| Selection | Install | Features | Apps | Hacking | Top |
| Category | CyanogenMod | Jimc Add-on | Verizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Communications and Web | CyanogenMod | Add-on | Verizon |
| Graphics, Images and Music | CyanogenMod | Add-on | Verizon |
| Personal Information Management | CyanogenMod | Add-on | Verizon |
| Work Applications | (None) | Add-on | Verizon |
| Games, Etc. | (None) | Add-on | Verizon |
| Other Applications | CyanogenMod | Add-on | Verizon |
| System Infrastructure | CyanogenMod | Add-on | Verizon |
| Etc. | Themes | (None) | Buy Things |
This is the set of apps included in CyanogenMod-7 plus gapps (separately distributed Google Apps), with no additions except the Market app. Additional apps for CyanogenMod-9 have been added.
Bluetooth Share (not launchable) -- I was not able to do OBEX push or FTP, sending or receiving.
Bluetooth SCO App by Texas Instruments (TI) (in CM9) -- This is for sending media audio (music) to a mono headphone using HSP. To use it you need to not have an A2DP headphone connected to media audio, so I'm not able to properly test this.
Browser -- The standard Android web browser based on
Webkit. One unfortunate feature
is that if you pass a streaming
audio URL from the browser to the music player, then iconify the browser
(hit the Home button), the player stops.
Dialer (and its Storage), titled Phone -- This is what you use to initiate voice chat, i.e. dial the phone. It is integrated with the contact list, and has storage for your call history and for automatically updated frequently called numbers.
The application com.android.phone is a daemon process that listens for incoming voice calls and SMS. Don't kill it.
Downloads and Download Manager -- Direct jump to download manager. You need to delete downloaded objects, or you can re-use them from this directory, i.e. play them again or reinstall.
Dropbear SSH Server -- This is preinstalled on CyanogenMod-7 but of course not in the stock image. Fly in ointment: it's missing in CM9-12-24. And it isn't available in the Market. See here for setup instructions for Dropbear including how to extract it from an old CyanogenMod image.
Email -- The standard Android client for non-Gmail e-mail.
FM Radio by Texas Instruments (CM9) -- Apparently the Droid 3 has an unadvertised FM radio and this app is included in CM9-12-24, but not in the Verizon stock image or in CM7. But at least on my machine, it says it cannot init the radio.
FM Transmitter by Texas Instruments (CM9) -- This app would be cute: transmit your audio content OTA to your roommate. But at least on my machine with CM9-12-24, it says it cannot init the radio.
FM Radio by Motorola (?) -- This is a different FM radio app, apparently from the Droid 2 but in this thread people report that it works on Droid 3. Here is the FM Radio apk file attached to that thread (2nd page). However, on CM9-12-24 its radio control service waits forever to init the radio.
Search by Google -- Dedicated app to submit search queries to Google.
Messaging -- To send and receive SMS (text messages), $0.20 to send or receive. It works. I'll let SMS junkies comment on whether they like this app or prefer some different one.
Network Location (not launchable) -- Estimates your location from the cell towers you're receiving from.
News and Weather -- Dedicated app for Google News. The clock displayer shows the weather from this service.
Talk -- Dedicated app for Google Talk, their XMPP service.
Voice Dialer -- You can say the name of a
contact, and the mode, and it will dial his phone number. For example,
Call Carter Jim mobile
; I'm duplicating the full name in the contact
vCard, the way I have it set up, but likely the app can handle an arbitrary
order of the name components. This would be particularly useful for doing
illegal voice chat in a moving car using a Bluetooth (HSP/HFP) headset. On
CM9-12-24 the voice dialer hangs and has to be force closed.
VPN Services (accessed from Settings) -- Need to set this up, but it worked in Froyo. This is for IPSec and requires a functioning partner.
Wireless Tether -- Puts your 802.11 NIC into Master mode, enabling other 802.11 (Wi-Fi) clients to connect to your phone, which then routes the traffic via the cellular net.
Camera -- In CyanogenMod-7 for Droid 3 (CM4D3) some crock prevents it from capturing camera data, but it works in the Verizon image. Forum postings suggest that one of the Market camera apps works on Droid 3, and is better than the standard Android app. In CM9-12-24 the camera is not working at all (not just the app).
