How I changed a "meh" Bionic to WOW.

[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!!

 

[PsYcHoNeWb]

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.

 

[PsYcHoNeWb]

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.

 

[Frankie15]

Thanks for taking the time to type that out. What's the difference between deleting the bloatware and "freezing" it?

 

[PsYcHoNeWb]

Thanks for taking the time to type that out. What's the difference between deleting the bloatware and "freezing" it?

Deleting bloat means that you use root explorer or another form of file manager that has root permissions to go to the system apps folder and literally delete the .apk files from the folder so that they are gone forever. Basically like deleting document files off you computer and emptying the recycle bin. Moving files just means you take the selected application in the system folder and move them to your SD Card so that you keep the application files, but since the aren't in the system app folder they wont run. Freezing the applications uses the program Titanium Backup Pro and all that does is for lack of a better word freezes them from running. They are still in the systems apps folder but they are inactive and will not run or show up in the apps drawer unless unfrozen.

 

[dash813]

in for future reference

 

[Frankie15]

Is there a list if bloatware apps that are safe to delete? I remember people having issues when they deleted bloat that was actually required for the OS to run properly.

Im looking forward to rooting but I will wait until there's a .sbf file. Also I have seen screens where people have modified the look of the status bar. They put a batter percentage up there and got rid of the blue look. Do you need to root to do that?

 

[beermanmike]

All i did:

Sign up for Zumocast, Install Zumocast on work and home computer, enjoy all Futurama, Family Guy, Starwars, Simpsons episodes and movies streaming to my phone.

That made it awesome.

*Also finally transfering bakery/restaurant/zoo story and Star Legends to my new phone helped.

 

[SSHGuru]

How are you doing that? Do you have them stored on your computer or are you streaming them from your computer somehow?

 

[PsYcHoNeWb]

Is there a list if bloatware apps that are safe to delete? I remember people having issues when they deleted bloat that was actually required for the OS to run properly.

Im looking forward to rooting but I will wait until there's a .sbf file. Also I have seen screens where people have modified the look of the status bar. They put a batter percentage up there and got rid of the blue look. Do you need to root to do that?

Yes if you go into the Rooting section of the forum, Cory posted a list of apps that are safe and not safe to remove.

 

[xoomer1]

changing how a phone looks does not make it great, just like painting a race car does not make it faster, what makes the bionic great is its speed and ability to customize how it looks

Its a shame that you have to do all that to make the phone great, ya know?
.

 

[JayWill]

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.

I'm not going to disagree with your point about the common user, but man, to me, that's the beauty of Android. Don't like your user experience? App it up, root it if that's your thing, and BINGOBONGO! You have an experience that's right for you and allow you to fall in love with your device that might be lackluster out of the box. When the candle starts to flicker, change it up and fall in love again.

I dig the hell out of that.

 

[beef5stew]

I have two kinds of friends:

1. iPhone friends: They come to me when their computer gets infected, xbox has a red ring of death, someone hacked their account, they want to buy a new computer, or they can't open a file.

2. Android friends: want to borrow a thermal paste or Torx screwdrivers

 

[JayWill]

I have two kinds of friends:

1. iPhone friends: They come to me when their computer gets infected, xbox has a red ring of death, someone hacked their account, they want to buy a new computer, or they can't open a file.

2. Android friends: want to borrow a thermal paste or Torx screwdrivers

LOL! I'd say that about sums it up.

 

[akorcovelos]

-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.
Beef5Stew

can you explain why these apps are better than the stock offerings? Is it faster or just more to your taste?

 

[ninjataint]

I have two kinds of friends:

1. iPhone friends: They come to me when their computer gets infected, xbox has a red ring of death, someone hacked their account, they want to buy a new computer, or they can't open a file.

2. Android friends: want to borrow a thermal paste or Torx screwdrivers

Makes sense, my girlfriend has come home many times to things disassembled into neat piles of parts on the living room floor.


Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[58Gemni]

I have two kinds of friends:

1. iPhone friends: They come to me when their computer gets infected, xbox has a red ring of death, someone hacked their account, they want to buy a new computer, or they can't open a file.

2. Android friends: want to borrow a thermal paste or Torx screwdrivers

LOL Couldn't have said it better.

 

[McGyver777]

i have two kinds of friends:

1. Iphone friends: They come to me when their computer gets infected, xbox has a red ring of death, someone hacked their account, they want to buy a new computer, or they can't open a file.

2. Android friends: Want to borrow a thermal paste or torx screwdrivers

t-shirt. I want that on a t-shirt!