First Android Phone (Blackberry user)

[Mediocrity]

Hey guys,

I'm getting the Atrix tomorrow, and it is my first android phone, and I'm very excited

My only experience with smartphones, is my 9630 Tour (Blackberry)

I've read a bunch of the beginners to android FAQs which were very helpful, but I have a small question series.

On my blackberry, I lived on a few applications that were like, MUST HAVES for it to be a good phone in my eyes. I'm assuming there are apps like Facebook, MSN and etc.

Here are some of the applications that I'm talking about:

1.Some sort of Flashlight thing. (I walk home often late at night, and it's always useful if I take a shortcut through a park) Also, not just the screen to be white, but I mean the camera's flash as the source of light.

2. I used BeBuzz to tell me which notification was which by color coding. This way, if I was in class, I could determine whether it was important to read or not. Like green was email, and red was BBM, which meant I needed to read it. (P.S) Is there even a LED notification light on the phone's front? And can it change colors?


Also, I really liked how my phone had convenience keys on each side, one was binded to my flashlight, and the other to my camera. It made taking quick pictures much easier, and finding my way home easier. Does the Atrix have something similar? If not, next best thing to do?

Also, I'm a big music junkie, and the phone has JUST enough memory to hold what my ipod currently holds.
Along with being a music junkie, I also produce music, and listening to music without my Equalizer is just awful.
Any players that have the option for custom EQ's or at least decent preset EQ's? Preferably free, but if it's good I don't mind paying


Last question

I'm very organized on my phone, my berry's homescreen has only 2 rows of icons. Most of which are folders holding things like Messaging apps, Map apps, Games, Media and etc.

Can I organize my Atrix like that?

Thanks and sorry for the wall of text

~Medio

 

[Mediocrity]

Sorry for the double post, but I also watch a podcast all the time, is it possible to get it on my android?

 

[Timelessblur]

Like you I left blackberry about a 1.5 months ago to go over to the Atrix. I was a 8900 user and like you I loved BeBuzz and BeWeather.

for the first question
1. Yes you can get a few flash light apps in the marketplace that are free to use it as a flash light. On my 8900 for a flashlight I just went into video recording mode and turned on the light and I do the same here but I do know there are multiple apps that can do it.

2. There is a little LED on the front of the phone that will blink. It is no were near as nice as the one for blackberry as it is not as bright and it is just a little circle but it does have different colors. I believe there is an App you can buy in the market place that will let you changed them but honestly it is not needed as a lot of apps already have their own color.
Email is green (oddly enough same color I used on my blackberry)

SMS- I got Go SMS for that and it lets you set you color for that program so again I match that to my blackberry.

Twitter I use plum and that has its own color no choice there but it is different.


Oh and welcome to the world of Android. Sadly you will miss the keyboard and I will be honest I though the blackberry was better for email but everything else Atrix is better.

Oh and for the keyboard I recomend you get Swiftkey for your keyboard. Check out Swiftkey X beta if you want to try it out for free. I bought swiftkey but am currently running the beta because it adds some really great features.



Edit:

For pod cast I use Google Listen. I find it is really great for handling that. There are some others but I like google listen and I just have it run off the RSS feeds to download the pod cast. It gets all the ones I listen to so covers all the bases for me.

 

[Mediocrity]

Thanks for the info Timeless

Does google listen also cover video podcasts?

I'm a huge starcraft fan, and a guy named Day9 does hour long videos on the game, and I'd like to have them on my phone constantly

 

[Jonneh]

As Timeless said, yes there are flashlight capabilities by using the actual flash on the camera - as for BerryBuzz, nothing is quite like it unfortunately, but an app called "Light Flow" from an active developer here on the forums probably comes the closest to me. Podcasts I use "DoggCatcher" or something, but I think it was a paid app. I'm sure there are free alternatives though. For #3, I don't think the Atrix really has any convenience keys, unfortunately. I remember it was super useful to bring up QuickLaunch on my Bold 9000. You might miss that. You'll also definitely miss the keyboard, though I don't know what the Tour's keyboard was like. People who say they don't miss their Bold 9000 keyboard though are either lying or never really loved the keyboard to begin with. As for me, I could type 23983 WPM on that thing without ever even looking down at my phone - of course I miss it. It feels ridiculously good in the hand while being ridiculously good at typing. It was a double-ridiculous keyboard in the best sense of the word. I miss it, but I can't deal with RIM's lack of innovation (same device is released every single month), their OS (though I hear OS7 is nice...might need to check it out sometime), etc. Android does everything better, with the exception of RIM's incredible keyboard. *edit* Oh, and e-mail. People will claim on here that they get their gmail e-mail practically pushed to their device as it arrives on the PC, but it's not true. I generally receive e-mails on my device about 10 minutes after it arrives to my inbox on my PC. Every now and then it arrives 3-5 minutes afterwards, but that's rare. People will read this and disagree with me, so it'll be like a he says/she says kind of thing, but you just need to be prepared for the possibility if you are in love with receiving e-mails PRONTO. I'm not in love with it, though it's quite annoying when engaged in a conversation through e-mail. Imagine receiving someone's texts 10 minutes after they sent it...yeah, not too fun for conversation lol. I've tried everything - gmail settings, stock e-mail settings, phone settings, posting in this exact Atrix forum asking for help, factory reset on the phone - nothing worked. I still usually (about 90% of the time) receive my e-mails 10 minutes after they were sent, sometimes 11, 12, or 13. The reason I know this is I'll go to my inbox on my PC when my phone notifies me, and it shows you how long ago it was sent. The only solution is to manually refresh gmail when in a conversation, but if you're busy working or something, that's not feasible.

