.232 experiences with accessories as a daily driver

Now that it looks like we may be close to a soak test (.242), I'd like to share some of my experiences with the Car Dock, Lap Dock, and Standard Dock. I hope others may be able to confirm or deny some potential bugs, and hope lucky soak testers may be able to confirm or deny behavior in their builds.

Standard Dock: Bedside mode stopped working for me at some point. Gets an error that says "Unfortunately, Smart Dock has stopped". I also noticed that the music player doesn't stay in sync with what I was last playing on the stock music player before I docked. Maybe this is just a 'feature', in that it remembers what was last played in the dock, but if so, IMHO that's not a good design.

Lap Dock: I bought this after I upgraded to .232, and I must say I was disappointed. Webtop 3.0 just seems 'clunky' to me, and unfortunately, using the lapdock as a Notebook doesn't work. For example, I wanted to use it to take notes at meetings but the typing is terrible. The cursor moves all over the place and all of a sudden I'm typing within a previous word or a few return carriages below. I also think design / form factor contributes to the typing issue, but I can't even type cleanly when being more cognizant of placement of my right palm (below the thumb) so that it doesn't inadvertently touch the mouse pad.

Car Dock: Also purchased after applying .232, this is my favorite yet most maddeningly buggy accessory. I've been digitizing my music collection and making the Bionic my primary music device. The ICS stock music player is still lacking, and moving it between docked and undocked isn't fluid at all. I rarely just plop it in and have the music transfer to my auto's aux input seamlessly. The library photo art doesn't stay synced without considerable assistance from 3rd party apps. Sometimes I don't see my cover art when docked, sometimes I do. It's never consistent. Also don't know why music lyrics don't appear consistently, but now I'm getting off topic into the *still substandard* stock player (which is the only thing that keeps us below par with an iPhone, for example, why still no ability to override a notification notice without interrupting music playback in 4.0.4?).

Overall, I think that the Car Dock integration with the music player's bad behavior is largely due to the inability to seamlessly switch between Car Dock Mode and undocked. Sometimes I have to try and load it two to three times by taking it out and putting it back in. Sometimes I have to reboot the phone to make it work. Sometimes when it does dock, the audio doesn't output without the considerable fiddling mentioned above.

Through all of those faults, I do like how Android 4's dock interface has been improved. Multiple layers of car dock UI ability coupled with a clean interface make it way nicer than the Gingerbread predecessor. Adding a shortcut to a location is very slow though. You have to press on the space and wait for the application menu to appear, which takes a very long time.

So those who are on .232 please share similar or different experiences. Those on post .232 leaks, please note if you have seen similar behavor, or better yet, see it addressed with the newer leaks, especially the .242 crowd!

 

I noticed that updating Music, instantly broke bedside mode. I reverted to the previous version of Music & that fixed my bedside mode problem.

I really liked the old WebTop 2.0 better than the new 3.0. The UI took a step (or 3) backwards when I "upgraded" to 3.0.

I like PowerAmp (paid version) more than the stock music app. I don't have any problems with it in my car.

I plan on disabling the Car & Bedside modes and trying the old Gingerbread versions (I liked them both) in the next couple days. There's a post on here somewhere with the apk files.

 

Thanks for the observations. Did you happen to notice if the car dock accommodates portrait mode, especially for navigation? Makes me crazy how the GB car dock wants to do landscape only.

 

Just my input, I've never liked the stock music app in any android software. I think 2 weeks after I got my OG I downloaded PowerAMP and soon after bought the paid version and never went back.

 

I use the default one. Because it's designed for your phone

Sent from my DROID BIONIC

 

The .232 car dock will work in either orientation I've used both just messing around seeing which one I like better.

 

Yep. Portrait mode is handled nicely.

 

YAY!! Thanks to both of you

 

Per the lap dock: double touch the white LED on the touch pad to avoid accidentally clicking around on the screen. I use a wireless mouse and it makes the whole experience about a thousand times better. Laptop replacement (for me) for sure.

Per the car dock: use Google Play Music and uninstall the car mode app entirely. I just use the Google music widget on my lock screen or home screen rather than waiting for the useless car mode app to load. Instant music/navigation/etc through my car stereo every time I get in the car. This is actually how I did it in GB as well. I haven't listened to the radio since I bought the bionic a year ago.

For reference, I've been on 232 since it leaked and am typing this out on it now.

I've also attached a screenshot of my lock screen so you can see what I mean when I talk about the Google music widget. I use the car dock in landscape so when it's in the dock everything in this screenshot is turned 90 degrees.

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Also, about webtop 3.0:
I hated it at first. The desktopish environment in 2.0 is what made the lapdock so appealing and useable in the first place.
I realize now that webtop 3.0 is far superior in terms of capability and ESPECIALLY stability, as I'm sure you're aware. From a capability standpoint, I simply use two browsers, one for webtop and one for phone. I use dolphin browser in the lapdock because it uses flash and I can set it to always display web pages as if I were using a desktop computer. Widgets on the home screens give me information at-a-glance in a way that blew my mind the first time I used it, and continues to do so; the calendar, Gmail, clock, and myriad other widgets are infinitely useful in 3.0.
For regular phone mode web browsing I use Chrome cause it's flippin awesome.

Again, a wireless mouse will take your lapdock experience to the next level.

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Broid how did you get your lock screen to look like that? I would love to have my weather site up on it and Pandora widget as well if possible

 

My guess would be with WidgetLocker.

 

Yup

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Sweet thanks

 

Indeed it is widgetlocker. One of my most favorite apps

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