Is the hassle worth it ?

[Guest ba5e]

I notice that one of your requirements is a MP3 player in a phone, be warned, I have a 1st gen Blade (with AMOLED) and I can't speak for all Blades, but mine has distinctive hissing through decent headphones on all the firmwares I have tried. This may not bother you too much if your using basic headphones, but I would like to reinforce that the ZTE Blade is useless as a music machine.

[Guest dsswoosh]

In fact, does anyone know how i can screen capture on the San Francisco.

If i can find out how to do it, i'll post some Opera Mini screenshots to prove that it is just as good as a normal browser with how i've set it up, but with completely superior loading times.

Nevermind, i found out how.

Quick test with www.ign.com since it's a pretty complicated website -

Opera Mini - Load Time 7.886 seconds across a 10mb wi-fi connection @ 54mbps

Screenshot -

Default Browser - Load Time 44.983 seconds across a 10mb wi-fi connection @ 54mbps

Screenshot -

Ok, so the default browser is SLIGHTLY better looking BUT, it also took 37.117 seconds longer, and if you are on pay as you go like me, and roaming on 3g, you can bet your life this gap would increase ALOT. Also, and this is the dealbreaker, the smoothness of scrolling on Opera mini is infinity times better than default browser. Waaaaaay better.

As for appkillers, it's an interesting article which i learned a few things. BUT using app killers definately speeds up menu navigation and makes it smoother. I have used a few different app killers and having lots of things in memory DOES slow things down. As for the only downside on the website you linked me, which is necessary apps COULD be killed accidently, this doesn't happen if you put them on the ignore list.

Appkillers = speedier phone, it is undeniable.

Edited February 6, 2011 by dsswoosh

[Guest shadowninty]

the resources used by the OS to restart killed apps should make your phone SLOWER

[Guest dsswoosh]

the resources used by the OS to restart killed apps should make your phone SLOWER

I can honestly say, that with my phone this is not true at all.

Also my friend has the San Francisco / Blade, he is using the standard 2.1 rom that came with the phone, and his phone works alot faster with an appkiller too.

I am willing to accept that not all phones will work in the same way, especially with different roms etc, but i have yet to see a phone working faster without an appkiller.

Just my experience of course.

[Guest shadowninty]

I don't see how more CPU use makes a phone faster.. maybe I'm just stupid

[Guest dsswoosh]

I don't see how more CPU use makes a phone faster.. maybe I'm just stupid

I would actually question the logic behind the article that you linked me. The best thing i can say is try an appkiller. I personally use Advanced Task Manager. The most noticable thing you will see when you kill apps is how smooth the scrolling becomes when you navigate menus.

Also, although the articles describes how the cpu "sleeps" on background apps, it fails to mention that when you need more memory it has to close down the apps that weren;t using the cpu. This USES the cpu.

I play alot of games on my san fran, which use alot of memory.

Ask yourself this - What will load faster?

A game that can load into empty ram

OR

A game that can not load into empty ram, has to wait for 2-3 other apps to close, and then load into ram.

I can definately see the argument the article makes, i just don't think covers all of the situations that can happen.

My phone for my useage without doubt works faster with appkillers.

For someone who just uses the phone to text, call and mp3/camera then yes, using appkillers might be slower.

edit- also the article didn't seem to mention background apps that try and access the internet via 3g (which is most free apps). This uses cpu and thus is better if they were simply killed.

Edited February 6, 2011 by dsswoosh

[Guest shadowninty]

but when they are killed they are restarted!!

[Guest dsswoosh]

but when they are killed they are restarted!!

Again i question this.

Which app are you talking about?

Once most apps are dead, they won't restart unless the user prompts them too.

My games won't load unless i click on them to load them. Once i am finished with them, i clear memory and that is it, dead, until i load them myself again next time. If i leave certain games open, some of them will continue to try and load ads, or access the high score board, even though they are running in the background.

Definately uses more cpu to leave games open. Draining battery, and eating megabyte usage.

This will apply to most free apps.

And i would say that the majority of users have a fair few ad driven free apps on their phone, wouldnt you?

As i say, if you are ONLY using camera/mp3/text and calls, then yes, i would say appkiller might make your phone slower (but lets face it, if you are only using your phone for these things and nothing else, you will NEVER notice any speed loss by running a program from new or switching to it when its in memory). But the reality is, most people use their phone for far more than this, which is where appkiller will speed your phone up, and save your battery.

Edited February 6, 2011 by dsswoosh

[Guest SqueakyG]

Going to reply to a lot of people all in one post:

I have been trying to get a wall paper to fit on the normal Orange set up and every picture I grab of google needs to be shrunk. The wallpaper confirmation wants me to move a box to chose what area to display.

