[beef5stew]

Okay, so I bought into the Bionic hype and was excitied when it came out. I was coming from a tricked out Droid Incredible and was extremely underwhelmed when i opened the box and starting playing with the capabilities. I had Force Close issues, way too much bloatware, and it seemed slower compared to what I had with the incredible. But what I found out is that the phone needs about 4 days to "break in". Here is what I had to do to make it a WOW phone:
-Put launcher Pro on it, first thing. adjust the number of rows so i could fit more stuff on my screens.
-Root it. Use AdFree to take the ads off the phone.
-Titanium backup and "Freeze" all the bloatware. This one took a little while because some what I thought was bloat was required by the OS
-Change browser to Dolphin, Change Keyboard to Swiftkey, change messaging to Handcent, change music to Doubletwist, change Camera to Vignette, change clock to beautiful widgets, and weather to weatherbug elite.

Now it's 90% like the Incredible I loved and getting better every day. The Lap Dock and 4G was the icing on the cake that really WOW'ed it. Now I can log into my work PC using citrix and have a keyboad and mouse. My Ipad 2 friends are coming over to the Droid side as we speak.

The only thing that is really keeping it from being over the top is the locked bootloader. i'd love to put a vanilla rom on this thing to see how it flys. I have chargers at work, home and car, so battery has not been an issue.

Beef5Stew

[LDubs]

wait - explain please - what ads are on the phone that need to be taken off with AdFree?

[B-RAN]

wait - explain please - what ads are on the phone that need to be taken off with AdFree?

Ad Free is an app that you can download from the market if you are ROOTED that will remove ads from any ad supported apps, it doesnt have anything to do with ads on the phone itself.

[beef5stew]

yep. it basically removes the IP addresses for ad servers in the /etc/hosts file. Frees up som realestate on the screen.

I'd also like to get wireless tethering back. From the develoments I've seen, I'm expecting that to be running in about 4 more weeks.

[LDubs]

Ad Free is an app that you can download from the market if you are ROOTED that will remove ads from any ad supported apps, it doesnt have anything to do with ads on the phone itself.

OH. cool beans! Thanks!

[oresteez]

Sounds very familiar to what people in the Charge forums did to make their phones awesome.

Its a shame that you have to do all that to make the phone great, ya know?
That's going to be the thing that will always make Android 2nd best compared to the Iphone (trust me, I'm an Android guy, but I'm also a realist).

The common person is NOT going to do all those things to their phone. Google/Android/the phone companies really need to get their act together.

[beef5stew]

i think alot of it goes to personal prefernce. with an Iphone, you are locked into the "Apple Experience", which is great if you like the way they have things setup. Sucks if you don't because you can't really customize the Apple Experience very much.

I have an IPad 2 I use, and I like the way Apple did web browsing and app downloading. I don't like the way they did email and accessorizing. Unfortunately, I can't change those things, so I learn to adapt and live with them.

My droid, out of the box, I was OK with and could probably learn to work with the motoblur and stock applications. But I don't have to with Android. i mad the phone fit around my lifestyle and the way I want to use the phone. Making the changes i noted above makes the phone feel like an extension of me..it's the "Beef5stew Experience" and IMHO is an Epic win.

Long story short...This phone requires customization to be a perfect fit.

[Tom in Bristol]

The Lap Dock and 4G was the icing on the cake that really WOW'ed it. Now I can log into my work PC using citrix and have a keyboad and mouse. My Ipad 2 friends are coming over to the Droid side as we speak.

The only thing that is really keeping it from being over the top is the locked bootloader. i'd love to put a vanilla rom on this thing to see how it flys. I have chargers at work, home and car, so battery has not been an issue.

Beef5Stew

Excellent review of your (logical) approach to setting up your Bionic instead of shrieking about your dislikes.

Have you seen Cory's post that includes his view of bloat to remove? Does your list look similar?

Droid Bionic: Apps That Are Safe To Remove Once Rooted

I've never rooted previous droids, but this encourages me to bust a move. Wondering if you think the unlocked bootloader/diff ROMS will or should happen before or after ICS?

Thanks a whole lot!

[ppeklak]

in for later reference.

[DroidST]

you could subscribe to the Thread to

[beef5stew]

I did see that list, but I had already de-bloated using Titanium. Basically every VZW app, blockbuster, kindle, etc. I like using titanium because it's easy to un-do if you mess something up.

