EdJanx
New Member
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!
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!
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