Touch the corner of the wallpaper selection box to make it bigger or smaller. The shape of this box is the shape wallpaper needs to be: twice the width of the screen. This is because wallpaper scrolls horizontally as you scroll between homescreens. The ideal pre-prepared format for wallpaper on this phone is 960x800 pixels.

thanks for all the assistance guys n gals. got Japanese Jelly fish running now. Just sorting out personal setting and then the hunt for a few apps/games.

Do I remove the files I added to mod or do they need to stay ?. and the USB connectivity. I am trying to move a few albums over but it seems to cut the link under a minute for some reason.

See, wasn't so hard was it? :P You can do what you like with all the programs you put on the SD card -- they are not "in use" by anything because they are just installation files, but you may want to keep hold of them. Clockworkmod is always on your phone now and you can access it any time by booting the phone with the volume down button. In JJ9 the USB mounting works a bit differently than the stock 2.1 ROM (pull down the notification bar, select it, press a button, press a confirmation... it's more elaborate) but I don't know why it would be disconnecting like that.

I notice that one of your requirements is a MP3 player in a phone, be warned, I have a 1st gen Blade (with AMOLED) and I can't speak for all Blades, but mine has distinctive hissing through decent headphones on all the firmwares I have tried. This may not bother you too much if your using basic headphones, but I would like to reinforce that the ZTE Blade is useless as a music machine.

I can confirm the same observation. The sound chip in the SanFran must be cheap as hell. Audio has quite a hiss, then about 5 seconds after sound media finishes playing there is a loud click and the hiss disappears. When I mentioned this in another discussion, people thought I must have a bad handset. It's funny how nobody else mentions these things. The interface for music is acceptable but nothing special, and of course you're limited by SD card size, so the SanFran is never going to beat an iPod anyway.

If you use a rom that has pinch support, set images and fonts to medium, turn mobile view off and fullscreen on when using Opera Mini, you would be hard pressed to tell any difference between that and a full web browser.

I don't really like Opera Mini! I find it slower than the default browser or Dolphin, because it takes ages for pictures to turn from blobby boxes into pictures. I also find that many web pages are badly formatted (when they look fine in Dolphin), and I don't like lack of true smooth pinch scaling in Opera: it's either zoomed-out or text-column-close-up, no true scaling.

But I have to use Opera Mini when I'm using 3G on Orange, because the "Orange Safeguard" blocks half the internet, including these forums! Opera Mini is the only browser that seems to circumvent the Orange Safeguard. Believe me I've tried every method Orange suggest to remove the safeguard, and they're a bunch of clowns. I called customer services and a clueless Indian guy said the only way to do it was to walk into an Orange shop with photoID. I walked into an Orange shop and the guy said the only way to do it was to call customer services!

So I use Opera Mini...

the resources used by the OS to restart killed apps should make your phone SLOWER

On the Task Killer discussion: It's debatable. Some processes will start up again as soon as they are killed, which uses CPU cycles. But some processes will stay killed, which saves CPU cycles if they do active background tasks. I suggest keeping a Task Killer, but excluding the tasks that are observed to always start up again (like Maps and Gallery), and using it to get rid of things you know will stay killed, like a game you have finished playing for the day.

[Guest IronDoc]

Afaik, the prevailing opinion is that task-killers should only be used on eclair. Froyo manages memory fines by itself.

[Guest Rotmann]

+1 on aggressive taskkillers on 2.2 they work against android and you don't understand how it works. You can use a task manager to close apps you don't need anymore for a long period of time or apps not responding but killing apps continously although you use them often is plain stupid. It takes more time and ressources to close and restart an app than to leave it to hibernate in the RAM (instant opening, almost no processing power needed. The Blade has plenty of RAM, which adds to the fact than you can leave oftn used apps to hibernate in the background.

On opera mini the main advantage is the compression, up to 90% and the resulting low data consumption ammountand the loading times. Opera mini sends a request to the opera servers, the servers get the site for you, compress it abd send it to you. The disadvantage is that some sites will not render or work correctly. The perfect combination is opera mini+another browser of your choice when opera mini does not render as it should.

Someone said the latest 3d games don't work on the blade but he is wrong, i play some 3d games and they work pretty good. Search youtube for blade 3d.

Edited February 8, 2011 by Rotmann

[Guest Cloud Warrior]

Thanks again everyone for the enlightening information and discussions. Unsure of the forum protocol on making topics, so without making multiple threads all asking for advice and opinion I will keep it all here. If this is not how this is done around here please correct me.

Recommendation time again. Now my phone is 2.2 and is working fine (again thanks all) I am looking for the best of each area.

