TASKER can do so, so, so much, but the same time, there are some very grey, very hazy limitations to what Tasker can do. What you can do varies from phone to phone and some of the cooler examples you'll see require a rooted phone. Beyond devices, the biggest limitation Tasker can face is your time — how much of it are you willing to spend to do this stuff? I've spent weeks fine-tuning my precious alarm after I switch phones, but that alarm also gives me something nothing else on Android can.
That's the heart of Tasker. It can work Android magic, if you're willing to take the time to understand the logistics and the programming behind it. That magic tests the limits of Android and the limits of user ingenuity, and if you're willing to suspend your disbelief, it can leave you in awe.
Bummed out
Tasker allows you to create an apk that can supposedly be run on another device. Besides most projects not working on any other device, the most limiting thing about Tasker is it's scene building ability. I can't believe that after this many years, scenes are still broken. Go ahead and spend a few days laying out your perfectly placed elements just to destroy all of your hard work with an accidental touch and not having an undo button. Better yet, try experimenting with a simple resolution change and your scene will never be the same again. So much for sharing your awesome project with anyone else. At least it will give you plenty to do the next time you accidentally change your resolution on your device. Tasker is great for doing tiny things with your phone, but you should look elsewhere if you plan on creating a full fledged App.
Related
I currently own a Captivate and I'm tired of the ROM-switching, and the laggy interface (On each and every ROM I've installed) and want to give this device a shot, so my questions to people that migrated from Android to WP7 are:
What's better? What's worse? What will I miss? Is it worth the move?
Thanks!
xgibran said:
I currently own a Captivate and I'm tired of the ROM-switching, and the laggy interface (On each and every ROM I've installed) and want to give this device a shot, so my questions to people that migrated from Android to WP7 are:
What's better? What's worse? What will I miss? Is it worth the move?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just left the droid bionic 4 days ago. I am not new to windows phone though. What's better:
Ease of use. Its simple
Reliable. Connects every time
Hardware is now comparable with a lot of dual core droids. This does not lack for speed.
Its attractive and light.
Once you learn the Os, it becomes addictive in its simplicity.
Connects my jabra hands free and allows voice actions. Cool.
What's not so good:
If you have any notion of custom, forget it. What you see is what you get. I mean that...exactly as it sounds.
Apps. WP has many of the more familiar apps, but not all, yet. There is no Starbucks app, or Barnes and noble to name 2. Its getting better though.
Still limited in ringtones. Takes some doing to get your tone.
Battery life is not great. Not awful either.
The buttons on this focus are backwards. The volume id on upper left. A right handed phone holder changes the volume everytime.
No led notifications..at all.
Would I buy this again. Yes. I say this knowing I'm getting the 900 soon. I'll have both. This is a good phone.
Thanks, that is very helpful. One thing you didn't mention is that compared to Androids of the same level the speed is astonishing. The experience is so smooth!
So far I have found most of the same apps I used regularly on Android and a very good alternative to another.
As you said, battery life is not the best in the world, but it sure beats the 7-8 hours I got on the Captivate. I went through a whole day (~13 hours) of heavy use (OTA downloads, take a couple of pics, etc) before I needed to recharge.
The one thing that ticks me off in particular is the way multitasking is managed. I open something and hit the home button. If I go through the active apps (holding the back key) I can get back to the exact place I was in before I left it. If I tap on the tile of the app it restarts the app from scratch. What gives?
xgibran said:
Thanks, that is very helpful. One thing you didn't mention is that compared to Androids of the same level the speed is astonishing. The experience is so smooth!
So far I have found most of the same apps I used regularly on Android and a very good alternative to another.
As you said, battery life is not the best in the world, but it sure beats the 7-8 hours I got on the Captivate. I went through a whole day (~13 hours) of heavy use (OTA downloads, take a couple of pics, etc) before I needed to recharge.
The one thing that ticks me off in particular is the way multitasking is managed. I open something and hit the home button. If I go through the active apps (holding the back key) I can get back to the exact place I was in before I left it. If I tap on the tile of the app it restarts the app from scratch. What gives?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't mention speed because most people's first response to a speed claim is no way, or you missed something. Fact is, I didn't believe it either. I went to t-mobile to pay my bill. There was an in store special on the 710. $20, that's it. So I took it. That little low end phone outpaced the bionic in almost everything. When my bionic went on vacation decided to take off, I did not hesitate. I have not looked back. I'm successfully weaned from android, with no regrets..even my girlfriend made the trip back. She's even more integrated with windows live, office, SkyDrive, OneNote, the entire cloud scenario. She uses the concept at work. They think shes a genius.
