HitchHiker’s Guide

to the Android

Rev 1b
11.28.09

Corey Hokanson
CONGRATULATION
S!!
You’re now the owner of a brand new
Samsung MOMENTtm….

And you have NO idea what to do with

it.

Well that’s where this guide comes in.

After reading this guide you should
have a phone that works FOR you
instead of AGAINST you.
Let’s get started
 Table Of Contents
I. About the Author
II. Opening the Box
III. Google Sync
IV. Not Syncing
V. Authors Note #1
VI. Getting New Applications
a. Downloading an Application
b. Accessing the Notification Bar
c. Finding Programs (the easy way)
d. My Downloads…. What’s it good for?
VII. What is it with that dang battery life, anyways?
a. Task Manager
VIII. Text Messaging (Installing ChompSMS)
a. SideNote About Defaults
b. Using ChompSMS
i. Sending your First Text
ii. Forwards, Time-Stamps, and Replies, oh
MY!
 iii. Blacklisting and Ringtones
IX. Settings – Quickly
a. Toggle Settings
b. Profiles (Coming Soon)
X. Making Your Phone Unique
a. Panda Home
i. Configuring Desktop Screens
1. Moving Desktop Items
2. Deleting Desktop Icons
3. Editing Desktop Icons
ii. Themes
1. Selecting a Theme

About The Author

I wrote this guide because I love technology. I also hate to see people not getting
the most out of their technology simply because they don’t know how to use it. This
guide should help users get the most out of their phones. That said, I’ve put a lot of
time into writing this, so I hope you appreciate it.

Feel free to contact me with suggestions or comments, I’m always looking for ways
to improve this:

Corey Hokanson
Hokansoc@gmail.com

If you really like my work, feel free to make it known:

Paypal: Hokansoc@gmail.com

www.Paypal.com
Opening the Box

Yeah not really… If you want a guide for that, read the box
itself. I’m going to assume at this point that you’ve
already got your phone charged and powered on. So:
Google Sync

If you already got your contacts and calendars synced to

google like you want them to, skip this step (note: you
might be missing something). Did you skip it? Good. For
the rest of you, your new Samsung Moment auto-syncs to
a Gmail account. This means calendars and contacts are
available online to edit. To view your contacts:

1. Gmail

2. Log in

3. Click on Contacts

4. Ta-Da

Ok so that’s fairly basic. From there you can add, delete,

and edit contacts in a method faster than phone
keyboards. Here comes the interesting part:
UnSyncing
So what if you have TONS of contacts in your gmail
and you don’t want them all synced to your phone?
That seems like a fairly reasonable request. Let’s set
it up.

1) Go back to the above and create a new group of

contacts. Let’s call it “My Phone.” Do this by
clicking on the new group button (highlighted in
red below).

Follow the instructions to name your group.

2) Now return to your contacts screen. Check the box

next to all the contacts you want to appear in your
phone. Then click on the drop down menu on the
right labeled “groups.” (Labeled
in yellow above)

3) Select “My Phone”

4) You’re done

5) “Wait! It still syncs all of them”

6) Ok ok… so you’re not really done.

But you’re done with the
computer. Grab your phone.
 7) Find the Contacts Program

a. If it’s on your home screen, click it

b. If not, drag the menu bar from the bottom of

the screen to the top, find contacts, and click
it.

8) Hit Menu

9) Hit “Edit Sync Groups”

10) UnSelect “Sync All Contacts”

11) Select “My Phone”

And now, you really ARE done. Only the contacts in

“My phone” will sync to your phone.

Authors Note #1

At this point you may have stopped playing with your new phone for long enough to
wonder “what is this guide and why am I reading it.” Here’s why. The Samsung
Moment is an amazing piece of hardware (if you want to hear all about it, mention it
to a computer nerd  ). However, brand new out-of-the-box it sucks. It’s battery
doesn’t last, it’s texting is messed up, too many processes run at once, the home
screen is boring, and it’s confusing. This guide seeks to teach you how to get your
new phone from sucking to rocking. Ok that’s enough rambling for now…
Getting New Applications

The Samsung Moment runs the “Android” operating system. What this means for
you is there are thousands upon thousands of programs available for it. Ok… So
how do we get these programs?

MARKET

The Market is the program that comes preloaded on your phone which allows you to
browse the thousands of apps available for your new phone. Within the market
there are two groups: Applications and Games.

Applications = all programs that aren’t specifically games.

Games = Games

Search lets you look for specific programs using keywords.

My Downloads gives you a list of all programs you already own / have
downloaded.

Downloading an Application

To download an application you first have to find it in the market. For this example
we’ll use a program called “ixMAT
scanner.”

1. Open the market

2. Click search

3. Type “ixMAT scanner”

4. It should return a program

labeled “ixMAT Barcode
Scanner”

Key things on this screen:

 1. Name: The name of the program.

2. Icon: This icon is the icon that will show up on the home screen and in the
apps list.

3. Price: The price of the program to be downloaded (In this case, free).

4. Rating: The rating the program has earned from other users.

5. Programmer: The person / group that wrote the application (In this case,
ixellence.com)

These features help you determine which program you want to download.

5. At this point, select “ixMAT Barcode Scanner”

Now you’re in the detailed view looking at the ixMAT Barcode Scanner program’s
description.

