Droid 3 help

[razoo]

The wife and I have just received our 1st smartphones, the Droid 3. Is there someplace or somebody that cam help us set the phones up? We will not need work things but would like them for social networking, email, etc. I want to make sure the proper apps? widgets? etc. are set up and turn or eliminate ones we would not use. Looking for the longest battery life and easiest use for us "smart phone illiterate" people. I keep reading about rooting, motoblur, etc. and have no idea about any of this stuff.Any help or info will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[The Droid Shnoid]

A post so nice you did it twice?

Set up is pretty straight forward, it's probably best if you set things up yourself so passwords and so-on are not known by others.

If you don't know about rooting, you should probably stay away from it until you have a better grasp of what it will and won't do for you.

The best thing you can do is read the FAQ's and other information within this site to help get build up your knowledge base.

 

[WarER4X]

The wife and I have just received our 1st smartphones, the Droid 3. Is there someplace or somebody that cam help us set the phones up? We will not need work things but would like them for social networking, email, etc. I want to make sure the proper apps? widgets? etc. are set up and turn or eliminate ones we would not use. Looking for the longest battery life and easiest use for us "smart phone illiterate" people. I keep reading about rooting, motoblur, etc. and have no idea about any of this stuff.Any help or info will be appreciated. Thanks.

Welcome to Android (and smartphones)! Your question is understandable, but rather broad. I'll say this much, if you (and your wife) have your own Google accounts, all you really need to do is turn the phone on, click on the Android logo and follow the on-screen prompts (more or less). Basically, all it involves is logging into your existing Google account and picking a few options (which are explained for you) and that's it. By doing so, your Google email, chat, calendar, market, maps, navigation and other Google built-in stuff will all be ready to go and connected to your Google account automatically. If you don't have a Google account already, I think the phone will ask you to create one.

If you are using another email service besides Google, then it gets a bit more complicated. You can search the web on how to set up email connectivity for whatever service you're using. Still, all your Google account stuff will be connected.

Once that's done, just start looking through the setting and see whats there. One thing you'll probably want to set up is ringtones (the default ones for the phone, I think, are pretty dumb). In Settings->Sound, you can set the Phone ringtone and the "default" Notification ringtone. If you want specific Notification ringtones for the various apps that have them (such as GTalk, Gmail, Calendar, etc), you can set the notification sounds by going into those respective apps and finding that option in their own settings menus. For example, if you want a unique ringtone for GTalk, you would start the GTalk app, bring up the GTalk options (with the menu button), go to Setting->Notifications and set it up. You would need to do that for each app that you want to have a notification ringtone other than the default you set in the main Settings of the phone. On a side note, if you set an alarm clock alarm, you can set the ringtone for each alarm you set by editing that specific alarm's options.

That should be enough to make you dangerous...

Now, as for rooting... as was already said, don't mess with it until you feel comfortable with the phone. Even then, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are a fairly tech-savvy person. A normal, out-of-the-box Android phone treats you like a "standard accoupt" user on a computer (as opposed to, say, a "superuser" or "administrator"). You are allowed to do most things, but there are certain parts of the phone's software that you don't have permission to mess with. When you root your phone, you are making yourself the "root" user of the phone (if you're not familiar with UNIX/LINUX lingo, "root" is basically the equivalent of "Administrator" on a Windows computer; basically you can do or modify anything you want; nothing is restricted). So, that means you can add/remove/change ANYTHING in the phone's software. This is good because it allows you to do things that, perhaps, the manufacturer or carrier (Verizon, in this case) didn't want you to be able to do (like, say, user your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot for free, or uninstall some apps that came preloaded). Then again, rooting can be bad because there is no longer protection in place for the system critical software on the phone. If you screw it up, you could effectively "brick" your phone (make it completely unusable, sometimes even permenantly). So, like I said, don't worry about rooting right now. It isn't necessary for normal use.

MotoBlur: This is the nickname given to all of the non-Android-stock stuff that Motorola does to the look/feel/interface of the phone. The name comes from the first Moto phone that had it, in which these cusomizations were called "Blur". Moto doesn't call it that anymore, but the name as pretty much stuck. Anyway, most Android phone manufacturers put some level of customization into the Android experience. They often do things like make the homescreen look and behave differently from stock android, change the look/feel of various options menus, add or remove some settings, add extra apps or widgets, change the notification bar or the app drawing, etc. HTC calls their custom interface "Sense", Samsung has a name for theirs which eludes me at the moment. If a phone has none of these interface customizations from the manufacturer, it is referred to as having "Vanilla Android". Most of the folks you would find on here would prefer their phones to be running Vanilla Android, but alas, manufacturers would rather put their own spin on the Android OS, presumably to add functionality, improve usability for "regular" folks (not Uber-geeks like many of us on this forum) and to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Again, welcome to Android and, hopefully, you can find the answers to all of your questions here.

-SR-

By the way, check out the "Android 101" series of articles for some helpful tips on the basics of Android.

 

[WarER4X]

Good grief, that might be the largest post I've ever written.

-SR-

 

[deal1120]

So..... is is possible to set ringtone ID for contacts? If so how?

 

[WarER4X]

So..... is is possible to set ringtone ID for contacts? If so how?

Yes. Go to your contacts. Click the contact for which you'd like to set a custom ringtone. Then hit the menu button. Click Options->Ringtone. Then you can pick the ringtone you want for that contact.

-SR-

 

[razoo]

War, thanks for the help. It was not long at all. I use Wildblue as my email so I was looking to have that set up and maybe a facebook app and a few others. I am looking to stop anything I do not use running in the background to save battery life. I read that people also take apps they do not use and and put them in a separate folder. The wife is trying to find out where her downloaded ringtones are on the phone. this is almost like a treasure hunt trying to find out where everything is. Life was a lot simpler with dial phones any ideas or help for battery saving and setting up the phone ideas will be helpful. Thanks.