So yeah, good concepts, good phone. Perfect, no. Like you mentioned. But a good show none the less.
I just made the switch from the HTC Desire. Honestly, the Focus S is a great phone. It's beautiful, stupidly thin like a cat walk model, great camera, etc.
WP7 is a beautiful OS, oh I've wanted to have it on my phone for so long now, but it's got a gammy leg. My main gripes are:
-Multitasking is a pain - it's so slow to resume applications I'm not sure what the difference is in relaunching an app. That said, without proper multitasking apps that should receive push notifications sort of... DON'T! This whole, let it run under the lock-screen is lame. In Android I thought it was ridiculous that EVERYTHING just ran in the background and now I'm complaining about the inverse. Is there no happy medium?
-Facebook Chat integration is another hobbled feature. I can't send pictures which you can in the Android app. I receive pictures as a LINK to the desktop FB site which is ridiculous because if you zoom you are bounced back to the left margin for some reason. Even the official FB app is useless when it comes to FB chat/IM! I used this with my wife constantly. The alternative is WhatsApp but then the whole seemless continuity from mobile to desktop is shattered!
-Integration with Gmail is a bit ropey, but seems quite adequate I suppose. I guess here too push notifications aren't possible it has to be 30 min intervals.
-I do admit to wishing that the keyboad had the key long press functionality for special characters like in Android. Flipping to the numeric keyboard is labourious
-Notifications are also a little inconsistent. The whole toast thing. Without a doubt the Android (and now iOS) pull down notifications bar is fantastic. This also goes for quick access to stuff like switching wifi, airplane mode on or off, etc
I'm sure I could go on... The positives are amazing. Damn it's smooth, beautiful and functional, but the above issues and others make it kind of a deal breaker for me. Android has sucked for a while, but it has matured and WP7 needs to do the same pretty quickly. I know the above issues might not be a deal breaker for a lot of people, but for me they are
Hmph! I'm a little annoyed now...
Coming from an ATT Cappy, I'm stoked.
Been on the Focus S for a few weeks now and I love it. IMO, it just works. What I need and want a phone to do, it does very well. EYE CANDY! There are a few things I miss coming from Android however.
1. The ability to toggle WiFi always on. This really sucks when sitting on my couch and using my phone to control my htpc (xbmc). It takes about 10 seconds for the wifi to re-connect after the screen is turned on. By no means a deal breaker and I'm sure will be addressed in future updates.
2. Individual audio volume controls. I miss the ability to have my alarm, system, media and other notification volumes at different pre-configured levels.
3. Apps are more expensive and the free ones are still a bit lacking.
4. Home screen customizing. I really would find it useful to have 3 home screens rather than 2 (tiles and apps). There's just too much **** i want quick access too I guess
5. Zero expandable memory. This one totally blows and was almost a deal breaker for me. ~16GB's is enough storage space, but just barely. There is no way I can have all my music, audio books and some movies on here. Currently I just have music :/
That's my 5. Everything else I think is comparable or better than Android currently. This phone is sleek and super fast. We just need some updates and app development to get this thing tip top.
Switched from Captivate to Focus S via the Smoked challenge.
- As far as operation goes, the Focus does indeed smoke the Captivate. Severely. I was always fighting the Captivate, but with the Focus S, the phone actually works as it was intended to. Metro is a bit plain, but the performance is steady and predictable. Personally, I'll take steady and predictable every time.
- The app situation on Windows isn't as solid as Android. Which only matters if the specific apps you are looking for aren't there. For example, if you can't live without Angry Birds, stay home.
- Video transfer *SUCKS*. Moving over large video files (movies) that aren't already formatted in a Zune friendly format takes *hours*. Seriously. Once they are transferred, they are beautiful, but if you are the type that likes moving different movies back and forth, stay far away from WP...at least until Apollo.
- Taken as a whole, this is an easy upgrade to recommend.
sarlo100 said:
Switched from Captivate to Focus S via the Smoked challenge.
- As far as operation goes, the Focus does indeed smoke the Captivate. Severely. I was always fighting the Captivate, but with the Focus S, the phone actually works as it was intended to. Metro is a bit plain, but the performance is steady and predictable. Personally, I'll take steady and predictable every time.
- The app situation on Windows isn't as solid as Android. Which only matters if the specific apps you are looking for aren't there. For example, if you can't live without Angry Birds, stay home.
