Low-end Android devices

I recently got new cell phone: Sony Xperia M4 Aqua. It has enough power in processing side, but only 4gb storage out of 8gb and Sony has already bloated it with its own software so there is only 2gb for end user.

I also own this cheap Gigaset QV830 tablet with almost vanilla Android 4.2.2 . For comparison there was 4gb free for user.

Either way both of my devices are still quite low-end spectrum for Android device storage capacity. 

I have to really think what apps I can Install. 

I like to find those Android apps with low storage footprint (low RAM footprint is also good with devices with 1gb or less). But there is one problem. You can't really see the true requirements for apps in Google's own Play store. You can see if the app is compatible or not, and amount of storage the initial installation needs, but that's it.

My workaround is HP Mini 110 laptop with Android installation in HDD. It has only 1gb of RAM and single core processor, but enough storage capacity to hold multiple Android apps.
(Another solution would be running  the Android in virtual machine, if you have powerfull PC).

Now I can inspect apps before installing them to my other devices and I definitely know how much RAM and storage they consume. And if android app runs smoothly in old laptop, then it runs smoothly on my other devices too...

Compaq mini

So... I got this Compaq mini 110 for free (150gb HDD version. So no SDD) and installed LUbuntu linux on it (it originally came with  windows XP installed)...

I intended to use it to do some internet browsing (Email, News, IRC) while on the road, but as soon I started Firefox, I noticed that many web sites are grown really resource hungry over past few years; For example Facebooks desktop version has grown to that big hideous bloated monster that brings those little innocent laptops in their knees, but on the other hand their mobile friendly version is really sophisticated... So lets do some tweaking;

As we know, this Compaq nettop can barely stand against modern, lower-end mobile tablet computers (in specs wise, with it's single core Intel Atom processor and 1 gigabyte of ram);
We need to tell to the mighty internet that we are using lighter mobile device, not fully featured laptop.

I have earlier experimented with even lower-end laptop with windows 98 so that experience came to good use now:

Here's what I did:

First I downloaded some extensions to firefox:

-Adblock or Adblock Plus (I prefer the ABP AB )  ...disabling ads may save some (=many) resources.
-Wmlbrowser ...Enables firefox to view WML formatted mobile (wap) sites.
-XHTML Mobile Profile ...Enables mobile browsing in firefox.
-Modify Headers ...with this extension you can easily edit firefox User Agent strings.
-(all extensions can be found from official firefox extension and addon site).

After installing all addons, I edited firefox user agent profile using Modify Headers extension, to tell websites that I'm using mobile browser:

Here's that UA string code:

Mozilla/5.0 (Android 4.0.3; Linux i386; Mobile; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0

Good tutorial to Modify Headers can be found from developers web site: http://www.garethhunt.com/modifyheaders/help/quickstart/

Some resources I used:

• https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/09/final-user-agent-string-for-firefox-4/
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Gecko_user_agent_string_reference
• http://useragentstring.com/

EDIT: Currently it runs XFCE based Xubuntu 14.04 LTS: XFCE desktop adapts to Compaq mini's odd screen resolution (1024 x 576) more flawlessly than Lubuntu's desktop solution.

Blogger/Blogspot goes mobile

At last...

Google Blogger service got finally fully working mobile template!

It works also on traditional desktop web browsers, so it is perfect solution for low-end blog reading with slower computer systems :)

 

-You can enable mobile device detection from your blogger settings

-If you like to view current blogger blog in mobile friendly mode, just add: ?m=1 after: *.blogspot.com/

-Example: http://low-end.blogspot.com/?m=1

 

 

 

Use always Google mobile web search

In default, google's mobile/pda version of search shows results from "normal" web
and you have to manually select the "mobile web" option.
In low-resource machine it may be more practical to search from mobile web by default:

 

http://www.google.com/m/search?&q=&site=mobile

 

Simply added URL above to my bookmarks and now i can search directly from mobile web.

Social media: Twitter

You need to stay in touch with outer world... Even with Low-end hardware.

 

Twitter is:
-really flexible service (many different applications)
-works on many platforms (works on win9x)
-simple (does what it have to do and no more)

 

Mobile site:
https://mobile.twitter.com/

 

Twitter api:
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/

 

*I found solution for posting tweets from windows command line:
http://phalacee.com/index.php?page=development&section=app&development=19

 

+
There is also other interestin twitter low-end "hacks" not related to windows 9x:
(Twitter monitoring typewriter):
http://oomlout.co.uk/?p=79
&
(Twittjr twitter for PCjr)
http://grantovich.net/projects/twittjr/