Ubuntucat

I just got my third Android phone. You can read about my previous experiences: T-Mobile MyTouch 3G First Impressions, Why people get Nexus phones: I rooted my MyTouch 4G after less than one day

This time, I got a Nexus phone—the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I’m just going to list the positives and negatives. These are positives and negatives for me. There may be things you care about that I don’t and things I care about that you don’t. Either way, you may find these lists useful in some way.

Positives

• Swipe-away notifications.
• Swipe-away recent apps list.
• Software buttons.
• Beautiful screen.
• Built-in screenshot ability without root (volume down button and power button together).
• Verizon LTE network.
• I have a Tasker profile that’s a tweaked version of what Juice Defender does. It’s either near-instant or only one second to reconnect when the screen turns back on.
• No shutter lag on camera.
• Camera photo quality better than most reviews would have you believe.
• Speaker is audible, despite what negative reviews say.
• No need to root to get vanilla Android.
• Will get updates to new version of Android before other phone models.
• Not much bloatware on here, but Verizon managed to squeeze a couple of useless apps on. With Ice Cream Sandwich, you can disable these apps even if you can’t uninstall them.

Negatives

• Headphones are noise-reducing ones, which are really uncomfortable for me. I know others prefer these. And I found an extra set of old headphones I can use instead.
• Autorotate is slow.
• The Android File Transfer app for Mac OS X needs the phone to be unlocked (makes sense, but confusing before you know it), and can transfer only one folder at a time from Finder.
• Even though speakers are audible, they are not loud, so you will have to crank them up to the max volume to get decent sound.
• Facial recognition to unlock takes too long. It has to load in a second or two before it even tries to recognize your face.
• Battery life is not good. The screen is huge, and in the battery stats it easily takes up more than 50% of the battery use. Fortunately I can make it through the whole day using my pseudo–Juice Defender profile in Tasker. I also bought an extra battery from Verizon for $20.
• The menu soft key (which is now three dots) is sometimes at the top of the screen and sometimes at the bottom of the screen.
• Keyboard autosuggestions is worse than the Gingerbread keyboard, which was awesome. I used to get four or five autosuggestions. Now I get only three and have to long-press on one to get more.
• Now that file transfer is MTP, I can’t use DoubleTwist as I normally would. Luckily, I could copy a ton of music and then use the AirSync plugin to finish the rest of the sync wirelessly. I understand why Google moved from MSC to MTP, but it’s also screwed things up a bit.
• The screen is large, which is beautiful, but it also means I can’t do one-handed WordFeud/Words with Friends while on the bus.
• If you use the slide-to-unlock unlock method, there’s no way to disable the haptic feedback on it.

Overall, despite all the cons, I love this phone. Ice Cream Sandwich has a beautiful UI, which is a joy to use. The phone is fast. And Verizon’s LTE is wonderful.

TouchNooter
The Nook Simple Touch is an excellent e-reader, and I like that Barnes and Noble keeps it that way. The e-ink screen and simple form factor make it perfect for reading books. That said, just for curiosity’s sake, I dove in and rooted the thing.

TouchNooter is an amazing script that automates the rooting process.

Getting it to work
Unfortunately, I had trouble reading directions, so it took me a long time to root. I kept dding the .zip file instead of unzipping it first and then dding the resulting unzipped .img file instead.

After I did that, I also realized that the wireless was off on my Nook, which meant I couldn’t follow the directions and sign in right away, which meant there was some weird bug with signing into the Android Market (I kept getting an error message about the network connection, even after I turned on wireless). I did quite a bit of Google searching. Some people recommended pushing a new Vending.apk file to the Nook via adb, but I couldn’t get adb to recognize the device, even after enabling USB debugging. Turned out the solution I stumbled upon that worked was just adding a second Google account to Gmail. Once I did that, I could magically sign into the Market app with my regular Google account.

e-ink-friendly Apps
There were some apps that quite obviously couldn’t run well on an e-ink screen with a slow processor and little RAM. Others surprised me. I had Google Translate, Flixster Movies, Google Books (once I tried to actually read a book), and Facebook crash or hang on me. Others that I thought would be problematic ended up being fine (Facebook can’t load, but Twitter and Google Plus work all right).

