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Jan

[Quick Look] RingDimmer Automatically Adjusts Ringtone Volume Based On Ambient Sound, Saves Users From Embarrassing Disruptions

Posted by Liam Spradlin in App Reviews, Applications, News

Do you find yourself constantly adjusting the volume of your phone's ringtone, or wishing that the annoying buzz of your phone's vibration could be toned down a little? Looking to solve all of your ringtone/vibration woes (while making sure you don't miss a call), Michael Pardo has introduced RingDimmer to the Android Market. The app adjusts vibration intensity and ringer volume based on ambient noise, ensuring that you never miss a call, and never have to be disrupted by an inappropriately loud ring tone.

The first thing users will notice about RingDimmer is its simple interface. When I say simple, ...

Nov

[Download] Latest Android Wi-Fi Tether 3.1 Update Finally Brings Inactivity Shutdown, Stops Turning Off Bluetooth On Start

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

In the last couple of days, I've been closely interacting with Harald Mueller, the developer behind Android Wi-Fi Tether for root users, a free and open source tethering app for Android. Android Wi-Fi Tether is pretty much a de-facto app when when it comes to tethering on Android devices that have native Wi-Fi tethering disabled (thanks, carriers), and is what I consider one of the most important apps in our supposedly open ecosystem.

In my correspondence with Harald, I have brought up 2 specific issues that have been on my mind for a while now, and to my surprise, ...

Aug

LiveSorter Eases The Process Of Sorting Apps - RIP, Manually Maintained Folders

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

With somewhere around 200 apps on my phone at any given time, it can be a pain to scroll through all of them to find what I'm looking for. Categorizing apps into handy folders can also be time-consuming. Fazik Logic takes the concept of sorting your apps one step further however with LiveSorter, a new app that automatically sorts installed applications into appropriate categories.

Adding to the list of LiveSorter's benefits, it has relatively no resource drain as it only wakes when a new app is installed and needs to be sorted. At the moment the app only recognizes apps ...

Nov

For Android Developers: Next Version Of Eclipse ADT To Include Auto Formatting Of XML

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Dev, Gingerbread 2.3, News

I was browsing the Android commit tree, as I like to do at 3:20am sometimes, and I just saw a new commit by Tor Norbye with the following description that made my heart skip a beat: "Add autoformatting of XML." This little update may not mean much to the regular folks, but to Android developers, like myself, this has been a long requested feature.

About a year ago, I wrote this article: Auto Formatting Android XML Files With Eclipse, which described how easy it is to achieve uniform, formatted XML files in Eclipse while doing Android development. Since XML ...

Oct

Tip: Set Up Automatic Scheduled Nandroid Backups Using ROM Manager

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Mods, Tips

This article is aimed at rooted Android users using ROM Manager - if you are one of them, you should definitely consider looking into it; otherwise move right along, as this info will not apply to you. To see what ROM Manager can do for you, check out our guides here:

When was the last time you did a Nandroid backup? Was it this week? This month? Three months ...

Oct

SmartSMSVibrate Automates Your SMS Notification Settings

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Apps/Games

Over at the bustling hivemind of xda-developers, poster Carsten4207 has just published his first app to the Market, and it's one with a neat little trick. The app, when enabled, uses the proximity sensor to determine whether your phone is in your pocket/face-down or facing up on a surface. You can then decide whether or not you want your phone to vibrate for incoming SMS messages depending on the situation.

The application does not poll constantly, instead tapping into your SMS state. Additionally, the app is only activated when a message is received, limiting the impact on battery life....

Sep

New AndroidPolice.com Feature: Instant QR Magic - Hover On Any Link In Any Post To Get The Corresponding QR Code [+Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Off-Topic, Tips

Admit it - QR codes are useful. And cool. They allow you to instantly get any bit of information, most frequently browser or Market urls, onto your phone - all you have to do is download the Barcode Scanner app from the Market (or any other QR reader) and scan the QR image.

Tutorial: Turn any url into a QR code from within your browser in just a few seconds.

But What About Chrome2Phone?

Chrome2Phone (or FoxToPhone) aims to make it even easier to pass information like this around but consider this:

Chrome2Phone functionality is only available on

...

Sep

Change Keyboard Automatically With Orientation, Using KeyboardManager [Root][Tutorial]

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Tutorials

One of the more obvious settings missing from Android is the ability to use one keyboard, say Swype, in portrait orientation, and then automatically switch to another keyboard when the phone is in landscape.

This feature has been oft-requested, and is something that is strangely missing from many mobile OSes. Well, the clever clogs over at the XDA-Developers Nexus One forum have managed to figure it out with a little workaround.

However, the hack only works for those on rooted phones with access to the /system partition as Read-Write. Thankfully that is most phones, nowadays. In the words ...

Aug

[App Of The Week + Giveaway] Tasker: Automate Your Android + 20 Free Tasker Licenses (£3.99 Each)

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Applications, Contests / Giveaways, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Have you ever wished your phone would just automatically silence itself while you're at work? Or maybe that it would immediately start Pandora when you plug in your headphones? Wish no longer: Tasker's got you covered.

This contest is now over. We have selected the winners - see if you are one of them towards the bottom of the page.

Tasker's goal is to automate (you guessed it) tasks on your Android device. This may sound a little trivial at first blush. But make no mistake, Tasker is anything but a trivial application. In fact, I can honestly say that ...

Nov

Auto Formatting Android XML Files With Eclipse

Posted by Android Police Team in Dev, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: April 16th, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

In this article I will describe the problem I've had with Eclipse's handling of XML file formatting as well as the best way to fix it.

I use Eclipse to do my Android development for a few reasons:

it's the only IDE fully supported by the Android dev team
it has a visual Layout/Resources builder that transforms XML files into corresponding visual representations
it's free and open source
I've

...