How To Droid tips, tricks, and easter eggs

[drumtrucker]

I have tried that (first time). No pop-up. Tap, long press, nothing.

I just tried rebooting just in case. Still no popup.

 

[Fadikine]

Make sure you are viewing your friend list NOT the news feed. The initial view (if you are using the widget) is news feed. You have to press the back button (1 time) and select friends.

If you are already doing this, then there are more questions below.

When you tap, you are tapping the picture or the entry?

Are you in the app or on the mobile webpage?

All of those options send you to the conact wall?

I have tried that (first time). No pop-up. Tap, long press, nothing.

I just tried rebooting just in case. Still no popup.

 

[drumtrucker]

yes, droid FB app
no, initial screen is 6 choices, i choose 'friends'
yes, picture (it briefly highlights)

I only have 1.

 

[Fadikine]

hmmmmmmmm. The only thing I can think of is that there is a setting that I have enabled that you perhaps do not? What sync setting do you have for facebook? I assume that you have your facebook account with sync on auto-sync enabled and Backrounds data checked? Do you also have Sync all for facebook, sync with existing contacts, or remove facebook data? (in the actual app sync settings) Also what Refresh interval do you have.

On a side note I had some initial issues with Friends and Facebook and my conatcts. I ended up removing and re-adding my account making sure that my phone contacts matched the names in facebook and that resolved a lot of issues. The inital setting that I had after this was add all, after it finished updating then I switched it to show only those with numbers.

yes, droid FB app
no, initial screen is 6 choices, i choose 'friends'
yes, picture (it briefly highlights)

I only have 1.

 

[drumtrucker]

hmmmmmmmm. The only thing I can think of is that there is a setting that I have enabled that you perhaps do not? What sync setting do you have for facebook?

Changed my sync settings, now I get the pop up!

thanks

 

[DroidRX]

Here's some decent tips for those new to droid from zdnet:

Stupid DROID Tricks, Volume 1 | Tech Broiler | ZDNet.com

 

[sharlan]

Lets you upload music/pics/anything from your PC to the phone's SD card. Mounts the SD card as a disk drive in Windows. Before you select the Mount option in the Android OS, the drive will show up in "My Computer" but it won't let you see anything inside of it.

More important, it charges your battery. Learned that lesson the hard way.

 

[JM33]

Not sure if this a glitch or an easter egg, but as I was typing in dolphin browser, I double tapped the space bar and it produced a period. I don't really find it useful but thought it was worth noting. I tried it in the search bar, didn't work. Anyone else notice this or find it working in any other app?

 

[johnlgalt]

It is built into the phone - I believe it is part of Auto complete - a single space / punctuation mark inserts the auto-complete word that has been highlighted, and your cursor is one space away from the inserted word.

A second space inserts a period (similar to using double spaces after the end of a sentence, as I do everywhere I type), but pressing any particular punctuation inserts that punctuation mark before the space that is already three, leaving the cursor in the same position.

I see this all the time when entering text into just about every single app - SMS, FB, logging in to web pages using the default browser, etc.

 

[jangoforhire]

If anyone has already mentioned this, I apologize, but I think its pretty cool, i found this out while playing with my droid last night. But while in a texting thread, if you you touch the picture of the contact at the top of the screen, a little scroll menu will appear allowing you to navigate a quickstart menu of items inside their contact (call, contact, text, email, facebook). pretty handy...

 

[jbg25]

I apologize in advance if this is common knowledge. But I have read several people say that something has disabled the ability to have the home page rotate to landscape mode.

This is just a setting, so if yours will not rotate check the following...

I have OpenHome, but I assume this is standard. check Sound & Display ->Display Settings->Orientation

 

[itsluy]

Settings / wireless / scroll to bottom to vpn settings / then vpn crt

Is that what you are looking for or are you saying it doesn't work.

I'm sure it works but HOW?

I've tried importing a certificate by placing it on the SD card and by downloading it from the browser to no avail.

I don't see an import option or documentation as to what type of certificate it'll accept and where to put it once you got it....

Anyone able to import a linksys certificate on on android 1.6 and above either in .pem or .der format? If so, how'd u do it?

 

[itsluy]

I apologize in advance if this is common knowledge. But I have read several people say that something has disabled the ability to have the home page rotate to landscape mode.

This is just a setting, so if yours will not rotate check the following...

I have OpenHome, but I assume this is standard. check Sound & Display ->Display Settings->Orientation

I noticed that, thought it was just a delay at first. Tried changing the settings yet the home screen and app list still won't go in landscape anymore.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Melon Bread]

Being new to Android, it took me a while to figure out how to mount the USB drive in Windows/other OS's: You need to pull down the notification menu, select the USB Storage option, and select "Mount". Hope that saves someone some time.

