ew wrote: > I've been a long time Nokia/Symbian user. I recently decided against both > upgrade paths (MeeGo or Windows Phone) for replacing my nearly 5yr old Nokia > N95-8gig. I considered the Nokia N9 which is now > a couple years old. The N9 was the closest thing to a full Linux phone > running MeeGo Harmatten. It was both attractive and functional but Nokia > dropped > support for the OS shortly after releasing the device... so sad. > > I decided to treat myself and get something current, with a solid support > path into the future. > > I have just received my Nexus4 device. Here are my first two findings. > This is not an Android issue, but I was surprised to find Google Voice > needs to use the cellular voice plan to dial out. I thought I could use the > device to make WiFi call without a SIM card installed. > I don't understand how I can make a call using GV with a > browser, but the Android app requires a working cellular number. Google > Voice integration was a key factor in choosing Android over MeeGo :(
>From a desktop browser, you can make a call from GMail with the chat box on the left - just click on the phone icon and you can call over your GV account. I have no idea if this works on the phone, I expect it doesn't. AFAIK you'll need to use GV over the cell network. I'll leave you to speculate as to why this isn't supported :-) You should be able to use chat to do video-chat over the phone, though. > > Second, I wanted to be able to transfer files to and from the device > using my SAMBA server. The first and only app I have tried is simply called > "Computer". I was able to copy files from my SAMBA > server to the device over WiFi. I tried pasting a few jpg > photos to the /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera folder. These pics would not > show up in the gallery.app. I the tried pasting the same > photos to the ~/Downloads folder with the same result. > After searching a bit it seems Android uses a database to "keep track" > of the files. I tried a couple suggestions such as clearing the gallery.app > cache and storage data. After resyncing the gallery.app > my photos were still not available. > > My questions: > Is this typical behavior? It depends on the application. I download music to my phone over a usb mount all the time. > Is there a better application for this purpose (sftp, ssh, nfs, webdav)? For pictures, I think your best bet is to just upload to picasaweb. You should then be able to access it from the phone. For other things, mounting as a USB works for some devices (not sure about the N4). The "adb" program will allow you to transfer files, but it sounds like you've solved that problem. If you're motivated, you can also store your files on a webserver. That will allow you to access them from the phone like any other web page. > Will I run into this limitation when trying to add other files such as > .pdf or office documents? Not sure. YMMV. > Oddly I see folks claiming they need to sync with Windows Media Player. > What are other users using to move or copy files to there Android device > (without USB cable)? For music, I'm contemplating setting up something to pull files over wifi when I'm on my home network. > Will I need to root this device? Not for the use-cases that you're describing. > > Thanks for reading, > > > Eric > > > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College > Jan 9 - High Performance Computing at a Small Scale > Feb 6 - Raspberry Pi > Mar 6 - 10th Anniversary Meeting! > ============================================================================= michaelMuller = [email protected] | http://www.mindhog.net/~mmuller ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures. - Freeman Dyson ============================================================================= _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Jan 9 - High Performance Computing at a Small Scale Feb 6 - Raspberry Pi Mar 6 - 10th Anniversary Meeting!