DRM Protected Content Storage (not launchable, not politically correct)
DSPManager -- For audio, bass boost and 5 band equalizer. You can make separate profiles for the internal speaker, wired headset, and Bluetooth A2DP. Tested and works, although the effect is not as ridiculously dramatic as in some car installations (chunka chunka chunka . . . )
Gallery -- View photos and other images stored on the phone.
Media Storage (not launchable) -- Comes with an indexer sensitive to music files and images. This is run automatically when the SD card(s) are mounted, i.e. at boot time.
Music -- The standard Android music player, which is improved in Gingerbread versus Froyo -- it is willing to play Ogg/Vorbis streaming content and no longer requires that streams have Icecast metadata. Its icon is a loudspeaker seen from the front.
Music (Google) -- It is also titled Music
but its icon is a
headphone set. I believe the business model here is, you store your
music tracks on Google's cloud and they stream it to you. It's got to be
ad-supported, but I didn't investigate in detail.
Pico TTS (not launchable) -- A text to speech engine. You need to identify and install an app with TTS capability to actually use it.
TTS Service (not launchable) -- Part of the text to speech service.
Screenshot (launch from power button menu) -- Long-press the power button, then select Screenshot from the menu. Results are saved in /sdcard/DCIM/Screenshots/screenshot-${time}.png where the time is in UNIX seconds extended with milliseconds. The result is 960x540px (for Droid3, or whatever size your screen is), about 35Kb. To interpret ${time}, do this on a Linux box: date -d @${time}.${msec} ; -d means interpret this date, @ means it's UNIX seconds, and you have to insert a decimal point. Busybox date does not take -d.
Sound Recorder -- In CyanogenMod-7, stopped unexpectedly (crashed), sorry. Absent in CM9-12-24 until this bug is fixed.
To use a custom photo as your wallpaper, first long press in the background of the home page. Pick Wallpaper from the menu. From there, pick Gallery. Select your photo (you need to first pick the collection, then the individual photo). In my case the image is 640x480 JPEG, and the crop rectangle is about 360x320px, hiss, boo. Position it and click. The image subset is scaled to 1080x960px PNG, and is saved in /data/data/com.android.settings/files/wallpaper . You can crop the image by hand and copy it over, but you need to restart the UI generator (translation: reboot the phone) to have it used.
I'm not sure how much these dimensions are specific to the Droid 3's screen, how much is generic Android, and how much you can change the dimensions for a custom effect. Almost certainly the home page generator cookie-cuts a screen-sized rectangle of pixels out of the image, rather than scaling it dynamically.
In portrait orientation, you see a centered vertically oriented rectangle almost from top to bottom of the image. When you move to other workspaces (icon panels), the subset moves horizontally to equally spaced positions, with the extreme workspaces showing the edges of the image.
In landscape orientation, you see a centered horizontal stripe. It's
important to crop the photo so the important visual elements are in this
stripe; in Nexus Surf
by Prash (CyanogenMod wallpapers), the android
kind of falls off the bottom. The stripe moves horizontally about 25px
(not much) when you change workspaces.
(To be written...)
Theme Chooser (and Provider) -- The default theme, called System
,
continues from the original Android, and has orange highlights, i.e. the
background changes to orange when you click a button or icon.
com.tmobile.theme.Androidian -- Highlights and decorations are Android Green.
com.tmobile.theme.Cyanbread -- Highlights and decorations are cyan.
Live Wallpaper Picker -- Long press in the home page background, and pick the Wallpaper item to get a list of all the wallpaper pickers.
Android Live Wallpapers -- A live wallpaper
shows in the
background some animation, music visualization, or useful information
such as your social network status. (Windows Phone 7 uses live tiles,
i.e. application icons, for this purpose.) This definitely costs
something in energy (battery), but I'm not sure how much.
CyanogenMod Wallpapers
Magic Smoke Wallpapers
Music Visualization Wallpapers
A key activity for PIM is syncing with your cloud server. These apps are provided by and designed for use with Google's servers. However, I have political objections to storing my personal information on a server which I do not administratively control, particularly when the server is owned by an advertising-supported company whose business model is world domination. Therefore, on my home server I have set up SOGo, which provides generic CalDAV and CardDAV as well as a web interface for the calendar and contacts, and webmail (IMAP). This is working out as my sync server.
The Google PIM apps support GMail (of course) and Microsoft Exchange,
referred to as a corporate account
. To use generic CalDAV and CardDAV
you need to install additional infrastructure, specifically
CalDAV-Sync and CardDAV-Sync.
