Ask a G1 Owner: Get Answers to Android Questions
By Giania • Nov 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm • Category: Recursion| Hot: |  |  | | | |
UPDATE: Comments on this are now closed. It’s been almost two years and frankly, I’m terrible at giving timely troubleshooting advice. Feel free to check below to see if your question was already answered. If you still have questions I suggest checking the internet for a support forum.
I’ve had my G1 since the day it debuted, and I’ve probably done everything with it by now. (Ok, well, maybe not EVERYTHING, let’s be reasonable here.)
If you have any questions about the HTC G1, Android, how it works with T-Mobile, or any combination of elements, pose your questions here and I’ll do my best to answer them based on my experience, or help you find the answers!
I will say that it’s been a great phone for me and I’ve really enjoyed it.
[...] still looking forward to answering your Android/Googlephone related questions, so fire away. (Please don’t make me pretend to ask questions at myself!) And I’m also looking [...]
I have a g1 phone and just recently when I get text messages my phone doesn’t ring or vibrate when it should .
Ok so if u want some work u could start by telling me everything about this phone.. I just got mine the other day I bought it from a friend so I don’t have a manual or anything. I wanna know everything you can do. Like I see apps that say I can watch movies on it? How do I get movies? Seriously please teach me some cool stuff about this insane phone! Thanks sooo much! Ringtones and music too…how do I dowload? Thanks again!
Well, for starters, since you bought it from a friend I’d recommend making sure it’s reset back to original factory settings so you don’t find any weird personal stuff. (You should also probably double check with said friend to make sure they got all the stuff off their phone first. ) To factory reset, go to the little grey slider at the bottom of the screen to pull up the main menu. Find “Settings” (the hammer and wrench). Once in that menu, find the item labeled “SD card & phone storage”. At the bottom of that menu is an option to “Factory data reset”. This SHOULD restore all the phone’s data and settings to their original, out-of-the-box state. This should only affect the phone storage itself, and not mess with your sim card. If you’re worried about losing data on your sim card, try removing it first and see if it will let you follow through with the reset without it.
Once that’s done you should be clear to set it up and play with it however you choose! It should ask you to set up a google account for use with the phone, you can use your gmail account if you’re comfortable with that.
Currently, the G1 allows direct access to youtube through the main menu (that grey slider tab), with full searching for anything you want. If you go to the youtube option in the main menu, it will give you some suggested videos based on the most popular items right now. If you push the menu button below the screen, you’ll get the option to do full searches, check the video settings, and more. The picture quality is pretty good, but I recommend using the head phones, as the sound plays out the speaker in the back and can be hard to hear. Also, using the browser you can access some web-based video players, but I haven’t experimented to see which ones work and which ones don’t.
I had to look up the ringtones issue since I don’t usually set custom ringtones, but the Android community explained it nicely for me: Save MP3s to your SD card, Go to “Music” in the main menu, press on the song you want to use as your ring tone for a few seconds. A sub menu will come up asking what you want to do with the song, one of the options will be use as ring tone. Or if you just tap on the song once, it will start playing. You can then push the menu button and it will give you options for that song.
You should have gotten a USB cable with your phone, it’s a regular square USB plug at one end, and a small plug that fits into the bottom of the phone at the other. (If you didn’t get this cable, go back and ask the friend you bought it from if they can find it. This cable is very useful and it would be a shame to have to buy it separately.) If you plug in your phone to your PC using this cable, your phone should make a sound. Up at the top (where the clock is) there should be a little alert. Use your finger to pull down the top bar like it’s a menu. Then click on the alert that tells you your phone is “USB connected”. It will ask if you want to “mount” your phone. This means that it’s asking to attach to your computer like it’s a hard drive. So select mount, and your computer should then see the phone just like a USB drive or any other storage device you plug into the computer. If you’re running windows, it should ask you what you want to do with this new media. If you select the option to open the folder to view files, you can drag MP3 files from your computer to the folder marked “music”. The same procedure should more-or-less work with a linux or mac os-powered computer.
Lifehacker just did a post on a few useful-sounding apps, with a couple of good resource links for android devices (like the G1) down at the bottom of the article. http://lifehacker.com/5212542/one-dozen-super+useful-and-free-android-apps I recommend checking that out, and any other android articles lifehacker may have.
I hope that helped answer some of your questions!
i have a g1 and i accidently smehow deleted all of the notification and ringtones that the phone originally cam with and some of my personal pictures is there anyway to restore them back ?
I have the g1 obviously and I deleted the built in easy access google on the home page and I don’t know how to get it back. Also I have an sd card in my phone and I went to view my pictures and there all gone. Somehow they got deleted and I want them back. Right along with google. Can u help me
I bought a G1, I see that you can set personal ringtones, is there a way to use your mp3′s or is the standard ones they give you the only way?
In repsonse to Shane with the ringtone question:
You can absolutely use your MP3s as ringtones!
Once your music is loaded onto your phone, go to the music icon in the main menu.
Browse to the song you want to use, and tap it to start playing it, this also brings up the details of the song itself. If you press the menu button, it will will show an option called “use as ringtone”. It will set the song as your ring tone and you’ll be off to the races!
Rachael – Sorry I took so long getting back to you.
To get the google shortcuts back on your desktop, hold your finger on the desktop screen for a second or so, or press the menu button while you’re on the desktop.
It should give you the option to add things. If you’ve got the original firmware, the option to add a shortcut to an app should be right there. If you’ve upgraded your firmware, the process is:
Shortcuts
Applications (or Gmail label)
and whichever google application on your phone you’d like on your desktop.
