Help Noobie to Captivate/Android have 10 questions

[TAWM]

Hello gang, very happy about this forum. My wife and I just got our new Captivates and we are having lots of fun with them. I have a few questions because we are not "techie", I can find my way around fairly decent but I am having a hard time figuring out a few things.

1. What is all this talk about "root"? What does it mean, what are the benefits, should we do it?

2. I have noticed that most of my contact info is missing. I think all contacts are there but some of them have just a name with no numbers or info. Some have just one number instead of multiple so I have lost lots of cell numbers or home numbers. This has me frustrated. What is the problem?

3. My media on SD card is present and I finally discovered how to assign a picture with a caller but when I get to the contact page it only shows numbers for AT&T, it will let me scroll on the side for letters but when I get to the letter I want it never goes there, just stays on letter A with the AT&T numbers. What is wrong here? In order to get my wife's picture on her call I had to create a new contact of her with the exact same number so now I have her in contacts twice. One with a pic and one without.

4. I installed the RingDroid so I could use my music as ringtones but apparently all my music is WMA files. Any ideas on changing these over to MP3 or is there something good to use for WMA as ringtones?

5. I cannot find any options for assigning certain ringtones to specific callers. Is this possible? All I have been able to do is assign one ringer for all calls, one ringer for all texts, and one ringer for all alarms.

6. I am in awe of the droid market. We have never had apps for our previous phones and we are just now catching up. I can spend all day in the market with the free stuff and have already installed lots of things. This brings up two questions:

a. I noticed my applications pages looks like its full on all three pages. Is there a limit to how many I can have? Some of the pre installed apps look like crap I will never use so I should probably delete these, correct?

b. Since I am installing stuff from the market, should I be worried about viruses like I would on my home computer? If so, then what should I do to protect my phone?

7. On the daily briefing page it has spots for AccuWeather, Yahoo Finance, AP Mobile (news), and schedules. I cannot seem to customize this. I would like to change the news source and maybe try a different weather app. Can I swap these out for what I want and if so How?

8. I noticed the FaceBook app really sucks. I went to the sight and bookmarked it for quick find but half the time I go there the sight is limited with old posts. I click on full sight and I get a lot more posts but sometimes they are very old posts as well. Nothing I do seems to update with recent posts. Any suggestions on this?

9. Does the AT&T navigator cost money to use?

10. I tried installing google maps but it doesn't look right. I had it on my old phone (tilt) and I had a satellite view instead of the map view I get now. What am I doing wrong with this.

11. Is there a limit on the number of questions I ask in one post?

I'm not sure what version my Captivate is, only that its a Galaxy S.
Thank you to all in advance for any help or answers you can give. I tried searching before I asked these questions and I couldn't find the answers so sorry if these have been asked hundreds of times.

 

[sremick]

Welcome to the forums. Bummer that your searches came up empty, as these are very common questions asked many times.

Anyhow, that said...

1) If you just got your phone, don't worry about it. To "root" your phone means to break out of the defined access barrier and get full admin rights to everything. But you can do tons more in Android without root than you can do in an iPhone without jailbraking, so it's not as critical. Perhaps the biggest use is to make a total and full backup, but rooting isn't without its risks and ramifications (like potentially being unable to install the standard updates from AT&T when they're released) so don't jump into this casually just because it appears "everyone else is doing it". It's an advanced topic best saved for later. 99% of the people who push others to root or install a "lag fix" never bother to mention the risks and side-effects.

2) How did you transfer your contacts over? If you shuttled them via the SIM card, that's why. SIM contacts can store much limited data compared to contacts stored on the phone (such as only 1 # per contact), so when you move back and forth details are lost. You'll need to comb through and do some manual cleanup.

3) Maybe a side-effect from using Google contacts? Not sure.

4) Can't convert WMA to MP3 without serious audio quality loss, as both are lossy algorithms. And your WMA files might have DRM in them as well. This is why one should avoid WMA like the plague. Microsoft's competing versions of standard formats are bad news. Still with OGG or MP3.

5) Another sign that you're storing/syncing your contacts with Google. Only native phone contacts can have custom ringtones per caller.

6a) On Android, you have your home screens and then you have the full applications list. You can have whatever icons you want on your home screens... any you don't want you can just delete. You choose from the full apps list, which can go on for pages and pages. This differs from the iPhone, where you just have one view.

6b) There are no known viruses. There can be the occasional trojan, but the market weeds them out pretty well. Read the comments of any new app you want to install, and see what people are saying on the internet. Also, when you go to install an app it'll notify you of any significant permissions it wants. Look over them and see if any seem unusual for the needs of the app, and don't install if you're suspicious.

