Organizing Your Android Marine Apps

[sinbad7]

I have a growing collection of apps on both my Galaxy SII smartphone as well as the Galaxy Tablet 10.1 which I have to page through on the colorful dashboard,page after page until my eyes are smarting.

While this may be acceptable sitting at home in my easy chair,it is not so convenient in the cockpit of a moving boat at sea.

I recently came across a VERY useful Android app called: AutoAppOrganizer, which is free and serve my needs ideally.

The program gives you an option at start up to automatically try to put the apps in the right directories which spares you SOME work,but you still have to do a fair bit of editing afterwards.

I firstly created all new directories and then moved all the apps into the directories they belonged and then deleted all the old,fixed directories. Using TeamViewer,you can do all the editing of your devices from the large screen of your PC.

You can move an app to a different location ANY time by just doing a long press on the app which displays a list of all the directories created and a blue tick mark where it is presently located.

You can even use your own created widgets or download dozens of widgets from their website.

You can now access EVERY app from the AutoAppOrganizer widget on the dashboard in a quick and easy manner. See attached screendumps from from both devices.

Tore

[niget2002]

I just create folders on the main screen and put short cuts in them to the apps.

[barnakiel]

I found so few decent sailing apps that there is nothing really to organize yet.

What a shame there is no such thing like OpenCPN App ;-(

b.

[Surveyor]

Take a look at Elixir and Elixir Widgets. This will allow you organize the screen icons in to groups and save screen space. You can put 10 icons in the space of 4 normal icons if you want. I have all of my sailing apps on 1 page in a 12x12 grid. Very nice app that comes with a lot more.

[sinbad7]

I must admit I have´nt tried Elixir widgets but I tried several others and found AutoAppOrganizer to be the easiest to use and with unlimited capacity.

I also have a large amount of Windows based apps. of various types which require a lot of space,better viewed as a listing. However,some like the mother,others the daughter.
(I like BOTH!!)

[Eyeback]

MyNOAACharts is a new app for android offered by NOAA on a "dry run" type basis. It is REALLY good so far in my view so give it a go.

[sinbad7]

Eyeback..

Great app. Only problem is the very large charts which has to be downloaded to be used off-line. Most Android Tablets have limited storage space.

I downloaded the smallest as a test,all of 81MB,looking great,working well,BUT,I found no option to delete the charts? Using my file manager I was´nt able to find traces of either MyNOAACharts OR the charts downloaded? WHERE IS IT???

For use on tablets and smartphones,there should be an option to download the charts state by state or even smaller,plus a quick delete option when you no longer needed the chart,in order to download a new chart section.

There could also be an option to let the user set the path to the chart download area so you could use external drives.

I had,in the end to delete the whole thing and download MyNOAACharts again.

But,having said that,a truly great utility.

Tore

[Eyeback]

Tore I think you are running up against the way the android operating system works. From my understanding, it is different to other OS in that you should let it control the memory in the device. The idea is that it will fill up the device and only delete files when it needs the memory. You should not try to circumvent this otherwise you will slow down the device and cause crashes. I had the same thoughts along with your ideas of splitting files into smaller chunks. Florida East coast took me 30 minutes to download on WiFi. I know that MarinerMX took me a lot less time to download. Cheers
Peter

[sinbad7]

Eyeback..

I am not sure I understand what you are saying. I am preserving the limited space for programs/apps and whenever possible store large amounts of data on external drives.
This has worked very successfully for my CM93 as well as my large .KAP database on my Google Cloud drive.

I just sent this suggestion to NOAA,hope they follow it up.

Tore

[sinbad7]

I suggest we move the discussion regarding NOAA charts for Android devices to a new thread I just created: NOAA CHARTS FOR ANDROID DEVICES

Tore

[Eyeback]

Tore, with MX Mariner, my experience with switching charts from the USA to NZ and back again was to let android control the memory and I suspect that MyNOAACharts will be the same. If you are having issues with your device then probably a hard reset is on the cards. In windows with CM93 it is desirable to keep the charts on your C drive to speed access, however if you have space limitations then a separate drive will be important however it will be slow. You sound like you are an experienced user and probably know all this already. Apologies if you do.

[sinbad7]

Peter..

I have no experience with Mx Mariner so I ca´nt understand the problem.
I have no such problems with either OruxMaps or MarineNavigator.

I have a variety of USB pendrives I use for my Tablet,the largest being 16GB but I believe you can pendrives with even higher capacity. USB HD´s demand too much power for the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 without extra power supply for the drive,otherwise I also have a 500GB external drive I could use.

I have never experienced any speed deterioration using charts from my external drives. Basically,I reserve all the available space for my growing number of apps. and port the heavy data on external drives whenever I can.

I just downloaded one of the smaller NOAA chart files from the STATE selection area using my newly created NOAA DOWNLOAD.APK and had it up and running in MarineTraffic within minutes, AND can remove it again in two seconds..

Tore

[niget2002]

Originally Posted by Eyeback

Tore I think you are running up against the way the android operating system works. From my understanding, it is different to other OS in that you should let it control the memory in the device. The idea is that it will fill up the device and only delete files when it needs the memory. You should not try to circumvent this otherwise you will slow down the device and cause crashes. I had the same thoughts along with your ideas of splitting files into smaller chunks. Florida East coast took me 30 minutes to download on WiFi. I know that MarinerMX took me a lot less time to download. Cheers
Peter

You're confusing disk space with Ram. Running apps run in ram. When ram starts to run out, then android will start to shut down apps that were left running in the background when you started doing something else.

The charts are stored on disk which is no different than saving a file on your computer.

I agree, that any app that allows you to download large files from the Internet needs to give you a way to remove them too.

[sinbad7]

niget2002..

I am aware that all I have in my Android apps are RAM and no HD. Where did you get that idea from? The file organizer is working beautifully for me,it is quick,easy to update and does not cause any hangups.

My latest download app to NOAA fetches the charts from the STATE listing very quickly and right into the directory used by MarineNavigator to install new charts.

Tore

[sinbad7]

Now what I would REALLY like to do is a way to store/move some/all my apps to my external USB drive but without having to root my device which invalidates the guarantee.
I believe there is even a way to SWAP SD card with External USB card.
However,most of these apps requires my devices to be rooted,so I think I will wisely leave it alone.

Tore