Very Useful Tip To Android Noobs


+Rep

 

[jbg25]

I noticed that, thought it was just a delay at first. Tried changing the settings yet the home screen and app list still won't go in landscape anymore.

Any other suggestions?

Did you reboot? I know some changes dont take place until reboot.

If not...there must be another setting...I will hunt around.

 

[jbg25]

If you are using open home...you have to fix the setting there too...

From your home screen hit the menu->More->Open Home Settings->Disable Orientation Change (first preference on the list)

Make sure this is NOT checked.

 

[hansangb]

I apologize in advance if this is common knowledge. But I have read several people say that something has disabled the ability to have the home page rotate to landscape mode.

This is just a setting, so if yours will not rotate check the following...

I have OpenHome, but I assume this is standard. check Sound & Display ->Display Settings->Orientation

As far as I can remember, I'm pretty sure it used to rotate based on your orientation setting. However, recently, it will *NOT* go into landscape mode unless you open the keyboard. This is only for the home page. In other parts, the auto-rotation works just fine.

 

[jbg25]

As far as I can remember, I'm pretty sure it used to rotate based on your orientation setting. However, recently, it will *NOT* go into landscape mode unless you open the keyboard. This is only for the home page. In other parts, the auto-rotation works just fine.

Like I said...ALL my home pages rotate based on orientation...Regardless of whether the keyboard is out or not.

 

[kmfdmk]

Luck you, the only way I've been able to get my Droid to rotate to landscape view on Home Screens is to open the keyboard. Tilting it over does not work on mine, and hasn't since I got it.

 

[locarno]

Luck you, the only way I've been able to get my Droid to rotate to landscape view on Home Screens is to open the keyboard. Tilting it over does not work on mine, and hasn't since I got it

There is a setting in the Droid handset that lets you allow landscape orientation. click menu->settings->sound and display->orientation. I have it off personally, kinda nice that it doesn't automatically re-orient unless i bust out my keyboard.

A few people have mentioned this app, but I'll mention it again. Open Home is a nice app because it gives you up to 7 home screens vs. the built in 3 that comes stock. Also, on the market there are a ton of skins and icon sets to use with Open Home to further customize your Droid.

First smartphone I've ever owned and definitely the best phone I've ever owned. Gonna be getting rid of my iPod Touch sometime soon because Droid is so much better than the iPod.

 

[ergalthema]

I noticed that, thought it was just a delay at first. Tried changing the settings yet the home screen and app list still won't go in landscape anymore.

Any other suggestions?

I think mine just started orienting by itself recently. For a couple weeks, by home screen orientation wouldn't change.

I also stopped receiving automatic gmail notifications, even though the sync settings had not changed. I searched and found here to uncheck all the gmail sync options, turn phone off, back on and check sync options. It worked.

 

[addyct]

How to add facebook birthdays onto your Droid

1. Log into facebook, search for "fbcal" and install it
2. On the fbcal app, export your birthday calendar onto Google calendar and save the file, do not subscribe to it.
3. Log into your google calendar account and under settings, import your facebook birthday calendar. Save it and go back to your google calendar. You should now see all your friend's birthdays there. (I made a new tag called facebook and placed all the birthdays in there)
4. Wait for it...wait for it...it should now be transfering from Google calendar onto your Droid!
5. Yay you're done! Now you won't miss another friend's birthday!

This is wrong.
If you download and save the file, as you say, any friends you make in the future will need to be manually added.

Subscribe to it instead of saving it. It will not show up at first, but give it time. It took my calendar overnight to sync to it, but it now is.

 

[theraven536]

It looks to me like it only syncs contacts in your phone to people who have their cell number listed on facebook.

You can always add the person's number as a seperate contact, then merge them. That's what I did.

 

[megush]

Android market has a crappy search function, let's admit it. However, to make it better, you can use google search filters within the market. For example, if I wanted to search for 'betterkeyboard', but didn't want the ridiculous amount of skins to come up in the search, I would type 'betterkeyboard -skin'. This helps filter out a lot of unwanted apps that come up.
Also the quotation modifiers work for specific text.

I don't know if this is a ridiculous question but I cannot find anything BUT skins for Better Keyboard in the market. Any suggestions? I'm assuming that I need to download the app itself first and then whatever skin I want, yes?

 

[JonKyu]

I don't know if this is a ridiculous question but I cannot find anything BUT skins for Better Keyboard in the market. Any suggestions? I'm assuming that I need to download the app itself first and then whatever skin I want, yes?

try searching the developers' name (better android) or try searching with google search query things e.g. "Better Keyboard -skin -theme" the latter is for future reference comes in handy when trying to sift through skins and themes! goodluck.