Pocketables

Companies that make white devices: Make my phone undirtyable!

2012-05-25T13:53:18-10:00

Big things are coming to Pocketables! Come back on Tuesday, May 29th, to find out all about it. Note: All comments have been closed until then.

I'm almost completely switched from my iPhone to my Galaxy Nexus, but I still enjoy a good Infinity Blade 2 gaming session once in a while, so I carry my iPhone 4S with me in my unoccupied pocket.

That's my iPhone up there. It's white; when I originally bought it, it was beautiful, too. But now, dust, dirt, and grime have collected in the crevices and grooves that are all around the phone. And the worst thing is that my home button has turned yellow!

This is my fault: I should've known that a beautiful white phone would've gotten dirty eventually. But then again, why should a phone that costs about $700 become ugly? It's not just the iPhone, either. The white HTC One X falls victim to ugliness as well - if you wear jeans.

I'm not rough on my devices, and I'm sure most owners of expensive phones aren't, either. We only slide them in and out of our pockets and touch them with (hopefully) clean fingers, which is what we bought them for: to use!

You'd think that with all of the innovation going on right now, companies would stop to make sure that their devices don't look like they've been to hell and back after a few months. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening. I don't understand why it has to happen in the first place, because I assumed that the job of designers was to make a device that will look as good the day it dies as it did the day you took it out of the box.

Until Company X says, "Look at this completely invincible and invisible film we've put on our phones! It keeps them looking as beautiful as day one for at least the length of your contract!" I'm going to keep to black devices. It's really a shame, as some of my favorite devices are white.

PARANOIDANDROID enables a per-app hybrid mode for many Ice Cream Sandwich devices

2012-05-25T12:43:41-10:00

You may remember the PARANOIDANDROID team for their work on a Galaxy Nexus ROM that combines Ice Cream Sandwich's tablet interface with the standard mobile interface to make better use of the Nexus's large display. Since we first wrote about their exploits, they have been hard at work adding new features. Some of their latest features, which they are calling "Per App Density" (PAD) and "Per App Layout" (PAL) are helpful tools which allows you to choose tablet or phone mode on a per-app basis as well as change the app's DPI independently of the system.

In case you are wondering why you would want to do that, we've actually examined some of the reasons why before. In short, tablet mode applications often look better, function better, and display more information than their phone mode counterparts, making them quite useful on larger smartphone displays.

The way PARANOIDANDROID manages tablet mode within the ROM is twofold: Per App Layout is used to choose whether an application displays in tablet or phone mode, while Per App Density is used to change the size of or scale UI elements are within each app. This combination means that users can make full use of tablet mode apps on even relatively small 4-inch and above devices without having to sacrifice simplicity or usability because their display is too small.

Originally, the PARANOIDANDROID ROM was designed only for the Galaxy Nexus. However, since then other developers have ported the ROM to a number of other Ice Cream Sandwich enabled devices, including the AT&T Galaxy S II, international Galaxy Note, Nexus S, and even the HTC HD2. Unfortunately, you actually have to have the hybrid ROM installed in order to use the feature for now, you can't get it separately. With the ROM though, there is a simple settings panel where you can choose what DPI you want certain apps to run at, and save it for future use.

I didn't get a chance to actually try out the utilities because I didn't have time to install the PARANOIDANDROID ROM, but this brings me to my final point. PARANOIDANDROID's utilities are great for the Galaxy Nexus and other devices which have the ROM, but eventually I would like to see the PAD and PAL features taken out of the ROM and available for installation on stock Ice Cream Sandwich builds. I, for one, would love to have a stock or nearly stock CyanogenMod build with the PAL feature, which would allow me to choose specific apps to run in tablet mode without changing my device's entire UI or ROM. Although I don't want to make the overall jump to tablet mode, I would like to use some application's tablet interfaces, so having PAL available as a standalone product would make a lot of sense.

If you aren't adverse to installing a new ROM to get these features, then you can follow either source link for further information on installing hybrid mode on your device.

[Paranoid Android via XDA-Developers]

RIM cancels Android, iOS BBM; does this mean it's even more confident in BlackBerry 10?