7) Yes, those are just the stock widgets and there are better. Touch and hold on the widget, and then when the trash can appears at bottom you can just drag and drop it to remove. You can always add them back... you're not uninstalling them, simply removing them from your home screen (same with app icons).

8) Yes the stock Facebook widget sucks. The Facebook app in the marketplace sucks a bit less (try that). But still, it switches to the mobile web site for some functions. It's not feature-complete. Yell at Facebook for a better Android app.

9) Yes. Install Google Maps from the marketplace. It includes Google Nav. Better, and free.

10) To switch to satellite view, press the button in the upper-right that looks like 3 stacked squares ("layers"). Then choose "Satellite". Note that in satellite mode Google Maps is considerably more-demanding in the amount of data it needs to keep downloading. If you're not on a grandfathered unlimited data plan, you might not want to leave this on all the time.

11) Yes.

 

[skinien]

First, "Droid" is a phone (hardware). The OS is Android. Welcome to the Captivate; it's a great phone that should get much better when Android 2.2 comes out - speculated to be coming out this month.

1. Root-ing is giving yourself higher privileges on your phone to access more options (i.e. installing an app that allows you to overclock your cpu).

2. Are you talking about google contacts that were automatically imported?

3. This is confusing - you're saying that you can't get to her contact info but you added her and now you see her twice. Where are you seeing her twice? You may not be viewing the appropriate "groups" in your contacts.

4. Not really sure here. You can probably find some program to convert these to mp3. Windows Media player may even do it.

5. Never tried it.

6.a. I don't think there's an app limit, but you'll be constrained to the space on your SD Card. To delete these apps you don't want, you have to root and use a program like Titanium Backup.

6.b. Not really, unless you install stuff outside of the market.

7. I haven't played with it too much but I'm pretty sure you're stuck with those feeds.

8. If you're talking about facebook in the browser, you'll have to manually refresh the page to update it. View the page, press Menu (lower left button) and Refresh.

9. Yes, I believe $10/mo. Google Navigate is free but if you haven't noticed, the GPS is bad on this phone. There should be an update coming out soon to fix the GPS issue.

10. To get to different views in Maps, Press Menu -> Layers -> Satellite. The new version of Maps (came out yesterday) has a Layers icon at the top so you don't need to use the menu to access it. To download the latest version, you should just need to open the Market and it should notify you that there's an update.

11. You've reached the limit Really though, there isn't a "limit" but this many questions in one post may be overwhelming. I have nothing better to do at the moment.

 

[TAWM]

Welcome to the forums. Bummer that your searches came up empty, as these are very common questions asked many times.

Anyhow, that said...

1) If you just got your phone, don't worry about it. To "root" your phone means to break out of the defined access barrier and get full admin rights to everything. But you can do tons more in Android without root than you can do in an iPhone without jailbraking, so it's not as critical. Perhaps the biggest use is to make a total and full backup, but rooting isn't without its risks and ramifications (like potentially being unable to install the standard updates from AT&T when they're released) so don't jump into this casually just because it appears "everyone else is doing it". It's an advanced topic best saved for later. 99% of the people who push others to root or install a "lag fix" never bother to mention the risks and side-effects.

2) How did you transfer your contacts over? If you shuttled them via the SIM card, that's why. SIM contacts can store much limited data compared to contacts stored on the phone (such as only 1 # per contact), so when you move back and forth details are lost. You'll need to comb through and do some manual cleanup.

3) Maybe a side-effect from using Google contacts? Not sure.

4) Can't convert WMA to MP3 without serious audio quality loss, as both are lossy algorithms. And your WMA files might have DRM in them as well. This is why one should avoid WMA like the plague. Microsoft's competing versions of standard formats are bad news. Still with OGG or MP3.

5) Another sign that you're storing/syncing your contacts with Google. Only native phone contacts can have custom ringtones per caller.

6a) On Android, you have your home screens and then you have the full applications list. You can have whatever icons you want on your home screens... any you don't want you can just delete. You choose from the full apps list, which can go on for pages and pages. This differs from the iPhone, where you just have one view.

6b) There are no known viruses. There can be the occasional trojan, but the market weeds them out pretty well. Read the comments of any new app you want to install, and see what people are saying on the internet. Also, when you go to install an app it'll notify you of any significant permissions it wants. Look over them and see if any seem unusual for the needs of the app, and don't install if you're suspicious.

