Casio GzOne Commando

C771

Review

• Pro: Great battery life for a smartphone
• Pro: Very solid design
• Con: Call quality could be better
• Con: Unresponsive touchscreen

The Commando brings Android to the outdoors in a sleek, yet rugged phone, but its unresponsive touchscreen makes it frustrating to use.

XT9 replaces the traditional Android keyboard with one that mimics Skype. The XT9 keyboard is way too big, taking up over half the screen when in landscape mode, making some apps useless.

Personalization

Recommended Apps

1. Keyboard from Android 2.3 --- Because the GzOne comes with only their XT9 keyboard, which is not necessarily bad, in fact it has some nice features and has nice big keys which is good for fat fingered people, however, it consumes over half the screen space. This is a problem when in landscape mode trying to use some text editors. The problem is so bad that when using the XT9 keyboard with Jota Text Editor in landscape mode, the actual text area is not even visible! Alternatively, "Keyboard from Android 2.3" takes up slightly less than half the screen, working well with apps like Jota.

2. Addons Detector --- The largest suck factor about Android is that the apps are not well classified, and there are some malicious apps out there, or at least annoying battery sucking ad serving apps. Addons Detector is an excellent security tool. Limited version does full detection. Real time scan requires pay upgrade, although it is useful without this.

3. Firefox --- A popular and well standardized web browser familiar to PC users. Free and no ads.

4. ES File Explorer --- Browse the android file system, the SD card, and even LAN shares.

5. WiFi Analyzer --- Detect WiFi hotspots, and help resolve WiFi interference problems. Although this is adware, the ad can be hidden for a limited period of time.

6. Ted --- Ted (Text Editor) is a great text editor for small text files. Similar to BBPad for Blackberry. Lets you set the background to black with white text. Free and no ads.

7. Jota Text Editor --- Powerful text editor that handles files up to 1MB. That's a lot of text! Free and no ads.

The Android Apps section of the Wiki should have most or all of the apps above listed, download links, and more information.

Saving Apps and Program Data to SDCard

The GzOne doesn't have a lot of internal storage, so you will want to have as many apps utilize the SD Card as possible. Special thanks to Lazygirl for providing the following steps:

1. Goto SETTINGS, APPLICATIONS, and STORAGE USE
2. This interface will show your installed apps under a tab ALL, click the ON SD CARD tab
3. Click the checkbox for each app you wish to save onto the SD card.
4. For each application you will be given several options, just choose MOVE TO SD CARD - This last step involves an interface that opens for each application. This interface has several buttons. Look for the button "Move to SD card." Typically the move is quick, however, be patient for larger apps may take a few minutes to move.

Support

Connecting to Windows XP

Windows XP detects it as a "C771" and after that an "MTP Device".

It is necessary to download the USB driver from the product support page.

Step #1: Install the USB Driver.

Secondly, MTP Device refers to multimedia mode,, which sucks. If you want your phone to appear as a standard drive letter in Windows XP for you to drag and drop files, you need to change the mode to "Mass Storage" mode. This is done on the phone itself.

Step #2: On the phone goto SETTINGS, USB, USB Connection (Change USB mode), and follow the prompt to select "Mass Storage" from the USB Connection options. You could also choose "Ask on plug" for Blackberry like behavior.

 

 

Keywords: Android SmartPhone Smart Phone PC