Rachael and Natasha:
As for recovering your photos or ringtones… I recommend connecting your phone to your computer and searching for them that way. A PC running windows should prompt you with instructions on how to browse the contents of your SD card, to see if the photos are still there. If you check this way and cannot find your photos, then I’m afraid they might be lost. If you had plugged your phone into your PC previously to download photos, whatever tool you used to download the photos may hve saved them to your computer and removed them from your SD card. This would be worth looking into.
Good luck, and sorry again for the delayed response.
how do u put a ringbacktone on it
Hi. I recently received an email from a friend with a youtube video on it. When I clicked on it, it gave me the options “open with browser” and “open with youtube” while also having a check box saying “do not ask again”. I accidentally clicked on “open with browser” while the “do not ask again” box was checked. Now everytime I attempt to open a youtube video in my email, I get a browser but it doesn’t play the video. How do I reset this option so that it opens the youtube app and plays the video? Much thanks.
I have to do a factory reset it was recommend by tmobile so I downloaded app manager &saved all my apps to the sd card but after I do the reset how do o get them off the sd card?
I downloaded the Sherpa app; Download Crutch appears to say it’s on my SD card. How do I view what’s on my SD card, and how do I complete install/download from such?
Thanks in advance. :-)
Well the first thing I’d recommend is to make it a point to get your apps from the actual marketplace, where they get stored in the app manager right away and are subject to the safe content guidelines setup by Google. http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=113474
Android apps are .apk files. I would check under Gallery > Downloads for your download crutch files.
Alternately you can mount your SD card by plugging your phone in via USB (or just remove your SD card and put it into your card reader slot on your PC) and explore the file structure to see where exactly on the phone it’s stored, then MOVE it to the download area of your gallery.
I haven’t used Download Crutch yet, though I just got it myself. I’ll experiment more with it after I find a PDF for something to fetch.
Also recommended in the Download Crutch description page and on several forum threads I found is the Linda File Manager, which seems to have more than just the download assistant. It may be worth looking into. Good luck!
I have a guestion, first of all loooovvveee my g1 but, how do u delete email all at once??? Even when I do it one at a time it comes back to haunt me! Please help!!!!
I recently downloaded some new sounds from a soundboard for ringtones/text message alerts. When I set the new sound for my text message notification it still uses the default notficiation sound and the new downloaded one. I have gone into settings and reset the notification ringtone as the downloaded one, then turned my phone off and back on, but when I receive text messages it still makes both sounds (default and personalized download). How do I get it to only have the personalized download as the notification?
Is that through the Email app or the Gmail app? I unfortunately haven’t used the non-gmail email application yet so I wouldn’t be much help but I’d be happy to help do some searching around for you.
Sounds like a quirky problem! There was an Android update over the weekend, on Sunday I think.
Has the status changed on that since the update?
Also, what file format are your custom sounds?
hello, I’ve had the g1 for a couple months now and i am not able to download pictures from picture messages when i get a picture from my friends i will press the download button and it will say “download unsuccessful” i dont have a data plan but i hook up to the wifi from the internet in my house
Since you don’t have a data plan I’m wondering if you’ve actually got picture messaging as part of your plan. I’d be willing to bet it’s a challenge with your service rather than the phone itself. Log into your t-mobile account and review your service/plan, your answers may lie there. (Also I think you can download text messages and or picture messages from the t-mobile site directly. I only log in periodically to check that my payments are working, so I’m not sure on that one.)
My g1 dos’nt let me know when I got a text while I’m on the phone it won’t ring but sometimes if I look at the phone I will c the text but the phone will nvr ring….
Well in theory it shouldn’t notify you of a text message while you’re using the phone because that would be disruptive to the call. This means your issue is likely by design rather than by mistake.
I just got a g1 and I dont have a data plan. It works fine but when I recieve pics in text I cant download them it just says message was unsuccessful
Please help I accidently deleted an important message thread from my G1 is there any way to get it back??
Hi, I accidently deleted a message thread from my G1, is there any way to get it back?? please help x
Unfortunately it looks like you may be out of luck here. I did a little snooping around and found this:
http://www.fixya.com/support/t2086316-recover_deleted_text_messages_from_htc
And a thread on the Android community forums that confirms that deleted SMS threads are gone forever.
Just to be sure I logged into T-Mobile and checked to see if they had an inbox for text messages, but didn’t find one.
For future protection, it looks like there is a backup utility on the App Market: http://code.google.com/p/android-sms/wiki/UserGuide To get the one described here, go to the Market and search for “sms backup” (no quotes) and select the one created by Christoph Studer.
Hey I got a g1 and I want to know how can I put my music as my text message alert?
hi… i have a problem because any time i get a picture messsage i can never open it the fone wont let me download it…. is there any way to fix that??
hi……i have the g1 i accidentally installed an app threw settings is there a way to get it back
srry i ment….. i have the g1 i accidentally unstalled an app threw settings is there a way to get it back
I’ve been noticing a lot of my apps are “uninstalled” iono why?
And now my Market App is uninstalled! How do I get it back?
how do i use a song i have downloaded as my message alert,plz help me!
I was wondering how to attach music to a picture and send it as a message iv tryed and tryed and can’t figure it out… I need help lol is there maybe a app I need to download or a trick around it or does it jus not let me send a picture message with a song attached….?
how do i delete items of off my SD card because my SD is currently full and I cannot take pictures or download music anymore. I do not want another SD with bigger memory. Thanks