topic Re: Recommended apps in The Lounge

Recommended apps

WeTheNorth — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 20:43:31 GMT

I was wondering if anyone has a recommended app (or a list of them) to help an individual get the absolute most they can out of the PM service? Are there any 'must haves' out there?

Re: Recommended apps

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 04:21:52 GMT

@WeTheNorth wrote:
I was wondering if anyone has a recommended app (or a list of them) to help an individual get the absolute most they can out of the PM service? Are there any 'must haves' out there?

Data Witness PM for a start. Written by a customer way back in 2016. Don't know if he's still around.

Re: Recommended apps

Staliger — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 04:51:54 GMT

@WeTheNorth PM has no any official apps. You can create a browser page of your self-service account and place on main screen to have a fast access to it and check your numbers.

Re: Recommended apps

gpixel — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 04:59:18 GMT

@WeTheNorth just create some bookmarks to your homescreen. if you're using chrome, goto the webpage tap the settings menu and tap add to homescreen

Re: Recommended apps

popping — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 06:51:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@WeTheNorth wrote:
I was wondering if anyone has a recommended app (or a list of them) to help an individual get the absolute most they can out of the PM service? Are there any 'must haves' out there?
Data Witness PM for a start. Written by a customer way back in 2016. Don't know if he's still around.

It is still available. There are two versions of Data Witness.

The Data Witness PM is designed for PM 30 and 90 days billing cycle.

Last update was in 2018 and have not updated with changes to PM self-serve update.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iwik.datawitnesspm&hl=en_CA

Re: Recommended apps

Triguy — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:54:49 GMT

Most popular apps Textnow, WhatsApp, Skype, and Fongo.

Re: Recommended apps

kselmak — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:55:00 GMT

If you are on 15 plan then fongo/TextNow/hangouts dialer is very useful to turn plan into unlimited Canada/USA calling

On any plan I find fongo very useful as voicemail

Re: Recommended apps

kb_mv — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:02:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:Data Witness PM for a start. Written by a customer way back in 2016. Don't know if he's still around.

@Anonymous I don't know if he is still around but his app is. I use it. Got it from the play store.

Re: Recommended apps

WeTheNorth — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:16:25 GMT

Thank you all for the replies, it's much appreciated!

@kselmak - I am on the 15 plan so I will definitely be giving those apps a look.

Re: Recommended apps

popping — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:33:00 GMT

I use AccuBattery app on my new phone. I charge my battery to 80% full to minimize the battery wear. This app let me set the charge alert to 80% so that I can unplug the charger. According to AccuBattery, the estimated capacity is 97% remaining on my 9 months old phone.

Re: Recommended apps

WeTheNorth — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 21:42:45 GMT

@popping - Thanks, I'll have a read on it.

Re: Recommended apps

B12 — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:49:56 GMT

You needn't Public Mobile for this. Any ole mobile provider works. My go-to app for over a year since I discovered it is YouTube Vanced. I won't bother with the official YouTube app. To me, it's useless commercialized filth.

Other than YouTube Vanced, if you've got a lot of circles I recommend Signal for private, encrypted communications.

Hope this helps.

Re: Recommended apps

kselmak — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 01:20:46 GMT

Yeah they are all great

I'm using fongo to appear to call almost any Canadian number from my cell, in use it to transfer the call. So I call myself and answer (that's not counted against my 100) then I hit transfer call and put in destination number. That costs me about 0.06 Meg's as fongo disconnects the moment you transfer the call (you can off your data or walk out of WiFi area)

This way I can really use my 250 and not run out, if I just stick to reading important email looking up something urgent, even navigating.

Fongo doesn't dial USA for free, but both hangouts and TextNow do. If it's important to have your number as display hangouts is great and has no advertisements. Otherwise TextNow is a great alternative service (and will probably get even better)

@WeTheNorth I should also mention dotmobile, they still need more people to signup and it's free, optimises look great we'll see how it will actually realise into service. I was very excited when I just learnt, but it's been some time now, I believe they are at dotmobile.app

Re: Recommended apps

Korth — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 01:58:10 GMT

The basic softwares built into phones (dialer, text, contacts, browser, keyboard, clock/calendar, calculator, etc) are just apps. They can be replaced with better apps. (And if they're unused/unwanted then they can be removed to free up resources, although that invariably requires you first root the device.)

I use Signal, Brave, and SwiftKey to replace some of these built-in apps. All superior to their generic Android counterparts. (Although SwiftKey needs to be leashed and lobotomized a little, since it's a sneaky Microsoft spyware.)

I always install some kind of off-device backup software. And I test it (deliberately break data then attempt to restore it) right away, just to confirm I won't be obstructed by any unexpected technical or financial barriers if/when I actually need to rely on the backup. That way it doesn't matter how screwed up anything on the phone ever gets - I can always hard-reset it back to factory defaults then restore my apps and backed up data. I can even restore that data on other devices if the phone gets lost, stolen, or broken. And I don't have to rely on the cloud or on the whims of any vendor lock-in subscriptions.

A task manager or a task killer, a file manager, and a compression app are all necessary for finer control over device performances and resources, and all unnecessary if you don't already know what these sorts of softwares are about.

I find WiFi Analyzer is sometimes really handy.

Some phones intentionally lack support for all the common file formats (like pdf, mp3, ogg, etc) which you might want/need to use a lot. There's countless apps and codecs which can correct or circumvent these deficiencies.

If you're new to the world of smartphone apps then I recommend you learn about "sideloading" apps. That is, downloading the apks onto your computer then installing the apps from there. So you always have an archived copy of the specific working software versions you're using, in case an update (or whatever) breaks things. And so you don't have to jump through hoops or waste time hunting down something you can't remember (or have to pay again for something you already bought) at the online app store sites.

