Mobile

Anyone who used Android knows that it does not, by default, repeat notifications for important events, such as missed called, text messages, email or calendar. One has to manually switch the screen on and look at the notification bar on the top to see what they missed. Ideally, Android needs to have a visual or audible notification that there is a notification that happened in the past.

Luckily there are many apps that provide this, and I review some that I have tried in the past, with the pros and cons for each.

Light Flow

Just what I have been saying all along.

Spectrum fragmentation means pricier mobile handsets, customer lock-in by carrier, and reduce the ability for global roaming.

This is mostly a USA/Canada problem only, since the rest of the world do not auction spectrum to specific networks.

Note: This article is Android version dependent. Before you do it, you have to upgrade your phone. Use the article on Making your Sony Xperia Arc faster using Android 2.3.4 Global Generic 4.0.2.A.0.42.

Root your phone

Root your phone using zergRush.

Remove the junk applications

$ adb shell
$ su
#

If you have a slow Sony Xperia Arc, then probably you have Timescape and carrier bloatware that makes your phone slow (e.g. Rogers in Canada). In this tutorial, I will explain the steps that I did to make the phone considerably faster.

Install PC Companion and Update Service

In order to flash a new ROM on your phone, you will need first to install Sony Ericsson's PC Companion as well as Update Service on your Windows computer. This is needed so that the required USB drivers are installed and configured.

Install Flashtool

Do you have a Sony Ericsson Xperia phone running Android? Such as the Xperia X10 or Xperia Arc? Is it slow and lags often?

We have a solution for you ...

But before we tell you, we have to explain why Sony Ericsson's Android can be slow. The reason is Timescape, Sony's user interface for Android phones. Even if you disable all the Timescape widgets from your home screens, it will still be running under the hood.

This is a a list of Android applications that I currently have on my phone. Some are more often used than others, but all are useful.

These apps are running on my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, which has Android 2.3.3 on it. Most of them ran on the Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 as well.

ADW Launcher is a fast and feature rich home application replacement. Use it instead of Sony Ericsson's TimeScape and your phone will feel faster.

This is great news!

Sony Ericsson decides to cooperate with independent custom Android ROM developers.

They started with publishing steps on how to unlock the boot loader, and how to build the Linux kernel for Xperia phones.

Thanks Sony Ericsson ...

As I wrote before, the USA/Canada mobile market is ruled by corporate interests. One of the myths is that there is a shortage of "spectrum". This gave way to auctions for spectrum. In turn this means that different companies make handsets that run on different frequencies, and the balkanization of the market, or prices going up as phones become multifrequency.

Now, Citigroup questions if US spectrum shortage is real.

Hope Canada listens too.

As the CBC is reporting, Mobilicity, a relative newcomer to the mobile market, is decrying the government auctioning off Long Term Evolution (LTE) "spectrum" to the bigger players (Rogers, Bell, and Telus).

This is the continuation of the industry lobbying for more balkanization.

So, over the past few days, I had an interesting issue with Android 2.1 (Eclair) on a Motorola Milestone.

Suddenly, it decided to stop syncing emails with Gmail. At the same time, syncing the calendar worked fine.

I tried solving this using by selecting another label, and then went back to the Inbox and it seemed to work, but in fact, it did not. It would show the correct number of unread messages, but the actual unread messages will be from an old sync. Very confusing.

Here is the solution: