OT: My personal test of 20 free offline Android gps map routing applications

[Nate Nagel]

yes, Motorola who has always been my favorite cell phone manufacturer has gone to the dark side... still good phones though.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

It used to be more useful before Android took away the ability for you to read the SD card directly from a PC through a USB connection. Now I have to physically remove the SD card, and I think the slot on my phone is starting to get funky as sometimes I have to insert it twice before it's recognized :(

nate

[Nate Nagel]

You're right, and I knew that, but it's good info that a lot of people

*don't* know.

Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes when a phone uses a micro USB port for both data transfer and charging (as many do) the phone will use two pins connected together or something to determine charge rate; that is, it can tell the difference between plugging into the USB port on your laptop (in which case it will charge at 500 mA) and plugging into a wall wart or a 12V to USB adapter in which case it will charge at whatever the device's maximum charge rate is.

In the case of the Evo, after some research online I found out what the actual issue was; I was curious if something was wrong with my phone because the very first road trip I took with it it worked fine, but subsequently every trip thereafter I needed a new battery about every 90 minutes. Sprint was clueless and basically just shrugged and said "GPS takes a lot of power." I wasn't real happy as I'd paid retail price for what was at the time a highly rated smart phone and I wanted to play with it and do all the stuff I'd been told a smart phone could do. What I read online however was that a new firmware was pushed out for that phone that reduced the max charge current due to thermal management issues, and that I believe - another issue that I had with that phone was that if run in a windshield mount on a sunny day with GPS app running, it really could overheat and shut down, I ended up moving it so that it was in front of an A/C vent. So in an effort to fix one problem, they created another...

The real solution to the problem was to buy a used Motorola phone which worked great until Sprint dropped WiMax and went to 4G LTE, then I bought another Motorola phone with a "free with two year contract" deal. I gifted the Evo to a friend who doesn't have a car or driver's license so it all worked out well for everyone :)

nate

[The Real Bev]

As in "won't work at all" or "just takes a lot longer"?

[The Real Bev]

As usual, it can't move anything to the external card if the card is known as /storage/sdcard1.

You can still read the internal storage via USB, but wifi sees only the external card. I use ES File explorer on the phone to transfer files to/from the computer, but haven't figured out how to do that from the computer, which would be a LOT easier. Something via the router, but...

Still, via USB I just cleared out some cruft from internal storage (each empty subdirectory uses 16K, not a big deal, but garbage is garbage :-( At one point I didn't know you were supposed to clear the data before you uninstall an app.

There's a 'Magix' subdirectory which contains 6 MB of stuff, but I don't know what uses it so I left it alone.

[Nate Nagel]

Depends on how you use it. I haven't tried, but I'm guessing a 500 mA charger would allow the same issue I originally described (battery slowly draining while running a navigation app) on many phones.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

You must have an older phone that can't run a newer version of Android. I think it was Ice Cream Sandwich (? not sure) that took away the ability to read both the phone's internal memory and the SD card over a USB connection. Now when you plug the phone in and go into the menu to change the USB connection type, the "mass storage" option isn't there anymore. There is a "Media Transfer Protocol" option, but that isn't always what I want (I may want to just back up the phone's files before doing something stupid; I may want to use the phone as a flash drive; I may want to poke around in directories that I shouldn't be poking around in, e.g. loading a custom color schema for Waze to match my car's dash lighting...)

nate

[Danny D.]

Something like that has always confounded me, both on my Motorola RAZR V3, which would never charge on USB car chargers, but, had no problem charging on PCs with the same cable - and - on my Samsung Galaxy S3, which practically burned up on some car chargers.

So, I don't doubt funny business goes on in some of these setups.

[Danny D.]

I'm gonna haf'ta agree with Nate.

I can only see two outcomes if the charger can't keep up with the current draw of the phone.

1. The phone battery will have to supply the missing current, which, will drain the battery, only slower than without the charger.
2. The charger is going to heat up, and might even blow its fuse (most have them, but not all). Most fuses are something like 2 or 3 amps, and they're on the 12 volt side, so, that's

24 to 36 Watts.

The *simple* answer is always get at least a dual port, 2 Amp USB charger, that can put out at least 1 amp from each port.

Personally, the best I've found are 2.1Amp (for the iPad) on one port, and 1 Amp on the other.