There are connector apps for additional protocols that I do not use.
If you make a change on the pocket computer or on the server, and you want
it to be visible immediately at the other end, you can order immediate syncing.
Start Settings -> Accounts & Sync. Select your cloud server account.
In the detail page that opens, press Menu and pick Sync Now
. Give it
a moment to finish syncing, then close the Settings app.
Calendar (and its Storage) --
Procedure to set up the calendar app to use my own instance of SOGo:
Having installed CalDAV-Sync, start the Calendar app. Hit Menu -> Settings -> Add Account. From the list that appears, choose CalDAV; other choices are Corporate and Google; the former means Microsoft Exchange.
On the next page, very similar to CardDAV-Sync, put it in manual mode first. Then set:
Only sync server to phone.
Now, if you create an event on the server and then sync on the phone, the event appears on the phone. To create an event on the phone:
If you then sync the account, and refresh the web page open on the server, the new event will appear there.
If you create (on the SOGo server) a task rather than an event, you get the usual event form and you can optionally specify times, but the task will appear in the left panel, which is the task list. However, I can't find any way to see the tasks in Android's calendar app unless they have dates and times like a normal event. (You could use the SOGo web viewer.)
People (and its Storage) -- This appears to be mainly
intended to manage your Google contacts. The People app sees the CardDAV
contacts as phone-only, not synced
, not knowing about
CardDAV-Sync.
The program is aware of phone-only contacts, but cannot create them. Syncing between People and a non-Google CardDAV server (my own SOGo) is hit or miss, i.e. I had a lot of trouble to figure out when changes on one would be propagated to the other. Also there is no native aid to merge duplicate contacts (I guess you're supposed to do that on GMail, which does have such support).
If you can create the contact on SOGo that's the ideal. Log in to SOGo; you can do the whole procedure from the phone. Then sync, and the new card will appear as a phone-only contact.
If that's not going to work for you, you can create the contact on the phone as a Google contact. If you were to sync, the new contact would not appear in SOGo. So later, use this cockamamie procedure that works. Export the entire contact list. The following steps potentially could be done on the phone, but to use the real keyboard on my laptop I retrieved the exported address book using Dropbear scp. Edit the book retaining only the targeted contact(s). Import it to SOGo using the web form (right click on the address book headline). The new card appears on the web form. Now sync. A phone-only component is now present. When editing the contact, be sure to edit the phone-only component.
The Verizon (Gingerbread) Contacts app had a menu choice to show the contact's physical address on a map, but CM9 (Ice Cream Sandwich) People doesn't. Here's a substitute: long-press on the address. It offers to copy it to the clipboard; accept. Iconify People (Home button) and start Google Maps. Hit Search. Long-press in the search box; a tag labelled Paste appears. Hit it, inserting the saved address, and then hit Return. Google Maps will display the appropriate map.
Clock -- This application has two purposes: to show the current time, and to manage the alarm clock. The current time display can be made very dim, which is important if you're using this application as an alarm clock overnight. On CM7 tap the sun/moon icon; on CM9 tap anywhere in the background. However, the layout is appropriately sized for a desk clock but the numbers are too small to read at night. See also Night Clock by Ned Fox.
Calculator -- This is the same as in the Verizon
image, hence is probably generic Android. It does simple arithmetic in
infix notation. Using the Menu key you can switch to an advanced
panel
which has pi, simple transcendental functions, power, square root
and parentheses. I prefer RealCalc, q.v.
Car Home -- It provides big icons that make direct jumps to the navigation app (also with voice input), phone dialer, contact list, and music player. Icons are double size for easy poking in a car holder. The background is dim, for night driving. Navigation is sponsored by Google and is subject to their terms of service.
Certificate Installer (not launchable) -- In CM9 it will accept (via the web browser) objects of mime-type application/x-x509-ca-cert (a root certificate authority certificate) and application/x-pkcs12 (containing a private key, a user certificate and sometimes a CA certificate), and possibly other X.509-related mime-types. The browser (and likely other apps) will trust web sites whose host certificate is signed by the CA cert, and will successfully present the user certificate if the web site requests it for authentication. (Not tested in CM7.)
Earth -- Logically this would be a dedicated app for Google Earth, but in CM9-12-24 it dies when launched.
