Help Car Home replacement/removal

[Scottd9000]

Just picked up a Fascinate for my wife and as we all know it's infested with Bing (until the 2.2 update). I have installed google search etc and its mostly running like her Eris was BUT the car home app that pops up when you place the phone in the car mount is the Samsung Bing app. The icons point to VZ navigator etc and she is like WTF I can't get the nav to work. Anyone know the easiest way (here come the "root the phone man....." comments) to disable the car home or replace it will the stock google one? Thanks, very nice phone minus the Bing crap.

 

[nitsuj17]

Just picked up a Fascinate for my wife and as we all know it's infested with Bing (until the 2.2 update). I have installed google search etc and its mostly running like her Eris was BUT the car home app that pops up when you place the phone in the car mount is the Samsung Bing app. The icons point to VZ navigator etc and she is like WTF I can't get the nav to work. Anyone know the easiest way (here come the "root the phone man....." comments) to disable the car home or replace it will the stock google one? Thanks, very nice phone minus the Bing crap.

just because you brought it up...generic "root the phone man....." comment

 

[Scottd9000]

4 minutes... That's pretty quick!

 

[Moonfire]

Generic 'I can't believe you chose the Fascniate over the DX, with Bing on there I wouldn't let the fleas on my dog use that THINK OF THE CHILDREN!' statement.

I've never launched that app (and now it's frozen until updates are brought out - I <3 you Titanium), so just guessing at what exactly is has. Have you considered a third-party launcher? LauncherPro* allows you to Hide apps in the drawer (and doesn't need root to do so), and its homescreens can be viewed in landscape. So you could drag what shortcuts you want on a screen and make your own. Even if you don't want to use it as the default launcher, you could use Home Switcher to launch LP, basically treating it as just another app (hitting Home would relaunch TouchWiz). All of these are free, although LP has a paid version with more features, namely widget-resizing and its own widgets.

*There are others, ADW.Launcher being the other main one. It's personal preference, really, I've just never tried it.

 

[Scottd9000]

I tried launcher pro paid version on my OG Droid and liked it except it was a bit laggy. That's a good suggestion - touch wiz isn't all that great. Is there a easy way to find the google stock car home app? I suppose I could grab it off my rooted D1 but thats on 2.2.

 

[larry0071]

Moonfire, that will not help.

Under accessories I posted about this issue a few days ago...

The issue his wife has is that when you buy the car dock and you dock the phone, you hit the home key and it automatically enters the dock mode for the car if in the car dock.

Here is the fix, and your wife will hate it, but she can handle it for now.... in a couple months we should get 2.2 with Google as a default.

Place the phone in the car dock and do not hit home. Already have it in the non-docked home screen. Once docked, open your application listing (app drawer) and manually select the Google Map application that you downloaded from the market. Now you can navigate with voice guide instruction with this application, use voice search for nav destinations and do what she had expected.

The whole issue with Bing Maps is not that the true Bing Maps software sucks, rather the problem is that we DO NOT have the entire Bing maps software! Verizon or Bing or Samsung...... someone.... decided to rip the voice guided mapping software out of Bing and instead give a totally useless Bing Maps POS that requires you to read the screen and also click step by step through the process of getting to the destination. It is a truely useless application, as I am 110% Verizon wanted!

By not giving you the full Bing experiance, they likely get a huge amount of low tech users to click on the VZ Navigator option and pay for the service. I completely believe that this is the reason we did not get the real Bing Mapping software.

I have an HTC Imagio (Win Mobile 6.5) with Bing and with Google both installed, and I thought Bing was A-OK, I prefered it over the Google maps. Both provided voice guided "garmin style" navigation, but I just liked the interface of Bing better. I defended Bing on this site prior to getting the Fascinate.

Then I got the fascinate and I immediately realized what everyone was crying about.... The stripped down, de-nutted, and useless version of Bind that the Fascinate has. It is pointless to even have this raped version of Bing maps.

So there you have it. I helped the guy and ran an emotional rant all in the same thread/reply! Multi-tasking!

Larry

 

[Scottd9000]

My experience with the physical car dock is that it automatically goes into the Bing/Verizon car dock when you place the phone into it. You have the option of hitting the "house" button on screen but that throws you back to whatever you were doing before placing the phone in the dock and not the home screen like you would expect. I will give it another look. Thanks for the rant - good stuff!

 

[miyooper]

Great rant!!

 

[larry0071]

Mine does not automatically go to the car or the home dock when I insert the phone, it requires me to hit the home key. At any point while in the dock (on my phone) if I touch the home key, it goes to the dock version home screen.

If yours automatically goes to the dock screen, change this and see if it works.

Where I said I mount the phone into the dock and then hit Google maps, don't do that.

Instead enter Google Maps prior to placing into the dock and see if the dock's magnet will allow you to remain in google maps.

All of this internal rage of mine could have been avoided if only Samsung allowed the end user (you know... the person PAYING for the phone...) to simply swap out the dock tiles with whatever applications they desired. So simple! I should be a freaking engineer, huh? Maybe CEO of Samsung? I must be a dog-gone genious!

 

[Scottd9000]

Thanks I will have her try that - launch google navigation + place in dock.

Anyone know how to enable the audio out on the dock? I get nothing out of it when docked.

 

[larry0071]

Thanks I will have her try that - launch google navigation + place in dock.

Anyone know how to enable the audio out on the dock? I get nothing out of it when docked.

Audio out = 2.2 Update

You will not have this feature enabled as far as I know until the OTA 2.2, should be in the time frame of 2 weeks -> 2 years from today.

 

[Scottd9000]

Being a OG Droid owner I know that song and dance well. Good to know that will eventually work, was going to return it.

 

[wtherrell]

Custom Car Home (App on the market) allows you to put whatever you want on the car dock screen. I use Locale with Dock Condition Widget to automatically sense the car dock and bring up CCH when I dock. With CCH you get three customizable screens (9 apps per screen) to put whatever apps you want. Also select which one you want as home screen when docked. Nice big icons that are easy to touch. I have both Google Nav and CoPilot as apps on mine. You can set it to auto-activate bluetooth, GPS, and speakerphone and go to max screen brightness when you dock.

Lovin' my Fascinate more every day!!