Yet another new-to-me Android 2.1 feature: tap and hold the dots on the bottom right and/or left of your home screen to see thumbnail previews of ALL the phone’s screens. Tap on a thumbnail to switch to that screen, no swipe necessary.
As you can see in the screenshot, the thumbnail previews don’t include wallpaper–the background is just white, for better visibility–but they do show the icon and widget layout so you can identify which screen’s which. This type of screen-switching will be familiar to virtual desktop lovers, or folks who use Spaces on OS X.
Android continues to live up to its reputation as “OS by Easter Egg,” Jeff Jarvis’ description . If you don’t want to have to hunt down every egg yourself, here’s Android 2.1’s best features in screenshots.
4 Comments
smcfay
This is a great feature but I’m sorry to report that the fluctuating 3g/edge issue many have been experiencing on the Nexus one is in a way related to Android 2.1. A user on the Google help forum managed to root and flash to the earlier editions and the problem went away. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en&fid=0bd8ccd4799040c200047d8ac1e66eb2
Gina Trapani
Interesting… I didn’t have 3G before so I’m not sure whether or not I’m having the problem, but really interesting to see it may be a 2.1 bug.
blakfoot
I had problems with my 3G connection banging back and forth back to EDGE, even though I had a strong signal. I forced my Nexus One to use 3G only and the problem is solved. Steps found at http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/5376/fix-force-the-google-nexus-one-to-use-3g-only-t-mobile/
Josh Parmely
It’s on page 33 of the user guide, but you have to go out to the support section of the site and download it.
http://www.google.com/support/android/
They seem to be working on a good number of videos in their Youtube channel to cover all of the out-of-the-box functionality, but it’s not all there yet. I’d actually kind of prefer for the manuals to be online in a video format. You can learn much more quickly by watching someone go through the paces than you can out of still images in a paper manual.