Our Biggest Android Annoyances and The way to Fix Them [Annoyances]

We asked , and, boy, do our readers have some issues with their Android phones. Here’s among the biggest sticking points, a way to fix them, and a number of tiny-but-aggravating issues our commenters found out all alone.

Phone Occasionally Lags or Freezes, Especially Heading Back to Home Screen

Our own Whitson Gordon has essentially written a novella on the other home screen launchers available to aggravated Android owners. At the moment, he’s digging on Zeam , a fast alternative launcher that also offers multi-finger gestures and a number of customization tools. Otherwise, you could speed up your sluggish Android with LauncherPro , that’s both highly customizable and fairly snappy.

Can’t Remove Certain Apps (and They’re Annoying, and Take in Space)

We hear you-believe me, as a Nexus One owner, I very sympathetically hear you with regards to minimal install space. There are a number of options, both sanctioned and slightly hack-y. We’ve run them down before , but for a recap:

First up, in case you’re running Android 2.2 or later, head into your Settings, choose Applications, then pick the All column. Press your phone’s Menu button, and click the ” Sort by size” option that pops up. Click on probably the most space-hogging apps at the tip. Inside the next screen, you may see a button providing a ” Move to SD Card” option. Hit that button, and nothing inside your app changes, but its cupboard space (or a minimum of most of it) moves in your phone’s SD card. Obviously, you are able to’t operate that app once you’ve got your SD card mounted as a storage device, but that’s less annoying than having to uninstall certain apps to allow others.

You also can sign up that same application management page to determine if an app is using an excessively huge amount of storage, and clear that space for storing out. It’s, at best, a short lived fix, as the app will eventually take back the distance, and you’ll probably must log in or reset your preferences. Still, while you just desire a smidge extra space to install an app, it’s a snappy fix.

Finally, in case you’re annoyed to the point of breaking your warranty, that you may root your phone and install a firmware that enables for removing apps one can’t otherwise remove, which includes the carrier-specific games and music/video ” stores” that you simply’ll never use. It’s what commenter LARPkitten did , and they’re loving it.

Getting Access to the SD Card is Annoying

Agreed. On ” stock” Android phones, the USB mounting process is multi-step (plug, pull-down, click, click, wait, wait more, go). On customized Droids and HTC phones, you’ve either installed special Windows/Mac software to recognize your phone, or it’s an analogous type of annoyance.

You’ve got a couple of options if manually mounting and un-mounting your SD card, Linux-style, isn’t how you’d prefer to get at your Android files:

doubleTwist , which offers continually improving desktop software for Windows and Mac that syncs your music, videos, podcasts, and photographs backwards and forwards from your phone. There’s even wireless syncing , that you would be able to make totally automated , for you to just throw that USB cable into storage.
For quickly dropping a number of files onto your phone, there is Awesome Drop , and it really is, actually, awesome . For snagging several files off the card, we’ve previously enjoyed WiFi File Explorer , but commenters on that post have many, many various suggestions.
In the event you’re regularly shuttling files backwards and forwards between your system, you must put money into establishing your laptops, desktops, and speak to with (anticipate it) Dropbox . The Android client can both download and upload files to and from the SD card.
In case you’re good with an FTP setup, you, at the side of Bradley Shaner , might dig SwiFTP , a free app that turns your phone’s SD card into an FTP server that works over your local Wi-Fi connection, or across the net.
Just to ease the technique of hooking up your phone for USB access, try an app named Auto Mount Your SD Card that doesn’t need much further explanation. You may also click an option within the doubleTwist Android app’s settings to do a similar auto-mounting on USB connection.

The Market

It may only be searched from the phone, and even then, it’s an unwieldy thing-finding the official Google Reader app, even, requires rather a lot of thumb-scrolling.

Until recently, our favorite solution was the AppBrain web market , and its own Android apps that allowed for some neat direct-to-phone installation on Android 2.2. That ability, sadly, has been knocked down by a contemporary Market change pushed out to many phones. AppBrain continues to be the simpler search tool, and provides manual sync-and-install/uninstall, in conjunction with a pick-and-push wallpaper browsing tool that still works. Official Android over-the-air installing is seemingly on the way in which, but until then, AppBrain and proposals from friends (and, er, blogs) are our imperfect curation tools.

Poor Battery Life

The option to a battery which could’t get you throughout the day, we’re afraid, is all about detailed tweaking of when and how your phone connects to the internet, turns on its screen, and runs its GPS and Bluetooth modules. If it’s any consolation, the answer is normally a similar on an iPhone.

The How-To Geek has a great, step-by-step, illustrated guide to maximizing Android battery life , moving in the course of the settings you may change. Otherwise, there are apps that automate your phone’s functions in ways which can save you juice: JuiceDefender , Locale , and Tasker , to name a couple of.

How You Fixed Your individual Android Annoyances

Our original call for annoyances and fixes yielded a treasure trove of aggravation and salvation, often through an app or tweak. Very often, too, the solution was an alternate launcher, or the rooting of a phone to install custom firmware, like CyanogenMOD . We’re fans of both those solutions, but they’re not the single tool for buying things right for your portable computer. Here’s a number of more:

ThomasSchoof :

No Reminders for a missed SMS!

Fix: Download ” Missed Reminder ” for it, nonetheless it’s still missing something. I mean, running a further app for buying a reminder in your missed sms?

MMT86 :

HTC Incredible …

2. GPS takes forever to get a lock. I mean sometimes 5-10 minutes.

We found, during a trip to Florida and subsequent inability to get a GPS fix for an hour after landing, that the GPS Status & Toolkit app is an effective, if desperate, fix. It includes a function for totally wiping your GPS cache. Your next location fix may take a little more time than usual, but at the least it’s going to (usually) work.

adamdavidcrawford :

How concerning the indisputable fact that alarms for daily events go off in the dead of night by default?

Timerific sets my phone to silent overnight.

Dave Freeman :

1. Having to modify settings so often that I wished to position the ability Control widget on a homescreen.
FIX: CyanogenMod 6.2, where I will add these buttons under the notification shade.

2. Putting my Droid within the car dock doesn’t default calls to speakerphone.
FIX: installed Car Dock Speakerphone from the market (free).

3. Putting my Droid inside the multimedia dock makes the soft buttons too bright.
FIX: rooted and installed LEDs Hack , set to automatically disable all LEDs when docked, and reactivating them when undocked.

4. Not a completely customizable dock.
FIX: Launcher Pro, pick one dock (that you would be able to scroll up to 3), set all five places to launch two apps (including the swipe action), giving me 10 apps in an extremely small space. Reset the Home softkey button to go to my Home screen, then open/close the drawer, freeing up even extra space.

There are so many things CyanogenMod helps with.
1. Hide apps inside the Drawer. Now I don’t put anything on my screen since my drawer only shows the dozen or so apps I need. Top ten most used apps are on the LP dock anyway. (Ed. note: that’s actually a LauncherPro feature)
2. Removes a number of the bloatware.
3. Phone is far faster!

What’s your biggest Android annoyance not covered here, or anywhere? Tell us what still bugs you about your open-source phone inside the comments.

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This post is tagged: application management, card option, cupboard space, customization tools, menu button, sticking points, storage device