Database Develop

YouMail Visual Voicemail Android App Beta

Don't know if anyone else has seen this yet (or cares), but since I love YouMail, I thought I'd post this up.
They have a link in this forum topic to download the .apk file, but since it says it's a closed beta, I'm not sure if you need to have YouMail allow your YouMail account to use the software.
LMK
http://api.youmail.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15

Downloaded. It works pretty well. No option to save MP3 messages to SD. Uses polling, which can be a total pain in the ass, and kinda pointless for a voicemail system.
I actually started writing this app about a month ago, but the project manager(i assume) didn't really understand what I was talking about. I tried explaining to him that polling from the device is kinda a kludgy approach, and they should try and implement a different system. I even went so far as to writing a small server side program that would ping the device when there was new messages.
Here's the weird thing though, I sent him a long email one day asking him a bunch of questions about the hardware and software they're using for this system(so I can better design this software), and he never got back to me. THEN, a few weeks later(a month maybe) calls me asking how things are going.
Mind you, I hadn't signed any agreement with them, no deal was in place, and I do have other responsibilities. After a week or so I just assumed they were going with another developer. I assumed from the beginning that there were multiple people working on multiple apps, and they would just release the best one first. Oh well, that's my run-in with them.
Other than all of the above, the service itself is VERY useful. As far as the app is concerned, I think it's a great first-go, but it needs a little refinement. It's a bit slow, and scheduled server checks just isn't going to cut it. Why manually check my messages when I can have them deliver it in MP3 for to my email directly on my phone?
In anycase, good job whoever wrote the app!

I installed it and it shows my messages however it doesn't play anything. I click open and it just sits there. Im running cm 3.4 with hero 1.2, maybe thats why

How is this compared to PF Voicemail?

Probably not as cool as a dedicated app, but I:
1. Simply turn on email notifications on the youmail website with the option to attach an MP3 of the voicemail and send the emails to my gmail account
2. then I setup a filter in gmail to label all youmail messages with attachments to "YouMail"
3. I put a shortcut on my homescreen by "add shortcut" "Gmail label" "YouMail"
4. for good measure I tell the Android message settings to sync emails in the youmail folder for 4 days worth of voicemail in case I run into a problem with my network connection.
Instant Visual Voicemail with push.

wagz said:
Probably not as cool as a dedicated app, but I:
1. Simply turn on email notifications on the youmail website with the option to attach an MP3 of the voicemail and send the emails to my gmail account
2. then I setup a filter in gmail to label all youmail messages with attachments to "YouMail"
3. I put a shortcut on my homescreen by "add shortcut" "Gmail label" "YouMail"
4. for good measure I tell the Android message settings to sync emails in the youmail folder for 4 days worth of voicemail in case I run into a problem with my network connection.
Instant Visual Voicemail with push.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, that's pretty much what I do too...I wish you could set it up to automatically download attachments though, especially since the beta app kinda sucks right now.

The app is in Open Beta now - feel free to download and try it out.
The only thing we (I) ask is that if you find any problems, or have any suggestions - either send us an email ([email protected]) or join in the discussion on the forums.
And yes, currently you need a free YouMail account in order to use the app. At some point you'll be able to sign up as part of the installation process, but that's in a later version.