File Manager by OpenIntents (in CM7) -- Simple
file manager; you can inspect the directory tree and can open, share,
delete, rename, copy, or move the file. It is similar to the Files
app in the Verizon image, but that one can also show file properties,
print, or compress/decompress. CM9-12-24 lacks a file manager; I think this
comes with CyanogenMod and the CM9 image does not yet have a complete set
of apps.
Home Screen Tips -- This is a widget living on the home page in the default CyanogenMod setup. You're supposed to delete it once you've seen the tips and funny comments.
Latin Input Method Tutorial -- Not launchable; I'm not sure how you see the tutorial(s).
Market (and Apps Installer, Feedback Agent, and Updater) -- This is not included in the GApps collection of Google Apps for CyanogenMod; you have to install it as part of the initial setup process.
How you pay for an app. This was CalDAV-Sync beta by DMFS.
You are required to use Google Wallet, which requires a credit card. You can find and sign up for Google Wallet starting at Google's home page. Then add the information for your credit card.
Run the Market app and show the product page for the desired
app. Hit the button with the price (for a free app it would just
say download
).
The next page shows the app's special permissions, plus it lists
the credit card to be used (if there is more than one card, you can
choose). Hit Accept and Purchase
.
In my case it returned a transaction error (card declined).
I was using
Bank of America's Shop Safe
service. The customer service rep
didn't find any obvious problem. He suggested creating a new
subaccount and giving that to Google, which I did. Then I configured
Google Wallet to use the new card, started the Market app, and
the purchased app made an appearance.
Terminal Emulator -- Gives you a shell session on your machine. The default font size is 10pt (ant size on a Droid 3) but you can set it in Preferences; 12pt works for me. The default control key is volume-down, and Fn is volume-up. It is preinstalled in CM7 but has to be obtained from the Market in CM9-12-24 and the stock image.
Most of these are not launchable; the ones with menu icons are indicated.
Items with Settings
in the title are accessed via the Settings
application.
Account and Sync Settings
ADW Launcher -- The main menu and start page generator for CyanogenMod-7. CM9-12-24 uses Launcher2 and is going to change over to Trebuchet.
Android Keyboard
Android System
CMStats
CyanogenMod Settings
CyanogenMod Update Notifications
Dev Tools (launchable) -- Has settings and viewers useful for developers; should not be used in production. The most interesting one is Configuration.
FOTA Kill -- In this post about FOTA Kill dated 2011-04-12, DirkGently says it's to stop the OTA notification service from running.
Google Backup Transport, Calendar Sync, Contacts Sync
Google One Time Init
Google Partner Setup
Google Services Framework
HTML Viewer -- The file manager (etc.) can send a local HTML file to this app and have it shown on the screen.
My Uploads
Network Location
Package Access Helper
Package Installer
Search Applications Provider
Settings (and its Storage) (launchable)
Setup Wizard
Spare Parts (launchable) -- Has useful tidbits of information. Battery Info: not just the charge state, but the voltage and temperature. Font Size: You can jigger the default font size here.
Status Bar
Superuser (launchable) -- This is available on the Market, but is installed by default in CyanogenMod. If you're installing it yourself, read these instructions for installing Superuser.
USB
User Dictionary
Unlike the Verizon image, CyanogenMod-7 and GApps have nothing in the categories of Work Apps, Games, and Buying Things.
These are additional apps that I put on the pocket computer.
Connectbot -- Uses SSH (Secure Shell, encrypted) to connect to another machine. You can forward ports, but I doubt that X11 port forwarding would work too well because the local window manager is not full service.
K-9 Mail -- A port to Android of Sylpheed-Claws (I think), which is highly regarded. This is the mail client that I normally use.
However, there is a major problem with IMAP IDLE (push e-mail), and K-9 is the most-used client capable of that, so it gets the blame. See Peter Kieser's blog dated 2011-03-25. The server is supposed to send a keepalive packet occasionally. Dovecot-1.2 has a non-adjustable interval of 2 minutes, and this is also the default for Dovecot-2.0. This keeps the phone awake and eats battery. The cure is to upgrade to Dovecot-2.0 and change imap_idle_notify_interval to 29 minutes, the interval recommended in RFC 2177. K-9's default keepalive interval is 24 minutes, so the server should never need to send, and the battery use will be reasonable. This is my experience; now the K-9 background process uses 4% of battery, which is noticeably nonzero but affordable.