 

[deal1120]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! You are a wealth of information!

 

[Masheen]

War, thanks for the help. It was not long at all. I use Wildblue as my email so I was looking to have that set up and maybe a facebook app and a few others. I am looking to stop anything I do not use running in the background to save battery life. I read that people also take apps they do not use and and put them in a separate folder. The wife is trying to find out where her downloaded ringtones are on the phone. this is almost like a treasure hunt trying to find out where everything is. Life was a lot simpler with dial phones any ideas or help for battery saving and setting up the phone ideas will be helpful. Thanks.

I would definitely check out me and war's posts in the rooting/rom section of the Droid 3 forum. We have a list of items that you can freeze via third party applications and significantly improve battery life.

1) For starters go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Network and change the network from Global to CDMA. I've noticed a good difference in how much battery the radio uses by doing this.

2) Settings > Battery & Data Manager > Battery Mode > Custom Battery Saver You want to keep brightness as low as possible without compromising your eyesight ( I actually prefer it on 0 in the dark) You also want to put your off peak hours when you usually sleep. AND under Peak hours Turn off data after: set it to 15 minutes. You can still receive all notifications by doing this.

3) Settings > Battery & Data Manager > Data Delivery > Social Applications click sync over Wi-Fi only.

4) Settings > Wireless & Network Settings > Wi-Fi settings Then press Menu > Advanced > Wi-Fi sleep policy > Never This stops your phone from switching from Wi-Fi to 3G radio every time your phone's screen turns off. Significantly improves battery as well.

5) Other than those. Keep your screen as dim as possible (what you're comfortable with) Keep your standalone GPS off when not using it. Same with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

 

[WarER4X]

War, thanks for the help. It was not long at all. I use Wildblue as my email so I was looking to have that set up and maybe a facebook app and a few others. I am looking to stop anything I do not use running in the background to save battery life. I read that people also take apps they do not use and and put them in a separate folder. The wife is trying to find out where her downloaded ringtones are on the phone. this is almost like a treasure hunt trying to find out where everything is. Life was a lot simpler with dial phones any ideas or help for battery saving and setting up the phone ideas will be helpful. Thanks.

I'm not familiar with Wildblue, but a Google search tells that it is probably your internet service provider? They probably have information on their website that tells you the info you need to set up either a POP3, IMAP or even Exchange email client (depending on what they support). That's the info you'll need to set up your non-Google email. The built-in email app that is used for all email accounts other than Google is simply called "Email". When you open that app a menu come up to give you a selection of services for which you can set up an account. Just click "Email". It will bring up a login screen where you input your email address and password. If putting that info in works, then you're all set. If that doesn't work, you'll have to set up the account manually, which it is a bit trickier, but you should be able to make it through if you have the information about your email service that I mentioned before.

For Facebook, all you have to do is open the Facebook app for the first time and it will ask you to login to you Facebook account. Once you login, you'll be asked what your preference is regarding syncing Facebook contacts with your Google contact (personally, I don't do that because I think is just creates a mess of my contacts, but my opinion might be skewed by the horrible support this feature had when the OG Droid first came out).

Like Masheen said, the only good way to ensure that unwanted apps aren't running in the background is to disable them in some way, and the only way you can do that is if you root your phone. If you decide to root, there is a very easy to use "one-click" app for this over at xda-developers.com about which there was an article on this site earlier today, but listed for the "Bionic". I still think it is a bit risky for a newbie to try, but that's your decision. Once rooted, the safest way to disable unwanted apps is to purchase Titanium Backup Pro from the market, open it (and grant it "root" permission when it asks) and then start "freezing" the unwanted apps. There is a pretty comprehensive list of apps that are safe to freeze if you go over to the xda-developers site and look in the Droid 3 Development forum. Freezing some of the stock apps on the phone will break other stuff and cause problems, so I wouldn't recommend straying from the list.

Another method of disabling unwanted apps that are locked (can't be uninstalled) is to dig into the file system and rename the app file extensions from .apk to .bak so they won't load. While there is an automated script for this at xda-developers, it is still a much more involved way of accomplishing the same thing that freezing apps in Ti Backup Pro can do and if something goes wrong, you run the risk of bricking your phone.

-SR-

 

[razoo]

Thanks to all. Did a few of the things to save the battery. Noe some other questions.
At the home screen, on the top right it show the time, strength, and 3G. Mine,except for the time were blue. My wifes phone was next to mine and it was white. I assumed that the white showed the strength. Blue was not good, correct? I called Verizon and they were no help. I called Motorola and the guy eventually had me do a total reboot I guess you would call it, and then I had white bars. I also had 4 icons of different things on the top left. Today, back to blue bars and not much on the left side. Wife's phone is now the same. Can text, email, browse, etc. but do not feel this is correct. Especially since the uy had me reboot it yesterday. Am I making too much of this or do I have problems? Thanks.

 

[WarER4X]

Blue is good, actually. Blue signal/3G indicator means that you are logged into your google services. You need this in order for gmail push notification, GTalk, Google Voice and other Google services to work correctly. For example, if I connect my phone to the WiFi in my office building, they block connection to the Google account server, so my signal indicator is white. Any emails or chat messages that are sent to me through Gmail or GTalk, respectively, will not make it to my phone until I disconnect from the Company WiFi and reconnect through the cellular network. At that point, my phone automatically reconnects to my Google account (my signal indicator turns blue) and all my email notifications come to me at one time.

So, blue is good.

-SR-

PS: If you connect to a WiFi network that allows your phone to access your Google account, the WiFi signal indicator will also turn blue.