YouMail for G1
Hi,
Could I please ask that you send *me* a private email with details about who at YouMail you were talking to? I'm the one responsible for the Android app and this is the first I have heard of someone contacting us regarding this app.
Regarding your comments about polling. We would absolutely ***love*** to push your voicemail to the phone similar to the way our Blackberry cousins get their email. Problem here is that in order to do that YouMail would need an interconnect agreement with T-Mobile (and other carriers) letting us use their push technology (yes, the G1 software does support push). The chances of T-Mobile (and other carriers) allowing that to happen are pretty much nil. (We all know that competition is bad... don't we?)
So, out of the box, what the Android app does is:
* Poll every hour to catch up on changes you may have made via the dial-in interface, or the web site (you can adjust it to be as often as every 15 mins, or as infrequent as 'never')
* Poll a couple of minutes after you miss a call - to see if the caller left you a message
* Poll when one of YouMail's special TXT messages arrives (the kind that start with "New VM:....")
* Manually initiated
That's the best approximation to push that we've been able to come up with considering the limitations. The drain on battery is actually remarkably low.
Of course, if you choose to receive your voicemails via email go for it!
I'll put a post up on the YouMail forums explaining battery usage.
Thanks
Doug
InGeNeTiCs said:
Downloaded. It works pretty well. No option to save MP3 messages to SD. Uses polling, which can be a total pain in the ass, and kinda pointless for a voicemail system.
I actually started writing this app about a month ago, but the project manager(i assume) didn't really understand what I was talking about. I tried explaining to him that polling from the device is kinda a kludgy approach, and they should try and implement a different system. I even went so far as to writing a small server side program that would ping the device when there was new messages.
Here's the weird thing though, I sent him a long email one day asking him a bunch of questions about the hardware and software they're using for this system(so I can better design this software), and he never got back to me. THEN, a few weeks later(a month maybe) calls me asking how things are going.
Mind you, I hadn't signed any agreement with them, no deal was in place, and I do have other responsibilities. After a week or so I just assumed they were going with another developer. I assumed from the beginning that there were multiple people working on multiple apps, and they would just release the best one first. Oh well, that's my run-in with them.
Other than all of the above, the service itself is VERY useful. As far as the app is concerned, I think it's a great first-go, but it needs a little refinement. It's a bit slow, and scheduled server checks just isn't going to cut it. Why manually check my messages when I can have them deliver it in MP3 for to my email directly on my phone?
In anycase, good job whoever wrote the app!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

mustang_52 said:
I installed it and it shows my messages however it doesn't play anything. I click open and it just sits there. Im running cm 3.4 with hero 1.2, maybe thats why
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you could send me some details I might be able to help.
The app downloads all message data via http.

Sistum Id said:
How is this compared to PF Voicemail?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what I'm waiting to hear about before taking the plunge...

Left myself a message and I got the alert. I ran the app and then it says I have a message. I click on the number that was the caller and well nothing seems to happen. I see what appears to be a download button and across a phone/speaker.
Nothing seems to make any noise.
Also this app was in my recently ran apps tray so does this app start on phone turn on or do you have to manually start for the alerts. Also the polling is that to check for messages or to pull down the audio?
The reason I ask this stuff is there really isn't any discriptions of what does what and most apps appear to be straight forward.
Looks like I just got a text now saying I have a message. Thats what brings me to the polling. Does it poll every hour on top of the text message?

kizer said:
Also the polling is that to check for messages or to pull down the audio?
The reason I ask this stuff is there really isn't any discriptions of what does what and most apps appear to be straight forward.
Looks like I just got a text now saying I have a message. Thats what brings me to the polling. Does it poll every hour on top of the text message?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if this is or isn't the info you're looking for, but this info was in the original post for somebody who seems to be working on the app...
ymDoug said:
So, out of the box, what the Android app does is:
* Poll every hour to catch up on changes you may have made via the dial-in interface, or the web site (you can adjust it to be as often as every 15 mins, or as infrequent as 'never')
* Poll a couple of minutes after you miss a call - to see if the caller left you a message
* Poll when one of YouMail's special TXT messages arrives (the kind that start with "New VM:....")
* Manually initiated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Heh...finally an app is developing for YM I had posted here and even emailed a couple of devs and got nowhere. Even emailed YouMail and got the standard "not at this moment, there are no plans on supporting Android".

omario117 said:
I don't know if this is or isn't the info you're looking for, but this info was in the original post for somebody who seems to be working on the app...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I"m blind and dumb. Thanks
Now if it only pulled down the audio it would be awesome. I guess thats why things are work in progress.

kizer said:
So I"m blind and dumb. Thanks
Now if it only pulled down the audio it would be awesome. I guess thats why things are work in progress.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only if you're calling yourself that, I'm not calling you anything
If you did think I was, I apologize, I was simply trying to make the posting of my info seem credible, as opposed to "here's information but I'm not going to mention where I got it" or "look at the first post by such and such"...

