The goal of this article is to flatten the learning curve from moving from a regular cell phone or other smart phone to an Android Powered phone. I will go over my experiences and misconceptions in hope that it might be of use to others. Of course your mileage may vary depending on your level of knowledge. I come from Microsoft windows and Linux desktop background and I did own a Windows mobile phone in the past.
My biggest misconception is I thought the phone would operate more like a desktop computer. Take for example a simple notepad program. I expected to open the program, create the document and then save to a directory of my choosing. Well two out of three were correct. You launch programs from the application drawer which is the same as going to start and then programs in windows. You then create the document but instead of saving your work you just go back to your cell phone home screen and the document is automatically saved. This threw me for a loop the first time. I started searching for a save option in all of the menus and could not find one. I finally gave up and hit the home key and I saw a little text box saying “saved”. Where the document is saved is determined by the application. At least I have not run across a program yet that gave you the option to choose a location where your files are kept.
So it seems a lot of normal desktop tasks are taken care of automatically with Android. Which makes sense since most people do not want to be bothered with these little details. Especially on device designed do work on the go. Still I like to know where my files are for backing up and transferring between devices. Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining. The phone just takes a little getting bit of learning. This is to be expected when you have planned to obtain installs for apps. There are ways of accomplishing these tasks and in a way that makes most sense to you. Android phones offer great functionality and are extremely extensible. This is possible due to the ever growing library of applications than can run on Android.
Installing Android Applications is accomplished by going to the Google’s Android Market from your phone or “side loading” them from other websites. Most Android phones have access to the Android Market but depending on how the carrier set up the phone you may or may not have the ability to side load applications. Tablet devices are more likely not to have access to the Android Market but there are other sources such as websites and another marketplace called Apps Lib available. While on the subject of different Android experiences they will vary depending on the device you buy. Apart from the Android version that comes loaded on the phone the manufacturer may modified the operating system as well. For example two of the most popular Android cell phone manufacturers HTC and Motorola both have customized versions of the user interface. Meaning operation of the phone may differ slightly or offer additional features from a cell phone that has a stock Android operating system.
The first thing I wanted my phone to do was have the ability to save notes such as grocery and to do lists. After looking through the factory installed applications I found this ability did not exist. Not to worry as I said before Android is extremely extendable. So I went off to the Google Android Marketplace to find a suitable application. I did a search on notepad and came up with over 1095 results!
As I mentioned earlier I like to know where my files are saved for back-up purposes. In the information page for Color note on the Android Marketplace it explained that notepad data is saved at /data/color note on the SD card. I went to find the directory but I could not find anything analogous to Windows Explorer. I went back to the Android Marketplace. This time I found an application called Astor File Manager. Again this application had a free version but this time it was ad supported. Meaning little text ads would run across the bottom of the screen while using the application. I installed the Astro File Manager and was able to browse the contents of my phone. So as I mentioned before it is pretty easy to make your Android device have the features you desire.
To wrap up getting an Android Powered phone was a somewhat different than I expected. This is true when you adopt any type of new technology. To me the effort of learning how to operate the device is well worth it. I am ecstatic with the flexibility, entertainment and amazing variety of applications. With more and more powerful phones coming available some say it could even take over the personal computer.
