Just got a new contract from Vodafone – £25 a month and a free HTC Desire – was interested in the HD but after reading repots on the battery life, figured I didn’t need the larger screen and shorter battery life. I don’t sit on Facebook all day so the auto-update feature is likely to be swtiched off which will also save on battery.

Anyway, as I’m new to Android, I’m wondering where this App store is? Is it a single place or are there various locations? How do I find them?

I’ve done a search on here and some of the apps sound fine but where do I find them? Do I pay for them?

I don’t talk much on the phone so have 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 1Gb data – which is likely to sort me out…phone kind of lives with me and I take photos, text, taking it riding (would like an app that will save my rides in GPX format so I can sync then with http://www.mapmytracks.com – Endomondo seems good but doesn’t appear to save your workouts (or the version I’ve used on my Nokia doesn’t anyway) – MapMyTracks will be releasing an Android app soon but not yet).

How quick does the GPS get a satellite lock on the phone?

I’m happy to do a search for apps myself but have no idea how the App store works or where it is located.

Also, what do I need to do to set it up? I’ve got all my contacts on my Outlook 2007 on my PC – how do I get them all to the phone?

Sorry for the daft question but I’m impatient and want to know all this before the phone arrives so I can start playing right away instead of reading a flippin manual!

Cheers.

Market place icon on your phone

search ‘andriod apps’ on here. quite a few useful threads

You can search for apps in the Market that is already installed on your phone.
3G watchdog is good for keeping an eye on your data used per month.

Cool thanks…so it’s something I get on the phone rather than something I can search just now and get the apps ready for install…ok, thanks.

Did search ‘Android’ and it came up with lots of threads so going to wade through them but couldn’t see any answer (or question) regarding the App store – I didn’t know if it was a website I could browse or what…thanks for the info.

you can look through some of the more popular ones here http://www.android.com/market/

but you just install straight to your phone

My Tracks
Compass
Bubble
Kindle
Google Sky Maps
Flashlight

angry birds

You can search and mark apps for install at appbrain app market, then when you put the app on your phone it will sync with the pc. 🙂

Batteryminder is very useful.

Right, I now own the phone – it’s set up – thankfully didn’t need to use by gmail account (never use it so god knows what it would pull down) – but I’m not sure if I’ve got it set up properly – I don’t want auto updates on anything…if I was to view Twitter or Facebook then I want to click a button and it will connect (I’m wanting to limit my data usage but also prolong battery life). I’ve also told it not to use Location info as it claims it does it even with no apps running so again I see that as a drain on battery and data usage of some sort.

What do I do to set the phone up so there is no data transfer without me manually initiating it?

Once I get this sorted I’ll start looking at getting my contacts in! Then the apps!!!

Cheers.

If you’ve not set it up with a google account, I think you will find that it won’t let you access the market for apps.

Get yourself a new google account, use that to set up the phone and then see how you go….

And how do I get rid of all my Facebook contacts??? For some reason they have all been added to my contact list – GTF!!! I only want the contacts I had on my old phone…

Will set up Google account now…

This phone seems to have a permanent connection to something…I’ve switched auto-sync and background sync off but it still continues to be connected to some data…what can it be?

All the accounts are now set to not auto-sync (although some seem to be set to synch once a day)…

Mince…think I’ll go into the Vodafone tomorrow and get it setup by someone who will hopefully have a better idea than me!

turn “mobile networks” off (setting, wireless and networks, mobile networks. (or add the settings widget to a screen)

There’s an App called quick settings to turn on / off Wifi quickly and other things.

Is there a H / G icon with 2 arrows under it? Thats your mobile data connection. Turn it on and off by holding down the power button for a few seconds until a menu appears, scroll down to ‘Mobile data connection’.

Cool, thanks…thing is I can’t work out what is causing it to connect…I thought I’d got everything switched off…or is it connecting just because I have Mobile connect switched on? I’ve switched it off now…

it does by default un;less you turn it off

Ok, thanks…and thanks for the advice/info – sorry for the thick questions…

Android phones generally do sit online all the time, syncing your mail and things, it’ll probably only use a couple of mb a month from syncing though. Unless the battery life is hacking you off I’d just leave it on.

I leave my t’internet off and only turn it on when I want it for ease of prolonging battery life. I have both wi-fi and mobile network widgets on the screen so I just turn them on easily when I want to surf then turn them off again. I find it’s just easier that way then I’m not worrying about battery life or usage. It’s not too bad toget the hang off once you’ve spent a few weeks playing around.