The Android Thread

[fin racer]

just discovered Themer.
Home screen launcher with some very nice themes.

[PGM]

stevejh said:

My S3 was getting ridiculously slow and laggy and the battery life was just bearable if you hardly used the phone but dropped dramatically if you did. I did a factory reset a couple of months ago when I upgraded to 4.3 but made the mistake of reloading all my apps so barely saw any improvement. Last weekend I did another factory reset but this time I only reloaded apps I actually use and also installed an app called 'sync settings' which allows you to switch off auto syncing of apps that you're really not that bothered about syncing. It seems that some apps try to sync at regular intervals whether you're connected or not and this uses battery.

I also used Automateit Pro to do things like switching wifi on when I get home and switch ringtone off when I get to work etc. It seems that the phone switching radios on and off, searching for location etc was using a lot of battery. I've now changed the switches to times rather than locations and now the battery life is much better. Yesterday, with admittedly light use but wifi on all day, the battery was still showing 75% after about 13 hours.

It actually feels like a new phone now. The lag has gone and I don't feel I have to take a spare battery or charging cable with me every time I leave the house.

Thanks for that, good info.

[Polarbert]

A lot of good ideas in here: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

This is my homescreen at the moment:

[Wheat]

I'm currently using Beautiful Widgits live wallpaper that shows the weather. It was buggy at first so I had to reinstall and it seems stable now. What's people's opinions on live wallpaper use of battery? Is it heavy?

[beko1987]

stevejh said:

installed an app called 'sync settings' which allows you to switch off auto syncing of apps that you're really not that bothered about syncing.

I've just downloaded that thinking it would turn off parts of syncs for apps so I could fine tune it but it just opens the sync manager page under account settings!

Shame!

I run Android Revolution HD and the Sense 6 toolkit is wonderful! I got a new handset on friday through insurance as they wouldnt fix my second broken screen, and it felt awful as stock, even though stock android isn't too bad. There's alot of great Xposed modules available too.

I used to use a program that changed things depending on what phone mast I was logged onto. Worked well, would leave home and the wifi would turn off, bluetooth on, sound on loud, screen on max brightness, then when I got to work it would turn wifi on, bluetooth off, vibrate on, screen 50% etc. Until I used to work on the cars on my mums driveway, which I can see from the office, so it would have work mode on and I'd look at my phone after hours of working and see calls, texts and everything! Don't use it now tbh, but it was cool! If you never do anything else round your office it's a good app!

[andy-xr]

I tried a load of launchers and themes, particularly themer and Automate it, and Nova Launcher. I found all of them slowed the phone down and used up more RAM than I liked, ended up putting Cyanogenmod onto it, Kitkat theme and have a widget for weather, missed calls, appointments etc, then all my apps in folders according to what they do (photography, Sleep, Travel etc)

I'm waiting for Mindr to come onto Android as that looks like it'll work better than Google Now for what I want. I tried Floatify for notifications the other night after reading lifehacker, but it just gets in the way of the unlock screen too much when I want to do something with the phone that I just stuck to the pulldown instead.