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My Very Own Protocol Droid

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31–40 of 205 posts

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#31

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

So far, so good. I got my first-ever cell phone a couple weeks ago and am doing this exact thing: Nexus 4 + T-Mobile pre-paid plan. I'm on the $60/month plan on the page linked above by whichdan, but will probably drop to $30, because I just don't use many talk minutes. So far, I don't have complaints with the service.

*edit DON'T have complaints. Accidentally an important word.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#32
post #23

I've been true to the Droid since the G1, and recently offloaded certain duties from my Galaxy Nexus to an iPod Touch 5 (needed for Facetime, popular with the family). When using iOS, I really miss the Intent subsystem. It seems like every app seems to offer different and restricted sharing choices (implicitly asking why I possibly wouldn't be using Instapaper...) [1] I wouldn't be surprised if this is the next Andro…

Any chance to convince your family to move to Google+ Hangouts? They work great on iOS devices and having multiple people in the chat is great.

Thanks, will try out the iOS client.....

We tried chatting with the Google+ Hangouts browser plugin, but at the time the performance didn't quite match Facetime on one-to-one chats when bandwidth was scarce.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#33

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custo…

> there's no file manager

Is there one on Android?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of good stuff you've seen from Google Now that have been a real help to you? Stuff that's genuinely useful rather than just "look at that" cool. EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.

Google Now will remind you when to leave in order to arrive to an appointment on time (as long as you are using Google Calendar) taking into account the local traffic situation. This one helped me already a few times not to miss a meeting.

I actually had an OpenTable confirmation in my gmail that wasn't added to my calendar, and Google Now still alerted me when it was time to leave. That one creeped me out until I realized it had scanned my email (still kinda creeps me out).

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#35
A common thing I have noticed in these recent Android switcher posts (and despite the disclaimer this is a fairly typical one): a shift in perceptive of who the phone should serve. Apple tends to make opinionated choose that works amazingly for the vast majority. Switcher tend to stop arguing for the norm and realizing that some people are different. When I used iOS and ran into a problem, I usually found that I just wasn't the typical user in that edge case. Which is fine to a point, but not when I rarely run into similar problems on Android.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#36
post #33

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custo…

> there's no file manager Is there one on Android?

Generally not by default, but that can vary by manufacturer. You can just download one of the many available from the Play Store.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#37
post #7

> Twenty years of using Macs conditioned me to think, “well, that’s the Apple way.” It’s such a small price to pay for such a user-friendly device. Another Stockholm-syndrome patient cured! I recently took over a prototype project targeting the Mac. XCode is garbage. OS X itself actively works against improving your workflow. It's Apple's way or, well Apple's way. iOS is built to keep the user in a padded cell (aka W…

Is there a better C++ IDE than XCode? Serious question, works well with cmake and all the other tooling people use with amazing autocompletion (given how hard parsing C++ is)

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I thought was awesome recently, had a business trip, Google Now knew about my flight information and popped up a notification telling me when to leave to be at the airport an hour early - even offered to navigate!

Any idea on how it knew? An entry you'd made in your calendar? Scanning your e-mail?

They don't make a secret of the fact that they scan your gmail account for a lot of Google Now's functionality.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#40
For what it's worth, issue 1 has proven to be the opposite for me. I had an iPhone 5 and it worked perfectly playing whatever app I had previously been using and not reverting to the standard iTunes library as it seems to for this guy.

Indeed, I switched to an Android phone (S III) and found the Bluetooth experience so poor (quiet, poor quality audio) that I bought an iPod Touch merely for listening to Spotify and podcasts in the car..

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