 

[dalvik]

for the music: PowerAmp Pro. highly customizable, excellent 10band equalizer. reads lots of formats. flac, ogg, ape, etc... you can try it first and if you like buy it. I bought it. combined with my monster turbines (and soon with etymotic hf2) I couldnt be more happier.

 

[Kage_]

Hey guys,

I'm assuming there are apps like Facebook, MSN and etc.

1.Some sort of Flashlight thing. (I walk home often late at night, and it's always useful if I take a shortcut through a park) Also, not just the screen to be white, but I mean the camera's flash as the source of light.

2. I used BeBuzz to tell me which notification was which by color coding. This way, if I was in class, I could determine whether it was important to read or not. Like green was email, and red was BBM, which meant I needed to read it. (P.S) Is there even a LED notification light on the phone's front? And can it change colors?


Also, I really liked how my phone had convenience keys on each side, one was binded to my flashlight, and the other to my camera. It made taking quick pictures much easier, and finding my way home easier. Does the Atrix have something similar? If not, next best thing to do?

Also, I'm a big music junkie, and the phone has JUST enough memory to hold what my ipod currently holds.
Along with being a music junkie, I also produce music, and listening to music without my Equalizer is just awful.
Any players that have the option for custom EQ's or at least decent preset EQ's? Preferably free, but if it's good I don't mind paying


Last question

I'm very organized on my phone, my berry's homescreen has only 2 rows of icons. Most of which are folders holding things like Messaging apps, Map apps, Games, Media and etc.

Can I organize my Atrix like that?

~Medio

Yup Android has all the Facebook, Twitter, MSN offical apps and 3rd party ones.

I use TeslaLED for my Flashlight App and no there is no way to bind it to an external button to turn it on.

For color LED notifications then you'll need Light Flow. The free version allows you to setup a limited number of apps for notifications.

For music junkies like yourself you can get a MicroSD card and keep your music on it. I have a 16GB Class 6 AData in mine that works pretty well. I did have to do a low level format using SDFormater before my phone would take it w/o issues though.

For app organization I use Apps Organizer. It works very well for putting stuff into categories.

For a music app w/ an EQ, the built in app has a cheesie EQ built in, but I'm not sure how good it is. Besides that I only use Pandora on my phone occasionally so I haven't had a need to search out another music app.

Enjoy your new Atrix.

 

[rebshalom]

I gave up my Blackberry Torch 9800 yesterday. I am still trying to fall in love with my Atrix. So far, I have encountered 2 problems.
1) the text size is so small that I can hardly read it. This is especiall true when using a browser (either the default or Firefox). Is there a way to default the size to a larger one?
2) I installed the retroclock widget from the market place, but cannot get it to show. I really am a totaly widget newbie.
Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[dalvik]

I gave up my Blackberry Torch 9800 yesterday. I am still trying to fall in love with my Atrix. So far, I have encountered 2 problems.
1) the text size is so small that I can hardly read it. This is especiall true when using a browser (either the default or Firefox). Is there a way to default the size to a larger one?
2) I installed the retroclock widget from the market place, but cannot get it to show. I really am a totaly widget newbie.
Thanks in advance for any help.

for the text size in the browser: tap more/settings/text size... choose between tiny small normal large huge. Alternatively you may try Dolphin HD browser from the market, its free. and I found it much better than the stock one and more customizable.

retroclock widget: long press empty space on your home screen, select Widgets, select retroclock... make sure you've got enough space on the home screen for it.

 

[rebshalom]

Thank you. Both problems are solved. Now if I could only load apps from the Amazon app store...

 

[zoso28]

Thank you. Both problems are solved. Now if I could only load apps from the Amazon app store...

You can use the amazon app store.. Search for root & sideload. I am a relative noob to android & I was able to do it in under 10 mins.

Sent from my 4G mobile on the network with more backhaul.. & no 4G