Help S2 A few things really bugging me.

[carter15]

Hi everyone,

I've had my Galaxy S2 for a few weeks now, love it and it's so much better than my old Desire HD.
There are a few questions that I haven't been able to find answers to, and I've looked across various forums.

1. Is there a way to make the incoming call contact picture bigger? Default picture size is very small and quality on screen is poor, regardless of the size/quality of the original image file. I know that there is an app called Full screen caller id, but I would like to avoid it if possible. HTC sense gives a much nicer incoming call notification.

2. Samsung stock photo frame widget - regardless of the size and quality of the selected picture, on screen it looks very poor. Even pictures taken with a pro DSLR, resized or original size, on screen appear to be low resolution and not sharp at all. It doesn't look anything like the on screen photo in S2 ads.
In the gallery however these same pictures look great. Am I missing something?

3. Stock Samsung weather widget - most of the time it fails to auto update using data connection. Also if I click on the update button in the lower right corner of the widget it always says "connection failed". If I tap on the widget (i.e. open the app) and then select update it updates as it should. On top of that the shortest auto refresh interval is 3 hours, so most of the time I have to update manually.
Is there a way to fix this as I really like the look of this widget?

4. Stock browser - It makes the newly opened tabs active. Is there a way to avoid that?

Thanks for any help on these issues.

 

[Rudedawg]

Thing that bugged me at first was MMS. Pictures messages arrived in a kind of slide format and appeared compressed. I don't know how much that is down to the sending unit of course.

 

[loony]

i miss my scrolling wallpaper. the "picture fame" just isn't the same but i can live without it.

 

[Rudedawg]

i miss my scrolling wallpaper. the "picture fame" just isn't the same but i can live without it.

This scrolling wallpaper? Is this not what I see on my S2?

 

[carter15]

Regarding q1 and the quality of the contact pictures, I forgot to add that I know that Google compresses contact pictures heavily by default, but on DHD you could choose a photo for the contact from the gallery and it would stay looking nice and in high resolution, and it would appear larger on the screen during an incoming call.

 

[NZtechfreak]

In settings in the browser you can choose for new tabs to open in the background.

 

[Rudedawg]

Regarding q1 and the quality of the contact pictures, I forgot to add that I know that Google compresses contact pictures heavily by default, but on DHD you could choose a photo for the contact from the gallery and it would stay looking nice and in high resolution, and it would appear larger on the screen during an incoming call.

Yeah I think the contact pictures in my list are ported from the facebook app so compression kicks in.

 

[carter15]

In settings in the browser you can choose for new tabs to open in the background.

Thanks, found it. I've gone through the settings a few times before, but didn't see it.

 

[loony]

This scrolling wallpaper? Is this not what I see on my S2?

...as in, on my old nokia5800 the "background" wallpaper changed, not the widget window you an set on one off the windows to cycle through pics.

i like to change my actual wallpaper which has to be done manually. the widget does well...but only if your on that particular page.

 

[Rudedawg]

...as in, on my old nokia5800 the "background" wallpaper changed, not the widget window you an set on one off the windows to cycle through pics.

i like to change my actual wallpaper which has to be done manually. the widget does well...but only if your on that particular page.

Not seen that admittedly but I do seem to remember the 5800 had a terrible unresponsive touch interface.

 

[heshanj]

i'd love answers to 1 and 3 too! but my contact pics are from facebook so i dont think i can do anything else. the non-fb contacts, i used google to upload individual pics, n although the size is small, at least the quality is ok

the weather widget is definitely the best-looking free weather widget, n its annoying that it doestn auto update every 3 hours.. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt update even over night.. and i have auto/background sync, wifi on. at least mine refreshes when i tap the icon.. buti find it annoyingly hard to tap that little refresh icon anyway, so i end up opening the app to update

 

[NZtechfreak]

Don't know about 3, but I'd suggest just getting Beautiful Widgets to be honest, paid app but worth it I think. For 1 I think there must be an alternate dialler that could do that... Will see what I can find...

 

[Gearu]

On nokias, each homescreen has it's own seperate wallpaper you can set.
What you can do on the S2 though is set 1 landscape wallpaper and scroll across it as you switch homescreens, I like this, makes it feel more tablet-like.

 

[loony]

yeah.....i have a naked chick lying down (no rudie bits to keep the missus happy) and as i scroll i get to see MORE! lol

 

[iynCognito]

...as in, on my old nokia5800 the "background" wallpaper changed, not the widget window you an set on one off the windows to cycle through pics.

i like to change my actual wallpaper which has to be done manually. the widget does well...but only if your on that particular page.

You can't get a separate wallpaper for each home screen afaik . However you can get your wallpaper to switch at set intervals or everyone you receive a call by using an app called Wallpaper Rotator. I think it is free and there is also a widget for it.

 

[loony]

i thought there would be an app out there, just hasnt been at the top of the "priorty" list lol....cheers thou.

 

[jaybird16]

I just got a new Galaxy S2 T989. I know the total screen resolution is 480px x 800px. So, I made some wallpapers that were 800px high and 1200px wide, and that was fine because the phone lets me decide how to crop the sides down so that it is the right aspect ratio.

And that worked. Sort of.

You see, the problem is, even though the total screen resolution is 480px x 800px, there is the little bar across the top that shows applications, battery level, the time, etc., and that means the actual wallpaper display size is something LESS that 800px. Maybe about 20 pixels less. So, what happens is the phone takes that image that is 800 pixels high, and displays it across only, say, maybe 780 pixels, because of that top bar. I think this is the reason why my wallpapers don't look crisp and sharp, but kind of blurry instead.

So the total height of the screen resolution is not the same as the displayed height of the wallpaper image.

How many pixels does that bar take up? What I need to know is the actual finished display height of the wallpaper.

Is this published anywhere? Does anybody know?

 

[Marrr]

Working out the height of the notification area is easy to do: just take a screen shot and load the resulting image into Photoshop and crop the area. You'll then have the exact dimensions.

 

[Marrr]

Forgot to add, take a screen grab by holding down the 'home' button and tapping the power button.

 

[Slug]

I thought that the notification bar overlays the wallpaper? Iirc the stock GS2 wallpapers are 960x800; I use that res for my own custom images and they don't appear 'squashed'. Just to check.... you are expanding the crop box fully i.e. to the full height of the image?