The funny thing is that they don't cost any more; but you have to read all the writing on the package and throw down (with disgust) any that don't say the amperage clearly, and whether it's concomitant or not.

[Danny D.]

I've had all three (Verizon, AT&T, & T-Mobile), albeit sequentially, in that order.

IMHO, they're about the same with respect to coverage in the Silicon Valley.

I'm positive they differ elsewhere, but, at least where *I* travel, the coverage is about the same. They even share antennas, I'm told.

[Danny D.]

Hi Nate, Android, at some point (4.1?) removed USB mass storage, and went to MTP mode. This screwed up all the Redhat Linux folks, who still don't have a way to install MTP easily.

But, the Google team gave Apple the MTP code, and I think there is opensource code for the rest of the Linux's, so, you *should* be able to read the SD Card.

At least, on my Samsung Galaxy S3, on Windows & on Ubuntu 13.10, I don't have any problem reading the SD Card when the phone is in MTP mode.

Note: You can only set the mode when you're plugged into a USB cable (just in case you're looking for the setting). The other choice is "Camera Mode", I think they call it PTP or something like that.

[Danny D.]

I never understood that stuff. If you can clarify, that would be useful.

For example, the Samsung Galaxy S3 I have seems to include an *internal* storage card, called, I think, /storage/sdcard0 (or something like that).

Since I have a lot of space, I don't move things around, but, be forwarned, all Android OS's up to (but not including 4.3) lie about the storage space.

There's an entire thread on this in comp.mobile.android, but, the punch line is that, at least T-Mobile, finally, at Android 4.3, started telling the truth about how much Internal storage you started with on your Android phone.

Here are all the memory apps I tested, by the way, and

*every* one fails to tell you what Android 4.3 now tells you!

Here's are the two Android operating systems I tested:

And, notice how they show the internal memory differently:

Basically, you don't get the truth until you move to Android 4.3, at least with my one test of the Samsung Galaxy S3 on T-Mobile.

[Danny D.]

That's a pretty good phone for that price!

[Danny D.]

I'm really liking that BLU Dash for bang for the buck:

[krw]

Yes, though it's a little more complicated than shorting two pins. The data pins are tied up, or down, with resistors of a particular value. The charging device then reads these resistors to program its charging rate. If the charger doesn't recognize these, it'll only charge at the USB rate (.5A). If a charger is smart enough, it'll read these resistors and know what is on the other end so can charge it faster.

Doesn't make sense. The charge rate doesn't affect the battery's capacity, only its charge time.

[Nate Nagel]

I can't find a link because the phone's been long discontinued, but I remember reading that the max charge current was limited by a firmware change to 700-something mA. Apparently the phone was *using* more than that when I had my usual suite of in the car apps running.

nate

[The Real Bev]

I just ordered one like that from buy.com for $6.99 (free, actually, they gave me $10 and no tax or shipping). Was that a good price?

I also got a nice pink microUSB cable for 99 cents at the 99-Cents-Only Store.

2.1A duals are ~$4, so I blew the extra $3!

[The Real Bev]

It's got annoyances, but I've used it for nearly 2 months and am pretty satisfied so far. I've made two wifi calls and NO cell calls so far, which shows how much I really need a cellphone :-( It's basically a pocket-size tablet with phone capability. I should have chosen a smaller one, though.

[The Real Bev]

Serious drawbacks:

1. You can't get cases for it. It comes with a grey skin, which is fine, but I'd like something in a neon color that I could attach a neck-leash to. For this function, smaller would be better. It comes with a screen protector already attached, plus one still in its package. I'd rather have a frosted one, but I can order something from China that can be made to work when these are destroyed.
2. Needs more internal memory.
3. Inability to run apps on the external card. I don't want to use the phone as an mp3 player, so the utility of the external card is far less than I expected. This may be an Android rather than a BLU thing.

I'd like to NOT have to push the power button before I swipe to make the screen turn back on -- The fewer times I have to operate a mechanical switch the happier I am. Again, this may be an android thing rather than a BLU thing.

[krw]

They all cover large cities pretty well. Got outside of a metropolitan area and the difference gets quite clear. Verizon is the only one with true nation-wide coverage. They're the only one who will even sell me service in my area and I live in a major metropolitan area.

I'm sure they share towers in some areas but antennas?