The world as frankps sees it!
Mobile phones
Articles that I have written about various mobile phones, their operating systems and software.
HaxSync – Android Facebook Sync
1 week ago
People in Android
With Android 4.0 Google is taking a step in the right direction updating the contact manager into the new and improved “People” app. The biggest change is a set of APIs that integrates Android with social networks. This is important as you can then let your contacts maintain their own contact information, and you will then always have updated information available on your phone.
The second change is the most visuale one, as the user interface has also been completely revamped and viewing contacts has now become a much more visual experience. The People app will pull high resolution images of all your contacts straight from their Google+ account and display them in the contact list and in the in-call background. It seems that there is now yet another incentive to move your social circle over to Google+.
According to the API Overview of ICS when a new photo is pushed to a contact, “the system processes it into both a 96×96 thumbnail (as it has previously) and a 256×256 “display photo” that’s stored in a new file-based photo store”. Your contacts information is now also available to you no matter which app you are in. So, if you are in Gmail, viewing an email from your contact, you can click on their image to reply to the contact through any available channel, including through SMS, social networks and IM.
The first time I saw the new app demoed I went WOW, but when I got the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone in my hands I went BAH! It is great to get your contacts to update information about themselves through their social profiles. But, why did Google have to limit the pull of high resolution images from Google+. Why doesn’t Google Contacts (the address book for Gmail) support high resolution images? Do you have friends actively using Google+? I don’t… So untill yesterday I had blurry pictures covering half of the screen when I ever was using People on my phone. A 96x96px thumbnail for incoming calls wasn’t pretty on incoming calls, and reminded me more of a C64 game.
A third improvement in People is that you can see your contact’s last updates on social networks, both Google+ and Twitter are supported out of the box. So what about Facebook, Google’s biggest competitor? Luckily, Google has made a plugin architecture available and there is already a third party solution available for you!
HaxSync – The Missing Facebook Integration
I have found an application that more or less solve my problem. HaxSync allows you to sync your Facebook friends with your Android 4.0 device. The sync is complete, with both status-updates and high resolution contact images in the People App! I bought the app within seconds and most of my contacts are now shown with beautiful high resolution images. But Google should integrate their services better ways…
How to configure HaxSync
- Install the official Facebook App.
- Go to System Settings → Accounts & Sync (Android Settings, not Facebook App Settings).
- Click “Add Account” → HaxSync.
- Click “Authorize HaxSync”.
- Confirm Authorization
- Wait for HaxSync to finish syncing.
- You should now see your Facebook contacts in the Android People app.
HTC Mozart and HD7 get tethering
02 months ago
The possibility of using your Windows Phone as a mobile hotspot (accesspoint) was originally a function reserved for new Mango units. This week HTC changed that when releasing an update for HTC HD7 og Mozart. I have the Mozart model and was soon to update my phone. The update is only through Zune on your PC.
With internet sharing (tethering) you can share your internet connection with up to 5 guest units, and the sharing is automatically getting disabled after a few minutes of inactivity so that you can save the battery life on your phone.
Remember to not use internet sharing when abroad (so called roaming). It can fast get very expensive!
internet sharing is found under Settings on your phone. The functionality is set up with a predefined password that I recommend you to change under setup. You can also change the broadcast name if you want to, but I recommend you to keep WPA2 as the security type for the wireless connection.
Official Twitter client finally Windows Phone 7 Mango ready
02 months ago
One of the applications that I have been missing when upgrading to Mango and starting to use my primary Live account (the one registered with an address in Norway). The Twitter client, along with Flickr and GoWalla, was not available in the Norwegian Marketplace. As of yesterday, Twitter is updated to support Mango and now available worldwide in Marketplace.
Other then fast-app switching, I have not find any new features (no Live Tile or push notifications). The version number has only gone from 1.13944.31667 to version 1.14329.14900.
Unlocking my Windows Phone 7 Mango
03 months ago
I have followed the developers behind ChevronWP7 closely, as I want to be able to do screenshots for the support pages that I have done for Windows Phone 7 at work.
This weekend ChevronWP7 Labs went live. It’s an inexpensive unlocking tool for Windows Phone for enthusiast developers. Before ChewronWP7 labs went live developers would need to pay for Microsoft’s expensive ($99 per year) developer program, even to run self-made apps on a physical device. Enthusiast developers only other option were to run self-made apps in an emulator. But ChevronWP7 Labs developers can unlock their phones for only $9. And that is not an annual fee! With my phone unlocked, I can also run homebrew apps made by others. I plan to run at least one such app, Screen Capture v3.
ChevronWP7 Labs isn’t jailbreaking a Windows Phone, as so many blogs have miscommunicated the past few days. ChevronWP7 is approved by Microsoft, the tool even makes use of the Live account that you have registered for use with your phone and Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. A jailbreak, like on iPhone, would give you unfettered root access to the device. ChewronWP7 on the other hand, enable developers to write code for the device without sacrificing the IP protection that Microsoft has put in place.
I unlocked my device one of the first days the tool was available and had to que up for the service. Bugs were found and service was closed down for a few hours. Problems got fixed and new unlocking tools published and then the Azure cloud service went down. They ran in to some SQL problems. The phone was connected to the PC for most of Saturday eve and the following night, but the service was down the whole Sunday and I could start all over again when the service got up around noon on Monday. But don’t get scarred, the unlocking process is really easy, at least for the enduser. The only problem I run in to, was that I didn’t have a unique name for the device. Somebody had already used HTC Mozart. Appearently the device name is registered at Microsoft.
After having opened the phone, I installed the screenshot tool from the WPXAP Forum, through the Application Deployment tool that came with the Windows Phone Developer SDK:
Updated my Windows Phone 7
011 months ago
Microsoft has just released their first update for Windows Phone 7, but this first update is sadly just a smaller infrastructure update that will help future updates. The update is only available through Zune for Windows and Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac. Linux users are as always left out in the cold… (*lol). The whole upgrade process took me about 7-8 minutes, and prior to the installation, a backup was made of the phone.
The second update will be the update you’ve probably been reading about or perhaps waiting for, codenamed “NoDonuts” (or just “NoDo”). This update will contain copy & paste functionality, improved Marketplace search and CDMA support. Sadly Microsoft has yet to announce when this update will be available.
For more information about this first update, please visit the official Windows Phone 7 blog and the newly created Windows Phone update history page.