I've organized the program is use most into logical categories on my home screens, so the extra bloat probably wouldn't even be noticed.

[KillerG]

I'm interested in rooting mine (lol tomorrow...Costco should have some. If they don't I'm just going to give up and go to Verizon). Does it really make a huge difference when you root it and remove the bloatware, other than the obvious fact that your app drawer is going to be much much smaller? I think I do want to root it mostly for wifi tethering and adfree, but I also like the idea of removing the bloat.
And before we make this into why Android is great, why iOS has this, etc. let's just leave it at the idea that Android is for customizing, and iOS is for people to just pick up and play. That's great, but there are a lot of people that aren't into that sort of thing.

[purist#ac]

Well wifi tethering doesn't quite work yet, from what I've seen.

[SSHGuru]

I did most of that on day one except rooting. Add that I changed email to K-9 and have not put Dolphin on it yet (I'll check it out). I have Vignette on it but I'm not sure it's better than stock once you know how to use it. Also I had BW, but on a suggestion of another user changed to BeWeather which is WAY better. All the functionality of Beautiful Widgets, with all and more of the functionality of all other weather apps.

Doubletwist was a first change as well but I'm having a hard time syncing my albums.

Okay, so I bought into the Bionic hype and was excitied when it came out. I was coming from a tricked out Droid Incredible and was extremely underwhelmed when i opened the box and starting playing with the capabilities. I had Force Close issues, way too much bloatware, and it seemed slower compared to what I had with the incredible. But what I found out is that the phone needs about 4 days to "break in". Here is what I had to do to make it a WOW phone:
-Put launcher Pro on it, first thing. adjust the number of rows so i could fit more stuff on my screens.
-Root it. Use AdFree to take the ads off the phone.
-Titanium backup and "Freeze" all the bloatware. This one took a little while because some what I thought was bloat was required by the OS
-Change browser to Dolphin, Change Keyboard to Swiftkey, change messaging to Handcent, change music to Doubletwist, change Camera to Vignette, change clock to beautiful widgets, and weather to weatherbug elite.

Now it's 90% like the Incredible I loved and getting better every day. The Lap Dock and 4G was the icing on the cake that really WOW'ed it. Now I can log into my work PC using citrix and have a keyboad and mouse. My Ipad 2 friends are coming over to the Droid side as we speak.

The only thing that is really keeping it from being over the top is the locked bootloader. i'd love to put a vanilla rom on this thing to see how it flys. I have chargers at work, home and car, so battery has not been an issue.

Beef5Stew

[Snoudel]

Okay, so I bought into the Bionic hype and was excitied when it came out. I was coming from a tricked out Droid Incredible and was extremely underwhelmed when i opened the box and starting playing with the capabilities. I had Force Close issues, way too much bloatware, and it seemed slower compared to what I had with the incredible. But what I found out is that the phone needs about 4 days to "break in". Here is what I had to do to make it a WOW phone:
-Put launcher Pro on it, first thing. adjust the number of rows so i could fit more stuff on my screens.
-Root it. Use AdFree to take the ads off the phone.
-Titanium backup and "Freeze" all the bloatware. This one took a little while because some what I thought was bloat was required by the OS
-Change browser to Dolphin, Change Keyboard to Swiftkey, change messaging to Handcent, change music to Doubletwist, change Camera to Vignette, change clock to beautiful widgets, and weather to weatherbug elite.

Now it's 90% like the Incredible I loved and getting better every day. The Lap Dock and 4G was the icing on the cake that really WOW'ed it. Now I can log into my work PC using citrix and have a keyboad and mouse. My Ipad 2 friends are coming over to the Droid side as we speak.

The only thing that is really keeping it from being over the top is the locked bootloader. i'd love to put a vanilla rom on this thing to see how it flys. I have chargers at work, home and car, so battery has not been an issue.

Beef5Stew

Hey! Can you post some pictures of the camera app? To be honest, the camera is the only reason I want to return this phone! The demo only lets me use the .3mp camera.

[beef5stew]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doen't the market allow you to install an app, and if you don't like it and uninstall it within some period of time (24 hours maybe), it will refund your money.

