How To

Ten Ways to Pimp Your Android Device

With Android phones being perhaps the most customizable smartphones around in all their open-source loveliness, we’ve come up with a selection of ways to personalize your Android phone, inside and out. So, let’s get creative and pimp those phones.

Slap on a new wallpaper
There’s a great selection of apps on the Android Market that offer tailored wallpapers for your Android phone, but it’s also pretty easy to make your own. For best results, make sure your image is as tall as the screen of your phone, pixel-wise. So, that’s 480 pixels for the old guard of Android, or 800 pixels for newbies like the Google Nexus One and Motorola Droid.  Read more…

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How To: Turn Off HTC Sense UI

Do you own an HTC Eris or Hero, love your phone but not digging Sense?  Thankfully there is a way to turn off Sense and use the standard Android Home instead. Here’s a quick step-by-step how to guide.

• Press MENU button.
• Press Settings.
• Press Applications.
• Press Manage Applications.
• Wait for the OS to compute application usage.
• Scroll down the list until you see HTC Sense and select it to go to the Application Info page.
• Press the Clear Defaults button.
• Press the HOME button. You will be prompted to select which app to complete the action with.
• Select Home and chose to make this the default action.

Now that you are back at the standard Anroid Home screen, what are the ramifications? There are now four fewer home panels on which to add widgets and shortcuts. The HTC widgets are no longer available, but the HTC customized apps like People and Messages are still available. The Facebook integration into the contacts is still there, also. The only real change is the home screen and HTC widgets. Interestingly, the original Android wallpapers are now available for use on your new Home! These wallpapers are hidden when selecting a wallpaper for the Sense home.

What if you want to go back to Sense? Follow the steps outlined above until Step 6 where you will select Home and then clear it’s defaults. The rest is the same.

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How To: Free Calls via WiFi Using Google Voice and Gizmo 5

• Setup or Login to your gizmo5 account page (www.gizmo5.com)
• There should be a section explicitly for entering your Google Voice username and password. Enter your username and password. Also be sure to make a note of your full 11 digit Gizmo5 number

• Download and open the SIPDroid app from the market. In the SIPDroid app, hit Menu and press Settings. Enter:
• Username: your 11 digit Gizmo5 number (e.g. 17475555555)
• Password: your Gizmo5 password
• Server: proxy01.sipphone.com

Read more…

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Bump Update: Bug Fix on the Way

Earlier today we told you about Bump for Android here’s a  quick heads:  if you try to set-up a contact card from Bump you might experience a force close (it does on the Hero), Bump Technologies is working on getting a fix out today or tomorrow.

In the meantime go to Menu > Set-up > Select and select your contact information. You may have to add yourself to your phonebook as the default contact card doesn’t appear as a choice.

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How To: Get Google Maps Navigation on Your T-Mobile G1

We’re sure a lot of you T-Mobile G1 owners have been interested in Google Maps Navigation since it was announced (to be fair, who isn’t interested?). And when we told you that the fine folks at xda-developers had figured a way to port Google Maps Navigation onto the beloved G1, you couldn’t wait to find out how to do the same. And now that we have those instructions, you’re ready to get started. So here it goes (remember, your G1 needs to be rooted and have CyanogenMod 4.2.3.1), to quote xda-developers:

Download file here

1. 1.  Unzip zip to desktop
2. 2.  When prompted to press any key, do so; the phone will reboot
3. 3.  When your phone is running again, run Part 2.bat
4. 4.  When prompted to press any key, the installation process is done.
5. 5.  Make sure GPS is enabled
6. 6.  Open Maps and press OK
7. 7.  Press Menu
8. 8.  Press Directions
9. 9.  Enter an end point
10. 10. Click Go
11. 11. Just under “Show on map”, click Navigate.
12. 12. When prompted to install the voice codec, do so.
13. 13. Enjoy

And remember, we’re all better Android users because of the great folks at xda-developers. And as always, be careful when you do this! Be sure to let us know how it works out for you in the comments

[Via: xda-developers]

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How to Add Custom Ringtones & Notifications to Your Android Device

One question that we’ve been receiving a lot here at DroidTalk since the release of the Sprint HTC Hero is: “How do I add custom ringtones and notifications to phone?”  Seriously it’s so easy a Droid can do it.

Well boys and girls of all ages today is your lucky day. Between firing one moving company, fighting with PriceLine about changing my hotel reservations for my move across country, hiring another moving company and playing with Google Wave I took some time out to put together these step by step instructions.

• Connect the Hero to your computer via the USB cable
• Open the Notifications screen on your Hero (pull down a finger from the top of the screen to the bottom) and select the USB Storage notification
• Choose “Mount”
• Browse to the SD Card on your PC
• Look for a folder called media, if it’s not there, create it by right clicking and choosing New Folder, then rename the folder to be media
• Inside the media folder, you need a folder called audio, again, if it’s not there create it as above
• Inside the audio folder, you can create a subfolder for the sound category you want to change-
  • ringtones – for sound files you want to use as ringtones
  • alarms – for sound files you want to use for any alarms
  • notifications – for incoming notifications such as SMS alerts, emails, etc
• Copy your sound file in to the relevant folder

You should now see your sound file listed in the menu for selection in the appropriate sound settings menu.  If you don’t see your ringtones, don’t panic simply restart your phone and you’ll be all set.

To access the ringtone/notification settings, press the hard Menu key from one of your home screens, then press Settings then Sounds and Display)

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