PhanMail Friday: Your Questions Answered [11/19/10]
What gives? when will we get the long awaited much anticipated phandroid app? please release it NOW!!! Also, please tell me it will have alerts!! — Shawn
Premium AF Members have had access to a private beta of the application for about a month and a public beta SHOULD go live in the next week or two. It’ll feature a boat load of new features including alerts, full forum support, chat and a lot more. I’m convinced you’ll love it and we’ll continually be working on new features such as “recommended apps” based on your personal profile. Stay tuned… I promise it’s almost ready!!!
How do you get your products to review? Do you contact the wireless provider or the company that makes the phone? Thank you. –Michael
We do the awesome product review rain dance and Droidoclause dumps them down our chimney.
With the way Android is growing, there’s a bunch of new anti-viruses out there. Paid and free…. which one is the best? Why? What would you guys use? BTW. Phandroid > all.<3 — Sarah
Personally, I think the power of due diligence and community support is better than any anti-virus. Before you download an app you should:
- Take note of the developer, be more cautious of unknown or unreputable sources
- Look at market comments – is anyone else questioning the apps reputation?
- If you’re concerned/suspicious, hit up our forums and ask others for their opinion
- Prior to downloading, read through the list of “permissions” the app or game requests and make sure nothing fishy is going on
I’m not saying mobile anti-virus is stupid, but I think much like on your desktop or laptop, you can play it safe by knowing what you’re getting into beforehand. Since I don’t personally use an Android anti-virus, let’s ask our readers what they think:
[polldaddy poll=4115068]
I just got a phone with Froyo and Flash, so I’m now using the stock browser (as opposed to Opera Mini). The only problem I have with it is I can’t close it out all the way without backing up through all the pages I’ve visited. I don’t want to just hit home and have it running in the background constantly. Is there any way to close out the browser without backing all the way through my session (short of killing it with a task killer)? — Jaylan
This is a misconception with Android. If you hit “Home” it won’t be “running in the background” – this is a fear people have because they’re used to the concept of Windows and having different apps “open”. When you press the home button on Android the most recent “state” of your browser will be saved and then your browser will be dead to the world until you re-open it.
Some apps DO “run in the background” when you press the home button, but the browser isn’t one of them. App developers should be carefully crafting their apps to ensure excess memory isn’t being used. For some apps, like streaming music apps, you NEED your app to be “running in the background” but in the case of the browser you should just press “HOME” and call it a day.
Try it yourself:
- Go to a webpage that will take a LONG time to load
- In the middle of loading, press the home button
- Go to settings > applications > running services
- You’ll see the browser is not currently “running”
- Re-open the browser and that single PAGE may have loaded fully, but after it loaded it will have stopped
- If you didn’t want to fully load that page, you could just pres the X to stop loading and THEN press the home button
I’m deciding to stay with tmobile for a while. In your opinion which phone out-performs the other, the mytouch 4G or the G2? I’m not concerned with about having/not having a physical keyboard. — Nicholas
As you noted, the main difference is the keyboard. Since that doesn’t matter to you, I’d also keep in mind the myTouch 4G has a front-facing camera. Beyond that the phones are nearly identical, with the myTouch taking the edge with more RAM and a faster processor.
BUT – and this is a big but – the G2 has stock Android while the myTouch 4G has HTC Sense (espresso). I personally prefer stock Android rather than the sexied up custom UIs, and you’re more likely to get OS updates earlier on stock Android devices. That being said the myTouch 4G will also be lighter and more pocketable.
Personally I’d go with the G2, even though I’d only use the keyboard for gaming. But since they’re so close in specs, you can’t really go wrong since they’re both great phones. Check out a head to head comparison between the two phones here.
Often (like real often) I’ll hear the beep that says I have mail on my EVO. I’ll click on the Gmail icon and then.. forever… I get a blank screen with the loading circle circling. I mean it sometimes takes 5 minutes! It knows I have mail, it told me so. Why won’t it give it to me??? Seriously, is there a better app? This is making me a little nuts. — Susan Dennis
I’ve never had that problem myself. The first thing I’d suggest doing is going into your Application settings and clearing out Gmail’s storage and database. It’s possible something could’ve gone wrong somewhere to cause the anomaly. If this “cleansing” doesn’t work, then the only alternative application I can confidently suggest is K9 Mail. It’s gotten a lot better since it was but a mere fork of Google’s official email client and there are a lot of benefits to using it over Gmail (such as proper handling of attachments.)
(answered by EVO user and Phandroid Contributing EditorQuentyn Kennemer)
Do you believe we should be paying for android updates on our phones? — Your Name
I think the carriers and manufacturers should decide what approach is right for them and the customers will vote with their wallet. In the end, the companies who please the customers most will win out, and good old democratic rule and capitalist practices will allow the “right” way to float to the top. Personally, I think paying for new versions of Android would be a ridiculous idea. Paying for new versions of an application would be appropriate depending on the situation.
The above question was already answered last week, but I already answered it on accident and thought it was an interesting point of discussion. So I left it in… deal with it ;)
That wraps up the latest edition of PhanMail – thanks for sending in your questions and check back next Friday for more answers to your questions!