Actually, a refresh of my old phone. For the last month, the battery in my T-Mobile G1 has been really flaky. It didn’t hold a charge for long and would shut down the phone if I was using some power-draining apps. Then Cyanogen released version 5 of his cyanogen mod (Android 2.1) but I couldn’t install it because I didn’t think my battery would last through the update process. Finally I had enough and ordered a new battery. I found a deal on ebay for two more powerful batteries for only $9.19, with free shipping. How can you beat that? Yesterday they arrived in the mail and I charged one of them up to full. Then I went through the update process to install the latest and greatest cyanogenmod and am now up and running with Android 2.1. It’s so fast and smooth. I think it’s extra snappy because I wiped the phone during the upgrade process and installed the apps from scratch. Probably cleaned up a lot of crap. Everything is running nicely and it’s like I have a new phone. Too bad the update didn’t give the phone a 3.5mm headphone jack, but I’m used to it.

Just a snapshot of my day

I was reading Gina Trapani’s Smarterware site and she posted her list of apps on her Android phone. I thought I’d do the same. So here it is:

Some hilariously awful video game voice acting.

I found this idea from Derek Powazek’s blog via another blog I follow (sorry I can’t remember which one). You basically set up a smart playlist in iTunes and specify the dates. My “The High School Years” playlist is not very interesting (no really embarrasing songs), and I find that I actually listen to a lot of the songs up to this day. I guess I like the oldies! Lots of English Beat, Cocteau Twins, Everything But The Girl, The Police, Bowie, and Bauhaus. Maybe some of the new wave stuff is a little embarrassing, but whatever! And our iTunes library includes Mariko’s cd’s as well, so I see all the music she listened to during those same years. She really was nuts about Toshiki Kadomatsu! Anyways, try out a smart playlist like this and see if you can dig up some old songs that you might have forgotten about.

One of the strengths of the Android OS is its ability to run apps in the background. However, this can also be a weakness because sometimes you can feel the OS bogging down after you have been using it a while. It’s supposed to automatically shut processes down as needed, but it doesn’t always do a great job. That’s where the task manager app Close Everything 2 comes in. This app will basically shut down any processes and services that you don’t want running any more. To use, just click the icon to launch it.

You’ll then be presented with a list of running apps. From here, you can choose to close everything in the list, or you can tap an individual app to close it, or select multiple apps to close using the checkboxes. One really nice thing about Close Everything 2 is that you can choose to exclude certain services from being closed. Just long-press on a service in the list to set it as excluded. It’s a good idea to exclude things like weather widgets, otherwise their auto-refresh will be disabled.

Finally, there is a Close Everything 2 widget that you can put on your desktop. It indicates the number of apps running in the background (that aren’t on the exclusion list) and you can just tap the icon to shut down the background processes. Whenever I feel that my phone is running a little sluggishly, I just tap the widget and voila, my phone is running at top speed again!

Close Everything 2 at AndroLib

For this week, the wallpaper on my phone for the daytime hours is an illustration of the anime “One Piece”.

Problem: My Android phone’s screen dims after a set period of time. I am able to keep the phone from sleeping when it’s plugged into the charger, but still, after a set amount of time, the dimming happens. This is an annoyance when I have the GPS on in the car. If I want to undim the screen, I need to tap on the screen which will move the map (and disable the My Location centering). Or, I can tap on one of the zoom buttons, but then I have to click on the other zoom button.

Solution: KeepScreen Lite. What this app does is keep your screen from dimming when certain apps are running. It’s just what I needed!

After you install KeepScreen Lite, open it and select Applications.

Just click on the apps (max. of 2 at this time) that you want to link to KeepScreen Lite. I selected Google Maps and My Tracks (sometimes I like to see the live GPS stats like speed, distance, elevation, etc.). After saving the settings, click on Start/Stop Service. This toggle persists even if you turn off your phone.

When you are using an app that is linked to the KeepScreen Lite service, you will see a little desklamp icon in the status bar to show you that it is active. It works great. Highly recommended.

To get this app, just head to the Market on your Android phone and search for KeepScreen Lite or go to the app page at Androlib.com and point your camera at the QR code using Barcode Scanner.

Here’s a screenshot of the current wallpaper on my G1. It’s from the upcoming MMORPG from NCsoft called Aion. I haven’t played the game yet, but the artwork is very cool. They have a bunch of other wallpaper at their website and all of them are really nice!