Thursday, April 18, 2013

A simple, elegant and good-looking lightweight File Manager for Nexus 4 (and Android in general)

inKa File Manager
inKa File Manager, a simple, yet elegant Android File 

I just noticed that the Nexus 4 does not come with any File Manager app pre-installed. So I started searching for a good looking app to serve my purpose. (I rather enjoyed the look of the i5800's File Manager, in spite of its simplicity; see an image below)

The default File Manager shipped with Samsung Galaxy products (more specifically i5800)

The app has to be beautiful and confirming to Jelly Bean's UI conventions would be a definite plus. 

Although all Google searches for such an app gives you the popular (and also regular) results like Astro File Manager, ES File Manager etc.; they were not what I'm looking for. Their functionality list is large, but their UIs are ... basically ugly (I found Astro to be the best in popular top).

Thus, I went ahead and looked at more obscure apps and found inKa File Manager which seems a simple, nice-looking, even elegant app. Its main screen is not crowded with all kinds of information  

inKa's main screen

and more options are only at a swipe away.


Left swipe
Right swipe

Enjoy

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Fixing Nexus 4's low volume for headphones

Google's Nexus 4
After receiving and setting up my new Nexus 4 I went forth and continued my audiobook listening activities only to notice that (even at maximum volume) the device was nowhere near my almost top notch previous phone's volume (the Galaxy 3 i5800), which basically blew the Nexus out of water.

Thus, discouraged I started looking for answers and found these two (quite popular) bugs signalled on the Nexus 4




And became even more discouraged (and I had not plan on rooting a new phone in it's first week; and even worse a Nexus) and after trying out Poweramp which after tweaking the volume settings a bit seemed to provide better volume for my mp3s (than Google Play Music did; I went back and forth listening to the same 5 seconds on each player), I went back to Google Play Music and discovered that it too had an Equalizer Settings section (but only on the specific playback screen, the one with the large album photo) which was strangely disabled. After enabling it I can safely say that it outperformed Poweramp, and although I haven't tested it thoroughly I think the volume problem will not bother me any time soon.

Detailed Instructions

So again, open your Google Play Music app and start playing a track. Now, go to the view with the large album cover

The large album cover screen

and hit the menu button in the top right and select Equalizer. You should be presented with this screen

The life-saving equalizer

Enable the equalizer and voilĂ . Good volume to all! 

Update - The Google Play Music app has been updated in the mean time and reaching the equalizer settings is much more intuitive. Just open the app, hit the menu button, select Settings and then Equalizer and you're there.

Enjoy