K-9 has a crock such that it aggressively starts its sync service even though neither auto-sync nor push IMAP are turned on. This is fixed in version 4.0. The version in the market is 3.802. See the list of downloadable versions. I installed K9-4.103. Auto sync and push notification are turned off. Effect on battery life: with push e-mail turned off the whole phone (when idle) now uses about 2% per hour, and I'm 99% sure that none of that is used by K-9. Problem solved.
Linphone Video by Belledonne Communications -- SIP client including video. Voice works; I did both the echo test (sip:500@ekiga.net) and the ringback test (sip:520@ekiga.net). But it did not successfully use the front-facing (or rear-facing) camera for video. It is hard to be sure that the problem is with CyanogenMod versus setup in the app, but the setup looks right.
However, Linphone on desktop Linux also failed to do video, so it's not clear in which direction to point the finger of blame. In a forum post, a developer said that Linphone needs a specific image geometry, and the media engine does not have a dynamic resizer. They're working on making it a little smarter . . .
On CM9-12-24, Linphone (with video suppressed in preferences) registered at the broker, and in the echo test (sip:500@ekiga.net) I could hear its message; however, outgoing voice was not echoed back. This is in line with experience with other voice input apps, but at least Linphone did not hang and have to be force closed, like the others. Update: this is fixed in CM9-01-01; it was a generic problem in the microphone channel.
This test of Linphone VOIP was done through a NAT box running Linux. The firewall required nf_conntrack_sip and nf_nat_sip to be loaded. It allows internal clients to send to any wild-side host or port, and with these modules, no additional firewall rules were needed, including for accepting incoming calls.
ddPhoneVideo by Dragos Diaconesea -- A version of Linphone with a different audio-video engine. Requires SMS Video (also by Dragos) which has the AV engine. Couldn't get it to connect, even immediately after success with Linphone (and exiting from it). About half the users love this app, and half can't get it to connect. It sent the same datastream (magenta noise) from the front camera that IP Webcam did, that is, it would have done video chat if the camera interface had been working and if it had been able to connect. (Not tried on CM9.)
Xabber by Redsolution -- XMPP/Jabber client.
It can do multi protocols (presumably all XMPP with extensions): standard
XMPP, Google Talk, Facebook, VKontakte, QIP, Ya Online, LiveJournal, Google
Talk for Domains. Connection hint: the server
is the domain name
that the server host is configured to serve. If there is no DNS SRV record
for this domain, then you specify the host
which is the actual
server. When correctly configured, Xabber works (on CM9).
OpenVPN Settings and Installer by Friedrich Schäuffelhut -- To set this up requires the tun.ko kernel module, which CM9-01-01 does not have, hiss, boo!
Barcode Scanner by ZXing Team -- Works effectively (in CM7). It will hand off a QR code to the web browser. (No camera in CM9-12-24.)
IP Webcam by PAS -- Sends out a video and audio
stream from the front or rear camera, via HTTP, which is formatted various
ways depending on the URL you use. Just about everything is configurable.
It has brief but useful help (FAQ
) included. This would be useful
for an impromptu baby monitor or snoop cam, though for a permanent
installation dedicated IP webcam hardware is a lot less expensive than an
Android phone. It worked fine (in CM7) with the rear camera, but this and
various other apps get magenta noise from the front camera. (No camera in
CM9-12-24.)
Jota Text Editor by Aquamarine Networks -- This is a nice flat file editor; I use it daily for recording blood pressure, plus minor editing of web pages. Press the search key for search and replace.
EBookDroid by EM Dev -- Multiprotocol document reader, can handle PDF, DjVu, XPS, comic book and fiction book formats. Tested successfully on PDF (on CM7). Unfortunately it crashes on CM9-12-24; reinstalling doesn't help.
Kindle by Amazon -- This viewer is specifically for e-books purchased from Amazon.com using their format and DRM which is incompatible with anything else in the known universe. It is therefore politically incorrect. But it works, nicely too. It also can read generic PDF files.
Mythmote by TKj -- Like a remote control for MythTV.
Cadrebible -- A very nice bible reader. When the preacher announces a chapter and verse, turning to it is a lot easier than in the print bible, and of course you're going to have it with you all the time. You can install multiple bibles, most of which are free, e.g. I have ASV, Vulgate (Latin), and Chinese. The major languages are covered, specifically Spanish.
