Palm webOS Homebrewer's Guide to Android

[dorelse]

my old palm pro rocking SPB Mobile Shell and win 6.1 was 'a better experience' for getting business done ...

I'm still rocking the SPB Mobile Shell on my Palm Treo Pro...reading through this guide getting ready to move to Android this week. At least SPB Mobile Shell is out now for Android, so the transition *should* be a little easier. (Had Pre & Pixi previously.)

I was also planning on getting the Nexus S 4G. However, I don't want to constantly be messing with my phone...I want to get it setup and have it just work. Threads like this make me nervous that's not going to happen.

 

[milominderbinde]

...I was also planning on getting the Nexus S 4G. However, I don't want to constantly be messing with my phone...I want to get it setup and have it just work. Threads like this make me nervous that's not going to happen.

The Nexus S is a Developer phone.

If spending a weekend trying to get something to work is your idea of heaven, the Nexus S is for you. If that would be the weekend from hell, this may not be the phone for you.

The Nexus S is a full out stripped down hot rod. No microSD, no HDMI, no Facebook Sync, no HD, no Notification LED, no Speed Dial, no Smart Dial, no Zoom, texts limited to 160 characters, no FM Radio, limited video formats, etc. It is for the tweaker who can't wait to get it home to put a new engine in it (ROM).

There are nice Nexus S Facebook, LED, microSD, Email, Text, & Camera Workarounds for 16 of the issues.

Check out the Phone Comparison for more on hardware. Also see the Vote for Sprint's best Android phone to see what other users are voting.

 

[JMack817]

i would like to see a rom built for android devices because with all the termoil in the webos world (and the fact i held on my palm pre for 2+ years.... i was in line on day 1 june 12 2009)i had to go with the evo 3d. and since webos can now run on dual core devices i think with the right team (our loving and devoted homebrew community)we get this done with the quickness. i have seen amazing stuff come from these people with my pre. i prefer webos over android anyday. and i have flashed roms running on my 3d right now. so i see no reason why we cant get it up and running on any device. So lets get this going. and i know i will be more than willing to donate any time or money to get this happening.

im sure others out there are wanting the same thing to happen

 

[raindog469]

While I'm very happy with my unrooted Epic, here are a few things I miss from my day-one Pre:

1. The task manager. The writeup at the start of the thread recommends Itching Thumbs, Wave Launcher etc. The thing is, they're all just apps, and so when you press the Home button it needs to load the app if it isn't resident. If you do anything memory-hungry (Firefox, Angry Birds, etc.) your launcher gets terminated like any other app when the phone needs memory. My Epic has half a gig of RAM and I still have to wait 10 seconds for LauncherPro to restart after running Firefox, and Itching Thumbs was pretty much unusable. Android purists will say you don't need to see a thumbnail of a running app just like iPhone people used to say you didn't need to multitask on a phone. Well, we don't need to use smartphones at all, but we do, and I was really spoiled by the ability to flick back and forth between apps. It makes the long-press-Home switcher feel like Windows 3.1.

2. For that matter, the "automatically kill apps when you haven't used them in a while" feature is a great theory, but in practice it means that so much as bringing up the task manager will cause Firefox and other large programs to lose their state and reload from scratch, even if they're only using less than 10% of my phone's RAM. Yes, WebOS saying it was out of memory and I needed to close some cards was annoying, but at least I got to choose which apps got closed. And switching to another task to check something and back to the text message I'm writing only to find myself in a different conversation than I was in previously, because every app maintains state differently even when they're not terminated, has caused me a lot of embarrassment when I didn't notice.

3. Non-invasive Exchange support. My Palm Pre didn't have ActiveSync support, yet it was still able to connect and sync with my clients' Exchange servers without having to accept ActiveSync policies. I'm not going to give an Exchange server controlled by someone else the right to wipe my phone remotely when they didn't buy me the phone, so my only option for Exchange access on my Epic is OWA Light. "Sorry, I didn't get your email this morning because I only remembered to check OWA just now." I understand there are hacked versions of the mail client I can use when I root my phone, but my Pre did it before I even enabled homebrew on it.

4. If there are keyboard shortcuts for page up, page down, home and end in any of the popular browsers (stock, Dolphin Light, Miren, Firefox, Opera) I haven't found them yet.