I want a easy to use and easy on the eyes calender but with the best sort of tasking. I like to put all my due bills on there weekly,monthly routine in a calendar along with item release dates and appointments. I'm not really wanting or needing the ability for timed reminder but the ability to easily set up a repeating reminder. On the build in calender it seemed to fail and mix up a monthly payday which put me off. I really don't relish putting reminders for each months out goings manually for every month in advance. I know I could use a money management app but I like a calender as I can track pre orders along with the ability to quickly scan outgoings to check available funds.

Games - I have a few top rated games from the android market place but are there any hidden gems ?. I am currently after a game to have some sort of management side to it. Best example would be Cityville or Backyard monsters on facebook. I'd like to build and see my own "empire" but I would accept the phone not necessarily handling this so a Mafia Wars style sim is also desirable. Any other games that must be played ?.

And then just genera apps. Anything that is useful to have ?. I have a few but always like to hear others opinions as there will always be something new to come up.

Thanks again and I only hope in the future I can contribute to this great forums.

[Guest friederike]

funny how some people are reprimanded after their initial post asking a "daft" question and others are okay to have their own help thread :P

regarding games, check this thread http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...m/323370/games/

regarding apps, recommended apps thread http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...ant-an-app-for/

[Guest Cloud Warrior]

funny how some people are reprimanded after their initial post asking a "daft" question and others are okay to have their own help thread :P

regarding games, check this thread http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...m/323370/games/

regarding apps, recommended apps thread http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...ant-an-app-for/

Thanks for the links. As I put in a few of my posts, I like to ask in a thread as opinions and trends change fast.

As for Internet law randomness, I totally agree. One day I could make a topic about X and be shot down but the next day user 2 can make a near identical topic and get nothing but praise and help. A bit like the old pirate arguments, some people will openly talk about torrents and think nothing of it but in another post from the get go it can be nothing but self-righteousness.

In this occasion of me getting help, I put it down to me being polite along with trying to be legible to read ,understand and most important I am grateful and have shown it. I may come off as slightly dull or soft in the head but I have found putting the time into your post can get you a better response.

I honestly don't want to be seen as lazy and wanting the board to do the leg work for me. I simply could not understand the guides as my posts hopefully have shown. Thankfully a good selection of users took pity and held my hand through the admittedly daunting process.

[Guest friederike]

My comment was not meant as an offense, sorry if it came across like that. (and I would not have replied if I did not want to be helpful at all)

I fully understand your personal motives, but for the whole community I think it would be of great benefit to raise most of those questions in already created topics, foremost for the guides, that you spoke about in your initial post.

I think the creators of those guides would really appreciate feedback and would be happy to tweak them, but they won't necessarily read your feedback as it is in a separate thread. And I think it is similar for other topics.

Those are just my thoughts. Sorry for starting this offtopic discussion by the way.

[Guest carkev]

I would go for the grey one, as I believe that all the white ones have the TFT screen rather than OLED.

I'm also led to believe that Orange did change even the grey ones to TFT in early December.

my original SanFran was OLED, and the one I got for my nephew at Xmas was TFT ... but we got lucky !

it had to be returned as having a faulty antenna and the replacement was OLED !

this justs goes to show the Orange still have some OLED's around, so I would buy from them.

whatever you do, I am sure you will love the Sanfran.

after being on WinMo phonesfor years I am blown away by Android on my SanFran.

[Guest Rotmann]

You just got an OLED because you got a replacement SanFran. All new phones come as LCD. Nothing bad though, my wife has a LCD and I have an OLED, in my eyes they both have advantages and disadvantages and these make them equal.

@Cloud Warrior - I heard Jorte is very good for calendar. Also Game Dev Story is something you would like (lite version in the market). There are also Mafia Wars style games in the market, like Gang Wars and many more (with war, racing and other themes).

[Guest carkev]

qoute "You just got an OLED because you got a replacement SanFran. All new phones come as LCD"

that may be the case now, and has been since early December, apparently because Samsung could not supply the screens.

my original Sanfran of late October was brand new and OLED ... as was the one in Jan.

I mentioned it to show that Orange MAY still have some OLED stock lying about.

but with my experience of Orange, the staff have no idea what they sell !

Edited February 11, 2011 by carkev

[Guest Cloud Warrior]

You just got an OLED because you got a replacement SanFran. All new phones come as LCD. Nothing bad though, my wife has a LCD and I have an OLED, in my eyes they both have advantages and disadvantages and these make them equal.

@Cloud Warrior - I heard Jorte is very good for calendar. Also Game Dev Story is something you would like (lite version in the market). There are also Mafia Wars style games in the market, like Gang Wars and many more (with war, racing and other themes).

