musicmatzes blog

android

It happened that I ordered a new mobile phone for myself. And because I don't want to have a google account, pre-installed facebook Apps and the like, it is a OnePlus One.

The order

Well, to order a oneplusone you can go to amazon and order it for like 433 Euro (64 GB version). Or you go to the oneplus store and order it for 299 Euro, which is what I did. I also ordered a screen protector and a case for it, to protect it even more.

But well, if you want to order from the manufacturer, you have to register on their page, which pissed me off a bit. The second problem was that you can only pay via Paypal and because you order from non-germany, you have to setup your Paypal account with a credit card. I do not have a Paypal account (because it really sucks) – so I asked someone else to pay the order for me and transfered the money to the persons bank account.

Unboxing

The One arrived seven days after I ordered it. It was absolutely nicely boxed, though some boxing was rather ridiculous: I understand that the power adapter has to be boxed separately, because of adapter variants. I do not understand why it has to be boxed two times – one time in a box, another time in a plastic-foil.

Screen protector

I also ordered a screen protector. It was shiped together with the One, nice! I applied it accordingly to this tutorial and I managed to get only one really tiny bubble under the protector foil. Well done!

Update!

Of course, when starting the One for the first time, it asks you to insert your google account data, etc. etc. I do not have a google account, so I was really pleasant surprised when I was offered a “skip” button!

As I do not have a micro/nano-SIM card yet, I also skipped the SIM setup.

Then, after some localization and skipping, I was offered to update the phone from CM 11 to CM 12. I did this, of course. It was really fast, although it said it would take up to 20 minutes. While updating it told me that 128 Apps are optimized. I always thought CM comes without Apps preinstalled? Well... We will see.

Initial setup

After applying the update I was asked for several things again, including google account data. Of course I switched off what I could switch off.

I also disabled everything the google apps want to do. None of the google apps should now be able to access my texts or other data. I hope.

The initial setup was fun. I really enjoyed using the device. It is a bit heavier than my old device, but it is also a few inches bigger, so that's completely okay.

I really hope I can get my SIM card as soon as possible, so I can start using the device properly.

What really bothered me in the first place: I have a 64 GB device. I can use about 55 GB of this – copying music will be painful! But well... I solved that “issue”. I found out, that one can install git-annex on Android. So I did that and just imported my complete music library. It took a rather long time to create the 44771 files and 3913 folders on the device. But having git-annex available on my Android device is a great plus point. So I don't have to care about syncing the files and so on, I just can use git-annex and it does everything for me. I just have to be careful with the available memory, as 55 GB can not handle my 500 GB music library, of course.

And, just you know, I do not use the web interface. I use the terminal emulator, of course!

But then, the disillusion: The music player didn't work with the symlinks git-annex generates. So I removed the git-annex repository from the device and copied music to it as I am used to.

Sync with owncloud

Well, syncing with owncloud was a topic. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't.

There is this DavDroid app on both the market and F-Droid, which can by used to sync between caldav/carddav servers and the device. I entered my owncloud data and synced, but it just won't work.

So I filed a bug in the forum of the developers, but they couldn't help me with my problem (though they responded really quickly and were really nice at all).

So I tried other synchronization apps and finally landed with CalDAV Sync Adapter and carddav sync free which worked.

Now I have everything set up to use the oneplusone as my daily driver! Yay!

A gem I found

I found a nice app in the f-droid as well: whohasmystuff, which can be used to keep track of things you lend to someone. Really nice and basic app. It just works™.

tags: #android #cmmod #linux #media #music #open source #software #oneplusone