Apps that are definitely great for a rooted Nook are ES File Explorer, Gmail, Opera Mobile, Terminal Emulator, WordFeud, and Words with Friends. The latter two are especially good, since the Nook offers a bigger screen than most phones, and it also doesn’t go to screensaver for five minutes (by default), so you have plenty of time to consider your moves before playing them.

Other tweaks
Swiping left to right isn’t terrible smooth on an e-ink display, so I removed all but one screens on my ADW Launcher. I plopped a power widget on the home screen to toggle wireless on and off easily.

I also set hardware buttons (the top-left for the Back button, the top-right for the Menu button, the Nook key for regular ADW home instead of the Barnes and Noble home—otherwise you get stuck in the Barnes and Noble interface and can’t get back to ADW without rebooting).

Gallery wouldn’t recognize photos off my MicroSD card, so I used ES File Explorer to find my screensaver photo (of my cat) and then used the ES File Explorer image viewer to set that photo as my wallpaper in ADW.

Belated Caveat
If you’ve never rooted an Android device before, most of what I’ve just said will just sound like gobbledygook, but I wish someone else had written all that. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.

In response to My Favorite Android App: Tasker, one reader asked how I set up my battery conserving profiles. These are totally a work in progress (and if someone has suggestions for how to streamline them, I'm open to hearing people's thoughts).

Terminology

These are not official names for the icons. These are just what I'm calling them.

This is what I'm calling check.

This is what I'm calling X.

This is what I'm calling plus.

This is what I'm calling bolt.

And this is what I'm calling tag.

I'd also like to throw in a disclaimer here that I am not trying to replicate the exact behavior of Juice Defender. I just found with JD that the bulk of the savings was in turning off data when the screen is off, so this is a modification of that.

User-defined global variables

I'm not a programmer, but I do understand some basics of how to use variables, and I think the way I use these I actually had to define them. (You can find on the Tasker website a list of variables Tasker comes with—that is, ones you don't have to define yourself.)

• Click tag to bring up the Global Variable Editor.
• Click plus and define a new variable as %DATA.
• When prompted for a Variable Value, input on if your mobile data is on and off if your mobile data is off.
• Click check to confirm.
• Click plus again define another new variable as %POWER.
• For the Variable Value, input on if your phone is plugged into a power source (either AC or USB) and off if your phone isn't plugged in.

Data on when screen is on

• Click plus to add a New Profile Name. You can call it whatever you want. I called mine Screen On Data On.
• When prompted for First Context, select Event.
• Select Display.
• Select Display On.
• For Task Selection, select New Task.
• For New Task, you can call it whatever you want. I uncreatively called it Screen On Data On.
• Under Task Edit, you'll see a blue plus above the check. Click that blue plus.
• Select Task and then If.
• Click tag.
• Under Variable Select, select %DATA and after the tilda, type in off. Then click check.
• Click blue plus and click Variable and Variable Set. Set %DATA to on.
• Blue plus and then Net, Mobile Data, On.
• Blue plus, Net, Auto-Sync, On.
• Blue plus, Task, End If.
• Click check.

Power Variable

Since there's no built-in variable for whether power is connected or not, we've had to create one. So let's make it work.

• Green plus.
• Name Power Variable.
• For First Context, State, Power, Power, source Any.
• Under Task Selection, New Task called Power Variable On.
• Task, If %POWER off.
• Variable set %POWER to on.
• Task, End If.

• Tap Power Variable On and then for Task Options, select Add Exit Task.
• Call it Power Variable Off.
• Task If %POWER on.
• Variable Set %POWER to off.
• Task, End If.

