Acer A500 Custom ROM vs Google Play Services

Those who have flashed to the custom ROM will probably now be running afoul with Google's latest versions of its Google Play Services.  Check out TO forums for more info on this.

Acer A500 Flashing

I had issues with the stock ICS rom until the point where Google Drive apps became virtually useless.  I couldn't edit spreadsheets and Hangouts was crashing crazy.  This post here is to list down resources from my attempted Linux only experience to getting from stock OTA ICS to TegraOwners Lollipop ROM.  A lot of the credit is from the hard-working folks at TO.  There's a huge amount of resources already in that forum so all you need is to search.  (They'll tell you the same thing!)  Since I don't dive in blind with these things, there was a tremendous amount of readings to be done just to get started.

Android and GPS

So, I've been traveling way more frequently than I used to and I figured having the GPS on my Android devices could be handy.  However, I realized that my Acer Iconia Tab A500's GPS never actually worked.  Also, the MoveTab had GPS that worked really well and then suddenly stopped working.  If I remember, GPS never worked for my Samsung Galaxy Pocket either.  All of these nonfunctional stuff got me reading and investigating just how to use this equipment.  Read that after the jump!  Note that a lot of the focus of this article is on my poor Acer A500 and its horrible GPS.

Dead Iconia Tab

So I got the stuck Acer logo on startup after the tablet froze on me while playing Magic 2014 (awesome game, by the way).  From the looks of it, for whatever reason, the boot loader cannot get ICS running so it's always stuck on the Acer logo.  I've read dozens of articles for resetting the tablet using the Volume Button +, Power button and then flicking the flip lock screen and the first time, it got through just fine but I still ended up with the stuck logo (strangely enough, I used the Volume Button - for my device).  Second time resetting only got stuck with the "Bootloader v0.03.12-ICS: Starting Fastboot USB download Protocol".  Well, ain't that nice?

I'm bracing myself for a busted NAND memory.  It sort of makes sense that if the data is truly corrupted because of hardware faults, then the machine is toast.  It also doesn't look like I'm the only one suffering from this.  I love my A500.  It's a splendid tablet, but this just has to be grating to experience.

Sad day.

Lessons on Android and Multimedia files

First off, if you're looking to skip folders from being scanned, put the .nomedia file inside the folder.  Second, using my A500 for music has lead to several particularly annoying issues.  Putting music in the micro SD card is just bad news.  Very, bad news.  My music players would pick up duplicate entries of the music files which is reminiscent to my problems with the original Google gallery.  That app would pick up and duplicate entries in its cache when the micro SD card needed to be reloaded.

Lesson learned.  Do not put music in the micro SD Card.

Cleaning up the crap takes a bit of time and effort, but if you've isolated your files in a folder, that's good.  Rename your folder and put the .nomedia file on it to keep Android from re-scanning and grabbing those poor files.  I then used Winamp to purge all the music in the library which just removes Android's internal mapping.  To be sure, load up each of your music players and make sure none of the music gets picked up.  Move your music folder to /sdcard and remove the .nomedia file.  Reboot your device and then run a music app which should begin re-scanning your device for media.

Hopefully, that will tidy up your music player.

Two Good VNC/RDP Android Apps

I had an earlier post talking about PocketCloud Remote RDP/VNC and how it was much better than androidVNC.  I have come with the realization that the free app version was restricted to only one connection.  That's not really a deal breaker, but I had an early quirk with the right click from the virtual pointer wasn't really working.  What I began to realize was that the connection was set to operate on Mac environment which meant I didn't have right click.  Switching to Windows environment for my connection setting worked wonders.

The next problem I had was that I had to remote to two machines and I needed another remote access configuration, something that the free PocketCloud app didn't allow.  I began to look for another app that could provide decent remote desktop functionality.  I found Jump Desktop Free which provides the keys I needed (tab, directional keys, etc).  The only usability quirk I had to learn was that right click was tap and hold on the virtual pointer.  To do the mouse drag, you double tap and then drag with your finger.

Damn! A proper VNC viewer on Android!

For a long time, I've endured androidVNC as my primary remote desktop viewer on my Acer tablet.  It's rudimentary but works and is free which was what I was looking for when I got my tablet.  There are a couple of things that really bothered me with this software though.  First was the propensity to crashes when doing multi-touch accidentally.  Second was the cumbersome keyboard support and the fact that half the time, I can't see what I'm actually typing.  Third was the lack of support for the very well developed Hacker's Keyboard.  While using it a few hours ago, I really started to think that there had to be a much better option that didn't cost a dime.  Google took me to another VNC that works so much better.  That's the PocketCloud Remote RDP/VNC.  Love how everything looks professional and the mouse circular menu really makes using the desktop much, much better.  Can't look back at my old VNC viewer after this one.

