Tips & Tutorials - 4/21 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Apr

Want To Make A Personalized QR Code With An Embedded Image? Esponce Can Help

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Tips & Tutorials

QR codes are finally starting to show up around town, but we've all known about them for some time, right? Well if you want to stay ahead of the curve and keep wowing regular people with your mobile expertise, why not start adding images to your QR codes? Esponce is a company that's in the business of selling QR code tracking and marketing, but part of the service is freely available, and you can use it to really spice up your QR codes.

The web tool provided by Esponce relies on the fact that some of the lines in a QR code don't actually contain the information needed to decode it.

Mar

[Quick Tip] Swipe Sideways Across The Notification Bar To Control Screen Brightness In TouchWiz, CyanogenMod, And AOKP Based ROMs

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Tips & Tutorials

Yesterday, a great thread titled Share One Awesome Tip or Trick You Do With Your Android Phone, I'll Start... popped up on Reddit, and thinking I would be already aware of all the little tricks, I almost ignored it. By the end of the day, seeing over 100 comments piqued my curiosity, so I checked it out.

To my dismay, among all the great tips, I found one, courtesy of kennansoft, that somehow evaded me all along - and it was available in my own stock Epic 4G Touch Galaxy S II ROM of all things.

The tip itself is very simple - if you turn off auto-brightness, you can just place your finger on the notification area (as you can see in red below) and swipe it left and right to control brightness.

Dec

[Update: Now With ICS Source] Gold For Android Developers: Add AOSP Source Code To Eclipse With The "Android Sources" Plugin

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Cupcake 1.5, Development, Donut 1.6, Eclair 2.1, Froyo 2.2, Gingerbread 2.3, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Tips & Tutorials

As an Android developer, the first thing I do when I set up Eclipse with ADT on a new machine is hunt down the Android source for the API level I'm working on.

Earlier this month, I added a request for Android 4.0 source to be added to the plugin, and I'm pleased to report that the plugin maintainer just added it to the latest version.

Honeycomb sources are being worked on.

Note: If you already have the plugin installed, you'll need to re-install for this addition to show up.

Developers should understand what I'm talking about, but for the rest of you - this priceless little addition to our development process means whenever we want to see just what exactly Android is doing at a certain point in our programs, we can actually take a peek.

Nov

PSA: No, This Is Not MSN 2012, Angry Birds 2, Or Modern Warfare 3 For Android - What You Can Do If You See Malware In The Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Apps/Games, Tips & Tutorials

In my continuous hunt for new apps, I sometimes run into such obvious malware/crapware that it causes an immediate virtual gag reflex. Sometimes, however, this malware is cleverly disguised and to an unsuspecting user it may seem legitimate.

Here, have a look at what I found today:

If you briefly scanned this page, you may have missed the fact that the publisher's name is MicrosDft Corporation (in all caps), or that it's requesting a permission to directly dial phone numbers without your intervention, or that the website in the listing is msM.com.

Thankfully, the amount of 1-star user reviews is now starting to look alarming, but that wouldn't have been the case if you saw it right as it came out.

Nov

Tip: Is Your Android Market App Loading Slowly, Especially On Wi-Fi? Give This Fix A Try

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Applications, Tips & Tutorials

The intrepid folks over at XDA are always tinkering away to try and make using your Android device a better experience. And a few weeks ago, one of them (namely, temasek) found that the Android Market has some issues trying to resolve DNS servers when your device is connected over Wi-Fi. This can cause the Market to load slowly, and it's definitely something I've experienced on my own phone.

The solution? A popular app called Set DNS (note: root is required), which forces your phone or tablet to use a particular name server when connecting to the web, may speed up load times over Wi-Fi.

Oct

Get The New ICS Font Roboto On Your Android Device Right Now

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Applications, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Tips & Tutorials

Today's Ice Cream Sandwich announcement yielded a number of exciting enhancements, but not quite as distinctive as the new font Roboto. Indeed during the keynote, the presenter spent an inordinate amount of time expounding the virtues of this font. Roboto is a sans-serif font with characters that have a pleasing roundness, and are spaced evenly, making e-mails, clocks, and menus easy on the eyes, and, in the words of one presenter, "a pleasure to read".

Unfortunately, as the font comes with the new OS, the majority of Android users will not be able to experience Roboto until their devices are upgraded to Android 4.0.

Oct

Device Frame Generator Allows You To Drop Screenshots Into Actual Android Device Frames, Giving Beautiful, Polished Results

Posted by Liam Spradlin in News, Tips & Tutorials

Roman Nurik, an Android engineer, recently gave the Android Asset Studio an awesome new tool that allows users to create gorgeous, high-res PNG images of any screenshot framed by actual press asset photos of Android devices.

The resulting images are, well, pretty. Gone are the days when developers or designers have to spend time in Photoshop layering up images and fabricating gloss, just to get an appealing graphic to show an app in action. Heck, even if you aren't a developer, this tool is still fun to play around with.

At the moment the selection of device frames is limited to the Nexus One, Nexus S, and Motorola Xoom, but it sounds as though more devices will be coming soon.

Sep

Tip: App Icon Pinching In GO Launcher EX - Can Your Launcher Do This?

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Tips & Tutorials, Videos

As a fan of first Launcher Pro Plus, then ADW EX, and now GO Launcher EX (which is absolutely free, by the way), I wanted to show you guys a recent addition to the latter that made it stand out from the rest of the pack even more than it already does. Lately, LPP hasn't given me any reasons to continue using it whatsoever - the app seems to have been abandoned by Fede, and ADW EX, while a very worthy opponent, also fell victim to GO team's fine offering.

Imagine that you want to organize your busy homescreen and swap some icons around.

Sep

Updated: Experiencing Issues After Updating Your Sprint LG Optimus S To Gingerbread? Here Are Some Potential Workarounds

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in LG, News, Optimus S, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: September 28th, 2011

On September 14, Sprint revealed that an update to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) was rolling out for the LG Optimus S. Seems like a good thing, right? Not so fast, actually - it turns out there are some fairly substantial bugs that weren't worked out before rolling out the update. Sprint is aware of the keyboard issue but has yet to acknowledge the other problems users seem to be experiencing, such as issues charging and using USB storage.

Update: Sprint pulled the Gingerbread update for the time being.

We've already had over 150 comments relating to the update, issues, and potential fixes, so I thought it would be a good idea to compile some of the suggestions into a post.

Sep

Download: Android 2.3.7 (GWK74) With Google Wallet For The Nexus S 4G

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, News, Nexus S 4G (Crespo4g), Samsung, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

WARNING: This file is only for the Sprint Nexus S 4G. To flash the update, the phone must be stock - that means no custom ROMs. Rooted handsets are OK, though this might reset root permissions (you just need to re-root). We've included a link to a full, flashable ROM which will probably require a wipe, as well.

If you find yourself still without the Android 2.3.7 (GWK74) update for your Sprint Nexus S 4G, have no fear - we're here to help. Thanks to Omar over on Google+, we've got a direct link to the update.zip from Google themselves.