2012-05-25T12:07:40-10:00

BlackBerry Messenger (or BBM for short) is RIM's instant messaging service and one of its BlackBerry line of phones' major selling points. The service is home to 55 million BlackBerry users, and now, there are no plans to extend the service to other mobile operating systems.

All through last year, we had heard rumors about RIM's idea to port BBM to iOS and Android. But according to the Wall Street Journal, the Canadian mobile giant has scrapped its plans to do just that. The reason isn't quite clear - the Journal's sources say that Thorsten Heins, RIM's CEO, just said "no" to licensing deals - but I think I have a better reason than that.

Thorsten Heins may be new, but he's made some big strides in reinventing RIM. Most notably, he's removed some unnecessary executives (presumably) to make room for more innovative people so his company can stay competitive. He's also already made it clear that he's confident that BlackBerry 10 will be popular, and I think the move to not license BBM to other platforms is just another affirmation of his belief.

Think about it: BBM, if ported to iOS and Android, could've been outfitted with ads and would've become a huge cash cow for RIM if the company marketed it correctly. But device sales are a good way to make money, too, so it's apparent to me that Heins and his company believe BB10 and the devices that run it will be popular.

BBM will still be a service, but it will be BlackBerry OS-exclusive. We'll find out around October if that's a good idea. Until then, we can only assume that we'll see a big push for BlackBerry 10 from the company come fall.

[Wall Street Journal via SlashGear]

HTC explains why it's always 10:08 on all of its phones

2012-05-25T12:00:00-10:00

Ever wonder why it's always 10:08 on all official HTC smartphone materials? HTC recently asked its Facebook fans if they had any ideas, and some of the answers were particularly amusing.

One user guessed that it corresponded to the month and year that the first Android smartphone, the T-Mobile G1, was released. (No, that's not it, but that's a really good guess, and an awesome coincidence!)

Another guessed that an ad designer randomly selected 10:08 one time, and everyone was just too lazy to change it afterwards. (Another good guess!) And yet another person pointed out that an analogue clock looks like it's smiling at 10:08.

But what's the real reason? 10:08 is actually the time during which a 12-hour digital clock has the maximum number of digit "segments" turned on. (Since 88:88 doesn't exist, we'll just have to settle on 10:08.) How's that for some fun, useless trivial on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend?

[HTC]

Get a 7-inch Lenovo IdeaPad A1 with Android 2.3 for $169.99

2012-05-25T08:14:40-10:00

It may not be the hottest Android tablet on the market right now, but the Lenovo IdeaPad A1 is still a very solid offering in the 7-inch space that I have been keeping my eye on. So, when I got a "price alert" from Newegg today telling me that the price had gone below my threshold of $175 to the current price of $169.99 I was intrigued.

For $169.99, the IdeaPad offers a 1GHz single-core processor and lackluster 1024 x 600 display without the IPS technology found in the similarly priced Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet. However, it does have an advantage in that it includes extras such as offline GPS, 16GB of expandable storage, Bluetooth, and dual cameras (3MP rear and 0.3MP front). Although it may not be getting Ice Cream Sandwich yet, the IdeaPad also has a stock advantage over the competition as it comes with very lightly customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Rumor has it that quad-core 7-inch tablets will be hitting the market late this summer, but for now the IdeaPad A1 at this price looks like one of the better deals you can get. The display and processor may be a bit weak, but it has plenty of the extra connectivity you would normally have to upgrade to a Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus for. So, for now the A1 is a remarkable deal at $170, especially compared to other less capable stock tablets in the same price range like the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. I would head over to the Newegg source link fast if you want one though, because the last time the A1 hit this price it sold out quickly.

[Newegg]

Siri meets Nelly

2012-05-25T03:11:14-10:00

Nelly, my own personal voice assistant made in Tasker for Android, made a cameo yesterday in my article about using Tasker for comic relief. Today a friend of mine came by, and as he recently sold his Galaxy Note to buy an iPhone 4S, I couldn't resist putting the two side-by-side and asking them the same question I showed off Nelly answering yesterday. Nelly's response here is of course programmed in by me, but that's sort of the point: Siri is a locked down system where Apple tells it what to say, and doesn't pass up the chance to use it for marketing.