I'd like to thank mustang_52 for getting back to me and helping figure out what was wrong. I believe the app is working correct for him now.
Just in case anyone is interested, there was a problem on one of the back-end servers where it wasn't creating the MP3 file that the app needs, so you were seeing "downloading" forever... we fixed it around noon today and everything seems to be AOK now.
There is a forum set up on the YouMail site that explains how the app checks for messages and the trade-offs we had to make since 'push' technology is effectively unavailable to us at present. (Unless of course we have some senior management from T-Mobile watching, and they want to contact me about making it available.........)
The forum is at: http://forums.youmail.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=8
Doug

Everything is working great since you fixed it. Thanks for such a great app.

Love this YouMail app... THANKS!!!

[Tool] CallWall - The call firewall [v1.0.1 26-08]

Hi you all out there,
since I was searching for application ideas I read about the wish for a call firewall again and again.
I decided to think about it and now here it is:
CallWall - The Call Firewall
It's an application which provides a service which directly blocks incoming calls by matching them with some user creatable filters.
Current filters are:
- Simple filter (a la *1337* to block all numbers with 1337 in it)
- Regex filter (a la .*1337.*)
- Contact filter blocks a single contact
- Contact group filter blocks a hole group of contacts
- Unknown number filter blocks all calls with an unknown caller ID
The calls can be blocked (same as clicking the hangup button directly) or just be muted.
I had to compile the app against the source and not the SDK - only for the hangup thing which is ~4 lines of code, all other things are SDK stuff. It installs and runs without problems in the emulator, so I think not-rooted-phones should be able to use it, too.
Please post comments and bug thing here
Have fun with it, hope you like it.
------
v1.0.1 - 26-08
-Added notifications for blocked calls and an ongoing notification while the service is started & active. All of them can be switched off in the settings.
------
Source code available at my git repository.

Could you add a screening feature like "You Have Reached " I had it on my Sanyo 500 years ago and I could pick up in the middle of them leaving a message. Well I think it would be cool if its possible THx

irrenhaus at it again
nice work man
can't wait to see what you add on to this

It didn't work for me...
All the calls still got through..

AustinKnight45 said:
Could you add a screening feature like "You Have Reached " I had it on my Sanyo 500 years ago and I could pick up in the middle of them leaving a message. Well I think it would be cool if its possible THx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yah, I thought about an answering machine on the phone which gives you the possibility to record an answer text and which records onto the sd card. But that will maybe come somewhen in the future

Mh could you give information about your configured filters?
I could only test it on my phone and the emulator...
Thanks

irrenhaus said:
Yah, I thought about an answering machine on the phone which gives you the possibility to record an answer text and which records onto the sd card. But that will maybe come somewhen in the future
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well these features are some what there.. I have them with google voice it saves all my voice mails (even transcribes them too) and it saves my text.. And I can screen my calls I can listen to there voicemail and if i wanna pick up I just do so... so in some sense it is a answering machine. oh and the cool part if some one calls you from an unknown number they cant get through they have to first leave there name and number.. Well thats the way i have it setup anyways

tried out some of the features and working well on my part awesome work again

We already have an ignore option on the phone im not trying to put this down but how is this any different?

imbonez9 said:
We already have an ignore option on the phone im not trying to put this down but how is this any different?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I think this piece of work is just more - lets say advanced
To say the truth, I think if the original functions do it for you there is no need for this app. Also the only reason I've made this is that I heard many voices screaming for an app like this - so I decided to code it .

All the power to you in no way was i hating just asking to find out more about this

^^ I think the original way to ignore a call just lets you ignore specific contacts.
The CallWall lets you additionaly ignore unknown numbers, hole user groups and numbers by pattern... And I'm currently adding different notification things so you know that a call was blocked ^^
Well I think that's all about it...

I think this thread needs to go to "Dream applications and games" and not in the Android Dev. forum....
Like the app though, could be very useful.
Stericson

Ah well yah sorry about that, reading so much the dev forum that I didn't think of the other ones xD

great idea
I really like this idea and like the overall layout. Good work!

