[blindza] Sort of review/initial impressions of new phone - Samsung Galaxy Y Pro B5510
- From: "Jacob Kruger" <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "NAPSA Blind" <blind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:10:51 +0200
FWIW, while have had this phone for like 2 days now, and am thus far quite
impressed with parts of it, will say that the primary issue etc. will still be
that am still needing to get used to a completely different interface, etc., as
opposed to all the nokia phones used before.
There are also still a couple of things need to finish off trying to
tweak/replace/fix, etc., but, think the more used I get to the actual parts/use
of it's interface, the closer I'm getting to making up my mind about all of
it's aspects.
You do seem to need to provide this android operating system based unit with
google account details, but I am using what's sort of my current primarily
active gMail account since that's also linked to various other online google
areas in any case.
Firstly, I did need sighted help to initially input the above account settings,
and then install talkBack screenreader, which is free, and once that's on, then
it also needs you to install voice synthesiser options, and the default is
called something like voiceData, but according to my then sighted helper it
seemed to handle that part of process pretty much automatically, and all they
really needed to do was go into settings on phone, look under accessibility,
and turn on accessibility, talkBack, etc., and it seemed to prompt for
installation of talkBack, etc., or they could easily enough just have
downloaded/installed it off the playStore on the phone, since had sort of
gotten another, slightly technophobic sighted friend to try install it from a
standalone file before hand, but anyway...<smile>
Either way, once they got the phone to start talking, I took it from there, and
didn't even bother with actual touch screen itself, but just tried to get used
to using the optical trackpad - effectively similar to your average touch pad
mouse interface on a laptop, since you effectively swipe a finger across it,
either left, right, up or down, and then use the centre of it to then click on
what has focus then, and sometimes you will also do what they call a long press
of that same selector key to then invoke a form of context menu specific to
what has focus, etc.
The one other slightly strange thing about the input on this phone is that
while it has a sort of full qwerty keyboard, along with a couple of extra keys,
in order to type certain special characters, like - and @ which might be pretty
commonly needed for typing in certain types of things, you need to know to
first press the alternative input key, on the bottom left of the buttons, and
then use normal keys like the S key for - and the H key for @ sign, but anyway
- will still do something like draw up a key value dictionary or something,
since haven't found any of those on the 'net as of yet.
Anyway, aside from the actual qwerty keys, on the very lower left is the
alternative input key, just above that is the shift key, for typing capital
letters, and feeling slightly different, and sort of on the left of the whole
keyboard is the options pad key for also invoking a form of context menu
depending on what you're busy with/focused on.
Then, to the left of the track pad is the home key, which is meant to set focus
on the samsung home/desktop, to the right of it is the back button, which sort
of goes up one level/back from wherever you are, and to the right of that is
the search key, and those three keys are more like flat touch buttons, as
opposed to keys that actually stand out, but they're quite findable.
Then on the keyboard , below the P key, on the top right, is the delete key,
the enter key, and on the actual bottom right are the 2 application keys you
can assign sort of shortcuts to, and, yes, there are also extra keys on the
keyboard like the . sign, one for question mark, etc., but anyway, most of the
symbol type characters you will use most commonly, like slash, backslash, comma
etc. you will need to type using the alternative input key followed by one of
the keys.
I have been asking questions on the accessible-android mailing list, and
getting answers there for pretty much all my questions, and to find what apps
you might want to look into, the following site has sort of user
reviews/rankings for the apps, and will post specifically relevant app pages
below:
http://www.androidaccess.net/
Anyway, what would have been a good starting point is to install something
called the eyes-free shell which you can find via the playStore, since while
haven't done too much with it as of yet, it's a form of interface wrapper that
lets us do quite a few more things with interface, like querying battery
status, signal status, the listing of currently installed applications to then
make use of them, etc. It does apparently offer quite a lot more functionality,
but still need to go listen to the clips off the eyes-free youTube channel to
find out exactly what else it's meant to help with:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EyesFreeAndroid
Also, quite funny, but when you start it up, you'll hear something that to me
sounds like a decTalk synthesizer saying the following:
"here I am with a brain the size of a planet, and you want me to just make
phone calls"
Here's the eyes-free shell page from above site:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=196
Once it's running, if you for example put a finger on middle of touch screen,
and then move it to the 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 o'clock positions, and then
let go, it will provide information about specific things, or, for example, 8
o'clock brings up the application listing.
Anyway, aside from that one, I also installed the eyes-free keyboard tutor app,
which pretty much just lets you test/try out the keys on the keyboard to make
sure you know where they all are, but, for example, to test/try out the
alternative input values, you'll want to focus on some or other text input
area/field, and then try those - here's the app page for it anyway:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=337
Then aside from those apps, have also installed the vOICe for android:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=63
And, google goggles, which is meant to let you use your phone to do things like
object recognition, minor bits of OCR, etc.:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=54
The walkyTalky GPS app, which is specifically meant for use by blindies -
although googleMaps app itself seems alright, and is ranked relatively
accessible in any case:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=80
And, lastly (for now), the K9 e-mail client software app, which guys reckon is
pretty usable by us:
http://www.androidaccess.net/details.php?id=317
Still just need to try installing an accessible/usable web browser - apparently
there's like a firefox beta version available, but need to try find it still.
There are a lot of different things about this unit that take some time getting
used to, and I laugh when it calls the memo app the meemo app - that's just the
TTS voice currently have it using, but still want to try out the eSpeak synthe
engine version for android, since that would mean should be able to get it to
talk afrikaans, among other things.
Can't think of too much else right at the moment, but, let's see how it goes,
and main thing is it definitely thus far seems worthwhile/useful
owning/learning more about, since can, aside from all of the above, send and
read messages, dial numbers, answer incoming calls - you do that by swiping
finger across main screen from left to right, and then use power button to end
call more easily, make notes using the memo app, etc. etc.
One last thing was that in order to transfer my over 400 contacts off my nokia
N82, while it will sort of sync contacts you have stored on google contacts
online portal/app, I just selected like 20 of them at a time on nokia contacts,
and blue toothed them to this unit, and there told it to accept the incoming
message, and they got added to it's contacts, etc.
And, also still need to get 100% comfortable with it's file explorer, called
myFiles - the standard/built in one -, but that let's me browse the memory
card, including a folder called blueTooth, which then contains files like MP3
files have sent to it, and there, if you do a long press of the select key on a
file, the context menu will let you do things to/with the file, or just hitting
select will make it play, but, FWIW, in order to actually set one as a ring
tone, instead of using one of the ones it came with, I used eyes-free shell to
launch application listing, went into music, found the track there, invoked
options menu key using the options pad key on left, and then told it to assign
it as a ring tone - and didn't document it while doing it, so exact wording
might be slightly different, but you get the idea...<smile>
Stay well
Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
'...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'
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- » [blindza] Sort of review/initial impressions of new phone - Samsung Galaxy Y Pro B5510 - Jacob Kruger
