What have you found new or different in 2.1?

[therooster0514]

For those who complained about updating to 2.1 without root.

[ROM] ESE81 Completely Stock With Proper Root, SU, & Baseband

Used that before getting OTA, works great. You have to have modified Restore, and some other pre-reqs that are explained in the link.

And if you want more than 3 screens, get HelixLauncher. I have now seen it in the Market. Runs flawless without any FCs. I only get one force close when i resume from a reboot.

 

[pjtoadie]

You have to buy a docking station or find a dock emulator on the market.

Ahh gotcha.....thanks!!

 

[bilbravo]

As an update to my post yesterday... after uninstalling HelixLauncher and rebooting my phone is back to normal. 2.1 is very snappy, and the battery life issue I had yesterday is gone. Not sure what it was about helixlauncher but it didn't like me.

 

[PetiePal]

Ahh gotcha.....thanks!!

There are 2 base methods:

1. Buy a home media dock (official or the EZESTAND. I own one of those from a forum member who's been selling them for around $12.99. GREAT stand that I use at home. Comes with magnet installed just like the official dock.

I also bought a Ped3 Universal Dock for work (see attached images) and stuck a small magnet on the right place to go into Dock mode. You can adjust as well for the Car dock home.

2. Use a free app from the Market to enter the right mode. I used to use DockRunner before having these 2 stands.

 

[Makedon]

The browser improved infinitely. Double-tap finally zooms in on a textbox or table instead of just zooming in a predefined distance no matter what you double tap on.

 

[DroidSteve]

I have found the standard mail application is just all around more stable than the old one. I have been using K9 mail since the first week of owning the phone. I have now deleted K9 mail and just use the standard email app. Saved me about 60mb from K9. Very happy about this.

 

[allanlaw]

Why couldn't you set up your yahoo account on the older version? My yahoo account has been on my droid since I bought it, just confused, what changed??

I would get hundreds of copies of each sent email in my "sent" folder in Yahoo. This is with the free version of Yahoo Mail set up to save sent emails.

 

[Deleted User]

Another minor change in 2.1: LED notifications for new Gmail (green blinking LED) now turns off when the screen is on (in which case you can see the status bar notification).

I was a bit confused when the LED wasn't blinking this morning because I knew I received email overnight, but found out that was the case when I turned the screen off (I leave it in the media dock overnight as my alarm clock).

Not sure if it's an improvement, but something different.

 

[PetiePal]

Also scrolling between homescreens is zippy fast. Opening apps much much faster.

 

[Krugger]

Mine has always behaved the way you're describing the new behavior.

I'm talking about when you add a Shortcut to a Contact on your homescreen. I just verified on a stock 2.01 Droid it behaves as I remembered when you click the shortcut... this new popup is definitely a change.

 

[PetiePal]

Confirmed that IS new, and pretty spiffy.

 

[chrlswltrs]

Here's a nice one:

If you put your phone on vibrate, it won't interrupt your music anymore when you get a notification. You'll only get the vibrate.

Whereas in 2.0.1, it would cut out the music (but not play any sound).

Thanks for the heads up, that did get really annoying.

 

[Titaniac]

One of the issues that was not addressed in 2.1 is the ability to accept/decline .ics appointments on the calendar. This may be insignificant to some, but as a business user, this is really annoying. *.ICS appointment file requests are used by Google Calendar, Apple ICal, and Mozilla Sunbird, but if someone sends me an appointment on my GMail, I cannot accept or decline that appointment from my droid. FAIL!

Google should really address this issue. It seems like this would be relatively easy. There are some "workarounds" like downloading an app from the Market, saving the ics file on the SD card, and using the app to load it. The one I'm using is setting up GMail to accept all calendar requests. However, now I have to go through my calendar every day and delete those that I would have declined.

While I think the Droid is still superior to other smartphones, this just reinforces the fact that it's more of a toy than a business tool, and the Blackberry is more of a business tool than a toy.

If someone knows of a method around this, please let me know.

 

[Jon8RFC]

Well, this isn't really new or different, but it's different from what I expected to change--same boot time for me on 2.1-update1 as 2.0.1: 51 seconds. I was hoping for a faster boot...not necessarily shaving off 30 seconds, but 5 seconds would've made me happy.

 

[nessthiss]

I installed Google Earth and played around with it. Then I noticed it was over 22mb and said holy #@%& and uninstalled it! That's too big for an app I'm barely going to use.

Google Earth isn't showing up in the market for me. I've received the OTA and it's working, I've got live wallpapers, pinch to zoom, etc. but can't find that. I haven't received any notification of updates to any of my apps either.

 

[PetiePal]

Try just typing in "Earth"

 

[nessthiss]

Try just typing in "Earth"

That doesn't bring it up either. I've even tried having the link sent from Google Earth for mobile but clicking the link in the text just causes the market to force close

 

[GeneW]

I'm not seeing Google Earth in the Marketplace either. I even selected it in AppBrain online and then sync'ed from the phone and got an error saying that the application didn't exist.

 

[Josh0187]

So, about all this tethering comments, does PDAnet no longer work?

 

[Phoenixdroid]

Yeah, no google earth here either, not on phone, not in market, and I searched it under google, google earth, earth.......and nothing. So how do others see it in the market when some of us can't?

 

[Haelous]

Same. No Google Earth in the market either. I am enjoying the live wallpapers though.

 

[Phoenixdroid]

I've read over on the Google forum that other are having the same problem. Some are saying that a newer droid is getting it, yet a droid rolled out on day one is not. Don't know about this but my droid was from launch date.

 

[Haelous]

I've read over on the Google forum that other are having the same problem. Some are saying that a newer droid is getting it, yet a droid rolled out on day one is not. Don't know about this but my droid was from launch date.

My Droid is a week old.

 

[BlueIce5249]

I've read over on the Google forum that other are having the same problem. Some are saying that a newer droid is getting it, yet a droid rolled out on day one is not. Don't know about this but my droid was from launch date.

I got mine the day after launch and it worked a few days ago.

HOWEVER, just out of curiosity I checked again and it's not there anymore Weird!!!! I promise, I used to have it! I downloaded it right after I updated my phone, and quickly uninstalled it.

 

[chrlswltrs]

I bought my droid the end of november, I just downloaded and tried google earth. I just searched "earth" in the market.