Call and Text blocking...
I'd love an App that let's me block text and calls from a certain number, but not only blocks them, but let's them know in no uncertain terms that I've blocked them!! Like on texts, it would send an auto-response to the number saying something like "the T-Mobile customer you are messaging has blocked this number xxx-xxx-xxxx. No messages sent will be received." or something.

suggestion
hey irrenhaus,
a feature that i dont think would be too hard to implement, is a filter where you block out everyone EXCEPT for a specific group/contact ... for example, when im at certain places, i would like to put everyone to mute except for my family... what do you think?
EDIT: i had another idea but forgot it so will edit this when i remember

I think this is great. I am tired of hitting the ignore button. I would rather the phone just mute itself and i don't even have to pay attention to it. With his feature, you don't ahve to look at the phone and touch something. This is aces above "your hitting the end button". Nice work!

I had a great app like this on my window mobile phone, except it had the option to answer the call and hang up, so the caller couldn't leave a voice mail.
Then it would send them a SMS stating they had been blocked, and if they replied via SMS the sms's were automatically deleted.
Also, it did this behind the scenes so you didn't get any notification(missed called, or sms, ringtones).
Was a really great app!...

parrothd said:
I had a great app like this on my window mobile phone, except it had the option to answer the call and hang up, so the caller couldn't leave a voice mail.
Then it would send them a SMS stating they had been blocked, and if they replied via SMS the sms's were automatically deleted.
Also, it did this behind the scenes so you didn't get any notification(missed called, or sms, ringtones).
Was a really great app!...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you rememer the app?

[SEARCHing] Conditional Settings app

Hi,
I was looking on the market but couldn't find anything like it.
I am looking for an app that can setup different things under different circumstances. Exaple would be: disable calls to the phone when satnav is on, or even better play an mp3 (or text-to-speech) to the caller with message (i'm driving now, will call back) or sending a text to a caller.
Also change settings based on time/place ur in etc.
Any app that can setup chain of events if/when -> then would be good.
Wouldn't be cool when you're driving and your android would answer the phone for you with a prerecorded robotic message saying that you're driving and will call back later?
Does an app like that even exist?
I read something about an app that can change phone settings depending on your location, but i don't remember it's name.
Any help would be great,
Thanks in advance.

bump, anyone?
Maybe someone is willing to create such application?

Locale is probably the app you read about. It wont do everything you want but it should do some.

Even though Locale cant do all of those things, they do offer a plug in system. Having had a quick look at their documentation, it should be fairly simple to create one.

Thanks for the responses, i will look into it, if I'll get anywhere with the plugin I'll post it here.
Cheers.

