[colug-432] Android

[Rob Funk]

On Thursday, December 29, 2011 07:06:47 PM Rick Troth wrote:
> Travis almost hit it in terms of what I was looking for.  But what I
> want is a bit more specific.  I WANT to synch my contacts with the
> phone.  I just don't want the phone to additionally "link" contacts
> which I have already spent much time organizing on the Google side.
> The limits of  "Settings -> Accounts"  shows the problem.  I do want
> sync, but don't want the aggressive extra too smarts.  Just not a lot
> of control there.

On both HTC Sense and CyanogenMod, I've had to do that linking manually, 
though it did suggest contacts to link. So maybe it's a Motorola thing to 
automatically act on those suggestions.

> The rooting options ... I've been thinking about Cyanogenmod.  Could I
> dual boot?  (still have the Verizon image handy ina pinch)  I mean ...
> is Cyanogenmod really full-function w/r/t what the cellular providers
> throw in?

For the most part Cyanogenmod is *more* full-featured than stock firmware.
The main thing that CM can't do that the stock firmware can is update your PRL 
(preferred roaming list, for selecting the best tower to use). I figure it's 
fine to deal with that when I'm updating the firmware anyway. Also on my HTC 
there's a GPS-reset code that the stock firmware knows and CM doesn't, but I 
found an app that can do that reset.

Occasionally there are certain phone-specific features that CM doesn't yet 
have support for; for example, the Samsung Galaxy S II has hardware-
accelerated graphics in its web browser, and CM's version doesn't have the 
hardware acceleration. (I just now realized that it *may* be possible to 
install the Samsung browser on top of CM to get that feature, but there may be 
other necessary infrastructure lacking.)

You (usually) can't exactly dual-boot the way we think of it in the Linux 
world; instead, you swap firmware by doing full backup images ("nandroid 
backup") of the phone and then restoring the desired one. Not something you 
want to do every day, but it's OK for occasional switching.
(I said "usually" because I have heard about dual-booting happening on some 
tablets in the process of getting alternate firmware running on them, but it's 
generally not a goal, just an intermediate point along the way.)