Smått fantastiskt!

This is the home-replacement system that is a must. At least until something better shows up. Its highy customizable so it’s rather irrelevant to show any screenshots. You can make it look like you want it to. And it´s free! But I have chosen to pay for it because it deserves it. And you get some extra features as well for doing so. Link: http://www.launcherpro.com/ 

DropBox

If you have not yet discovered this app then you really shall check it out. It is a synced folder that is accessible from both the phone and the computer (and for others if you like). When I find something I want to have on the phone I just download it to the dropbox-folder and tada! There it is! No usb-cable or bluetooth. And as soon as I have installed this FREE app i can access all the files i need.
Link: http://db.tt/uBrc0yx

PowerAmp

This music player is as far as I know the best there is. Even when you compare it with other non-android platforms. It´s very good-looking, works in both portrait and landscape, and has a real equalizer. And the equalizer means everything when listening to music. There is a preset for the internal speaker that makes the Galaxy S go from boring speaker to pretty neat sound! It also features a widget and a lockscreen. The only thing I really miss is the ability to use Google Voice-actions to “listen to”. This works in the next app though. You have a pretty generous free trial-period and the price is very low. If you spend this amount of money on a handset you cannot afford to not use this app.

Link: http://powerampapp.com/

Spotify

Spotify is not a freeware on the mobile phone and that is a pity. Actually I find it rather expensive… but then again, the service it offers is outstanding. Over 10 million tracks right there in your pocket and the ability to “offline-sync”, meaning download to sd-card (but only being able to play it in the spotify-client with a payed account). There is a nice widget but no lockscreen. And of course I miss the equalizer from Poweramp.
Very cool and useful in the car is Google Voice search. Press the Google-widget and Say “listen to Queen we will rock you”. Wait a sec and the correct song is played. 

Link: http://www.spotify.com/se/mobile/android/

Widget Locker

This is a customizable lockscreen. It works as a replacement for the standard lockscreen. The good thing about this one is that you can place widgets on it. So you can have your clock, weather-forecast, newsticker or whatever directly on the lockscreen. And you can place your own sliders with shortcuts!
My setup it two sliders. Drag finger to the left and start the camera, drag it to the right to fire up the flashlight. You know when it´s so dark and you need that light,  but don´t have the time to fiddle with the menus. The other slider fires up either the dialpad or the silence/vibrator-mode. You are in a meeting and need to silence it, slide finger and it´s done.
I also have set it up to wake on the home-button, and another press on the same button unlocks it. I don´t like to try to find the power button on the side.

You can also actually hack the apk and replace the images there to customize the look completely!

Link: http://teslacoilsw.com/widgetlocker

Fancy Widget

I like this one. It offers good visual customization and a good weather-forecast. I thing I like is when you hit the forecast, you can hit it once more and then open up a custom web page. In Sweden we have the klart.se-service which is very accurate with hour-by-hour forecast.

Link: http://www.anddoes.com/category/fancy-widget/

NDrive navigation

To review this system shortly is unfair so I just recommend you to check it out. It has the features you need and it looks really good on a 4 inch super-amoled from Samsung.

Link: http://www.ndriveweb.com/products/product/96/

Multi Picture Live Wallpaper

This is not yet a survivor but I sure is a candidate. This buddy lets you set one unique image to each home screen instead of one large 960×800 wallpaper. And it lets you setup rather nice transitions between the images that looks very cool. Why want to have different images on each home screen you might ask. Well, I think it make sense to have one for the calendar, one for the start screen, one for the music etc.

Android Agenda Widget

This one is the most customizable calendar widget I have found. I like to have one full home screen for the agenda that fills the whole screen. This one lets you do exactly this (among a zillion other setups). It also lets you scroll the list. But beware, It is a PAIN to setup the way you want it to.

Tapatalk

This goodie lets you browse, read and interact on most of the large online forums out there. My choice is to follow xda-developers and swedroid.se

Link: http://tapatalk.com/mobile.php#android

ES File Explorer

A nice little file manager that lets you browse the local network by wifi. Thats about it.

Other obvious apps that I don’t even bother to mention is:

Google Maps
Google Earth
Google skymap (why?! well it´s just cool)
Google Goggles (perfectly useless but very cool)
Youtube
Facebook
Barcode-reader
AppBrain (to find new apps)

Sweden only:

Blocket
Bokus
SVT Play
Sveriges Radio player

First I assume you have done all the basics, such as turning the screen down to the lowest possible value. The screen is allways the number-one-juice-killer. On Samsung Galaxy S if you turn of automatic brightness you can change the value by just sliding your finger on the notification bar. Very neat.