5. A standardized keyboard layout. While the SSH and VNC options (which I use pretty much daily) are far more robust than those available on the Pre, the fact that every phone has different keys (or none at all) results in things like "Hold down the trackball for CTRL" (whose phone has a trackball anymore?) or "Press End Call for ESC" (I swore I'd never get another phone without a hangup button, but somehow I did). I got a patched version of ConnectBot that lets me use the useless Smiley button as a CTRL key, but other apps don't fare nearly as well. If I'm lucky, maybe

6. Interactive indicators. On the Pre, you could swipe down on the indicator bar to get the date, which wifi network you were connected to, etc. Alarms showed up as notifications, which was annoying at times because of the screen space used but often useful. On Android, wifi and alarm states are reported in the indicators, but to see what alarm is set or which network you're on, you have to go into settings menus, sometimes more than one level deep.

7. As others have noted, there's no OS-level screenshot facility, no way to silence the phone without turning on the screen (but at least I haven't had an alarm go off in the movie theater because WebOS alarms defaulted to not respecting silent mode),

There are so many things I like better on the Epic, even without having rooted it, that it seems almost silly to bring up these minor downsides. For example, just being able to run Firefox (and be able to scroll overflow: auto divs and iframes that seem to be used on more and more sites these days) makes my Epic twice the web browsing device my Pre was, and Android's voice recognition does a way better job than any of my PCs ever did without having to train it. But it hasn't been a 100% smooth transition. No doubt other power users have had their own issues to deal with, but I'm glad I got out of the WebOS downward spiral four months before it hit bottom, and I haven't even powered up my Pre since then.

I still hold out hope that HP will release WebOS as free software and allow Google to copy some of their design wins, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[6tr6tr]

One thing to note about synergy that's different (for people coming from WebOS and might be confused as to why it's not working):

* In WebOS, if you have a "john Doe" on Exchange and a "John Doe" in Hotmail and a "John Doe" in your phone contacts (that were added from your last phone), it'll give you one entry in Contacts with all of them linked.

* In Android, although it syncs all those contacts with their servers, it does NOT link them. So you'll get:

"john Doe" - from Exchange
"John Doe" - from Hotmail
"John Doe" - from your phone
"johndoe2@somehwhere.com" - also from Hotmail

If you want to link them, choose one of them in Contacts, hit the "Menu" button (looks like this: http://androidhelps.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Android-Menu-icon.jpg), choose "Edit", then hit the Menu button again and choose "Join" and then find the other contacts (one at a time)

 

[Makinola]

I wish that we could find patches or hacks to boost the google flagship device the nexus s 4g because even though its a great phone some minor improvements could be made to it. As for switching over from webos i find that the device is different but similar, so downloading apps that mimic webos helps the transition

 

[l8whalefr8#AC]

Great thread....

I'm a soon to be webOS refugee. I bought the pixi (OK, it was free), but then the support for the device went away 2 months later. I bought a Touchpad on launch day (which I love).

So apparently I feel like the platform-kiss-of-death.

I dislike iSheeple, and BillyGates ware. So as I'm tiptoeeing into the android waters, this thread will be a huge help.

It seems like finding the right phone will be the biggest challenge. I'm not one for putting a big screen TV in my pocket, but it seems like those are the only ones spec'd. From what I'm reading, there is a cycle about to come out and waving in the IceCream version of android. Is that fact or crap?

I look forward to "homebrewing" the phone a bit too.....

 

[milominderbinde]

Vote in the PreCentral Poll: Are you planning to switch away from webOS?

And then check out the results!

 

[daaknes]

Anyway to get youtube to play in the background?

 

[l8whalefr8#AC]

Oh....what bugaboos do I need to watch out for with android? I mean even if Ghandi, Buddha and Jesus make a partnership to save webOS, I'm still going android....

 

[g090910]

How can I change the icons when I get a email for words... Like forward, reply, etc...

 

[doctorzeph]

I am now the proud owner of an HTC Evo 3D. Sorry to see the demise of WebOS--so sudden. I loved that OS. I miss the card view, but I've quickly gotten the hang of Android.

One major GLITCH I've found has to do with the Android Marketplace. I've had no problems downloading free apps and was even able to buy the Spiderman 3D game app via Sprint account.

However, now when I try to buy PAID APPS in the marketplace, it seems to hang on the "authorizing purchase" screen. Twice I've cancelled purchases within the 15 minute windows to get the refund. After reading that this is a common problem and that I just need to give it more time, I tried again. Now I've been waiting for over 45 minutes for the app to download but it is still showing "authorizing purchase". This is ridiculous. I previously used my credit card to pay for the purchases so I tried billing Sprint this time to see if that would help it go through. No luck. How long should I wait? 24 hours?