A hack that enabled Siri to be used for other things by using a proxy server made the rounds some moths back and got a lot of attention, yet here you have an Android app that has the exact same capability running completely inside the app itself, and it's not even the main feature of the app, so I thought it deserved to be highlighted in a separate article.

Oh, and if you're wondering why I named my voice assistant Nelly, you have some reading to do.

LTE Galaxy Nexus getting car dock NFC + pogo pin mod kit via Indiegogo

2012-05-25T02:45:22-10:00

The Galaxy Nexus has a lot going for it, and both the NFC capability and external connection pins made it over to my mock up perfect phone a couple of weeks ago. While mine were magnetic, the Nexus variant has a few metal connectors on the outside that connect to pogo pins - tiny spring-loaded connectors - on docks. Only problem is that while the Nexus has this capability, the pogo enabled docks are few and far between.

A lot of Nexus owners are tired of waiting for the accessory manufacturers to get a grip, and have taken matters into their own hands. Following a series of mods to existing Nexus car docks to add pogo pins, a project on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo now aims to bring the parts necessary for this mod to the masses at bulk prices.

This is somewhat of a special crowdfunding project since it's not about making a product happen, but rather about people getting together to get parts that are otherwise hard to get for the everyday Nexus owner. The goal is $8000 to help buy the parts, and there are several options available for what you actually get by pledging.

$15 will get you the parts to do the DIY joy, including pogo pins, a spacer, wires, a female microUSB connector, and an NFC sticker. You then buy your own official car holder for $30, cut a hole, solder the pieces together, and end up with a holder that connects to the Nexus via pogo pins, with the normal USB connection happening through the back of the holder rather than the phone. $30 will get you a pre-soldered kit, where the project creator does the soldering for you, but you still need to buy the dock and cut the hole. Then, for $80, you get the entire thing assembled for you, with the dock included. In other words you're paying $30 for a dock, $15 for parts, and $25 for not having to do the assembly yourself.

The included NFC sticker is the other side of this setup, and it basically allows you to use a variety of apps and system to create automatically triggered profiles. This means that you can set up the phone to automatically start music, navigation, or things like that when you insert it into the dock. Combined with the pogo pin connection, you then turn a $30 plastic phone holder into a USB cable-less NFC enabled car dock. Not bad for $55, or even $80 for a fully assembled dock.

Hopefully the $80 option will make this a bit less niche than it would otherwise be if it required soldering skills, as this project needs backers to succeed. I think it's great that someone is taking charge and working towards making this mod available to anyone, as it's just plain silly to have a phone capable of so much yet limited by what Samsung can be bothered producing.

[Indiegogo via Droid-life]

HTC One X bootloader gets unlocked, in spite of resistance from AT&T

2012-05-25T01:00:00-10:00

When I first heard that AT&T was restricting access to the bootloader on the HTC One X, I was ticked. Yes, AT&T was acting like, well, AT&T. But HTC has its own bootloader unlocking program that has become quite popular among those in the rooting and developing community, so there's really no excuse for AT&T to restrict access to it.

That's why I smiled a little bit when I heard that a one-click root method was recently discovered for the One X. Yes, I thought to myself, we're finally getting closer!

Today, I'm pleased to announce that developers have now successfully unlocked the bootloader on the One X. This means that not only does one easily gain superuser access in the system, but now it's possible to flash different kernels, radios ... the sky is truly the limit! I've included the exact instructions, word-for-word, from the developer below. Of course, proceed at your own risk, and if you screw up, you might not have a working phone anymore.

That being said, get to unlocking, and join with me in laughing at AT&T's unsuccessful attempts at thwarting the very active, open-source, resilient Android developer community.