OliveOffice Premium by OlivePhone -- It can read spreadsheets from Microsoft Excel (.xls), but I was never able to get it to do a formula, like adding or multiplying cells. You get the text representation of the formula. Uninstalled.
Kingsoft Office by Kingsoft Office Software Corporation Ltd. -- Well, that was a bust. Just like OliveOffice, if I edited a cell to contain a formula it ended up as the text representation of the formula. Uninstalled.
Simple Spreadsheet by Tomahawk (ad
suported, key $2.10) -- Well, this one works! I was able to create a
powers of 2 spreadsheet. For Save As
you give a basename, and the
sheet lands in /sdcard/org.thetomahawk/spreadsheet/${name}.ss . It does
not read or write XLS files, but you can import/export CSV, as
/sdcard/${name}.csv but the exported cells are values, not formulae. Watch
out: the Back button does Undo
and there is no Redo
function.
RealCalc Scientific Calculator by Quartic Software -- A real calculator, emulating one of the Hewlett-Packard calculators from the 1970's. You can configure infix or RPN operator order. Complete transcendental functions. It includes unit conversion.
Andoku by Markus Wiederkehr -- Andoku game: you're given a 9x9 array; the cells can contain digits from 1-9 and some are pre-filled. You are to fill in the rest of the cells so that each row, column and 3x3 subcell contains exactly 1 of each digit. This implementation is well liked, including by me.
Lexic by Rev. Johnny Healey -- Word search game: it gives you a nearly random 4x4 or 5x5 array of letters. Find words; longer words score more points. Fun and good brain exercise.
See the writeup on CyanogenMod's PIM apps for a discussion of jimc's political issues and personal PIM server.
CalDAV-Sync beta by DMFS (costs money) -- DMFS turns out to be Marten Gajda in Dresden. See the notes on the Market app for how to pay for an app. You don't normally execute this app directly; if you do it has no intrinsic setup options and it gives you a direct jump to account setup.
CardDAV-Sync free beta by dmfs -- Infrastructure to sync with a generic CardDAV server. The paid version has a few additional features; what I've been able to see so far are support for a vCard's organization, website, notes, and categories/groups. You don't normally execute the app directly; it just has one setup item (date format) and a jump to account setup.
Contacts by Contapps Ltd -- I don't know what these guys' business model is, but I'll bet it's a rakeoff for the charges for non-free SMS sent via their service. It uses the same contact editor form that People does, and so can't create phone-only contacts, so it isn't much of an improvement over People. But it has a contact merger. Its major attraction is that you can tweet, do Facebook things, initiate IM or SMS, and several other social network activities, all from this app. But for my anti-social network…
Astro File Manager by Metago (ad supported), plus its Bluetooth and SMB modules -- As a file manager it works. But using Bluetooth I was unable to get either OBEX or FTP to work, sending or receiving. The partner was a Linux laptop with bluez-4.88.
Bookmark Sort & Backup by Happydroid -- Inexplicably, the standard browser has no ability to re-order bookmarks. This app handles that function, plus deleting, editing, and backing up.
Google Maps with Street View -- This is not included in the GApps collection for CyanogenMod; you install the two apps separately from the Market. I'll assume everyone is familiar with Google Maps, including the traffic layer. To activate Street View, long-press on a place marker or anywhere on the map, get an address marker, click on the right wedge, and pick Street View from the option menu. To shift the point of view, drag the marker in the lower left corner so the targeting circle is approximately where you want it. Drag elsewhere on the screen to pan left-right or up-down.
Google Sky Map -- Turn the phone in the direction of interest and it will show stars, constellations and planets that can be seen in that direction.
Night Clock by Ned Fox -- Shows the current time in your choice of color and font, on a black background; for nighttime it can make everything very dim. The numbers are made large, necessary for reading at night. It can do its own alarms (not for CM9, though) or use Android's standard alarms.
Tricorder [from local copy] -- Its theme imitates
an original Star Trek tricorder, and the content displays a variety of
useful information including accelerometer, magnetometer, GPS, wireless and
cellular signal. Unfortunately the meanies at CBS exuded a DMCA takedown
demand since the app is not licensed from them. From various sites a
substitute quadcorder
app has appeared;
the link is to my local copy. See also Phone
Tester.
In Tricorder, but not in Phone Tester, the accelerometer axes are exchanged according to the screen orientation, such that Y is usually the largest and is negative. The magnetometer axes do not exchange.