7) Yes, those are just the stock widgets and there are better. Touch and hold on the widget, and then when the trash can appears at bottom you can just drag and drop it to remove. You can always add them back... you're not uninstalling them, simply removing them from your home screen (same with app icons).

8) Yes the stock Facebook widget sucks. The Facebook app in the marketplace sucks a bit less (try that). But still, it switches to the mobile web site for some functions. It's not feature-complete. Yell at Facebook for a better Android app.

9) Yes. Install Google Maps from the marketplace. It includes Google Nav. Better, and free.

10) To switch to satellite view, press the button in the upper-right that looks like 3 stacked squares ("layers"). Then choose "Satellite". Note that in satellite mode Google Maps is considerably more-demanding in the amount of data it needs to keep downloading. If you're not on a grandfathered unlimited data plan, you might not want to leave this on all the time.

11) Yes.

2. I'm not sure I understand. My sim is where all my contact info is. My contacts have multiple numbers and I have switched it from phone to phone before and not lost anything unless a number was previously saved to a phone instead of sim. What do you mean by manual clean up? I don't have too much, I have too little.

3 & 5. Not sure about the google contacts. Doesn't sound like anything I have ever used. Never had a google account until I got this phone. When you say native are you talking about new contacts I place on this particular phone? If so that will have to be done manually and take two weeks!

4. Most all my music is from my home computer. I would buy a cd, come home and rip it to library, hence the WMA. Am I going to have to re-rip those cd's into a different format to use them on my Captivate?

Thanks for the info, still kinda lost though

 

[looksbetterinred]

From my past experience, multiple numbered contacts saved to the cim break apart and become a contact for every number. I have moved contacts numerous times between phones and this seems to always be the case. I just go in and clean it up after I’ve moved them.

 

[sremick]

If you're storing all your contacts on your SIM, then you will indeed have limited options as to the data fields and features you can do. Sorry. When I exported all my contacts from my Motorola V635 to my SIM, all my single contacts with 2-3 numbers became multiple single-number contacts on the SIM, with no indication of which # was which. "Manual cleanup" involved sorting that out after moving the contacts from the SIM to the Captivate. This is a common issue, and just the nature of SIM contacts as the data structure doesn't have all the same fields and options.

By virtue of having an Android phone, you need a Google (Gmail) account. This account has its own associated contacts. Many people sync their Captivate's contacts to their Gmail, either merging them into existing contacts or basically just using their Google contacts as their primary contact list. This gives more functionality than SIM contacts, but you still can't do some things like assign per-caller ringtones.

Moving your contacts from SIM to phone doesn't need to be done 1-by-1 and can be made easy by free tools such as Copy To SIM Card.

The Captivate can indeed play non-DRM WMA files but you'll find the format isn't nearly supported as-well as standard, open formats. You can try to work with your WMA files as-is but I'd strongly advise doing all further ripping in OGG or MP3, and when you have time re-ripping your old music. WMA is a headache... but you probably used Windows Media Player to do the ripping so of course Microsoft makes WMA the default, choosing MP3 instead difficult, and MS even cripples the default MP3 settings to give the impression that MP3 sounds worse than WMA. Get a better file format, and get a better ripper. WMP and WMA suck.

 

[TAWM]

First, "Droid" is a phone (hardware). The OS is Android. Welcome to the Captivate; it's a great phone that should get much better when Android 2.2 comes out - speculated to be coming out this month.

1. Root-ing is giving yourself higher privileges on your phone to access more options (i.e. installing an app that allows you to overclock your cpu).

2. Are you talking about google contacts that were automatically imported?

3. This is confusing - you're saying that you can't get to her contact info but you added her and now you see her twice. Where are you seeing her twice? You may not be viewing the appropriate "groups" in your contacts.

4. Not really sure here. You can probably find some program to convert these to mp3. Windows Media player may even do it.

5. Never tried it.

6.a. I don't think there's an app limit, but you'll be constrained to the space on your SD Card. To delete these apps you don't want, you have to root and use a program like Titanium Backup.

6.b. Not really, unless you install stuff outside of the market.

7. I haven't played with it too much but I'm pretty sure you're stuck with those feeds.

8. If you're talking about facebook in the browser, you'll have to manually refresh the page to update it. View the page, press Menu (lower left button) and Refresh.

9. Yes, I believe $10/mo. Google Navigate is free but if you haven't noticed, the GPS is bad on this phone. There should be an update coming out soon to fix the GPS issue.

