Android Stuff

I got my wife an iPhone a few years back and she loves it. When I faced the decision to either get an iPhone or an Android phone, I agonized over it for quite a while. A number of my developer friends convinced me that Android was the way to go, so I picked up a Samsung Captivate (the AT&T flavor of the Galaxy S phone). It was as slick as my wife's iPhone 3G, but I really knew that I'd made the right decision when:

  1. I synced my GMail account and all of my phone contacts were instantly synced with my GMail contacts and
  2. I installed the Google Voice app which blew the iPhone "visual voicemail" out of the water
Since then, I've been loving Android (and currently, Samsung as well). It's not for everyone - I liken it to the old PC vs. Mac debate: Android is the PC - more powerful but rougher around the edges; iPhone is, well, the Mac - extremely polished, but more restrictive of what you can do. This page is now a collection of random helpful Android stuff I've found for my needs.


Apps I'm Running

Here's a list of the apps I'm currently running on my phone (and tablet). This list was generated by an app called MyAppsList which I then annotated a bit to provide details about why I like it.

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Other Handy Utilities and Resources

In addition to the above listed apps, here are other utilities I've found useful to have with my Android phone:

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Original Google I/O Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android Backgrounds

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1s given out at Google I/O 2011 had special Android backgrounds on them that get wiped out when you upgrade to Honeycomb 3.1. Here are the background images in case you lost yours:
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Fixing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Boot Loop of Death

My Galaxy Tab crashed hard recently (still not sure how...), dropping into a startup boot loop. It would show the Samsung logo with the swirling animation, then keep restarting. When I tried to power it off then power it back on, it would drop into a screen that said: 
====================================
 Entering upload mode...
     Upload_Cause:  undefined
====================================

Thanks to some internet searching, I stumbled across the solution that worked for me here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1107271&page=12. I thought I'd repost it here (with some of my own annotations) in case anyone else ran into this problem! This works for a PC - not sure what the solution is on a Mac, but I suspect it doesn't differ much other than the drivers required. Please note that this will wipe your tablet completely clean and restore the firmware back to its original factory state...I'm not sure if there's a way to avoid this.

  1. Install the Android SDK. You will need some of the tools that come with it to restore your tab
  2. Download the original boot, recovery, and system images. This is the bare 3.0.1 tablet ROM image that shipped with the original Google I/O Galaxy Tabs
  3. Download and install PDANet on your PC. This will install a USB Driver to enable you to communicate with your tablet in Fastboot mode (which is different from the adb driver or Samsung Kies driver which you may have already installed). It doesn't really matter if the installation fails to fully install the software - all you need is the driver included in the package.
  4. Ensure the tab is turned off. Power it on by holding the [Power Button] and the [Volume Down] (the volume rocker closest to the power button) down simultaneously for about 4 seconds. This should bring up two icons: a USB icon and a Downloading Triangle. If it didn't, hold down power to turn off the tab and try it again. My device seemed to bounce between the "Upload Mode" text screen and the icon screen.
  5. Use the [Volume Down] button to select the USB icon, then use [Volume Up] to select it. This will enter the Fastboot/Bootloader mode of the tablet which will allow you to upload a raw image from your PC.
  6. Connect the tablet to your PC using its USB cable
  7. Open a command line on your PC and navigate to the tools directory of the SDK you just installed. For me, it's located here: C:\Program Files\android-sdk-windows\tools
  8. With the img files in the recovery zip above, execute the following commands: 
    c:\dir>fastboot flash system new.img

c:\dir>fastboot flash boot boot.img

c:\dir>fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

c:\dir>fastboot -w      <--- to wipe userdata and cache 

c:\dir>fastboot reboot
  9. Your tablet should now reboot into the original state with Honeycomb 3.0 and you should be able to go through the initial setup steps again.
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Last Update: Saturday, July 30, 2011


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