Help Me Customize my Droid 2 Global (please)

February 7, 2011 1:36 PM

What does Droid (2 Global) Do for me?

I just switched from an iphone 3g to Droid 2 Global on Verizon. I'm not a power user by any means and this may be too much phone for me, but so far I'm having fun with it. I'm a facebook, twitter, texter but also like to surf the web.

So what are you favorite twitter apps (free!) and tweaks for the droid. Basically I want to customize the look and feel of my phone and make it work great for me. It's basically fresh out of the box and right now I'm staring at 50 different apps that I may never use.

How do I make my phone look and act cool? What are some great websites to go to that will help me with this?

Also is there a way to make custom ring tones and to edit my contact list easily? My contact list was transferred at the verizon store and I've got LOTS of duplicate entries...that sucks.

Tell me droid fans, where do I get started?

posted by smithmac_99 to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Twitter: Tweetdeck is the best I know of.

Apps: Except for gizmodo just changing their site design to something terrible today, they usually have a good "best of" list for android apps that comes out fairly often for different categories. Also, just browsing the market and looking for apps that (a) have a good number of downloads and ratings and (b) are highly rated is a good way to start.

Contact list: Assuming your contacts were synchronized to your gmail account (it's possible to keep them local to the phone, but relatively uncommon) log into gmail, go to contacts, and look for the "consolidate duplicates" option.
posted by devbrain at 1:42 PM on February 7, 2011

Your phone should be running Android 2.2, which means that you can install many apps on the micro SD card. Make sure you have at least a 16GB card in there, then you can go into the Applications menu and move individual apps to the SD card, freeing up space on your phone's system memory. Note: not all apps are coded for this feature.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:46 PM on February 7, 2011

Also is there a way to make custom ring tones?

Search for ringdroid in the app market. It will let you cut up any portion of an MP3 to use as a ringtone.
posted by subtle-t at 1:57 PM on February 7, 2011

Your Droid 2 has enough internal memory that you shouldn't worry about app2sd.
posted by devbrain at 2:05 PM on February 7, 2011

Visit xda and androidforums.com and look in the subsection for not only your phone but other models. In most there will be a thread called "Show us your Droid/Desire/Galaxy homescreens" and you can see endless examples of what other people have done. If a particular person isn't using a common widget or whatever, usually someone will ask ("Hey, what's that calendar widget on screen 3?") and the poster will answer. A lot of people (myself included) use Launcher Pro (there are others). I found my favorite wallpaper with Zedge.

If you google for "best android apps" or "top android apps" you'll get a lot of lists with a lot of overlap. Since there are a million out there doing a thousand different things, it'd be difficult to recommend any. Just jump in and try them out. When you've got an hour to kill next week, try out one or two that you previously thought you'd have no use for. IMO the fun of an Android phone is not so much loading the 20 best apps in the first week and being done with it, but monkeying about with it for an hour or so each week. try appbrain.

That said, try Dolphin HD browser for internet. RunPee if you go to the cinema. Angry Birds, Rocket Bunnies and Robo Defense if you like games.
posted by K.P. at 6:28 PM on February 7, 2011

I really like Android Police to find Android News, and in particular new applications.

Here is their website and here is a sample of their weekly app roundup.

I would also install AppBrain on your phone, as it gives the ability to look at hot apps per day, week etc.

If you want to see, what I've installed, click here
posted by Admira at 9:45 PM on February 7, 2011