Car Chargers and the HTC One

I am seeing a lot of people complaining that their HTC One is losing charge while driving using GPS and Blue Tooth streaming.

A couple of important things to consider when charging using a car charger -

One - The charger must be able to provide a true 1A to the phone.  Some chargers rated 1A do not truly supply 1A so make sure you find one that does -

Two- when you use a USB cable to charge your Android phone you must have a dedicated charging cable.  Cables that are used for syncing or data transfer have a different configuration which tells the Android to limit draw to 500mA or 1/2 A.  A simple test is to connect the phone to your computer with the cable.  If the computer recognizes the phone and allows you to transfer data, the phone will throttle back charging to maximum of 500mA.

There are also apps that can tell you what kind of charge your phone is drawing - example this one -

Battery Ap by MacroPinch a screenshot of which is shown above.  When charging under the USB Data protocol, the app will show "USB" under the battery as shown above.

If you have a proper charging cable for your car charger, "AC" will be indicated, and the charge rate will be much faster.

Here is an example of a charge only cable at Amazon
Charging Cable

So, if you are frustrated with the charge rate from your car charger, check the output of your charger and don't forget your usb cord.

Google Contacts - Fixing the Pictures

Ok, for those of you who sync your google contacts (and you should so they are available on all devices present and future) are using the stock contact app and have been suffering with the "bubble pictures" for contacts there is a way to fix this.

In order for your phone to show normal photos instead of the bubbles, you must first go to gmail.com on your computer. From the inbox, click the drop down box under the google logo on the upper left of the screen. Choose "contacts".

Select the contact that you wish to update to a high res photo. When the contact opens, select the "Groups" drop down box and check the "Starred in Android" box.

You will then need to select the picture for the contact and change it to whatever picture you want.

Shortly thereafter, (sometimes instantly, sometimes a few minutes later) the contact photo will update on your phone and the bubbles will be gone.

Looks good on you Sid.

Note that there is an option on the phone under the contact settings "Download contact big photo on Wifi Only" so if you aren't on wifi and it isn't syncing the pic, that is why.

Also note that you can move the contact on gmail.com back out of the "Starred on Android" group without losing your nice new picture on the phone. Leaving the contact starred will mean it shows in your favorites tab. 

Hope this helps-it was driving me crazy that some of the contacts would show up fine and others bubbled after change their pics on gmail.com. It all came down to if they were "starred in android".

Using the HTC One (M7) - Notification Shade Power Toggles/Screen Always On

There are several apps available in the play store to put toggles in the notification of the HTC One.  I am using Power Toggles.

One of the features available is a toggle to keep the screen on.  This can be useful in some circumstances, such as using the HTC One as a bedside clock, or when doing development on the device.

By default, the longest screen timeout on the HTC One is 10 minutes.

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How to keep Blinkfeed while using a launcher.

How to keep Blinkfeed while using a launcher.

HTC has created a nice news and social media aggregation feature in Sense 5 on the HTC One.  However, many users don't like the restrictive features of the Sense 5 launcher.

Using a third party launcher such as ADW, Nova, or Apex provides much more customization than Sense 5, but since Blinkfeed is part of the Sense 5 launcher, you will immediately lose Blinkfeed.

To get access to Blinkfeed with one of these launchers, follow these steps:

1.  Clear the defaults of the current default homescreen launcher.  This is done under SETTINGS/APPS.  Click on the default launcher.  Scroll down and find the clear defaults button.  Click it.

2.  Press the home key.  You should now have a choice of which launcher to use.  Select HTC Sense.
Click "One Time Only".

3. Delete all home screens except blink feed.  Clear the apps out of the dock.  (Optionally you can keep the homescreens and icons in the dock if you wish, deleting them makes a clean Blinkfeed only setup that I prefer).

4. Press Home.  This time choose you preferred launcher and tap Always.  This should take you to your home screen under the new launcher.

5. Create a custom shortcut.  In most launchers you long press the homescreen and choose add or add shortcut.  When asked to what you want to create a shortcut you will be choosing an Activity, not an App.  In the list of activities, scroll down to HTC Sense. Click it.  Choose HTC sense (Launcher) or HTC Sense com.htc.Launcher.Launcher depending on which launcher you are using.


6. You now have a shortcut icon that will take you to Blinkfeed.  Clicking the icon will open Blinkfeed.  Clicking home again returns you to your preferred launcher homescreen.

That's it!

Variations on above include setting the HTC Sense launcher as the default so that hitting home opens blinkfeed, while another icon is created to your preferred launcher.

HTC One (M7) Released April 2013

HTC One (M7) Released April 2013

Ok just planning a few user tips here to keep them in one place and make them accessible to others.