Android ICS Irritation: Application Not Responding

I started getting some slow downs with my last few days of Honeycomb.  Launching apps had gotten generally slower.  The stock browser paused damn too much.  Everything was becoming a painful experience for me.  With that, I looked up Elixir 2 and Lookup Ad Detection to figure out just what was happening.  No matter how much I inspected the 'top' command output, I couldn't see anything that was really causing a bottleneck.  I then looked up the ad network apps that were in my system.  It was there I realized that there's a chock full of these that come with your freebie games.  Without hesitation, I proceeded to zap away the multitude of freebie apps that were hooked up in these ads.  Truth be told, I don't know which one did it, to be honest, but I could definitely sense a good change in speed.  It wasn't enough though.

Acer A500 and Ice Cream Sandwich

Ever since the word got out that Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich or simply ICS) started going out, the wait for the update has been infuriating.  Every time I check my device for updates, it has always insisted it didn't have any.  I knew it was already out there though and its inability to find it was aggravating.  People had mentioned that the Iconia Tab Updater needed to be updated but as far as Google was concerned, it was which only made matters more irritating.

Finally I decided to go to Acer's local support website and looked for this apk and bit the bullet.  As soon as the app replaced the one installed by Google, it picked up 4.0.3 right away.  I knew ICS had problems but I was willing to bite the bullet.  After the update went through without a hitch, I've decided to write down my thoughts on this.

Sims FreePlay

I've been playing Sims FreePlay for a while now on my Acer IconiaTab A500.  It's a nice decent game that isn't quite Sims-ish if such a word exists.  I think a lot of people are at arms with how it's real time and you have to literally wait 6 to 7 hours for your Sims to wake up from slumber.  Me?  I'm not that peeved, to be honest.  It seems that what I've done pretty much in the game is to give them really long tasks, sometimes tasks that take a day to complete.  Doing this seems to have several advantages.

First off, the game gives plenty of XP and money (provided that the task does let you earn) returns for completing tasks.  Second, while your sim is locked in his or her task, your Sims's needs do not go down. If you give him or her a 7 hour task and come back later, the needs (hunger, cleanliness, etc.) should still be relatively intact, which makes looking after them quite a breeze.  Just be the task master!

Another oddity I noticed is that to maintain your Sims's needs, you really should look into the following to bring it back up quickly.  For hunger, you need a refrigerator.  Using only a couple of seconds, you can satiate your Sims's hunger rather quickly.  For cleanliness, you should just use the sink which I find is the quickest way of bringing that statistic back up.  A shower is fine if it's really low though.  For sleep, use the couch for daydreaming.  A minute is all you need to satisfy that need.  For the social need, you can either interact with another Sim or use the phone.  For entertainment needs, just about anything your Sim interacts with should be fine.  I usually go with baking or gardening since that gives money.  Lastly, we all know what the toilet bowl is there for.

If you're the kind not to care about the goals, you'll be fine with the game and the daily grind you put your Sims into.  It's when you start wanting to 'advance' so-to-speak where the freemium aspects of the game can get grating as you feel the need to spend real money on Lifetime Points.  Me?  I'm not one to care.

Oh, and invest in a dog.  Really.

My Journey to the Tablet World

Recently I got an Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet and I've been meaning to get one of those fancy mobile internet devices for myself. I've always had a plan to unstrap myself on the computer chair for all the online tasks I demand. This idea spawned from using the Zaurus SL-5600 for a good year or so and while the machine was mostly insufficient for even for simple browsing, it was a brief glimpse into this vision of being online anywhere, everywhere. I had thought of several options, from netbooks to perhaps another laptop, but I knew this was not the optimum solution. I owned a laptop for many years now, and it has not particularly been portable. Of course, it weighed a ton, which did nothing to help the situation.

When I saw what tablets could do, it did not even strike me to use it, but I suppose the interest grew and as I evaluated the propositions, I started to see some value in them. They were many times more easier to interface with, and the wifi connectivity was very good. The biggest trouble I have ever had with my Zaurus was simply running out of memory and that problem seemed to crop up at every turn with it. Even using my brother's mobile phone to surf the web was an exacting experience. While analyzing modern tablets, I saw this problem didn't even exist and that was a very important key to this. It seemed to be the natural solution of what I was after.