Fire up your command prompt and go to the directory that you have ADB installed to. Type "adb shell" and hit enter.
Type "su" and hit enter. You now have root privileges.
Next type "dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 of=/sdcard/mmcblk0p4" and hit enter. This will dump the partition to your sdcard.
Next type "exit", hit enter, type "exit", and hit enter again. This should take you back to a command prompt for your computer.
type "adb pull /sdcard/mmcblk0p4" and hit enter. NOTE THE SIZE OF THE FILE BEFORE THE NEXT STEP!
Open the file (mmcblk0p4) with your hex editor.
Look for offset 00000210 and you should see CWS__001 with your IMEI number attached to it.
Change CWS__001 to 11111111 and save the file as mmcblk0p4MOD. This will give you SuperCID as well. :-D MAKE SURE AT THIS POINT THAT THE FILE IS THE EXACT SIZE IT WAS BEFORE YOU HEX EDITED IT!
Now go back to your command prompt and type "adb push mmcblk0p4MOD /sdcard/mmcblk0p4MOD" and hit enter.
Type "adb shell" and hit enter then type "su" and hit enter again. This will put you back into the android shell and give you root privileges.
Type "dd if=/sdcard/mmcblk0p4MOD of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p4" and hit enter. To test if it worked restart the phone into fastboot (type "adb reboot bootloader" and hit enter) and once the bootloader screen comes up type "fastboot oem readcid" and hit enter. It should read "ROGER001".
Next type "fastboot oem get_identifier_token" and hit enter. Leave that up on your screen and go to HTCdev.com. Follow the instructions from there.

Enjoy all!

[xda-developers]

What's the point of multiple apps for Facebook (and other services)?

2012-05-24T18:19:13-10:00

Today, Facebook revealed the fruit of its Instagram acquisition: an iOS app. Facebook calls its new app Facebook Camera; like the name implies, it's a camera app that ties directly into Facebook. But that's all it does. Its purpose is to make uploading and viewing pictures easier. This makes no sense to me since the Facebook app already performs this task admirably.

This isn't the first time Facebook has released another Facebook-branded app besides the actual Facebook app, either - just look at Facebook Messenger, which allows you to chat with your Facebook friends on your phone, just like the Facebook app that's already on your phone.

Notice how repetitive the word "Facebook" is in the first two paragraphs of this post? It's not written that way because I don't know any other words that are fitting for "Facebook;" it's like that because repetitive is exactly what the social network is being. In two paragraphs, I mentioned three separate Facebook apps; two of them only replicate features that are already found in the first one.

In Facebook's defense, the new Camera app does allow you to add filters à la Instagram, and maybe that's important to you. But to me, it seems like a waste of $1 billion if this is all that Zuckerburg and Co. will be doing with the purchase.

Not only that, but will iPhone users really want to navigate their phones to find another camera app? Why couldn't Facebook have built a better photo viewing and uploading experience into the existing app as an update? Filters surely would've been simple to add, and a minor UI tweak doesn't seem like a herculean task, either.

Personally, I'm trying to find the most efficient way possible to use my phone. To do that, I'm trying to cut down on the number of apps I have installed; the ones I do have installed are multifunctional. In other words, there's no need for extra apps when the ones I already have (Facebook) can do it all.

The Facebook Camera app is available now in the iTunes App Store for free if you want to try it out.

[Facebook | iTunes]

Use Tasker to add some comic relief to your device

2012-05-24T16:36:07-10:00

What was the first thing people did when Siri came out on the iPhone? Ask it lots of funny questions like "will you marry me" and "how much wood would a..." you get the point. If you're the kind of person who finds that kind of thing funny, then Tasker has more uses for you than you may think. The ability to use text to speech, accept voice input, and other useful actions can give you some quite funny results if you combine them in the right way. Read on to see a couple of examples.

Who you gonna call?

This is one that I sort of accidentally stumbled across while exploring ways of recreating the Galaxy S III's proximity sensor based calling, until I realized that said feature is rather pointless. I've refined it a bit since then, and this is what I currently have.

To set it up, start by adding a new task - not a profile. As the first action, select Misc and they Say. In put "Who you gonna call?" in the Text field and select a voice engine - mine is a custom one downloaded from Google Play, so if you're using stock ones, expect them to be more robot-like.

Next, add the action Get Voice under Input. Leave all of the fields untouched, as it will automatically store the text it hears in the variable %VOICE. Next, add another Say action, this time making the text something like what I have: "Sorry, but I do not think that person can help you." Select the voice engine, scroll down, and check If. Input %VOICE in the first field, ghostbusters in the second, and change the symbol in between them to !~, aka "Doesn't Match." This is what will be read aloud when the voice input doesn't match "ghostbusters."

