This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

Stereodude

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I didn't pay anything for it. It said something about losing some functionality after 2 weeks when I installed and ran it. No idea what functionality that is.
 

Handruin

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I didn't pay anything for it. It said something about losing some functionality after 2 weeks when I installed and ran it. No idea what functionality that is.

I was going by the description which states that the app is a 14 day trial. Typically when I see that type of writing I assume it's mostly useless after the trial period but maybe in this case it is not so I consider it a paid app based on that description.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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It's $2 or something. I'd pay that with no hesitation just to remove ads. I paid for ES File Explorer at one time as well.
 

mubs

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Is it secure to pay through the phone? Don't laugh, you know I'm paranoid about these things, and Android isn't exactly Fort Knox. I've avoided paid apps that I wanted and would gladly pay solely for this reason. Couldn't figure out if there is a way to pay through my desktop on the play store. This was a few years ago.


Whenever Chrome is used on my phone, unlike other apps, including Maps, it never exits but keep running and I have to manually kill it. Mine is a Samsung running 4.4.2. Previous Samsung did it too. Is it just me?
 

ddrueding

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I think you're asking if it is safe enough to buy an app for your phone from your phone? Sure.

If you're asking if it is safe to use some kind of e-wallet to purchase things at a physical store? I'm not comfortable saying that yet.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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You can always go to play.google.com and buy from a desktop browser. I suspect you'll have exactly the same protections (SSL + whatever 802.11 encryption you might have, if you're using 802.11) either way.
 

LunarMist

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Is it secure to pay through the phone? Don't laugh, you know I'm paranoid about these things, and Android isn't exactly Fort Knox. I've avoided paid apps that I wanted and would gladly pay solely for this reason. Couldn't figure out if there is a way to pay through my desktop on the play store. This was a few years ago.


Whenever Chrome is used on my phone, unlike other apps, including Maps, it never exits but keep running and I have to manually kill it. Mine is a Samsung running 4.4.2. Previous Samsung did it too. Is it just me?

Don't you have credit card protections? Any silly apps I buy are added to the monthly charges.
 

mubs

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Thanks guys. I was more concerned about the almost weekly release of news about horrendous vulnerabilities in Android. My dear darling manufacturer, Samsung, provides no updates whatsoever, no matter how critical said vulnerabilities are. So I've been leery of using the phone for anything serious / real.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Stupid Android Trick: You can upload music to Google Play Music from a desktop, but not from your Android thingies. If that's a thing you want to do, make a monitored folder on Google Drive/Dropbox/Onedrive on one of your PCs. Tell Google Music Manager to Monitor that folder and to upload new music found in that folder. Share the files you want from Android to that folder on Google Drive. It'll be uploaded as soon as the PC syncs the file.
 

Will Rickards

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ES File Explorer went stupid a while ago. It has a bunch of bloat in it now, most egregiously an "App Analyzer" that likes to push out extra notifications that it's doing (useless) things. The fix is Solid Explorer, which has a more or less identical feature set, including the robust file viewers and LAN and Cloud service connectivity, but without all the crap and stupid.

Note this is on sale for $1, so I bought it.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Why does no one use Hangouts? It's on every Android phone and a client exists for everything. Why do I need kik, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, an SMS client, or - god forbid - Facetime?
 

Handruin

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Why does no one use Hangouts? It's on every Android phone and a client exists for everything. Why do I need kik, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, an SMS client, or - god forbid - Facetime?

I use Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and Google's Messenger for SMS. The other ones I don't care about and I'd also be fine with just Hangouts and Messenger. I realize Hangouts also does SMS but I don't like how it manages the messages.
 

Howell

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I use hangouts exclusively. Though I'm sure there are parts of even it I don't use. It wanted me to login and I didn't know I wasn't.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I spent 20 minutes this morning explaining Hangouts - a thing that was already on everyone's phone - to people who couldn't agree on a message system. I guess I can understand never using Play Books or Play Music since we have so many options for those things (although they're also good software). And I suppose I'll even forgive people for not wanting to look at Email for one-sentence messages. But talking to seven people and not one of them had every looked to see what Hangouts does.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I won't accept SMS messages. They're limited to a single device and can be wonky about delivery, especially between cell providers. Certain whitelisted senders can send them to me but I see and reply to them as email.
 

Handruin

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I won't accept SMS messages. They're limited to a single device and can be wonky about delivery, especially between cell providers. Certain whitelisted senders can send them to me but I see and reply to them as email.

Why not integrate SMS into Hangouts and then it's all the same for you? I never really find them to be a big deal worth making a fuss over.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I have my emails filtered so I get appropriate notification noises on my devices and can IFTT things if need be. I really don't want to break that.
 

sechs

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Why not integrate SMS into Hangouts and then it's all the same for you? I never really find them to be a big deal worth making a fuss over.
Actually, he just needs to port over to Google Voice and use Hangouts for everything.

I can send SMS to folks using my GV number from basically anywhere on the Internet.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I have a fully integrated Google Voice number. My carrier is Sprint. I can have that.
However, in a wider point, I don't think anyone else should use SMS and I'm doing what I can to discourage it.
 

mubs

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SMS is still widely used here. Reduced somewhat due to Whatsapp etc. But mobile data is still not widely used, and if a person is out, best bet to send a message is via SMS. When voice calls fail because of signal issues, SMS will get through. The other fancy stuff you have there like described in posts above are virtually non-existent here.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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It's widely used here too, but I have no idea why, since data plans are ubiquitous and a sizable fraction of messages will be either longer than 160 characters or contain binary data.
 

Handruin

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There's also the simplicity that everyone who has a mobile device has a number and for me to message a friend, I use the number stored in my contact. For other services I need to know yet another account name under that service an hope they're signed in to Hangouts/messenger/etc. I agree SMS is no where near perfect but it's simple and fairly consistent. Modern SMS apps like Google Messenger reduce the SMS limitations of things like character limits and picture attachments.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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There also needs to be a dividing line between what's personal and what's professional. One of the reasons SMSes piss me off (besides the fact that everyone thinks I want to be married to my phone for always and forever) is that I don't want to get them from customers. I don't want to give out my phone number to anyone I don't have to, but it's expected now. The fewer people who have the power to make my phone ring so that I have to use it for talking, the happier I am.
 

timwhit

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What's everyone's view on the newly released Google Allo messaging app? We all seem to agree that there are too many messaging apps and now Google confuses things by adding yet another one to its portfolio... I've installed it but not yet used it much.

Why didn't they just enhance Hangouts with new features? If I had to guess this will be another abandoned Google project in a couple years.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Probably. At least Hangouts doesn't require a Google account. I've had people tell me, with a straight face, that they had to buy an Apple device because of Facetime.
 
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