- Video transfer *SUCKS*. Moving over large video files (movies) that aren't already formatted in a Zune friendly format takes *hours*. Seriously. Once they are transferred, they are beautiful, but if you are the type that likes moving different movies back and forth, stay far away from WP...at least until Apollo.
- Taken as a whole, this is an easy upgrade to recommend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually returned my Focus S for an SGS II. There were just too many little things I missed coming from Android that I couldn't live without. Going to the SGS II seems to be the best of both worlds for me and I'm super stoked.
Hey all! My name is Alex Markley and I was ecstatic to have my app idea selected as a finalist for this app development challenge!
My app idea is simple: Strap a pebble onto your wrist, fire up the companion drum machine app, and go to town on your air drums! (Drum stick optional.)
I'm a tad behind on my announcement and setting up my project but I am an experienced Pebble developer (I made the semi-popular Roku Remote app) so I expect to deliver on time!
I'm looking forward to engaging with you, the XDA developer community, as the contest progresses!
Thanks,
XDA:DevDB Information
Pebble Air Drums, Device Specific App for the Pebble
Contributors
alexmarkley
Version Information
Status: Testing
Created 2014-08-21
Last Updated 2014-08-21
Updates
August 27th, 2014 -
I'm disappointed to report that in my testing the latency in the communication between the Pebble and the host device is far too high to allow my app idea to work. In order to play an instrument in real time you really need a latency of less than 10 milliseconds for a reasonable experience. Anything above 25 milliseconds is absolutely unworkable. In my tests with Pebble, I have routinely measured message ack times of well over 150-200 milliseconds, with spikes of almost 2000 milliseconds!
Now I freely grant that these numbers represent message round trip times, not one-way message times, but I don't know how to measure the actual time between message sending and message receiving between two separate devices. (Presumably the one-way time is roughly half of the round trip time, but the measured jitter is so high I have no idea how reliably that could be assumed.)
Because of this uncertainty, I did actually implement simple drum machine functionality, allowing me to trigger drum samples directly from the watch. Unfortunately, it was as I suspected. The drum sounds were so delayed as to result in a sad mess whenever I tried any kind of rhythm.
I have tried a number of things in my attempts to speed up the delivery of AppMessage dictionaries. I have reduced the size of the dictionary to a single uint8. I have set app_comm_set_sniff_interval(SNIFF_INTERVAL_REDUCED). None of that has even made a dent in the problem.
Unless somebody can suggest a way to dramatically improve this problem, I am afraid I must withdraw my app idea from the contest.
Thanks for reading!
--Alex Markley
Reserved
@alexmarkley: Too bad. Your idea was my favorite. Pebble Corp should really make some effort to reduce the lag between the watch and the phone. I don't know the BlueTooth standard in details, but I doubt the lag would be its fault as I use BT tethering on a daily basis without any problem.
Alex,
I was also looking forward to seeing your app work. I also ran into the variability of response time between messages when I tried blasting the titles and subtitles of 100 menu items from JS to C for my Food Trucks app. I did a timing of this yesterday and it took an average of 20 seconds to send over that amount of data to the watch. Since I was able to scroll down concurrently to data streaming, I inserted a little wait message until the actual text showed up.
I also experimented with SNIFF_INTERVAL_REDUCED and it maybe only helped 10%, if at all. I decided to leave it out of my app, as I wanted the app to be battery friendly.
Good luck next time.
Mike
Can anybody recommend an AOSP-derived ROMs whose developers are enthusiastic about bringing new developers into the fold & have spent some time making documentation and build scripts likely to be relatively straightforward for someone with lots of programming experience (including Android development) and (desktop) Linux experience... but has never managed to actually **build** a ROM from source and make it all the way to a working phone?
Why AOSP (vs Touchwiz) -- there are certain things about Android that have always annoyed me, and I'd love to try and fix. Like implementing "rotate on screen-powerup" (screen orientation normally locked & indifferent to the accelerometer state, but doing an accelerometer read whenever the screen gets turned on by pressing the power button and changing the portrait/landscape orientation at THAT time if appropriate). Or building a hacked browser that prompts to override website directives to not save credentials. Not to mention, fantasies about putting back features that Google took away from us, like ext2-formatted microSD cards. Or jacking up the touchscreen sample rate to the maximum supported by the underlying chipset whenever a Graffiti-like input method is active. Yeah, nothing hard or anything...