When the screen is on, (if you have an amoled-screen like the Desire, Galaxy S etc) you want to keep the screen as black as possible. Therefore use a black or at least very low-key toned background. And goes without saying, dont use those fancy animated backgrounds.

But this is something that has really extended the lifetime: APNDroid

If the screen is the number-one killer, then the 3G-radio is the second. And when you keep your screen of, the radio is running in the background all day long.

You can turn of all automatic updates but still battery is killed. With APNDroid you mess up the APN-settings so the phone just cant connect to the Internet. When enabled that is of cource. This causes the phone to just give up on such tasks.

APNDroid comes with a toggle-widget that lets you tund network on/off just like with the wifi. If you keep it off all day long except for those short periods of time when you actually need connection, you will notice a tremendous increase of battery life. At least according to my experence.

Even better would be to turn of 3G completely and rely on 2G only. I have not found a way to do this with just a toggle-widget, but this is a good start.

You can also (experimenting with it now) set this automaticly with the amazing application called Tasker (£3.99).

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Denna film visar att glaset tycks tåla en hel del. Det är först när han går loss med ett rakblad som det blir repor. Inte ille måste jag säga.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xASJobjD68

Men ändå så har det rapporterats på ett antal forum att folk fått repor bara av att ha den ensam i fickan. De teorier som förts fram är att det skraptåliga glaset klarar hård belastning, men är mindre motståndskraftigt mot mikroskopiska vassa partiklar, t.ex. slitrester från nycklarna som fastnat i tyget. Vet inte om teorin håller, men jag tror ändå ett skärmskydd är att rekommendera (för båda telefonerna)

Så även om ett skärmskydd sänker fingerkänsligheten en aning så rekommenderas det ändå. Kolla här vad en liten smärgel kan åstadkomma:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmqe9G5TIOg

Källor:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/24/samsung-galaxy-s-sporting-gorilla-glass-to-protect-that-precious/

http://www.swedroid.se/forum/showthread.php?t=19066

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Eftersom en fix har dröjt så pass länge och Samsung lyst med sin frånvaro av ens kommentarer på ämnet så har vissa befarat att det rört sig om ett faktiskt hårdvarufel. Om så vore skulle det vara ett hårt slag för alla som köpt den i tron att marknadsföringen faktiskt talar sanning. Och telefoner idag har behov av positionering för så oerhört mycket mer än bara navigering. Som positionsrelaterad sökning på Google, förstärkt verklighet, träningsprogram med mera…

Många är de som försökt hacka mjukvaran och åtskilliga så kallade fixar har dykt upp på scenen sedan juli. Men nu kommer en firmware från Samsung som enligt uppgift faktiskt adresserar problemet - och det med besked. (Man ska då komma ihåg att det kommit nästan en läckt firmware i veckan sedan juli så det har inte varit brist på försök, men gpsen har tidigare varit hopplös.)

Dock finns en del som klagar på även denna. Själv har jag inte testat den. Observera att skärmdumpen ovan är tagen inomhus.

Läs mer på tråden i swedroid!

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Watch the clip demonstrating this. If this works as promised you can send a text message by just saying it and it will be transcribed automaticly to text. You can also navigate to the closest business by just ask android to use google to search for it and then give you the route. Et cetera…!

Quite obviously it only works for english spoken language but hey, who cares? Unfortunatly it will only run on 2.2 froyo so we who has the samsung galaxy s has to sit tight for an upgrade (or run a custom rom).

Check it out!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGbYVvU0Z5s

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The idea with Swype is that you dont lift your finger from the keyboard. Instead you draw a curve over each letter in the word you want to type, and swype types it for you. Sounds strange? It is strange and my first thought was that this is another painful try to make a new newboard for the touchscreens. I have tried a lot over the years and have always gon back to the standard qwerty again. But Swype is different.

My first thought was that this is hard. It must be impossible to draw a curve over just the correct letters when the finger is actually in the way for you to the the keyboard. And yes its hard, but you dont have to. Swype figures out the word even when you do a  terrible jobb.

Its like star wars, just trust the force Luke! Draw the curve and voila, there the correct word is. And if Swype is unsure you get a list of suggestions. Swedish is a language with a lot of letters. Take for example the word notebook, in swedish will be anteckningsbok. 14 letters in one word. In the first try it got it right! And I havent even been training.

I just say: whoa! 5 stars!

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In direct sunlight. The sun is from behind:

Same situation but the phone i shadowed by myself:

The screens blackness indoor:

By the way, the htc-sense looking clock is called Fancy Widgets and cannot be found in the market because htc has asked the developer to remove it. If you are the slightest creative you can pretty easily figure out where to find it anyway (hint: Jack Sparrow landed his ship in such a place). Its uninstalled though due to by some reason taking a lot of cpu.

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