[REVIEW] Choice Dialer - BT Dial/Command Entry

I recently purchased Choice Dialer, and thought I'd start a thread with somewhat af a review, and hopefully learn from others too about how to make it work well for us.
Ever since moving to Android, I have sorely missed Microsoft Voice Command. Choice Dialer is a start toward that direction. Of course, some will think of Vlingo, which in fact may be better now than when I last used it. Seems there is not one voice app that does everything.
Among features that it has are;
Of course, Dial by name, or number
Play/pause music; Next/Previous song; Play by artist; Play from album; Play songs by title
Send email
Send text
Set Facebook status
Create contact
Open App
Schedule an event on calendar
Enable/Disable WiFi, Blue Tooth, GPS and some more
Tell you the time
Add to calendar
I have only had the app for a few days, and this review will not be comprehensive.
Does it understand?
I am struggleing a bit having it understand me. I frequently have it say "Try again". Sometimes it does something completely different from what I asked.
I am finding that it has a learning curve for speaking so it understands, as it is getting a little better. Interestingly, it understands better if I speak faster. When talking to a voice recognition, I think people have a tendency to speak slow and enunciate clearly. Interestingly, i find that makes it worse...at least, speaking slow does, for me.
I also think the app needs to mature some. For example I had this conversation with it yesterday:
Me: Enable Blue Tooth
CD: Did you say Disable Blue Tooth?
Me: No
CD; Disabling Blue Tooth.
Uh...it should have understood NO.
Another thing, as all voice dialers need, it needs a fairly quite environment. Background noise, radios, etc. will really throw it off.
Playing Music
First off, the only music player it plays through at the moment is the native android music app. I use MixZing, so prefer that.
It is nice that it will play by Artist, Album, or Song. But a glaring omission is it will not play by Genre. I asked them about playing genres, and got this response:
As to your suggestion for genres, for now perhaps you can approximate the effect through playlists? I steer clear of genres, as Android does not support the concept in its data model (I cannot ask the phone to tell me which songs are "pop").
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dialng
I find it to do fairly well at dialing when the person is in the contacts. Occasionally need to retry. I really like that it has voice confirmation.
Send Email
When I go to dictate an email, it uses Google Voice to hear the message. And often I get "Server problem Speak again" message in the Google App. I suppose it is a problem for the Google App, not Choice Dialer. But in the end, not too great. I attempted an email 7 times, and it worked twice. When it works, there is no way that I know of to have it use punctuation.
Open App
I can say Open <program name> and it works fairly well.
An interesting challenge for it is this one: "Open GPS Test". It never gets that. I presume because GPS is not a word.
Enable/Disable Functions
It works pretty good to enable Blue Tooth, and WiFi. Again, I sometimes need to repeat.
But, interestingly, enabling GPS is not what you expect. It launches the settings for you to click it, rather than just turning it on. I contacted them about it, and this is their response:
That is because that is all it CAN do.. nothing more direct is permitted a non-Google app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That one perplexes me. If you can directly enable Wifi, and Blue Tooth, I wonder why you couldn't do GPS. Certainly, there are apps that you can toggle it with.
Support
I find them VERY responsive. This is a good sign, and hopefully the app will mature and improve.
Wish List
If only this, or some app somewhere, could be as solid and capable as I found Microsoft Voice Command to be.
Would like to be able to : Play music by genre; Of course, have improved understanding and accuracy; tell me what is on my schedule today, and tomorrow. I'm sure there are others, but I'm running out of time for now on this post.
Conclusion
I may continue to use this for basic stuff, including dialing, and turning on BT when in car, opening apps etc. But for now, its too much effort repeating and so forth for the other features to be of much value to me.
So, are you using Choice Dialer? Better luck with it? Suggestions for use?

ewingr said:
I recently purchased Choice Dialer, and thought I'd start a thread with somewhat af a review, and hopefully learn from others too about how to make it work well for us.
...
Conclusion
I may continue to use this for basic stuff, including dialing, and turning on BT when in car, opening apps etc. But for now, its too much effort repeating and so forth for the other features to be of much value to me.
So, are you using Choice Dialer? Better luck with it? Suggestions for use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried the free version and really found it to be barely on par with the VoiceDailer.apk. Additionally, though there were lots of settings, it seemed overly complicated to me (I am a huge Voicedial fan from MS6.5).
I really only want the dial bit with confirmation (I never got that to work with the free version), and maybe reading/sending texts via voice.
I am not ready to step up and buy the app, and a 1 day trial is sort of silly. Give me 3-4 days. I did not realized there was a 1 day trial when I got the free version from the market, so I did not have an opportunity to test the paid version.
It is good to hear that their support is responsive. Let me know how you progress with this. I will let you know if I purchase the product.

I'll post back in a while.
I am still finding it a bit frustrating. I love the confirmation. But, I find it has a LOT of trouble understanding me. I think it is due to background noise.
Last night I tried it a bit driving home. I drive a Lexus, so road noise is not that bad, but with my Motorola T505 speaker phone unit, I had to scream at it for it to hear me.

Well, I'm about to give up on Choice Dialer. It just has way too high a percentage of not understanding.
I'm very disappointed. This is the only app I've found that has verification by voice.
I find Vlingo and Google Voice to have its share of misunderstanding, but not near as bad as Choice Dialer, but then they require hands on methods for verifications.