I already cleared the Marketplace cache as this was one of the suggestions I read about.

Am I better off just purchasing through Amazon?

 

[doctorzeph]

I just moved my phone to a WiFi deadzone so it went to 3G. Then I just hit 'cancel' then 'purchase' and then it downloaded and installed. Weird. Anyone else experience this?

 

[nightdevil21]

OMG this thread just made it seem so easy to leave WebOS... Dag it! decisoins decisions

 

[johnsonbx]

While I'm very happy with my unrooted Epic, here are a few things I miss from my day-one Pre:

1. The task manager. The writeup at the start of the thread recommends Itching Thumbs, Wave Launcher etc. The thing is, they're all just apps, ... I was really spoiled by the ability to flick back and forth between apps. It makes the long-press-Home switcher feel like Windows 3.1.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I just switched from a Pre Minus to a Photon and it's a better phone in so many ways. But I can't believe how primitive the task manager is. It really DOES feel like Windows 3.1 (or maybe the last version of DOS). At least Win 3.1 had Alt-Tab switching.

Or am I missing something? Is there a way to flip back and forth between open apps as I would in a modern operating system?

I'm not trying to gripe. I think I'll come to like Android a lot but I'm sort of at a loss here.

 

[intelligen]

This is exactly what I was thinking. I just switched from a Pre Minus to a Photon and it's a better phone in so many ways. But I can't believe how primitive the task manager is. It really DOES feel like Windows 3.1 (or maybe the last version of DOS). At least Win 3.1 had Alt-Tab switching.

Or am I missing something? Is there a way to flip back and forth between open apps as I would in a modern operating system?

I'm not trying to gripe. I think I'll come to like Android a lot but I'm sort of at a loss here.

Based on my brief experience with Android and iOS, I think the best we can get directly from the OS is a list of most recently used apps by pressing and holding the Home key. This roughly approximates what you're asking for, but is still a far cry from the awesome task management we've gotten used to on webOS.

Android and iOS both try to hide the complexity of task management from the user. The apps pause and go to the background, and only terminate if the OS determines it needs to free up RAM (unless you use a task killer to forcefully terminate them). Perhaps this behavior is intuitive to someone who's never used a computer before, but I personally find it extremely frustrating.

 

[rlanza1054]

Hi,

I should be on Android by the end of the week with the new Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch.

I'm trying to get my apps lined up.

I know that the first app I will be purchasing is Newsroom.

But now I'm looking for something to download my podcasts automatically like 'drpodder' from WebOS?

Thanks all!

Rob

 

[aviatordoc]

Doing well so far..
The EVO 3D has replaced my pre and have all my stuff going. The last was the AKO (Army Knowledge Online) webmail which was a bear to set up on the pre. On the droid it went just fine and installed the security certs just fine.
I think my Pre will be finally laid to rest.

 

[ajonesma]

Awesome guide! I'd like to see one for iphone to android!

 

[milominderbinde]

...Is there a way to flip back and forth between open apps as I would in a modern operating system?...

Sure, just long-press Home to see your last 8 apps you have used. Tap the one you want to go back to. It will open right when you left off.

With Android you are two clicks away from any of your last 8 apps, no matter what order they are in. Once you get the hang of it, it is hard to go back to shuffling cards around to find the right one.

I have an Android and a Pre. I am dramatically faster switching apps on the Android. You will be too. It is just like going from a manual transmission to an automatic. webOS had you do all the shuffling, moving, and closing. Android will do it for you. Android Multitasking is so simple, you don't even think about it. With Cards, you have to always be thinking about it.

See the Getting Started section on Multitasking for this example.
→ You are listening to tunes and start an Email. A Calendar pop-up says: "Get gift for bday party"
→ The store has it but the price is ridiculous. Use Barcode Scanner to see Best Buy has it on sale.
→ You hear a song & Shazam it to see who it is. You rip an MP3 of it from YouTube.
→ As you drive, you keep getting texts. You use Messaging speech to text to reply.
→ Best Buy tries to charge you full price. You show them their own in-store ad online.
→ You have voice mail. Use Visual Voicemail to hear the party is now at Olive Garden.
→ You get a Facebook that the party now starts at Olive Garden. You reply.
→ You use Voice Actions to say: "Navigate to Olive Garden"
→ At the party, video chat with a friend who's away.
→ Take photos & HD video & post on Facebook. You Bump your number to someone new.
→ Later, you go back to the email and say, "I'll send more tomorrow."