Help New Flytouch 3-- A brief Review & Question

[cyberbob]

OK, so I've had my shiny new FT3 for a couple of days now, so I thought I would share my experiences/impressions of it, and follow up with a simple question that I hope some of the guru's here can help me out with. Everything worked swimmingly right out of the box, but after a couple of hours playing around with it I got an error message: "android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. - Force close" Nothing I was doing would get rid of it, so I did the "3 button factory reset", no biggie, problem solved, works like a champ now. I am brand new to the Android tablet world, and perhaps my expectations are lower than some of the "Veterans" out there but I can't find much to not like about this tablet, Full Android Market is pre-loaded and worked like a charm once I signed in with my Gmail acct., WiFi setup was a breeze and works flawlessly, and the unit will function even with marginal signal strength, Youtube and/or Google videos play fine, if not a bit laggy at times, angry birds downloaded & installed without a hitch, and plays as fast as it does on my 3 ghz. desktop PC (yeah, you can do that) screen image quality and brightness are very good to excellent IMO, touch screen sensitivity and responsiveness seem excellent, my only complaint here is that I have kind of big knobby fingers, and I've found that using a small Hewlett Packard USB wireless scroll mouse works really well as opposed to the the fingers for many tasks. All things considered I'm extremely pleased with my FT3, I purchased from Chinagrabber, it arrived in 13 days exactly from the date of purchase, and I ordered a USB keyboard case and a "leatherette" flip stand case which came to just a hair over $250 total, delivered by standard Hong Kong post with tracking. I like it enough that I think I'm gonna "donate' this one to my wife and order the new 8gb model for myself. Sorry if this post was a tad long winded, I wanted to cover as many of the main features to the best of my ability, but if I left anything out, feel free to ask, Ill answer as best I can, given my limited technical knowledge in the Android world..

One question I would appreciate some help on.... I attempted to install Dolphin HD Browser, the download and install process from the Market went as normal and was confirmed as installed, It's present in the apps list under the "manage apps" tab in settings, however there is no icon anywhere I can see and I can't see any way to launch it. I'm at a loss to figure this out, but perhaps someone has a solution or some suggestions...???

In closing, I would have no problem recommending this as a first time tablet for a newcomer, or even an inexpensive but very capable tablet for more experienced users to tweak and play with to their hearts content.

BTW, for anyone who cares about such things, my FT3 came with the following tech info in the "about device" tab:

Model # -- Disco
Android Version -- 2.2-20110316
Baseband Version- Unknown
Kernel -- 2.6.32.9 zjd@dtlinuxserver #28
Build # --FRF85B

 

[MrSmith317]

Bob, Are you still using the stock launcher? If so that's why you don't see your installed app. Try switching to Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher(both found in the market). The problem is that the stock launcher wants to emulate an iPad and just plain sucks. The launchers I've mentioned are more akin to an Android experience.

 

[cyberbob]

Bob, Are you still using the stock launcher? If so that's why you don't see your installed app. Try switching to Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher(both found in the market). The problem is that the stock launcher wants to emulate an iPad and just plain sucks. The launchers I've mentioned are more akin to an Android experience.

OK Mr Smith, thanks very much for the info. Yes I'm using the stock launcher, or at least I should say I've not changed it to the best of my knowledge... Now, will I have to disable or delete this "stock" launcher, and if so where is it found and what's it called, or do I simply download/install the Launcher Pro...?? If it is just a matter of downloading and installing a new/better launcher, what effect does it have on the old launcher...?? ie. does it go dormant, is it better to remove it completely or what...?? I'm sorry to seem so clueless about this stuff, this is a totally new frontier for me, and it's one of the reasons I signed on here, to gain the benefit of so many helpfull and knowledgeable folks when needed. Thanks again..

 

[MrSmith317]

If you install a new launcher, the next time you hit the home button it will ask you which launcher you'd like to use. Most of us prefer Launcher pro, but I'm an ADW guy myself. The stock launcher will just go unused and can't be removed unless you load a custom ROM(or root and delete it). So I would say grab a launcher, hit home and have fun.

 

[cyberbob]

If you install a new launcher, the next time you hit the home button it will ask you which launcher you'd like to use. Most of us prefer Launcher pro, but I'm an ADW guy myself. The stock launcher will just go unused and can't be removed unless you load a custom ROM(or root and delete it). So I would say grab a launcher, hit home and have fun.

Thanks Mr. Smith, I'm going to give Launcher Pro and/or ADW a try.

 

[loltedious]

learned a lot from you guys