Data off when screen is off

• Green plus.
• Name Screen Off Data Off.
• For First Context, Time.
• Check Repeat and set it for every 5 Minute(s).
• Check.

• Under Task Selection, New Task and then call it Screen Off Data Off.
• Blue plus, Task, If, %POWER, off.
• If %SCREEN off.
• If %DATA on.
• Auto-Sync Off.
• Variable Set %DATA off.
• Mobile Data set Off.
• Task and End If.
• Another End If.
• Another End If.

English translation

Basically what this does is say if you turn the display on, check to see if data is off. If it's off, turn it on, and then turn on auto-sync. And then every five minutes, check to see if the phone is plugged in and if the display is off and the data is on. If it's on, turn off auto-sync, and then turn off data. That's it!

The Android app model is a bit different from the iPhone app model. For the last few years, iPhone apps have generally been pay-for apps, and Android apps have generally been ad-supported cost-free apps. The last two years, I spent exactly $0 on Android apps and was just fine with the functionality I had. I would check out some pay-for apps to see what was out there, but nothing made me think “I would definitely pay for that.”

That was until I found Tasker.

It’s a relatively expensive app (currently US$6.49), but it’s totally worth it. It basically allows you to improve phone usability, automate tasks, and save battery life.

Granted, as you’ll see if you read the reviews, the interface isn’t the most intuitive. However, once you get the hang of it, it becomes quite easy to use.

Here are some of the cool things I’ve been able to do with Tasker:

• Adjust volume per app. Angry Birds volume tends to be a bit too loud. So with Tasker, I set up a profile that turns the media volume down whenever I launch Angry Birds, and then turns it back up when I’m done playing Angry Birds.
• Adjust mobile data type for weak signal spots. When I’m at work, the Edge signal is way better than the 3G or 4G signals, so I set Tasker up to see if I’m at work, and, if I am, to switch the phone to the Edge network only. Once I leave work, it switches back to 3G/4G preferred.
• Autorotate for select apps. I used to use a toggle button to turn autorotate off and on as needed. Really, though, the only app I use autorotate for is the photo Gallery app. So I set up Tasker to turn autorotate on when I launch Gallery, and then turn it back off again when I’m done.
• Conserve battery life. Before I used Tasker, I’d tried an app called Juice Defender. It was a good app and actually did conserve battery life. The primary way it did that was by turning mobile data off when the screen was off and then turning it back on again when the screen is on. The annoying thing was that if you had the screen off for only a moment, the data would turn off. In practical terms, that would mean that if I was looking at my phone to see when the next bus would arrive, I’d check it, turn the screen off, and two minutes later, I’d turn the screen on to check and have to wait about ten or twenty seconds for the data to turn back on. With Tasker, I can set it up so that the data will turn off if the screen is off… but only after five minutes. If I turn the screen back on again within five minutes, data will just be on the whole time. If I keep the screen off longer than five minutes, data will turn off. I’ve also set it up to switch from 3G/4G preferred to 2G only if the battery life is critically low. And I’ve set it up to turn on autosync every hour for five minutes and then turn autosync back off.
• Quiet camera shutter. At least on three Android phones (two that I’ve owned), the shutter sound when a picture is taken is way too loud. So I set up a Tasker profile for lowering the system volume when the Camera app is launched.
• GPS when needed. Yes, generally speaking, GPS on Android turns on only when you launch an app that needs GPS. There are exceptions, though. For example, at least with the version of Facebook for Android that’s out as of this writing, the Facebook app will turn on GPS when you launch it, even if you don’t want to actually share your location with Facebook. So I’ve just turned off GPS, and Tasker allows me to specify which apps I want GPS to launch for (e.g., Maps, Navigation, Yelp, Movies).
• Headphone volume. If I have my headphones in, I want the volume turned down—for music, for Netflix streaming, for phone calls. When I take my headphones out, I want the volume up. I have a Tasker profile for that, too.
• Silent for school assembly. Almost every morning, the school I work at has a brief all-school assembly. So I set up a Tasker profile to detect if I’m at school and to silence my phone during the hours of the assembly and then un-silence it afterwards.
• Longer screen timeouts per application. Generally speaking, I like the 30-second timeout on the screen. If I’m not touching the screen for 30 seconds, I want it to turn off to save power. Certain applications I want the screen kept on longer, though. For example, if I’m playing Words with Friends or WordFeud, and I’m staring at the screen for three or four minutes as I think of a move. I don’t want to keep touching the screen periodically to keep it on. With Tasker, I set it up so that the screen timeout is 7 minutes for certain apps and then 30 seconds for everything else.
• Suppress Notifications. If I’m listening to music, I don’t want notification sounds interrupting me, so Tasker lets me turn the notification volume off when I’m listening to music.