Phone Tester by Miguel Torres (ad supported) --
This app is a replacement for Tricorder (q.v.)
minus the cool factor
, but plus the lack of a DMCA takedown notice.
It displays information, including the manufacturer ID, on the sensors
(accelerometer, magnetometer (XYZ and compass), ambient light, and
proximity), Wi-fi (with lease info), GPS, battery (including voltage and
temperature), device and OS nomenclature and versions, and touchscreen.
Very comprehensive. See Accelerometer
in the feature
checkout page for the axis orientation with this app.
APN Manager by 81 Square -- Has a list of APNs for USA, Canadian and European mobile operators, plus you can type in your own. I enabled Verizon Internet (choices are CBS, FOTA, IMS, Internet). No visible effect. Power cycled the phone. Didn't help.
CaCertMan by Guardian Project -- This is for deleting evil X.509 root certificates. To use it you need root access, and you need to set a password for the certificate storage database. For the latter, see Settings -> Location & Security -> Set Password (near the end). Unfortunately it does not (yet) add certificates. Also unfortunately, on CM9-12-24 it struggles with the certificate storage for 60 secs or so, announces an error, and continues in its infinite loop. Uninstalled.
GPS Status by EclipSim (ad supported) -- It turns on GPS and displays what is delivered, plus other useful information such as battery status and ambient light. The nicest feature is that on CyanogenMod (but not the Verizon stock image) it displays the location and status of each visible satellite individually.
ClockSync by Sergey Baranov -- On a rooted phone it can set your clock using NTP to your own server or to the public pool. It can do this on a schedule, which was a godsend for Froyo on HTC Dream. (The Droid 3 with Gingerbread/CM7 and CM9 seems to keep good time.) For me a valuable feature is the continuous clock display including seconds, which helps when setting house clocks to Daylight Saving Time.
On several (but not all) phone models including HTC Dream, and on
Android-2.2 Froyo
and 2.3 Gingerbread
, including CM-6.2, but
apparently not earlier versions, the phone loses clock ticks, worse when
charging. The clock can drift as much as one minute per day. This can be
embarrassing when setting clocks.
On my Droid 3 with CM9-12-24, it looks like the clock drifts relatively little per day, but at unknown intervals it jumps by about 14 to 15 seconds (varying). I had Settings -> Date&Time -> Automatic Date&Time activated, and likely it was getting a network time update. I've turned this off (but left on Automatic Timezone); we'll see if the offsets improve. I have ClockSync set to sync on boot and once a day.
rsync backup for Android by Michal Kowalczuk -- Rsync is a protocol and program that copies selected files from one machine to another in a compressed format, so only alterations (or new files) go over the wire. The originating end can either send or receive. It is most useful for making backups and installing software. Normally it uses SSH for transport. This app can originate a SSH connection to another host, or if the Dropbear server is running on the phone, the other host can originate the connection. I use that mode for my own backups.
When installing, you need to download executables from the mother ship. rsync, ssh and dropbearkey end up in /data/data/eu.kowalczuk.rsync4android/files . Make a symlink in /system/xbin to rsync. You should already have gotten dropbearkey and ssh when installing Dropbear (but make the symlink if not).
ln -s /data/data/eu.kowalczuk.rsync4android/files/rsync /system/xbin/rsync
aLogcat by Jeffrey Blattman -- Shows the system log. There's a lot of it, and to make it really useful I'll need to learn how to use the filter.
Wifi Analyser by farproc (ad supported) -- Shows the results of Wi-fi (802.11) scans: which neighbors have Wi-fi and which channels they use.
There is a ton of applications in the stock Verizon image, many of which I will not retain when I install CyanogenMod. Vcast is Verizon's media store. I did not update this list when I updated to system 5.6.890; likely the set of apps is very similar. This set of apps is limited to those having icons in the launcher.
Browser -- The standard Android browser, based on Webkit.
Dialer -- For voice chat; integrated with the contact list.
Downloads -- Direct jump to the download manager.
Email -- Android mail client for non-Gmail accounts.
Gmail -- Mail client specifically for Gmail.
Google Search -- Dedicated app to submit queries to Google.
GoToMeeting -- Looks like a teleconference tool to someone's cloud service. I doubt it's free.
IM -- This service is provided by Verizon, and my guess is that it is a non-SMS instant message service, the same general idea as XMPP. In their terms of service they mention a charge for each message, similar to SMS.