The major omission I found when switching from Windows Mobile to Android Eclair was voice dialling thru bluetooth. When I updated to Froyo I immediately tested the Voice Dialler with my Jawbone II - disappointed is an understatement. Recognition of contact names was abysmal, half the time it would dial the wrong contact without any confirmation. Other times I'd have to select an option on the screen - hardly hands free!
I tried Vlingo, but soon found it would only listen and speak thru the phone, not the bluetooth. Apparently a headset with A2DP profile is required.
So I tried Choice Dialer free, and found it better than the stock voice dialer because it offers voice confirmations thru bluetooth. That alone makes it worth using.
Recognition is good using the Jawbone, I haven't tried a built-in bluetooth or separate speaker phone yet. I'll report back when I've done so.
Anyway, I was impressed enough to purchase the Choice Dialer Plus. Can't say I've used the text and email capabilites for real yet, because although you can dictate a message thru bluetooth, you can't send it without pressing a button on the screen. Apparently the developer is working on making texting fully hands-free. He seems pretty active, judging by the change log on the site.
So I would recommend that those who are disappointed with stock Voice Dialler give Choice Dialer a try and see how the voice recognition works for you. Or if you have an A2DP headset, try Vlingo.

What do you want to see in Android 4.5/5.0?

I want to have a dialer where I can search for businesses directly through the dialer. So you know how in 4.4 I can type "John" and call the guy in my contact list name John, I want to be able to type "McDonalds" or "Best Buy" in that same search field, and based on my location it will pop up with "McDonalds, 123 Fake Street" along with a thumbnail picture of it(or its map location) and its hours for that particular day. And if I click on the thumbnail I can see more info, open its location in GMaps, etc

fredryk said:
I want to have a dialer where I can search for businesses directly through the dialer. So you know how in 4.4 I can type "John" and call the guy in my contact list name John, I want to be able to type "McDonalds" or "Best Buy" in that same search field, and based on my location it will pop up with "McDonalds, 123 Fake Street" along with a thumbnail picture of it(or its map location) and its hours for that particular day. And if I click on the thumbnail I can see more info, open its location in GMaps, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't you just say "show me the nearest mcdonalds" in google now?
Works on my nexus 5 anyway to do the stuff you said.

Think your request is a bit too much for a display of that area. When searching for a number you generally just want the quick info, clicking on it to get more info is fine but all that wouldn't fit in a small space especially if you gotta scroll over 10x just to get 1 phone number.
The current stuff though does allow you to type McDonalds and have it pull in local info from the closest one. It will show street address/town as well but that's all.

Ok I want the following
Blocking Mode baked into the update just like the one on the Samsung Galaxy Line.
Slide to call or text just like on the Samsung Galaxy Line.
One Button touch to clear all active apps not having to swipe them away one at a time.

I want a polish and fully tested OS.

Always listening "OK Google," like the Moto X has. (Optional setting if necessary for those who don't want to take the battery hit.)
Face Detection setting that prevents going to standby when you're looking at the screen (like Samsung has, not motion-based like "Gravity Screen" app does, although that's better than nothing.)
Customizable Quick Panel.
Theme control (not everyone likes bright-as-hell white backgrounds on everything!)
Combined music/video player, more like iTunes.
Location-based screen locking. (Don't ask for PIN/Password if I'm at home or work, but otherwise do.)
Not necessarily in that order, and I'm sure I could think of others if I tried hard enough. Also, that one-touch "clear all" active apps suggestion is good.

Hmmmmm, having a slide to text option in the contacts would be nice but also more sharing features. I am a very social networked person and I love to share anything and everything having more sharing options is certainly a plus.

vseslija said:
One Button touch to clear all active apps not having to swipe them away one at a time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you mean in the notification bar, this is already a feature.

kgry said:
If you mean in the notification bar, this is already a feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, he means in the recent apps switcher.

Backup functions (obviously without root or custom recovery)

Finer control over killing and keeping apps in background.

Wake the screen when I get an SMS and and visual voice mail built in the phone app like on the iPhone.