Thanks. Will give them all a look. A good and ideally free recourse game is my top want. Hopefully the "wars" style games will be free and have no need for online as I don't want another big bill to worry about :P .

[Guest logicalextreme]

I'll add my two cents as a response to the original question.

I finally got my first smartphone (excluding the N95 that I had for a couple of months before it was stolen) in June 2010, an HTC Desire. It took me a lot of screwing around with goldcards to get it rooted, and a long while before I had it stable, fast and how I liked it. I'm willing to concede that a lot of the slowness was due to me getting used to Android, adb, the recovery process, frameworks and re-learning Linux, but it really did take a long time and I almost bricked it at one point. I spent even more time recently getting used to Gingerbread and resizing the phone's partitions to get around my /data filling up.

I had to have it picked up by HTC today because the motor connection had clearly broken, meaning it didn't vibrate and I missed several calls. I'd grabbed an HTC Diamond from the so-called "box of fail" at work a few days earlier, and spent the better part of a day removing the SIMlock and flashing a custom lightweight WinMo (6.1) ROM. After 12 hours of using it, I realised that I was now completely owned by Google and couldn't comfortably go back.

Despite the fact that HTC's turnaround time to get the phone back to me is 5 days, given their service record both in general and with regards to my claim I fully expect to have it back sooner. I wouldn't be surprised if they repaired it on arrival and sent it back today and I find it on my desk tomorrow morning.

But still; up to 5 days without it was pretty scary to me (sad, I know). I like to keep on top of email and RSS. I also like to know who's calling me, and couldn't be bothered plugging in WinMo's terrible ActiveSync protocol to my Google account. So I went down to Argos (UK catalogue store) at lunch and grabbed a white San Francisco, which set me back £99 including a mandatory £10 top-up on Orange (the Orange SIM has not and probably will not touch the phone).

I'd brought my goldcard in anticipation, after having to dig it out last night to "stockify" my Desire so HTC wouldn't reject it (I should add that it took me a full day and a half to return the Desire to its stock state). ADB's on my work PC, I had a cable ready and I had drivers ready to install.

Lo! I had the SIMlock off less than sixty seconds after getting back to my desk.

Half an hour later (and this is only because of an extremely slow file server, it wouldn't have taken more than a minute otherwise) I had Clockwork running, and had backed up the phone's stock image just in case.

About fifteen minutes later I had chosen and flashed Japanese Jellyfish and resized the partitions in one go, and changed to my preferred system fonts. Without touching Clockwork or the goldcard. I never needed the drivers I'd prepped.

It took me weeks (months, counting the partitioning) to get this far with my Desire. It took me less than an hour with the San Fran. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't any bother at all. Overclocked, the thing runs just about as well as the Desire. I am MIGHTY impressed with this piece of kit, especially for the price. I intend to use it for plenty of meddling when I get my Desire back.

On a side note, despite my research into what the white and grey handsets looked like beforehand, I completely missed out on the realisation that there was even an OLED version available. In comparison to the Desire, all I really notice is that the blacks aren't as deep. Still got a great viewing angle.

Second side note: I just browsed through some of the posts, and for those with restarting applications that you don't want automatically starting, check out Autostarts. It was one of Paul's apps of the day a few months back and is exactly what you need. It was a bit iffy on Gingerbread on the Desire, for those on CM7.

I look forward for what we'll all do with this handset.

[Guest robyarr]

just installed the 2.2 froyo mod,straight off that orangesanfrancisco.com

easier thing i've ever done,taking the battery cover off is probably harder,i've got one of them appkilers and usually kills a few apps and leaves me with 300mb (is that about right?)

couldn't really imagine the phone being any faster as it does everything at a tap of the finger,no lagging

awesomeness

wanna get 2.3 next

[Guest shadowninty]

Dont use a task killer.

Dont worry about RAM

[Guest ThrashMan]

I bought an AMOLED screen off ebay after reading on here about the SF. Great phone only downside is the s*** battery.

Honest to god it is so stupidly easy to mod this phone it is unreal, if only the damn battery could take more than one day it would be the perfect phone to be quiet honest.

I have to disagree with your experience. I'm using CM7 N63 and battery life is really good. It's even better on a 2.2 Froyo ROM.

[Guest Tom Kitchen]

I have to disagree with your experience. I'm using CM7 N63 and battery life is really good. It's even better on a 2.2 Froyo ROM.

I think it depends how much you use it - I find it impossible to get more than a day on my Blade whatever rom I use, today I'm already charging it and its only half five...

[Guest C3P001]

I get minimum 2 days use and i use it quite a lot running stock froyo wifi turned off when i dont need it