Help A few questions from a smart phone newbie.

[mikeherrera]

Hey everyone. I upgraded to a fascinate yesterday, and since I haven't been in the smart phone game at all, I'm a little lost on the lingo. I've been reading through this forum for a couple of days and everyone seems really cool and open to questions, so here goes:

1. What is Froyo?

2. What's the purpose of a launcher (like launcherpro?)

3. After reading lots of reviews, I was concerned about all the unnecessary programs Verizon preloaded on this phone, so I asked the verizon sales rep and he said 2.2 had already been released, and you could already change Bing to Google with no modding or "rooting". Is this really true? Or was he just trying to make some money?

4. Kernel? Hummingbird? I feel so lost right now!

Thanks for any and all help. I love this phone but would like to know a little more about it.

 

[Wolfedude88]

Hey everyone. I upgraded to a fascinate yesterday, and since I haven't been in the smart phone game at all, I'm a little lost on the lingo. I've been reading through this forum for a couple of days and everyone seems really cool and open to questions, so here goes:

1. What is Froyo?

2. What's the purpose of a launcher (like launcherpro?)

3. After reading lots of reviews, I was concerned about all the unnecessary programs Verizon preloaded on this phone, so I asked the verizon sales rep and he said 2.2 had already been released, and you could already change Bing to Google with no modding or "rooting". Is this really true? Or was he just trying to make some money?

4. Kernel? Hummingbird? I feel so lost right now!

Thanks for any and all help. I love this phone but would like to know a little more about it.

1. Froyo is the Android 2.2 update, changes certain features, a pretty good update but nothing huge most would notice.

2. Launcher pro gives you a different app drawer, adds it own set or widgets if you like them, different app drawer. Also it can take some of the lag away if you are having some. It is just personal preference really.

3. 2.2 is out, but not for this phone yet, he was definitely misinformed.

4. Hummingbird is the name of the processor on the phone.

 

[jamesnmandy]

Hey everyone. I upgraded to a fascinate yesterday, and since I haven't been in the smart phone game at all, I'm a little lost on the lingo. I've been reading through this forum for a couple of days and everyone seems really cool and open to questions, so here goes:

1. What is Froyo?

2. What's the purpose of a launcher (like launcherpro?)

3. After reading lots of reviews, I was concerned about all the unnecessary programs Verizon preloaded on this phone, so I asked the verizon sales rep and he said 2.2 had already been released, and you could already change Bing to Google with no modding or "rooting". Is this really true? Or was he just trying to make some money?

4. Kernel? Hummingbird? I feel so lost right now!

Thanks for any and all help. I love this phone but would like to know a little more about it.

fyi you will get different answers, many of which can be true, here's my take

1. as mentioned it is the next version of the Android operating system...think of 2.0 as Windows XP, 2.1 as Service Pack 1 and 2.2 as Service Pack 3.....Froyo is short for frozen yogurt, Android 3.0 is commonly referred to as "Gingerbread" and using Windows as the example, Gingerbread would be Windows 7...some of the Linux die hards are gonna string me up for that comparison...LOL

2. allows you to have more customizations, I have tried both and Launcher Pro caused me grief and it's also got a lot of paid for themes. Check out ADW.Launcher, same type of customizations with more free themes, it's what I personally run.

3. what he meant to say was 2.2 for the Fascinate is coming, and will allow you to set Google as the search provider instead of Bing, it will not however allow you to remove the rest of that garbage they put on the phone...but there are solutions for that too...

4. Kernel refers to the "core" of the Linux/Unix derived Android operating system, be very careful and read and ask questions before you worry about kernels, and it is best practice once you do get there to not drop a brand new kernel on your phone if you cant do without it, best to let the more adventurous ones go first....start by looking into basics like rooting and ease into it from there. Hummingbird is the CPU codename, here's a quick and dirty tidbit on it.

when in doubt ask

 

[mikeherrera]

Thanks to both of you for the replies and explanations!

I remembered another question I had:

When I was checking out at the verizon store, the rep said "Do NOT sync your contacts with facebook. It will royally screw up your phone." When I asked him why I couldn't use that feature of the phone, he just repeated "Don't do it."

It's a little frustrating, because while I don't really have any urge to sync with fb, I should be able to if I want. Does anybody here know of a problem related to that feature?

 

[jamesnmandy]

Thanks to both of you for the replies and explanations!

I remembered another question I had:

When I was checking out at the verizon store, the rep said "Do NOT sync your contacts with facebook. It will royally screw up your phone." When I asked him why I couldn't use that feature of the phone, he just repeated "Don't do it."

It's a little frustrating, because while I don't really have any urge to sync with fb, I should be able to if I want. Does anybody here know of a problem related to that feature?

ok here's the deal with that, i did it the first time...it will make your life hell if you dont do it properly

just set up your google account and contacts first. Hint: it is much easier to go to a desktop and do all the sorting and labeling and editing of your contacts from within gmail and then let your phone sync to it automatically

once you have google and your contacts all set like you want them, you can set up facebook. there is an option during facebook setup where it asks you if you want to sync contacts from facebook to your phone. you can choose not to at all, which is fine, they will all still show up when you are in the facebook app as friends, so its not like you dont have access to them

however what i chose was the option to only sync facebook contacts that were also already in my contact on my phone, that way all the people i really wanted in my contacts, who also have facebook accounts, will show up as linked contacts in my contacts list, and those people on your facebook friends list who are just "internet acquaintances" will not

the problem comes when someone who has 1000 facebook "friends" tells it to go ahead and sync all your facebook contacts to the phone...well....guess what, your phone aint gonna handle that importing of 1000 contacts very well....LOL which is why he said that, that was a very true statement

whats nice about the way android uses your online google account for contacts is they are always there, lost phone, stolen phone...or if you mess up and get your contacts all jacked up....you can always go to a desktop, log into your google account, edit your contacts, then do a factory reset on your phone, set up your google account again on the phone and start over and it will sync your contacts how you set them on the PC....

 

[mikeherrera]

Cool! All of that makes a lot of sense. I never wanted ALL of my fb friends to be listed on my phone contacts anyway, so it's good that you can choose to link the contacts you have instead of adding a ton of new contacts.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Kabob]

Hey everyone. I upgraded to a fascinate yesterday, and since I haven't been in the smart phone game at all, I'm a little lost on the lingo. I've been reading through this forum for a couple of days and everyone seems really cool and open to questions, so here goes:

1. What is Froyo?

2. What's the purpose of a launcher (like launcherpro?)

3. After reading lots of reviews, I was concerned about all the unnecessary programs Verizon preloaded on this phone, so I asked the verizon sales rep and he said 2.2 had already been released, and you could already change Bing to Google with no modding or "rooting". Is this really true? Or was he just trying to make some money?

4. Kernel? Hummingbird? I feel so lost right now!

Thanks for any and all help. I love this phone but would like to know a little more about it.

A few more tidbits.

1. Every update of the Android software is named after a desert: Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0/2.1), Froyo (Frozen Yogurt, 2.2), Gingerbread (3.0), Honeycomb, Ice Cream. Most new devices come with either Eclair or Froyo installed at the moment, Gingerbread should be out late this year/early next year.

2. Launchers simply change the user interface of the phone and allow you to customize it more to fit your personal preferences. I tried Launcher Pro and really like it, it looks alot more like stock Android, the Fascinate's TouchWiz is a bit of an iPhone ripoff.

Launchers do not replace anything, they simply run on top of your stock UI.

3. Already answered above, but yeah. He was either trying to sell you a phone or was misinformed. Froyo is starting to reach Galaxy S phones, it's not yet hit the states. Expect Froyo on your phone in the near future, hopefully before the end of November (no promises there though). It will allow you to use the Google search and such, but you can't remove bloatware.

4. Hummingbird is the processor that the Fascinate uses. It's alot easier to give it a code name like "Hummingbird" than say it's true designation of "S5PC110," dontcha think? Alot of the phones have cool names for their CPU's...Snapdragon, Scorpion, etc. Hummingbird is getting alot of praise because of it's power though. While most of the newer phones have the same CPU clock speed, Hummingbird paired with it's GPU flies through 3D content.

 

[saps]

mike give the sticky atop this forum a gander as well

 

[bradmatic]

Cool! All of that makes a lot of sense. I never wanted ALL of my fb friends to be listed on my phone contacts anyway, so it's good that you can choose to link the contacts you have instead of adding a ton of new contacts.

Thanks for your help!

If you're like me and only have 250 fbfriends, then bringing them onto your phone isn't a big deal. There is a tick box (somewhere in the contacts area) that allows you to hide contacts without numbers. That eliminated the vast majority of the fbfriends I didn't want on my phone. For the rest.. 20 minutes on google cleared it right up!

 

[bezerk19]

Hey everyone. I upgraded to a fascinate yesterday, and since I haven't been in the smart phone game at all, I'm a little lost on the lingo. I've been reading through this forum for a couple of days and everyone seems really cool and open to questions, so here goes:

1. What is Froyo?

2. What's the purpose of a launcher (like launcherpro?)

3. After reading lots of reviews, I was concerned about all the unnecessary programs Verizon preloaded on this phone, so I asked the verizon sales rep and he said 2.2 had already been released, and you could already change Bing to Google with no modding or "rooting". Is this really true? Or was he just trying to make some money?

4. Kernel? Hummingbird? I feel so lost right now!

Thanks for any and all help. I love this phone but would like to know a little more about it.

Also and FYI in case you are new to Android and google contacts, is the way it syncs your contact pictures to your google account. You will notice if you take a nice picture of someone with your phone and use that picture as your contact, next time your phone syncs with google, your contact picture will look very pixelated (very poor quality). What I've done to fix this (this is a Google problem) is create a "Phone Contact" not a google contact, with only the name of the contact (must be the same), just add the picture to that account, then the phone will automatically link both accounts, thus your nice looking picture will always be available. Its a pain I know, but it beats looking at the poor quality picture (i'm assuming size reduction Google does). The problem here is, Google will not have this picture in your account, so if you hard reset your phone you have to do it all over again.