Listen to That Android Show Episode 13: A Long Look At The Nexus 7
2012 has been a banner year for Android and the Nexus line. Powered by the amazing Project Butter filled Jellybean, the rise of the Samsung Galaxy S III and the growth of the Play Market, Android became a worldwide sensation with adoption rates soring past the 1 million activations a day mark. The summer release of the Nexus 7, featuring the partnership of Google and Asus, started off a flurry of sales and it shoed that you could have the experience of stock Android in a good looking and affordable 7 inch tablet. While the team dreams of getting their hands on a new Nexus 4 or the delightful nexus 10, we turn instead to our trusty Nexus 7 units to provide you a long look at the tablet and the enhancements that come along with version 4.2 of Jellybean. Join Byron Lee, Ricky Enger, Ana and Joe as they discuss their thoughts on the good and the bad of the Nexus 7.
In The News
Let’s start with the “What’s new” page for jellybean 4.2
Ars Technica reviews Jellybean 4.2
Android 4.2.1 rolling out to take back the month of December
Here’s the Play Market page for the nexus 7 8 BG
take a look at the Accessibility page for the Nexus 7
Also, for more SPN goodness on the Nexus 7 and other tablets, be sure to listen to our second Mobile Special “Scratching The Surface With Mike Calvo”
A Discussion Of low Vision Use Of The Nexus 7 With Byron Lee And Joe
We’ve had a lot of requests to chat about using low vision related apps on Android. Byron Lee recently acquired a Nexus 7 and he stopped by to offer his thoughts on the unit and provided some tips for using Android in general.
Change System Fonts to APHont
Below are the steps Mr. lee provided for changing your system fonts. Beware that this requires you to root your phone and you would seriously need to decide if you would want to do that before pursuing this option. Also, we don’t recommend rooting on the show. So, do this at your own risk!
Here are the steps from Byron:
1) root phone
2) changed her default fonts to BOLD APHONT–a low vision font
APH Products: APHont A Font for Low Vision
note: the default fonts for android are in the device folder
/system/fonts/
and i replaced both
DroidSans.ttf
and
DroidSans-Bold.ttf
with APHont bold, but i made sure to rename it as “DroidSans.ttf” and
“DroidSans-Bold-ttf”
*** i also kept a backup copy of those 2 fonts! ***
3) rebooted
4) changed the default font SIZE using “Font Size (for root users)”;
published by i-p-tel GmbH, and available on the Android Market.
5) rebooted again
6) installed JORTE for calendar — syncs w/ google calendar
Byron also recommended these apps as being low vision friendly
Mailbag
First up, an email from Mike Arigo
“Hey guys, loved the show!
I don’t know of any qwerty phones that have jellybean out of the box, but if you’re willing to learn how to install different roms, you have several options. I’m running 4.1.2 on my sony xperia pro, my sony xperia mini pro, my htc desire z and my htc my touch 4g slide. All of these phones have qwerty keyboards, and were never officially updated to jellybean, but they run it very well. These phones only work with GSM, that’s why I don’t like CDMA, you’re too limited in what phones you can use. I’m with Steve, I prefer to buy my phones directly, as far as I’m concerned, the carrier control needs to end at the sim card.
That’s a shame about motorola phones, but I’m not surprised. Motorola has always been one of the slowest companies to update their phones, and on top of that, they don’t allow you to unlock or easily root them to install other roms. I have 2 motorola phones that are stuck on 2.3, they could easily run jellybean but I can’t gain the access to do it.
Unless Motorola changes their policy on letting you install other roms, I will never purchase or recommend motorola phones again.”
Next, Chris writes in with an ARCHOS update
“Hi,
Just wanted to say once again how much I enjoy the show, love the news and app reviews which are nicely put together, unlike the ‘Android Police’
podcast which although at times interesting seems to be so full of waffle!
Anyway, I’ve recently gotten a replacement Archos 80 G9 250Gb tablet, after Archos most recent firmware 4.0.25 turned my previous flash/SD G9 device into a ‘plastic brick’ (long story but the forums are full of tales of woe and lousy customer service).
Whilst replacing all the lost apps, I noticed that Adobe Flash Player has vanished from the Playstore, although I haven’t come across a problem in not having it installed so far, is their any alternative out there?, I assume it’s primarily for video playback?
Best wishes
Chris
UK”
Well Chris, um no. Chrome is one way of getting around some issues with Flash content. And Adobe only is allowing new Flash installs for the BBC iPlayer. But this isn’t a consistent thing and it does depend on the region you live in as to if it remains on the Play Store. If you have installed it before, it is in the “All Apps” section of your Play market options.
Lastly, Norman writes in with more info on using Hotmail
“Hi.
I’m a longtime fan of That Android Show, great show.
I just finished listening to episode 12.
I wanted to comment on the e-mail from chris about setting up Hotmail on your android.
I set it up using Microsoft exchange.
Use m.hotmail.com as your mail server.
I’ll also include the link on where you can go to get instructions on how to set this up.
http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/hotmail/hotmail-help-center/android-hotmail-without-app
these steps are a little tricky but I did it without sighted assistance
Norman”
Thanks Norman and thanks to everyone else who wrote in, left us iReports in iBlink Radio or who drop us a line on Twitter. We’re looking very forward to hearing your nexus 7 experiences!
Contacting the Team
We’ve had our say, now its your turn. Drop us a line at resources@serotalk.com or send us a tweet at our official Twitter page.
You can also follow our hosts by visiting
Ana’s Accessible Android blog or
JJ at Android Access.net.
Finally, Check out Steve’s Twitter feed.
Thanks for listening!
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