How do we not have an Android phone thread yet?

[Tom Servo]

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but I learned a valuable lesson - never clear the cache/data from Google Play Services through the Apps Settings. I did that to clear out a bogus permission that I accidentally installed on my phone when working on an app and it left the phone completely goofed up. Half the notifications stopped working (e.g., I got notified when I had email on two of my four email accounts, but not the other two), some apps would auto update and some wouldn't, all sorts of weirdness. Only way to fix it was a hard reset.

[Freude am Fahren]

The Note 4 (ATT) has been updated to Lollipop 5.01. Mostly I like it. Looks better. Runs a bit snappier too

I don't like how I don't have a mute/vibrate/sound options on the long press power button screen. I guess I'll get used to using the notification panel toggle.

Also, I'm split on the new notifications on lock screen. I like the idea, but the implementation is pretty bad. First of all, you can't choose a-la-carte what you do or don't want there, just some vague all/hide sensitive/none options. And you can't even use the second to make it work like you want, because it still shows a panel, just doesn't show the information, not to mention you can't set just any app to "sensitive" or not. So I have all my persistant notifications show up like weather, which I don't need there. The searching using GPS shows up whenever it's there, etc.

The other problem with the lock screen is music controls have disappeared. I used them a lot, but now the best I get is a small panel from my music player notification thing. Meh.

[Yw-slayer]

I flashed my Oneplus to Cyanogen12 (Lollipop). I'm pretty sure that battery life has taken a bit of a hit, even though I've turned of "Dynamic Screen" or whatever it's called.

[SportWagon]

I bought two http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/rca-10-t.../6000191673834
(One for me, one for missus).
I think they may be the most powerful computers in our house.

USB keyboards, with a somewhat fragile-seeming connector attached to the book cover. And Micro USB pass-through down the edge of the keyboard. (Though I haven't actually tried that connector yet).

I have an old 7" noname Ice Cream Sandwich tablet that worked with an NTFS memory card, but I think that may be an anomaly. (That allowed me to run a 12G or so Linux chroot loop file off it). Supposedly exFAT is where it's at now, so sometime I'll need to see if these tablets will read such. I'd like to get the Galoula chroot running on these too, though. (Well, working within a 4G loop file is possible, too, but awkward).

Bah. The similar http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/rca-10-tablet/6000189150433 (bluetooth keyboard) claims larger memory card capacity, which might imply necessitated exFAT support.

[Kchrpm]

The other problem with the lock screen is music controls have disappeared. I used them a lot, but now the best I get is a small panel from my music player notification thing. Meh.

This is a common complaint I'm seeing, hopefully all the music player apps will modify their notifications and they can end up really nice.

[SportWagon]

So I eventually got a Linux chroot working on one of those 10" RCA tablets from Wal-Mart. Eventually went with NTFS as the format for the memory card.

Learned my original old reliable galoula.com software had become deprecated to the point of recent removal from Play Store.

It seemed he was about to help you get X apps running, but perhaps not quite. The upgrade process was awkward as you needed to decouple your environment from the helpful GUI management process. I'd just about almost managed that. But not quite.

Linux Deploy seems to be where it's at now.

I got very greedy and tried for Ubuntu 12.04 with Gnome.

I learned that repeated "dpkg --configure -a" will eventually converge.

But packages seemed to be downloaded (to cache) which didn't get installed. Discovering tightvncserver was in that state was key to getting X running on my small prototype machine.

Installing was often a process of allowing the processes to run until they ran out of memory and rebooted the machine. But starting afresh, more progress could be made.

And I gave up on Gnome, and did "apt-get install lxde" instead (well, as well). And that actually works. (After you change the obvious config files for the VNC user).

But once you manage to get X running, you really wonder still whether it can really be much more than a toy/demo.

I mean, having the ability to ssh to a fully-featured Linux has at least one great advantage; a properly working vi. (and many more fully standardized commands besides). I find it difficult to believe that even on the larger (in pixels) 10" tablet I will really be able to get X working reliably enough to do much useful. Mapping mouse buttons is the biggest problem. Perhaps a mouse will just work through the USB pass-through on the keyboard?

I did a lot of work on my 7" tablet, and decided it would be worth cloning the system (i.e. Linux disk image file) for use on the 10". Wasn't sure you could get a fully-ready system running under Linux Deploy but then I noticed the "Import/Export" facilities.

So export, modify the image location (external SD card name change between different implementations), and then import on the new machine. And, indeed, it worked!

An interesting phenomenon; the old 7" tablet appears to have a "sparse" file being used as the loop file for its root. Claims 9G in size, but currently occupying 1.7G. But it dd'd to a full 9G on the destination memory card, and seems to work.

As for other news, someone keeps trying to force a Lollipop down my throat. On my Galaxy S4. I need to be assimilated sometime early this week I guess. When there seems to be enough time to leave and watch that everything works okay. Resistance is futile. And tedious. Just hope Strava (and GPS in general) still works properly afterwards.

[21Kid]

I guess it's not really a phone... but too bad.
Android Auto Preview.

The TL;DR version? I want it in my car, like, now. I bet you’d like it too.

[Kchrpm]

T-Mobile finally approved and pushed out Lollipop to my phone, a day before the likely announcement of Android M. Now to play around with the new bits and hope for minimal bugs!

[Kchrpm]

Google had their I/O conference keynote this afternoon. Link to all of The Verge's articles: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/28/86...15-latest-news

A few key things:

Android M officially announced, with mostly optimization features vs design changes
The changes to how app permissions work is likely the biggest thing. Now instead of accepting all of the permissions when you install the device, you get a pop-up the first time the app actually wants to use each of them, and you can accept or reject them individually (and go back and change it later).

Brillo is their attempt at making one single OS to be shared among the "internet of things" (aka turning normal stuff into smart stuff)
There's a related piece called Weave to help items talk to each other, even if they aren't using Brillo.

Photos has been separated from Google+, and new features have been added to help with search and sorting.
Free unlimited storage of 16MB pictures and 1080P video, as well.

Now on Tap makes Google Now more context aware
This basically lets Now figure out what the app you're looking at is doing, and make results out of that. The examples they showed included knowing that you're asking a question about the music you're listening to, pulling up info on a restaurant mentioned in a text, and suggesting a reminder based on a text asking you to do something.

Maps will add offline search and navigation, with voice
As a T-Mobile user, this will be great for me.

[Random]

Still waiting for Lollipop. Ho hum.