Always listening, and Wi-Di native file transfer.

fredryk said:
I want to have a dialer where I can search for businesses directly through the dialer. So you know how in 4.4 I can type "John" and call the guy in my contact list name John, I want to be able to type "McDonalds" or "Best Buy" in that same search field, and based on my location it will pop up with "McDonalds, 123 Fake Street" along with a thumbnail picture of it(or its map location) and its hours for that particular day. And if I click on the thumbnail I can see more info, open its location in GMaps, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can already do most of that in the 4.4 dialer ... aside from linking with maps.

fredryk said:
I want to have a dialer where I can search for businesses directly through the dialer. So you know how in 4.4 I can type "John" and call the guy in my contact list name John, I want to be able to type "McDonalds" or "Best Buy" in that same search field, and based on my location it will pop up with "McDonalds, 123 Fake Street" along with a thumbnail picture of it(or its map location) and its hours for that particular day. And if I click on the thumbnail I can see more info, open its location in GMaps, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The dialer already does exactly that. I do it all the time and it works well.
I want them to get that fricken search bar off of the home page and to never ever again presume that it's ok to use up an entire row of every screen with the exact same widget. Whoever thought it up should be fired. Whoever approved it should be fired. Whoever attended a meeting where it was suggested as a possible feature that did not get up and *****slap the person who mentioned it should be fired.
The screen indicators should be clickable so as to allow you to one touch to any screen as seen on touchwiz.

I'm loving KitKat. I just want Hangouts to have expandable notifications and the option to reply through the notification itself, but this is a Hangouts request more than an android one.
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krabman said:
The dialer already does exactly that. I do it all the time and it works well.
I want them to get that fricken search bar off of the home page and to never ever again presume that it's ok to use up an entire row of every screen with the exact same widget. Whoever thought it up should be fired. Whoever approved it should be fired. Whoever attended a meeting where it was suggested as a possible feature that did not get up and *****slap the person who mentioned it should be fired.
The screen indicators should be clickable so as to allow you to one touch to any screen as seen on touchwiz.
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Try out a custom launcher like Nova. To be honest I like the Search Widget at the top on all pages.
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bmg1001 said:
I'm loving KitKat. I just want Hangouts to have expandable notifications and the option to reply through the notification itself, but this is a Hangouts request more than an android one.
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---------- Post added at 04:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:18 PM ----------
Try out a custom launcher like Nova. To be honest I like the Search Widget at the top on all pages.
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Lol I've been on android from day one, I had a launcher installed mucho quick. Doesn't change the fact that the stock launcher while having some promise is heavily flawed to no good end. I understand that some may like the search bar there. Some may like it on every page. Who knows, maybe someone wants to make 5 pages and fill them all with the same search bar. Great. More power to them. Let them create search bars till the cows come home. Some of us don't want a search bar there. All of us could be happy before which is the beauty of android. I could put my search bar where I want it, everyone else could put it where they want it. Now no one gets a choice, we have entered the era of the idroid. What did we gain by giving up choice? Nothing. Not one thing.
A bad precedent in my mind. Good thing I'm not running Google, heads would have rolled long before this ever saw the light of day.

googles needs to get it's **** together in regards to streamlining and unifying some of their services. while not really android specific, there are many related things that effect android users daily.
hangouts is supposed to be your unified messaging locale, however no google voice integration
google keep seems like a good product, however the apparent lack of integration with google now and android voice commands doesn't make much sense. if i say "okay google..." then set a reminder, why doesn't this show up in keep? if i set a reminder in keep, it should show up in google now and vice versa. i don't wanna hunt around all over the damn phone trying to figure out where all my assorted reminders are located.
there are two photo apps currently -- gallery and photos
i feel like android is really coming into it's own quite well as a mobile os, and it's very clean cut at this point. however google really needs to clean up their services because some things still feel half baked.

A flash light quick toggle
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shotta35 said:
Think your request is a bit too much for a display of that area. When searching for a number you generally just want the quick info, clicking on it to get more info is fine but all that wouldn't fit in a small space especially if you gotta scroll over 10x just to get 1 phone number.
The current stuff though does allow you to type McDonalds and have it pull in local info from the closest one. It will show street address/town as well but that's all.
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I missed this at first myself. If you type in the previously mentioned McDonald's you will get a list of them showing their address so you can parse out the appropriate contact. If you then click on the contact at the left on the placeholder for the contact picture it will bring up the direct dial, maps shortcut, and website.