[debonu]

It gives you 15 minutes for a refund... Which really isn't all that much time. =/

-D

[D1andOnlyOmen]

It gives you 15 minutes for a refund... Which really isn't all that much time. =/

-D

Agree that it isn't all that much time to get comfortable with an app, but at least it's better than nothing. I've taken advantage of this feature (for better or worse) a couple of times this past week...after paying to "unlock" features from free versions of things that really didn't turn out to be all that much better/useful than what the free version offered.

[creccaj1]

I actually did most of what BeffStew did with the exception that I moved a majority of the bloat to my SD Card using RootExplorer and then froze other apps that would not go away (NFL Mobile, VZW Media Sync, VZW Nav). Just installed AdFree before too, forgot totally about that program so I will see how this will go. I check my battery stats this morning before plugging in and it was at 20% after roughly 1 day of being off a charger.

Lets see how this goes today .

[Jkoldha]

Excellent review of your (logical) approach to setting up your Bionic instead of shrieking about your dislikes.

Have you seen Cory's post that includes his view of bloat to remove? Does your list look similar?

Droid Bionic: Apps That Are Safe To Remove Once Rooted

I've never rooted previous droids, but this encourages me to bust a move. Wondering if you think the unlocked bootloader/diff ROMS will or should happen before or after ICS?

Thanks a whole lot!

Agreed. We need more people problem solving and less people whining. Great post!

[Issemann]

I have Vignette on it but I'm not sure it's better than stock once you know how to use it.

Can you elaborate on this? I read many posts of how the camera wasn't impressive. I took a few photos myself and they lack some luster, but I shrugged it off as "it's a phone cam". Thanks!!

[Issemann]

I check my battery stats this morning before plugging in and it was at 20% after roughly 1 day of being off a charger. Lets see how this goes today .

Impressive! Can you provide some more details on what you've done to get such good battery life? (E.g. Did you turn 4G off? Disabled background syncing? Etc.) Thanks!!

[creccaj1]

Impressive! Can you provide some more details on what you've done to get such good battery life? (E.g. Did you turn 4G off? Disabled background syncing? Etc.) Thanks!!

• CDMA Only
• Background Sync for Facebook/Twitter off
• Auto Brightness
• Backlight Timeout 15 Seconds
• WiFi Connected When Availible, Off When No WiFi
• Blutooth Connected to My Car When Driving
• Mainly Use for Text Messages
• Occasionally Check Facebook/Twitter
• Rooted and Moved/Froze Bloat
• Email (3 accounts other than Gmail) Check Every 30 min

Thats all I can think of right now, if I think of more I will post again lol.

[Frankie15]

I'm interested in rooting mine (lol tomorrow...Costco should have some. If they don't I'm just going to give up and go to Verizon). Does it really make a huge difference when you root it and remove the bloatware, other than the obvious fact that your app drawer is going to be much much smaller? I think I do want to root it mostly for wifi tethering and adfree, but I also like the idea of removing the bloat.
And before we make this into why Android is great, why iOS has this, etc. let's just leave it at the idea that Android is for customizing, and iOS is for people to just pick up and play. That's great, but there are a lot of people that aren't into that sort of thing.

Wondering the exact same thing. Would love an answer.

[creccaj1]

Wondering the exact same thing. Would love an answer.

Basically this is how it goes. iOS is great for people that want the phone to work right out of the box. That isn't to say that Android phones wont work right of the box, they will but you wont access their full potential. Jailbreaking an iPhone and Rooting an Android are pretty much going to do the same thing... give you access to admin rights and install/remove stuff that you couldn't before.

Rooting you Droid phone should not be taken lightly, there are chances that you could brick your device... not saying that will happen but there is always a chance to mess something up if you aren't careful. Do you research and a lot of it before hand. I rooted mine because the amount of crap the Verizon loaded on this phone is ridiculous. Go to the Bionic Rooting/Hacking forum and read up on how to root and what the implications mean. Generally if you root your phone and delete bloat you might see slightly better battery life, no promises.

The reason for removing bloat is because the Verizon apps take up space on internal storage, they constantly want to run in the background, and half if not three quarters are useless and no one uses them. Basically rooting your phone will give you full control over it and you just need to respect that fact and be very careful what you do with it. This is a great forum to ask these types of questions but make sure that you ASK before you DO.