android blackberry

It seems strange to me that my Droid Charge didn't come with a note taking application.  I've been sending myself text messages instead.  Here is a very quick comparison of 3 popular note taking apps across several devices.1. Post-it notesI'll start with the most popular note taking application ever: the post-it note + a pen.  Prerequisite: knowing how to write.  Beyond that, learning...

Android has a really cool, very detailed battery life indicator.  As a software engineer, I have no idea how it is even possible to do this, so I question the accuracy.  Charting CPU use is just not enough to really do this.To see it, press the settings button then select Settings - About phone - Battery use.  Screenshot bel...

This is a follow-up to Battery Life Problem: Part 1.After uninstalling Fring and rebooting, the battery life today seems good... a little too good.  Take a look at this screen shot:How is my battery at full power at 5pm?  So I look at the system status screen (Settings - About phone - System Status) and the discrepancy becomes clear: Aha!!  The battery indicator shows full, but the...

Update: See part 2 of my battery life saga here.Yesterday my phone's battery life suddenly dropped from about 30 standby hours to about 4 standby hours. According to the nifty meter that tracks what is using battery life (how do they do that!?!?!?), the display was using 60% of it - even though it was locked the entire time.  Reducing the screen brightness was ineffective.  It just kept...

Here is an example of some bloatware that came on my Samsung Droid Charge:The application is "City ID" and notice that it cannot be stopped, uninstalled, or otherwise manipulated in any way.  This alone makes me want to unlock my phone.This programs job is to periodically get in your way by asking if you want to pay a fee to lookup the area code of a call if the caller is not in your address...

I love the reminder options on my Android phone.  I would love them more if they worked.  My phone sends me reminders at seemingly random times.  Here is one example:At 11:53 on the 13th, I get a reminder about Artscape.  It tells me that Artscape is Thursday the 14 through Sunday the 17th.  Oops!  That should be Fri 15th through Sunday the 17th.  Did I enter it...

Take a look at some of the options for the Android browser.  It makes no sense to have "change brightness" as one of the shortcuts in the browser.  That is an option that applies to the entire phone, not just the browser, and it is something you set once in the main settings.  The most important menu option for a browser would be bookmarks, which is buried on another screen.This is...

The phone only understands one call volume which applies to the earpiece, bluetooth, and speakerphone.  This is silly.  The iPhone remembers each of these volumes independently.  With my Android phone, every time I hit the Speakerphone button I have to crank the volume up, then crank it back down when I switch back.I think even my old flip-phone supported th...

Camera phones take pictures.  You should be able to view those pictures too.  For some reason this basic functionality is limited on my Samsung Droid Charge.  So far I found 2 photo viewers on the phone.  One good, one less good.Camera Photo Viewer:If you click the camera icon you can go into review mode by clicking on the picture in the corner.  This is just like on the iPhone...

One problem with the Droid Charge is that it is too large to fit in women's pant pockets.  In general, men's jeans have deeper pockets.  The phone is large enough that my coworkers keep asking me about my new laptop, and if I need a bag to carry it around.That's it: my next phone is going to be twice as b...

2 of my favorite iPhone features are voice dialing and Google's voice search.  Android has taken voice recognition to a new level, although the voice dialing has a nearly fatal flaw.For 2 years, every day I left the office I grabbed my iPhone, and without looking held down the home button and said "Call Jessilem."  Please wipe that silly look off your face, you know you have stranger pet...

One horrible misfeature of the iPhone is that the iPhone does not always show the date and time of text messages.  It seems like if the messages are close enough together it groups them as part of a conversation, and it only displays the time stamp of the first one.  This has been a problem for years and is a constant unaddressed complaint. While this does save a bit of screen space,...