Re: Recommended apps

B12 — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:31:18 GMT

@Korth

"The basic softwares built into phones (dialer, text, contacts, browser, keyboard, clock/calendar, calculator, etc) are just apps. They can be replaced with better apps. (And if they're unused/unwanted then they can be removed to free up resources, although that invariably requires you first root the device.)"

My absolute disdain for smartphones is very much derived from this here.

If I buy a device that is supposed to be "mine" I do not want things on it that I didn't put on it myself. Apps like Phone, Messaging/Texting, Contacts and maybe an unbranded Browser are appropriate additives... I'll give you that. Beyond those few apps though there is absolutely no excuse, rhythm or reason to put anything else on the phone when selling it to a customer other than to commercialize the device and force people into using what they might not have wanted to use.

I've scoured the internet for smartphones that are android that do not include any Google services on it and I've come up empty. There is not a single solitary device that is android that does not come pre-loaded with Google bloat. Due to this, one must either deal with Google or put custom software on their phone and leave Google out.

If you think I'm nuts, that's alright I'm certainly not part of the crowd. Tell me this doesn't sound sketchy though. You buy a device, during setup it wants to you log into Google, then into your brand-name's cloud account, then maybe some other services and suppose you "decline" signing up, it then makes you doubt yourself by asking you to "confirm" you don't want to sign up and even further maybe the service even tells you what you are missing by not signing up. Sound sketchy? To me it sure does.

This behavior and action from companies is revolting and shouldn't be allowed.

Re: Recommended apps

WeTheNorth — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 18:40:52 GMT

@B12

I don't watch much on YT other than at home so I don't think I'd need the YT app you've mentioned, but thanks for letting me know about it should things change in the future and I do find myself watching more on my phone. I will look into Signal, however!

I've also been putting off getting a new phone for many of those same reasons. It just all seems so shady lol.

@kselmak

I was quite impressed with fongo when I looked into it yesterday. It certainly does offer great advantages when using a capped minutes plan, which I am on. I have purchased the 500 minutes add-on but I may still install the app. Not being able to call US numbers isn't a concern for me. I'll also have a look in on the dotmobile app you've mentioned. Thanks!

@Korth

I am new to smartphones so I will look into sideloading any apps I do intend on downloading. Thank you for the very informative post. I know I will be coming back to it in the future!

Re: Recommended apps

Korth — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:54:55 GMT

@B12 wrote:
I've scoured the internet for smartphones that are android that do not include any Google services on it and I've come up empty. There is not a single solitary device that is android that does not come pre-loaded with Google bloat. Due to this, one must either deal with Google or put custom software on their phone and leave Google out.

Branded hardware comes with branded software. Every operating system component on the device gets directed to the branded online app store. Sometimes also a collection of strange useless apps from the manufacturer (when OEM and ODM are different entities). Often also another junkware payload installed by the carrier or retailer.

There are many alternative operating systems. There are even many devices which come with clean (or mostly clean) operating systems pre-installed. They strip out all the proprietary blobs, all the invasive telemetry, all the unwanted background wares.

I've been running a GrapheneOS port (on a non-Pixel device) for a while and have so far been very impressed. It even has substantially higher PassMark & Geekbench performance scores than it did out of the box - likely an indicator of how many extra (and unwanted) processes it was running before.

https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrapheneOS

https://grapheneos.org/

https://www.xda-developers.com/root/

Re: Recommended apps

Korth — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 20:09:36 GMT

@B12 wrote:
My go-to app for over a year since I discovered it is YouTube Vanced. I won't bother with the official YouTube app. To me, it's useless commercialized filth.

Or even no YouTube app at all. Just visit the YouTube site and watch the YouTube vids in the browser. A good browser (like Brave) has adblocking, scriptblocking, and filtering already built-in, without cluttering up any background resources, without yet another dev window peering into your life.

Re: Recommended apps

B12 — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 20:21:24 GMT

@WeTheNorth

A deal breaker for me on any device is if the battery is not removable. If I have to use one of these bricks (phone with a non-removable battery) I will with a lot of irritability.

Currently I got a Galaxy Note 4 and today it has infuriated me enough to go and buy a different phone which also has a removable battery and the UI is far better than anything Samsung has put out thus far. LG G3 and what's great about it is that there is a wonderful mod community for it.

@Korth

I actually would use my browser to watch YouTube except that it's capped at 720p and I can't turn the screen off (a huge waste of battery depending on the use case). So I take comfort in knowing that YouTube Vanced lets be watch what I want, ad-free, and my usage is probably collected. I'd rather no ads and have my data collected than be bombarded by ads and also have my data collected. If I can mediate the situation somehow, I will and so I am.

Re: Recommended apps

Korth — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 20:58:38 GMT

@B12

You might be unaware of Telus WIreless Network Experience Optimization (an implementation of Openwave Mobility Media Optimizer). It basically identifies the maximum display resolution of your device then transcodes video content down to it, to conserve bandwidth. So the mobile carrier and the mobile user don't have to waste gigabytes pouring 4K videos into 720p displays.

But it does introduce some transcoding artifacts. A little blurriness for 10-20 seconds, some frame jitters and briefly-displayed compression glitches. And it imposes invisible watermarks which somehow (perhaps deliberately?) breaks compatibility with some video playback softwares.

I haven't tried Vance playback but I know Brave playback works perfectly, plus it kills ads and tracking (mostly).

This "optimization" is built into the Telus network machinery. End-users have no way to configure or disable or workaround it, it just automatically parses onto all video traffic. Bell network and Rogers networks have similar systems in place.