Now we're going to add the two actions that run when you do say "ghostbusters." First, select Music Play under Media. You need to have the Ghostbusters song stored on your device to be able to make it play, I'll leave it up to you how you get it. Select the file in the File field, and modify the Start slider to where you want the file to start playback (mine's at 28 seconds to get it to start where it does in the song). Check If, input %VOICE and "ghostbusters" in their respective fields like you did above, but this time select ~ ("Matches") between them.

Finally, add the action Call under Phone. Input %VOICE in the number field, and once again, set up the IF %VOICE ~ ghostbusters criteria. I would suggest leaving AUto Dial unchecked, or it will actually convert the text to a number and try to dial it rather than just display "ghostbusters" in the phone dialer.

Save the task, go to you homescreen, and add a non-app shortcut to Tasker's Task Cut option. Select the task, find a suitable icon, rename it, and place it where you want it. Not when you click it, the phone should act as mine does in the video.

The whole Ghostbusters thing is of course just one of countless possible amusing uses for the Say and Get Voice features in Tasker. These are actually extremely powerful features, and you can make your own voice assistant this way if you way if you just use the "If %VOICE (matches) CODEWORD"-system to trigger various things. Doesn't have to be joke tasks either, this has applications far beyond joking around.

What's the best smartphone?

Someone at Apple made an oopsie a couple of weeks back and somehow made Siri stop overriding question regarding what the best smartphone is and instead cause it to look online for the answer. Using some weird system of customer satisfaction the reply was Nokia's Lumia 900, which is naturally not what Apple wants its voice assistant to tell people is the best smartphone. Apple quickly corrected it, but not until the damage was done. It now replies one of a few different phrases, one being "the one you're holding." We don't support such blatant disregard for personal preference and rigged marketing here on Pocketables however, so how about we make one that's more honest, and add some laughs to it in the process? Certainly a neat tool to have around the next time you encounter someone with an iPhone 4S....

As for how you set it up, the voice input and output is basically the same, with "*nothing*" and "*best smartphone*" as the triggers that you would input using "If %VOICE ~ CODEWORD" for each of the two Say actions. For added bonus I made it change the response based on charging status. To do this, go to profiles, and add a new profile. As the context, select State, Power, Power, and set it to Any. Add a task, then as the only action select Variables, Set Variable. Name the variable whatever you want, but keep a capital letter in there - and start it with a % to make it a variable, e.g. %Chargeresponse. In the text area, put in what you want it to say when charging. Save the profile, find it in the profile list, and expand it so you see the connection between context and task. Hold down on the task, and select Add Exit Task. Use another Set Variable action, name the variable the same as above (e.g. %Chargeresponse), and input the non-charging reply. When when you make your Say action in the main voice assistant task, use your variable (e.g. %Chargeresponse) instead of any text. This will then change based on charge status.

Finally, I made it open our website using the Net - Browse Url action. I added it to the home screen, named it something that has meaning only to people who read books by Mike Shepherd, and then you're done .

Face unlock

The final example I'm going to show you is much simpler, yet still amusing. With the face unlock feature in Ice Cream Sandwich being what it is, this might be the safer way to go, hurt feelings or not. The way it works is quite simple: make a task that has a Say action with the response you want, and add a shortcut to that task on your lockscreen - assuming you use a lockscreen capable of that, like WidgetLocker. It would actually be possible to make it more like the stock one, activate when the screen turns on, show something that looks like a camera interface etc - but for the sake of this being the simplest joke in the article, I'll stick to the easy version.

These are just three examples that I came up with. There are endless possibilities to be explored here. You could for instance use the charge trigger I showed you above to instead activate a spoken message that says something like "You're charging me AGAIN? No wonder the planet is going under" every time the phone is plugged in. Imagine the look on the face of someone less tech savvy than you who didn't notice Tasker suddenly being on the device and running, when the phone suddenly starts commenting on their power use. Do that enough time, and you'll have done more good than Earth Hour.