Back on a Droid again with all sorts of new questions

[bocabean]

It has been about three years since my first Droid. Yesterday, I took the leap of faith and retired my Blackberry with the purchase of the Razr Maxx. After spending a great deal of time into the wee hours of the morning, I am having some flashbacks to why I gave up the first Droid.

Email. I have an imap account set up through GoDaddy. It is my primary email account. Needless to say, that all email on that account should be "pushed". However in order to get the mail on the phone, I have to go into email and then hit the sync button to get everything to download. What are the proper settings for the emails to automatically download with notifications? I know that it sounds basic, but I must have set something wrong.

I have seen various discussions about "bloatware" for all of the "wonderful" apps that come pre-installed. I am not looking to start "rooting" or doing anything that might impact my warranty after less than 24 hours of ownership, however what can be done to at least park these apps elsewhere.

If I want the "Facebook" photos to not show up on my menus, can I make that go away as well?

Which forum would be the most appropriate one to post further questions about the "getting started stuff" as I go along. I want to make this a positive experience and I want to stop listening to the "shoulda got an iphone" comments.

Thanks

 

[Sydman]

For the email check this link...

Android: Setting up Email | Go Daddy Help | Go Daddy Support

If you click on the screen by screen setup I think on screen 8 it asks how often you want to check for emails, make sure that is push. Also the default email client on Android has been known to have problem, a lot of people recommend K9 from the Play Store.

For the bloatware you can only hide it from the APP drawer until you root then you can freeze them so they are not running. I am rooted and don't even have stuff frozen, this phone has so much storage and is so fast that it is almost unnecessary.

Can't help you with FB because I don't use it, I just go to the mobile site so it won't integrate with my phone. Don't go to the dark side it is better over here.

 

[NoLimit]

I have seen various discussions about "bloatware" for all of the "wonderful" apps that come pre-installed. I am not looking to start "rooting" or doing anything that might impact my warranty after less than 24 hours of ownership, however what can be done to at least park these apps elsewhere.

You can hide the apps in the app launcher by long pressing the icon and selecting hide.

 

[bryeds]

Going from blackberry to android is a huge leap, i can't stress enough that you need to give it time to get used to it, but in the end, you'll love it. blackberry is a rock solid email/messaging device, but thats about it. It gives you SO MANY customization options for they way you interact with messages and notifications, Android removes those, BUT it gives you the ability to actually use and enjoy your phone throughweb browsing, apps, books, music, etc.

in your contacts you'll see alot of them duplicating or being merged, go to contacts, hit the menu, go to display options, and turn off the facebook contacts. This will hide the duplicate contacts information the facebook app creates. I dont' think it'll remove the pictures though, you may need to remove it for each person

 

[TisMyDroid]

in your contacts you'll see alot of them duplicating or being merged, go to contacts, hit the menu, go to display options, and turn off the facebook contacts. This will hide the duplicate contacts information the facebook app creates. I dont' think it'll remove the pictures though, you may need to remove it for each person

Wow, thank you! I did not know that and have tried several things to get rid of my duplicate contacts. This worked seamlessly!

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[bryeds]

Wow, thank you! I did not know that and have tried several things to get rid of my duplicate contacts. This worked seamlessly!

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Great! There is also a function motorola built into the phone that will merge similar contacts. For instance, if you have mr. smith, 111 a st, somewhere USA and a Mrs. Smith at the same address, same home number and different cell number, it may marger them into a contact called Mr & Mrs. Smith. It also does this with some of the facebook contacts. if you notice it, open the contact for editing, hit the menu, then hit separate - this will put them back as you had them originally. You can also join contacts - if you wanted Mr & Mrs Smith, open Mr Smith, hit menu, then hit join and select the contact to merge with. The caveat to this is that when you look at a "Joined" contact on your phone, it'll only look that way on the phone, not in your contacts in gmail or outlook, this is a function built into the phone by Motorola.

 

[bryeds]

One more note about the display options in contacts, you'll see twitter, youmail and outlook categories there (if you are using exchange) - you can pick and choose which to show/hide. When I was using youmail for instance, it would download all the contacts that had been uploaded to the service, causing the pictures of my contacts to be lost. Twitter and facebook both add additional people to the contact list. It can get really cluttered in there after a while, so you can use it to filter what is shown and/or hidden. When you use exchange email it adds all your contacts folders along with categories and suggested contacts, for some users it can cause massive duplication.

 

[TisMyDroid]

Thank you so much. When I went in there (thanks to your great advice) I did notice all the different accounts and unchecked them all except for my google. But I did not know about all the merge and unmerge features. This is awesome! Thanks again! I'm keeping you tuned in, lol!

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[bocabean]

Thought that I would check back in on the string that I started. Day 3 now (I won't give anymore daily updates, I promise) and I am becoming much more accustomed to the phone. I think that the Android platform has improved alot since I last used it three years ago. I am, however, getting a bit nervous about a couple of things. The first is that I am now noticing that I when I am in the middle of an app (it can be any of them), the screen will suddenly shut down and I have to press the side button and go through the pattern unlock again.

I was able to successfully reinstall my Docs to Go from three years ago, as well as a few other apps. That was great! I also went ahead and spent the $ to install DejaOffice to work in conjunction with CompanionLink. I had found that for some reason, the contacts that had loaded originally from Gmail were not quite the same as those in my Outlook account. Prior to purchasing the phone (earlier in the same day), I had purged all of my Gmail contacts and then reloaded them with a fresh export from my Outlook account. One would think that they should have been a perfect match, but they were not. So today I wiped out the Gmail contacts again, as well as what was on the device prior to installing DejaOffice.

Now everything is perfect. The tech support guys at CompanionLink were also quite helpful.

Back to enjoying my new phone. Next project-recovering my music from the Blackberry and iTunes.

 

[TisMyDroid]

Thought that I would check back in on the string that I started. Day 3 now (I won't give anymore daily updates, I promise) and I am becoming much more accustomed to the phone. I think that the Android platform has improved alot since I last used it three years ago. I am, however, getting a bit nervous about a couple of things. The first is that I am now noticing that I when I am in the middle of an app (it can be any of them), the screen will suddenly shut down and I have to press the side button and go through the pattern unlock again.

You may have already tried this or figured it out but just in case, go to settings, display and you can set how long before the screen times out.

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[bocabean]

I did do that and it was set for 2 minutes, however my understanding is that the timer should commence from when the phone is sitting idle. Certainly not when someone is in the middle of say typing an email, scrolling through settings for an app, etc. If there is human input taking place on the phone, then the timer should not be running until after theme last input.

I tried setting it to Never timeout and left it there for awhile. Now I have gone back to the 2 minute setting. The phone didn't waste any time in shutting off the screen after the first idle period. The real test will come when I start to use the phone. Interestingly, when I just brought the phone back on from the unlock state, after it went dark, it opened up in LinkedIn, which I wasn't even using today. I'll give the phone the benefit of the doubt and assume that maybe I inadvertently hit that icon before it closed down, but I am reasonably certain that I did not.

I think I will go find a watch with a sweep second hand and time it (not right now as I have more important real life issues, but I will check it out at some point).

 

[TisMyDroid]

Yeah, there is definitely something wrong. The time out should be the time it is sitting idle with no activity happening on the screen. Did you try a restart or quick reboot (hold power button and volume down until it shuts down).

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