Messaging -- An application that unifies your SMS, E-mail and social network message streams. I believe this is related to the late and unlamanted Moto-Blur.
Mobile Hotspot -- Puts your 802.11 NIC into Master mode, enabling other 802.11 (Wi-Fi) clients to connect to your phone, which then routes the traffic via the cellular net.
Skype Mobile -- Voice over IP service (cheap but not free); includes video conference capability. It uses a non-public protocol and is therefore politically incorrect. There are other similar services that use SIP and/or H.323.
Talk -- Google Talk, their XMPP (Jabber) instant message service.
Text Messaging -- Send and receive SMS text messages
,
$0.20 each, in or out.
Voicemail -- Direct jump to your voicemail account.
Camcorder -- Record videos.
Camera -- Take still pictures, stored in /sdcard/DCIM.
DLNA -- Controls audio-visual equipment (TV, audio) capable of this protocol.
Gallery -- View photos on the machine.
Music -- The standard Android music player, which is improved in Gingerbread versus Froyo -- it is willing to play Ogg/Vorbis streaming content and no longer requires that streams have Icecast metadata. Its icon is a loudspeaker seen from the front.
Slacker -- An online music service.
YouTube -- Android has always had a separate app to show YouTube videos, rather than using a standard codec with the media player.
Alarm & Timer -- Sets your alarm clock. This is not a clock displayer, like CyanogenMod has. It also has a simple countdown timer.
Calendar -- Interface to Google's cloud PIM service for your appointments.
Contacts -- Interface to Google's cloud PIM service for your associates' phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
Tasks -- Interface to Gmail (Google) cloud PIM service for your work assignments.
Calculator -- Simple arithmetic calculator; the advanced panel
has square root, trig functions, pi, etc.
Citrix -- Client for doing the remote desktop thing to a Windows server similarly equipped.
Quickoffice -- Need to investigate.
Let's Golf 2 -- A game, not tried.
NFL Mobile -- Dedicated app for football scores.
Nova -- A game, not tried.
Files -- Simple file manager; you can inspect the directory tree and can open, share, print, compress/decompress, delete, rename, copy, or move the file, plus show properties.
Guided Tours -- I'm not sure who put together these tutorials.
Help Center -- I didn't investigate how extensive the help is.
Latitude -- I believe this is a social networking app sponsored by Google involving interacting with people in your physical vicinity.
Maps -- The Google Maps client.
Market -- Purchase applications (many are free, too) from the Android Market.
MOTOPRINT -- It can print file objects (photos, PDF, power point, etc.) to a network printer, a bluetooth printer, or a retail printer. It does not do IPP, apparently, and therefore could not find my printer.
My Accounts -- Manage your Google account, etc.
Navigation -- Google Maps navigation application (beta). I think
this is turn-by-turn navigation. Routes may be dangerous, prohibited,
or involve ferries.
News -- I haven't investigated who the news provider is.
Places -- Not sure how this relates to Google Maps but likely there's some connection.
Social Location -- Not tried.
Social Networking -- I think this is a multi-protocol social network client. I'm antisocial . . . The web browser also has non-deletable bookmarks for Facebook, Twitter, and other social network websites, but the image does not have their individual dedicated applications.
Voice Commander -- Speech to text app, specifically you can get the user interface to do things using voice commands. Not actually tried.
Voice Search -- Dedicated app linking to Google's search service with input by voice.
VZ Navigator -- Verizon's turn by turn map navigation service. I doubt it's free.
Apps
-- This looks like a dedicated app for purchasing other
apps from the Vcast market. Not investigated.
Blockbuster -- Buy videos online.
Books -- Reader and purchasing interface for Google Books for Android.
City ID -- Displays the state and city for an incoming phone call or a typed-in phone number. Free trial version (you need to pay when the free trial is over).
Kindle by Amazon -- Read and purchase books from Amazon.com.
My Verizon Mobile -- Dedicated app to manage your Verizon account.
Vcast Media Manager, Music, Tones, Videos -- You can rent ringtones and other media from Verizon's Vcast service.
ZumoCast -- It's a cloud storage service sponsored (?) by Motorola. You can stream media from it. Accounts are free with limited space; if you need more you can pay.
Flash Player Settings
Settings
Task Manager -- Manage the tasks (processes) running persistently on the computer; kill if necessary.
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