10. To get to different views in Maps, Press Menu -> Layers -> Satellite. The new version of Maps (came out yesterday) has a Layers icon at the top so you don't need to use the menu to access it. To download the latest version, you should just need to open the Market and it should notify you that there's an update.

11. You've reached the limit Really though, there isn't a "limit" but this many questions in one post may be overwhelming. I have nothing better to do at the moment.

3. I go to gallery. Go to pictures, click picture, click menu, click more, click set as, click contact icon. Screen then goes to contacts, only it only shows me contact numbers for AT&T. It has all the letters down the right side that you can quick scan to go to the letter you want. For instance I can slide it to the letter S but instead of going to my contacts that start with S it stays on A but instead of showing all A contacts it only shows AT&T numbers. At the top it has the option to create contact just like the normal contacts screen does. So as an experiment I went ahead and created my wife as a contact again. It allowed me to use the picture I clicked previously as her contact picture but now I have her twice in my contacts. One with picture and one without.

 

[sremick]

3. I go to gallery. Go to pictures, click picture, click menu, click more, click set as, click contact icon. Screen then goes to contacts, only it only shows me contact numbers for AT&T. It has all the letters down the right side that you can quick scan to go to the letter you want. For instance I can slide it to the letter S but instead of going to my contacts that start with S it stays on A but instead of showing all A contacts it only shows AT&T numbers. At the top it has the option to create contact just like the normal contacts screen does. So as an experiment I went ahead and created my wife as a contact again. It allowed me to use the picture I clicked previously as her contact picture but now I have her twice in my contacts. One with picture and one without.

Correct. You can't add pictures to SIM contacts.

Normally, when you go into contacts from the main menu, you're seeing a consolidated list of all the contacts from all the sources you've configured. These include SIM, phone, Gmail, and potentially Facebook and others. (when in Contacts, click on Menu then Display Options to configure which display). But like I said: not all provide equal functionality, as you are seeing. Since you can't add photos to SIM contacts, and all your contacts are stored on the SIM, the phone isn't showing your contacts when you try to add a photo that way (there are other ways, like tapping on the photo with the contact open from the Contacts list). When you created a new contact for your wife, it made a phone contact, which you can add a photo to... but now both are shown in your contacts list when you view the full list.

You need to decide how you want to organize/use your contacts.

 

[TAWM]

Correct. You can't add pictures to SIM contacts.

Normally, when you go into contacts from the main menu, you're seeing a consolidated list of all the contacts from all the sources you've configured. These include SIM, phone, Gmail, and potentially Facebook and others. (when in Contacts, click on Menu then Display Options to configure which display). But like I said: not all provide equal functionality, as you are seeing. Since you can't add photos to SIM contacts, and all your contacts are stored on the SIM, the phone isn't showing your contacts when you try to add a photo that way (there are other ways, like tapping on the photo with the contact open from the Contacts list). When you created a new contact for your wife, it made a phone contact, which you can add a photo to... but now both are shown in your contacts list when you view the full list.


You need to decide how you want to organize/use your contacts.

Ok, I think I have it. On my phone I can copy all contacts from sim over to phone. Now I have double of everybody. I need to show only contacts on phone. Now these I can put a picture on. EXCELLENT and thank you.
Now... How am I going to find the missing numbers that are on my sim? Is that where the tool "copy to sim card" comes in?

 

[idilium]

welcome to the good side of the force it will be some time till you understand how this phone work and it will be more time till you customize the way you like it
to many nice options.
\but one thing for sure you will have lots of fun with it

 

[sremick]

Now... How am I going to find the missing numbers that are on my sim? Is that where the tool "copy to sim card" comes in?

Not sure what you mean. If you copy all the SIM contacts to your phone, there should be no "missing numbers".

 

[TAWM]

Not sure what you mean. If you copy all the SIM contacts to your phone, there should be no "missing numbers".

Before I placed my sim in captivate I had multiple numbers on numerous contacts. Now, after I put sim in new phone, my contacts are all there but the ones that had more than one now only have one. For instance, I have my mom's home number and cell number so one of them is missing. Some had four numbers and now only have two. No emails were saved. Aside from trying to contact each person to ask for missing numbers I don't know what to do. I know that they are on it...somewhere.

 

[sremick]

Sounds like maybe not all your contacts were being stored on your SIM on your old phone. SIM contacts can only associate one number with one name.

Subscriber Identity Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Even old phones could store contacts on the SIM or the phone. For quite some time, storing them on the phone gave you more fields of info (including multiple #s per contact) while storing on the SIM gave you portability at the loss of detail. It's been a common issue and point of confusion for years.