Selecting the Acer Iconia had then become weighing through different options. The plan was to get a proper ssh client and VNC viewer so that I could still do some work while away from my office that I had become so entrenched in. The next step was to have very good Google services support seeing that I was almost embedded into Google's ecosystem. Everything else was gravy as far as I was concerned. It had to be an Android, and the price had to be reasonable.

At first, I was interested in one of those Chinese knock offs, Wopad. The i7 builds seem to solve much of the processing power issues the first editions had. Its price was also extremely attractive but shouldn't really be a surprise judging that it does come from China. But, there was something about it that I just couldn't get around to. It was support. You'd be getting this neat device for a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the regular tablets, but what happens when you have problems? Who do you go to? Don't know? I thought so.

Chopping those cheap ones off put the choices down to Samsung's offering as well as Acer's and Asus'. All three are pretty good machines, though I found the Galaxy tabs here to be much older models and those definitely did not attract. Asus meanwhile seemed to be a tad bit more expensive than Acer's proposition and what I got from it was much, much less. Acer it is, and to this day, I'm quite happy with it.

For the most part, I've read that the Acer Iconia Tab is a pretty hefty device, but since I haven't handled much in terms of tablets, I did not have any preconceived notion of just what was light. I got around the weight issues pretty quickly and settled in on the device. Having a capacitive touch screen display was an eye opener as the last quasi-tablet I handled was Toshiba's ultra portable with a resistive touch screen. It ran on Windows and it was such a pain to use. This tablet's touch screen was very sensitive and at times seemed too much to handle. The availability of a full-sized USB port also made some of the transition very easy, allowing me to plug in flash drives and transferring files. Overall I was pleased, but it was not all rosy with this.

Software seemed to be the biggest issue with Android. Going through Android's Market was like entering a flea market and you just never know what you get. There's a lot of stuff, and a lot of it, you don't really know if you'll ever need. Some of the stuff just simply does not work and it would be ideal if Google could separate the glitchy apps from the stable ones. Perhaps they haven't because surprisingly, Google Docs is one of those crazy malfunctioning apps. It pains me to have to work with this and Android's crappy soft keyboard. I was on the verge of screaming for directional keys as the cursor would almost always jump too far with the touch screen. For those who had those problems, pickup the Hacker's keyboard. It's a god-send for me and it made the app much more bearable. It also works great on my ssh client, ConnectBot (I think), which allowed tab support (Yippee!). Google Docs had even more issues though, with the cursor not being aligned to where the letters were going to show up. I hope that this is going to get sorted soon.

Games are also absolutely nothing to write about here. Acer's tablet came with Hero of Sparta, Let's Golf and Need for Speed: Shift and the only game worthwhile there is EA's work. I was very skeptical with NFS, tilt racing, but the end result is surprisingly natural. The game also looks very good for portable devices. The other game that really shone for me was Galaxy on Fire 2, which had that Freelancer kind of feel, if you want some space flight sim-ish game. The virtual control stick is just awful for mining though it may just require more time to adjust. I really wanted to try Nova 2 from Gameloft but their site seems to keep me from downloading any trial version. Speaking of trial, I also wanted to get Riptide GP demo, but it just wasn't around at all. To wrap up the disappointment, I really wanted Sims 3 and it seemed that the Android Market just refuses to list the game down for me.

Other apps that were very useful for me were ES File Explorer as this allowed me to access my Samba file server and pull up mp3s, videos and pdfs. It was very good and the interface was very nice. VNC Viewer I used was called android-vnc-viewer and while it works well, it is kind of unstable especially when I try to touch the display with more than one finger (for some reason). Using it needs some getting used to, but it works and that's all that matters for me.

Lastly, there's this thing about syncing back to a desktop. I read about being able to connect to Ubuntu and after taking much consideration, I figured that the mtpfs drivers that were used to interface with the device should be mature enough but the support libraries in Karmic were just too old. I decided to just use my XP Virtualbox install and expose the tablet to it. For some reason, I have to turn off USB debugging on my tablet to get the entire setup working, but it did work. I manage to copy stuff into and out of the device and that works just fine for me.

Tablets do address specific needs and I can certainly understand that better now. It isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for some robust online device on the go, then look no further.