These are only the things I personally have set up Tasker to do. Others have set up a whole host of Tasker profiles. On the Tasker website, you can find many examples of profiles that may be useful to you.

If you consider US$6.49 to be an expensive investment sight unseen, you can try out a seven-day free trial of Tasker. Try it. You won’t regret it.

Whenever a new trojan appears for Linux, Mac OS X, or (now) Android, inevitably you get a crowd of ignorant panic-mongers up in arms saying “See? [fill in the blank] gets viruses, too! Ah ha! Better install that antivirus now.” Now, apart from the fact that so-called “antivirus” software is for all practical purposes useless (a placebo at best), viruses and trojans are conceptually very different types of malware.

And, no, this is not just a matter of some geeky semantics.

The mass hysteria out there right now about Android malware reminds me of HIV/AIDS “information” back in the early or mid 80s. People were genuinely afraid you could catch AIDS from hugging someone or drinking from the same water fountain as someone who had AIDS. There wasn’t a lot of reliable and consistent information about how people became HIV positive.

Same deal now. If you read any mainstream press coverage of Android malware, you’ll see the focus is really on quantity (Android Malware Surges Nearly Five-Fold Since July or Android sees a 472% increase in malware since July) of malware instead of actual risk of infection. In typical pop journalism fashion, a lot of “news” articles are taking the “here’s one extreme, and here’s another extreme, so you decide” approach instead of actually informing consumers of the facts of how they can protect themselves from malware.

For example, Security Experts Concerned About Google’s Attitude Toward Android Malware makes it sound as if there is Chris DiBona saying Android malware isn’t a problem and then there are the “antivirus” vendors saying it is a problem. Same deal in Android Security: Threat Level None?

All these articles leave the consumer with is a sense of confusion, and no real practical steps to protect oneself. The former, for example, says:

Most malware researchers agree that the openness of the Android platform, which allows installing non-vetted apps, and more importantly the openness of the Android market, which lacks a strict application review process, contribute to its malware problem.

The latter at least hints that users could be responsible for malware proliferation:

Now that we have a few different views on this topic, who do you think is right? Well, there’s some truth to what the security vendors are telling us. Smartphones—and apparently Android devices in particular—can be infected with malware through careless use.

Careless use. Who is doing the careless using? Phone owners. Phone users.

That is the big difference between a virus and a trojan. The trojan you have to give permission to. You have to invite the trojan in. You know the famous story about the Trojan Horse? Yeah, that attack wouldn’t have worked if Troy had said “Yeah, fancy wooden horse? We’re not letting that into our city.” Same deal with malware. If you don’t install malicious apps pretending to be legitimate, you won’t magically get infected with malware. This is true for Android, Mac OS X, and Linux. I have never heard of any malware proliferating on any of those platforms that was not a trojan.

So if you want to protect yourself, don’t install “antivirus.” Install some common sense instead. Here is a great, step-by-step guide on how to do that: How to be safe, find trusted apps, & avoid viruses – A guide for those new to Android

You’re welcome.