Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Link2sd: The Way to move All Data to SD Card

In most of the Android phones the built in memory of the phones are not sufficient. As the apps are installed primarily in the built in memory the phone memory ends up at one level and you have install one by deleting another. There are some solutions for that available in the Android market like move 2 sd, app 2 sd and others. Moving apps to sd is built in from the 2.2 version on Android. But none of them is enough if you are using too many apps. However you move your apps the library remains in the phone memory and many apps can not be even moved. For that reason you might want to install link2sd which might set you back with it's setup process. But let's look step by step. Is it that hard?

1. You will need a memory card reader, phone USB cable won't do

2. Insert the card using card reader into your pc

3. There are many partition tools available for free online. Using one of them make two partitions in the sd card

4. One will be fat32 and the other will be ext2 or ext3. Depends on your cards capacity. But let's not take the risk and go for the safest ext2. Remember to make both the partitions primary. Fat32 will be your memory cards memory for media which will be recognized by your phone and ext2/3 will not be recognized now.

5. Install link2sd from the market. It's free. It will ask to reset your phone to recognize the additional memory.

6. Now you are ready to move all the apps+data to your card. Just select one by one and in the next menu click on Link

7. Then tick all the boxes and continue. Everything will move to that additional phone memory and work same as before


Also remember that you can not link your apps unless you have them wholly in the phone memory. So if they are in sd card in the Froyo way, move them back to phones memory at first and then link them to sd. I have installed around 90 apps including big games like Pro Evolution Soccer in my phone of 176MB phone memory. I hope it will help you too.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Cheap Gingerbread Phones

 

The market is now full of the new version of Android phones, Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Everyday new phones are joining the race though all of them are not Gingerbread. In fact there is a trait that the cheaper phones come with Froyo loaded in those and the more expensive phones come with Gingerbread loaded in them. Therefore if you want to buy a cheap Android phone and also have the taste of the Gingerbread version you will be quite out of luck. There is not much to look for in that particular search of cheap Gingerbread phones. But there are some phones with pre installed Gingerbread and some which can be updated to Gingerbread later on which might be cheaper than buying directly. Here are my choices of cheap Gingerbread phones

HTC Wildfire S:

HTC-Wildfire-S-2

Certainly the most famous phone in this category. Firstly it is from HTC and secondly its affordable which is a rare combination. This phone has a decent configuration and it runs the latest phone version of Android quite smoothly with its 600MHz processor. It comes with the famous Sense UI which is the best known among the Android customizations. Though the 3.2 inch display might be on of the smallest among the Gingerbread phones, it has all the features that it makes it a competitive smartphone in this price tag.

Samsung Galaxy Ace:

Samsung-Galaxy-Ace

Another famous phone which comes with Android Froyo preloaded. But nothing to worry! Just update it OTA (Over The Air) after purchasing and congrats, you are a proud owner of a Gingerbread phone! Comparing with the Wildfire S it has better specs and more features. The screen size is 3.5 inches and TouchWiz has been used efficiently to improve your Android experience. It also has a better processor of 800MHz which makes it even better.

LG Optimus Pro C660

LG-Optimus-Pro-C660-2

Yes there are much more famous but cheap Gingerbread phones out there but this is about a different form factor with a different brand. This is a BlackBerry like Gingerbread phone which is yet to be released. This phone features a 2.8 inches display with a physical QWERTY keyboard under it and a 800MHz processor. The camera is 3.15MP and there is no secondary camera. The other features and lackings are as expected to be on a phone of that price and OS.

And again, there cannot be any Budget Android phones review without the price. But the prices of these phones vary too much according to regions but the average price of these phones is around $200 without contracts and none of them exceeds the $300 barrier. If you are too choosy you can also do some more investigation and there are some more promising phones like HTC ChaCha, HTC Salsa, Samsung Galaxy 3 and 5 and many more. Moreover, if you are an owner of a popular Android phone there is always a chance that there is a Gingerbread custom rom for your phone like Cyanogenmod or Miui.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Best Android Web Browser

Unlike iOS there is a huge number of browsers available for Android phones. To say one of them as the best will not be very smart as different browsers excels in different fields of performances. But still here is a comparison of Android browsers which may help you choose in the ocean of the apps.

1.Opera Mini browser:

OperaMini5beta_Android_speedDial

This is the most famous mobile browser on all the mobile platforms. In the Android phones too this browser is really great with its unique features. For example it has one of the  rarest features like page compression which will save a lots of bandwidth if you are on a limited connection. It provides better results too if you are using a slow connection.

2.Dolphin HD browser:

ScreenShot00427

This is another famous browser for mobile devices. The strength of Dolphin browser is the gesture control. There is also another ability which makes it stand up from the crowd is the ability to use add-ons. So you can customize your browser with your necessary features. All the other average features of mobile web browsers are present in it.

3.Skyfire Web browser:

skyfire_android_UI_overlay2

This browser became famous from the very beginning of its release as it promised flash videos for non flash supported smartphones. It did its job very well and there are more to it. It does not only let your mobile play online videos but also compresses it so that it takes less time and bandwidth to be played. There are some more innovative features like user agent switching, facebook overview, feed reader, like button for all the pages etc.

4.UC Browser:

uc-browser-7.9-for-android

This browser is known as the fastest browser with its revolutionary compression technology. Besides you can choose between data saving full function mood according to your connectivity. Among the other common features the Night Mode is one of its unique features. The download management of this browser is also very powerful.

5.Firefox for Android:

Firefox-5-Beta-Android

Firefox for Android is one of the most hyped browser for Android phones but it could not keep up with the hype. It is a good browser with some average features. But still it has got many glitches and it does not support many Android phones. So there are many obstacles on its way to be a popular browser on this platform.

There are some other good feature rich browsers out there like Miren browser, Maxthon browser and xScope brower which pack a good number of features and impressive performance. I hope this comparison of Android browsers will help you to choose your favorite browser/browsers.