(Updated) Android Project Quick Tip: How to Set Your Android Browser to View Full Web Sites (as opposed to mobile sites)

Update:  I just realized that phones running stock Android 2.2 or prior versions most likely don't have the same menu settings as those described below. I was running a custom ROM at the time I wrote this. However, thanks to Lifehacker, I have discovered a way for stock users to access the menu settings they need to change your Browser to view full websites as opposed to the mobile only. So here you go:


Open your browser, enter about:debug into the address bar, then hit the "Go" button on your keyboard—don't tap the search/URL suggestion that comes up. You'll notice that the browser now does, well, nothing. But hit your Menu key, choose the "More" option, then select Settings. Scroll down some, and you'll see a new collection of advanced options there, including a "UAString" option. Click that, then choose between Android, desktop, or iPhone user strings to change what browser web sites think you're visiting with.

If you are running CyanogenMod 6, here's a set of instructions for you:

We all know how nice it is when websites have a mobile version for those of us on mobile devices. Mobile sites are optimized for viewing on a device with a smaller screen and usually have less advertisements and pictures that slow down viewing and rendering of these sites on your phone.

However, there are often times when you want to see the full version of the website. Most websites are set up to recognize whether you are trying to view the site with a mobile browser. The website then automatically redirects you to the mobile site without asking.

The stock Android 2.2 browser has an option that will "trick" websites into thinking you are using a desktop browser, thereby avoiding the redirect to the mobile version of the website. I'm not aware of whether the stock Android browser had this feature before Android 2.2 (Froyo) was released, but it's there now. Since Android doesn't come with a user manual, we're here to help you out.

So here are the steps to force your browser to view full websites:

1. Open up the stock Android 2.2 browser;
2. Press the "Menu" button;
3. Select the "More" option;
4. Select the "Settings" option;
5. Select the "User Agent" option (shown below):

6. Select the "Desktop" button (shown below):

And that should do it. You can always change the setting back to "Android" if you want to go back to viewing mobile sites. There are also selections for "iPhone" and "Internet Explorer 6" but I haven't played around with those settings enough to figure out what they do. If anybody knows, leave us a tip in the comments!

The Android Project Reviews: Knocking Live Beta (Cross-Platform Video Chat App)

Category: Video Chat
Price:  Free
Gotta-Have-It Factor: 1

I need to preface this review by noting that Knocking Live is currently in Beta (hence the "Beta" in the title). This review may change once the final version is released.  That being said, Knocking Live is not ready for mainstream use, in my opinion.

The one advantage to Knocking Live is that it is a closs-platform video chat application. So those of you Android users out there who have friends with an iPhone (i.e. every Android user out there), can supposedly use Knocking Live to videochat with your iPhone friends (to give you a better view of their sense of superiority).

Unfortunately, after testing Knocking Live with one friend who owns an iPhone 4, and one friend with a Nexus One, I was unable to get Knocking Live to work (I own a Motorola Droid, if you were wondering).

The biggest problem we had was the force closes, which came frequently. We didn't get more than 5 seconds of video feed without the app force closing. Another problem was that we couldn't get the audio to work. So it ended up being a laggy, silent video feed. And the last problem is that only one video stream seemed to work at a time. If I could see my friend on my phone, he couldn't see me on my phone, and vice versa.

Another frustration I had with Knocking Live is that your friends have to be "Online" for you to be able to "knock" on their door. For me, this meant I had to have the application open and in the foreground. So in order to videochat with your friends, you'd have to contact them via other means first, tell them to open up Knocking Live, and then "knock" on their door. Hopefully they'll come up with a way to notify your friends that you want to chat with them, without always having Knocking Live open and running.

Fortunately, Knocking Live is free in the Android Market because I wouldn't recommend paying anything for this app. So I'll wait and see if Knocking Live improves at all with future updates. But for now, I'd search elsewhere if you're looking for a cross-platform video chat application. I give it a 1 on the gotta-have-it scale.

Android Project How-To: Manually Remove Pre-Loaded Apps

In the beginning of the Android invasion the carriers shipped their first phones without a lot of bloat/crapware mainly due to the small user base at the time. Now that Android is gaining an approximate 200,000 new followers a day, there is serious incentive for the carriers to load apps like Nascar, AmazonMP3, and a host of other apps that may very well be useless to the user. Even worse, is they bake these apps into the OS so standard un-installation is not possible. But, thanks to the Android Community out there, it is possible to Root nearly any device on the market and gain privileges you should have had in the first place--like being able to remove those apps that are of no interest to you and that are possibly using some behind the scenes CPU.

In this post I will show you how to remove these apps for free using a few simple lines of code via the Terminal Emulator. For the record I am on a Nexus One (AT&T version) running CM6 so naturally I didn't have much pre-loaded; AmazonMP3 was the only one. For the newer phones on other carriers there are likely more apps you may want removed.

Here are the steps:

1. Get Rooted. If you are not, then this post is not for you. If you want to be, try Google.

2. Download SuperUser from the market.

3. Download Teminal Emulator from the market.

4. Ensure SuperUser rights for Terminal Emulator in the SuperUser app.

5. Open Terminal Emulator.

6. You should see a # sign. If you don't type "su" and hit return.

7. You will need to remount your system folder on the phone with write permissions. To do this type "mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/mtdblock3  /system" hit return.

(it won't say anything it will just go back to a # sign again).

8. Now type "cd  /system/app" hit return and then "ls"

You will now see a of all the apk files, which are the applications. For the most part the crapware apps aren't tied together or connected to the Android System. I wanted to remove AmazonMP3, which is pretty much a standalone.