The closest I ever came was building CM10 about two years ago for my S3. From what I recall, I managed to get a daily build to compile without errors using a VM somebody made available... but when I finally flashed it to the phone, it just kept rebooting. From what I remember, there were generic instructions for building CM available, but I'm pretty sure there were additional steps specific to the S3 and/or AT&T that were omitted (but mandatory for a working ROM). Or it might have been eMMC-related (I remember that phone was *always* funky about newly-flashed ROMs, and often required multiple flashes before one would "take"). Either way, I ended up badly frustrated & ultimately accomplished nothing.
Hello,
I am new here and have no experience programming Android systems. I am looking at buying an Android platform in dash radio unit that has some hard key buttons and hard hey knobs.
I don't know if this differs from other Android platforms such as a cellular telephone or a tablet but here's what I am wanting to accomplish (I am under the impression anything is possible since it's just a computer program comprised of 1s and 0s but I'm sure all of you will set me straight).
Okay so essentially I would like to customize the interface, easy enough I know lot of people accomplish that, perhaps only rooting would be required... however I think my vision is more complicated than most. My intent is to create a vector cartoon image of my vehicle, during boot I would like to have the image load on the screen and as the booting phase is progressing (like a status indicator) different lights will turn on, and perhaps have some audio that plays. Then on the home screen I would like to have the same image (or similar) with different status indicators shown, which lights are on, if the vehicle is running, TPMS values, also time of day would be reflected with either a sun progressing across the sky from Sun rise to sun set, then the moon will come out with Northern Lights dancing in the sky. While driving perhaps the wheels could turn.
So yes to me it seems highly ambitious and very in-depth. All of that information will be available to the unit via other applications except for the lighting which I could route through separate circuitry (perhaps through a USB interface??) unless there's another?
My intent is not to open the unit or rebuild it physically. But rooting, reprogramming, flashing, and wiring outside of the unit I am comfortable with.
I believe that's a good start for now, I appreciate your time.
P.S. I don't mind learning and doing the work myself, I am starting from scratch though. Is this viable? Would it be expensive to pay someone? Is it even possible?
I have left out the brand and product because I'm assuming it wouldn't matter, it is running Android 8.0, 4G+32G, 8-core CPU, it has the hard buttons and is touch screen.
Sorry, there is another feature I was looking at having. It has a dedicated hard key "Navigation" button. I was hoping to have two or three specific navigation applications, that as I press that button, it will jump to the last used application, and with each button press it will cycle through all the other 'designated' gps applications.
Also I might want to customize some other hard key button functions, but that's the major one, so I am hoping/assuming it can be done in the first place.
Also simple default startup options, running programs, screens and layout.
Thank you for your time and knowledge.
No one even has any advice or help or anything constructive?
Am I posting this question in the right forum?
Usually forums aren't this quiet. ?
What your looking to do sounds like it would require a decent amount Android programing knowledge. If your starting from scratch with no experience in programing or building Android applications I do not think it's worth your time.
Yes the headunits run a mostly normal version of Android with some customization to do things like interact with the can bus and play Bluetooth audio.
Thank you for the reply, so for an experienced programmer, is this reasonably achievable?
Would it be with contacting someone to do this?
Hi,
I'm new to the forum, but I have a problem that seems too specific to be able to look for advice anywhere else. I have a Samsung S10 5g with Exynos SoC.
I have ADHD that can severely hamper my ability to do focused work when I can't eliminate distractions. Life has changed to the point that I can't get around without a smart phone (I couldn't log into my work account without using 2FA on a mobile app as the only option, for example), but I recently discovered that the paid version of BlockSite actually did quite a good job of locking down my phone with the option to unlock it by a password known only to my wife whenever that's needed.
That worked well for me for several months, and productivity soared as did the quality of my relationship. The problem is, the app has to be airtight. When ADHD brain pain sets in, nothing else matters to me more than breaking into my phone to mindlessly browse and ease the pain. And after a few months I was regularly spam tapping on apps on my recently viewed apps screen to try and force it to stay open. It fell apart completely when I accidentally opened split screen mode and realised that the BlockSite block screen only takes up half the screen. Since then, the app has been useless and I tend to browse in those difficult times as much as I ever used to.
It doesn't matter how I accomplish it, rooting or otherwise, but id like to find a way to completely disable recent apps functionality to bring BlockSite back to being functional for me.
I'm currently seeking treatment through other means, but it would be a huge help to me regardless if this were possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.