-worker's wife had the screen go dark and it wasn't 'fixable' by rebooting/pulling the battery...she is going to get a replacement now.

Have you noticed any improvements with ART?  Or too soon to tell?

Funny, I did not have it happen after I switched back to Dalvik (also have not had the Swiftkey issue).  I would say things *seemed* to be faster with ART but I could have been imagining it-- it was already pretty fast.  I keep meaning to check to see if my Nexus 7 has the ART option since it is also on 4.4.2.

One sidenote: when you switch to ART you have to reboot the phone and then it takes a couple minutes or so to "optimize" (pre-compile?) your apps & processes.  I wonder if maybe it didn't hit a snag when it did that.  It also reboots & "optimizes" everything when you switch back, FWIW.

I may try ART again sometime soon just to see if the problems pop up again.

[derspiess]

So I switched to ART on the Nexus 7 and had processes crashing left and right as soon as it rebooted.  Would not even run the standard Android keyboard.  Had to go back to Dalvik on that one as well.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Thinking of the HTC One over the S5.

[Arvoreen]

I briefly tried turning on ART on my S5....didn't get any force closes, but had real odd behavior like having the keyboard pop up over the top of the input box...only way to see what I was typing was to periodically close the keyboard.  Decided it wasn't ready for primetime yet

My previous phone was the HTC One X+, and I don't think I'll go back to a phone that doesn't have a removable battery again.  I think HTC is stuck on that design point.