9. Type "rm -r xxxxx.apk" (it's case sensitive) hit return.

example: rm -r com.amazon.mp3.apk

And as you can see my phone no longer has AmazonMP3 in its app drawer.

There are a number of steps, but trust me it is fairly simple and easy. After I did these, I restarted my App Launcher and found the AmazonMP3 app gone. It is also not self starting and running in the background.

As usual, there are risks with these types of activities, so please do a backup beforehand.

There are a number of apps that require Root that do great back-ups found in the market, like Titanium, MyBackUp Pro, etc.

Good luck!

The Android Project Reviews: The Best Video Player for Android - RockPlayer

One of the biggest issues I have with Android is the lack of an all-in-one media player. Unfortunately the native video player that is built into the OS is severely lacking and only plays a few different video formats. Until somebody comes out with a media player that can play both music and videos, we'll have to make due with what we've got.

I've used quite a few different video apps on the market, and I've been disappointed by every one of them... until now. I downloaded the free version of an application called RockPlayer and gave it a try. It plays almost everything I've thrown at it. According to the developer's website, RockPlayer is an embedded platform, high-performance all-format video player. And I don't disagree with that. The developer says that RockPlayer can handle the following formats: avi mkv rmvb mp4 mov wmv asf wma wav mpg ts mpa dvd au mp3 mid ivf aiff ogm ogg cda flic d2v aac roq flac drc dsm swf pls pmp. As you can see, there's not much it can't handle. There's no more need to transcode your video files before putting them on your phone.

One of the disadvantages to RockPlayer is the price, and the fact that you can't purchase it straight from the Android Market. Although the free version works fine, it is ad supported and there is a red "R" in the top left-hand side of the screen, which may bother some people. So to purchase the app, you have to go to the developer's website and pay $9.99, which is pretty steep compared to most of the apps in the market. But if you find yourself watching a lot of videos that aren't supported by the native Android video player, I highly recommend you purchase this app.

For me, I give the RockPlayer app an 8 on the gotta-have-it scale. I can't stand having to transcode .avi files before transferring them to my Droid. So this app is well worth it. Go ahead and give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments!

(Updated) Android Facebook App is (No Longer) Draining Battery after Update

So word on the street is that the new update to the Android Facebook app is draining batteries. This news came out just a few hours ago, and apparently Facebook has already acknowledged the issue. This is from the Facebook for Android facebook page:

Hi folks, a number of you have commented on seeing a battery drain on your device since installing the new Facebook for Android app. We have identified the bug that is causing this battery drain and are working on a fix now. As soon as the patch is ready, we will push out an update. Thanks for the quick feedback and for your patience as we get this fixed

So hopefully this gets fixed soon, because I don't really want to have to downgrade to the previous version of Facebook for Android. I'll be surprised if the fix comes out soon because previous updates to the Facebook app have been few and far between. 

On a side note, it's fun to read all the anger in the comments on the Facebook for Android page. People feel like Android users aren't receiving equal treatment because the iPhone app is so much better. 

Update: An update for this problem was pushed to the market last night. So go update your Facebook app and let us know whether you're still experiencing battery drain issues.

Froyo 101: Adjusting Flash Settings in Stock Browser

Now that many of us are running Android 2.2 (Froyo) on our phones, I thought it might be good to share some tips and tricks that I've learned during my short time using it. Unfortunately, Froyo doesn't come with a user manual (Google probably has one somewhere, but I haven't found it). So I'll do my best to share with you the options that Froyo gives you that you might not discover on your own.

The first tip I'd like to share is how to change the Flash settings in Android's stock browser. The first thing that impressed me about Froyo wasn't its ability to handle Flash, but the speed improvements in the stock browser. Unfortunately, I've found that running Flash all the time decreases web site load times significantly, especially on media-heavy sites. Hopefully this will improve once Flash 10.1 moves out of beta, but until then, I can't have it slowing me down.

To fix this problem, the stock browser gives you the option to completely disable Flash, or to pick and choose which Flash objects to enable when you want it. So here's how you do it:

1. Open up the stock Android browser
2. Hit the Menu button
3. Select "More" in the Menu
4. Select "Settings"
5. Scroll down to "Enable plug-ins" and select it

6. Select "On demand" if you want to pick and choose which Flash objects to use OR
    Select "Off" if you want to completely disable Flash

There you have it, a fairly simple fix, although not that obvious if you don't know where to find it.

Do you have any tips for using Froyo that you'd like to share? Leave them in the comments.

New App Notification: Android2cloud does Phone2Chrome

Now that many of us are running Android 2.2 (Froyo) on our phones, one of the greatest new features is the ability to run an application called Chrome to Phone, which allows the user to send a link from a desktop browser to an Android phone with a simple click of the button in Google's Chrome or Firefox (through the use of an extension).

After using Chrome to Phone for a month or so, I found myself wishing that is had the opposite functionality as well, to send a link from my phone to my desktop browser so I don't have to go through the hassle of cutting and pasting and e-mailing the link to myself.

Well I no longer have to wait to be able to do that.  Lifehacker just posted an article on a new app called Android2cloud, which does the opposite of what Chrome to Phone does. From the Lifehacker article:

"After installing the Android app (available at the stie and in the Market), installing the Chrome extension, and authenticating both apps through your Google account, you'll get one-button transmission powers between your two Google browsers. You can copy/paste a URL through android2cloud itself, but it's easier to hit the "Share page" option on a web page and choose android2cloud as the vessel.

Android2cloud is a free download for Android and Chrome, and requires a Google account to connect the two."

Here's the link to the google code site for the Chrome extension and the application: android2cloud

 Now stop reading this and download it! Let me know what you think about it in the comments.

(Thanks for the tip, Keltose!)