This shows you all the information that was visible from the earlier screen, plus a
more detailed description and comments.
 6. Click Install

7. This screen shows you what permission the application has. This is the
android equivalent of those obnoxious pop-ups in windows that ask you to
confirm that you want to install. Ignore the text and click OK

8. It informs you that the program

will download and starts
downloading.

How to know if it’s actually

downloading… Also known as
how to access the notification
bar

Ok. So now you’re wondering how to

check if it’s actually downloading. You do
this by looking at your notification bar. If you haven’t looked at your notification bar
before, it’s the area in the top left of your screen. It gets filled up with little symbols
whenever important things happen to your phone. It’s really hard to learn what all
the different symbols mean, so luckily there’s an easier way to view it. Place your
finger on the top bar of your screen and drag it down to the bottom. This opens up
your Notification Bar.

As you can see from this screenshot, in this particular case the program is 25%
downloaded.

When the program is completely

downloaded the icon changes, and the
notification bar tells you the program is
completely installed.

From here you can click on this icon to

run the program, or hit clear notifications
to remove the icon from your notification
bar (this doesn’t uninstall the program)

If you choose not to run the program right

away, it can always be found in your
application list later. (swipe up on the
menu bar from the home screen)
Running ixMAT Barcode Scanner (Also known as “the easy way to find
more programs”)

ixMAT Barcode Scanner, simply put, scans barcodes. However, if I left it at that
you’d wonder why I had you install it first and what good it was. Barcodes can hold
a lot of information. For example, HTML codes. Many android webpages use QR
barcodes to give you a quick link to their product. We’re going to take advantage of
these to eliminate the need to search for any future apps that we’ll install.

To use ixMAT

• Open the program

• Accept the terms and conditions

• Move the phone to where the barcode you want to scan is within the box

• Wait

Test QR Code Example Screen

Once the program captures the

image, select “open browser”

This should then open a market search for, in this case, ixMAT Barcode
Scanner.
My Downloads: Why it exists and what you can do with it

The My Downloads screen in the market gives you a list of all the applications
you’ve installed. This in and of itself isn’t particularly useful. However, it does more.
This screen will also let you know when you have programs that are out of date.
What this means is when developers release new versions of programs you have,
this is where you go to update them. Simply click on the program, and follow the
instructions on the screen. (They are exactly the same as the steps for installing a
program the first time).

It also lets you uninstall a program. Select the program you don’t want anymore,
and then click uninstall. Follow the instructions and it will remove the offending
program from your phone.

Battery Life (And how to fix it)

If you’ve been using your phone much, by this point you already know how much
it’s battery life sucks. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. The battery life of this
phone CAN BE great. We’re going to fix it.
Application Manager

Another thing that drains battery is trying to do too much at once. With a laptop,
you can use task manager to find what programs are running. Android has no such
capabilities…. Built in. So we’re going to install a program to do this for us.

Installing “Advanced Task Killer Free” (ATK)

• Scan the link on the right with ixMAT Barcode

Scanner

• Install

Using ATK

After installing, find it in your applications

and run it.

You should get something like this:

Bet you didn’t know that you had that many

programs running, did you?

Closing Programs
Ok. To close programs, just uncheck the boxes next to the ones you don’t want to
kill, and then hit “Kill Selected Apps”
Ignoring Programs

So what about those programs you don’t want to kill… ever. For example, calendar,
alarm clock, gmail, and google talk.

If you hold your finger on a program in the list for about a second, a menu pops up.
(from here on, this will be called “long-press”) If you select “Ignore” from the list,
that program will no longer be in the kill list, and will be left alone.

If you want to remove a program from the ignore list, hit the “setting” button and
hit “ignore list.” Then select the program you want to remove.

Why this helps

By killing the programs, they stop using battery life. They also stop using the
memory. This means not only will your phone last longer, it will run faster. I
recommend using ATK every time you use your phone before you put it back in your
pocket.
Text Messaging

Have you gotten any texts yet? Do you know how to check? Yeah… the default
texting program that comes with the moment is a piece of crap. Don’t bother trying
to learn how to use it…. It’s not useful. We’re going to fix that by installing and
configuring a program called “Chomp-SMS”

Same as with the other programs, scan this and

install.

Configuring ChompSMS

• Open up Chomp.

• Hit menu

• Then settings

Here you have a list of settings for chomp.

Important Settings:

• SMS Network

o Via ChompSMS

 Don’t check this one… It won’t

work

o Via Mobile Carrier

 You’re on Sprint. Use it 

Example of a Customized
o Quick Switch Chomp Screen
  Don’t bother checking that either… you’re fine sticking with
sprint

• Mobile Carrier

o Nothing here really matters

• Credits

o Ignore this

• Display

o Now we get interesting ones

o Custom font packs

 Don’t like the current fonts? Try new ones.

 Like the current fonts? Leave it alone.

o Customize List

 This lets you change your settings for the list of

conversations… Take some time and play around, you can
make it look like whatever you want it to

o Customize Conversation

 This is the same as customize list, except for the actual

conversation screen

o Show BlackListed

 Ignore this for now

o Show only Mobile Contacts

 If you select this, only your contacts with mobile numbers

will show up when you try to compose a message. This is
great if you have all your contacts correctly filed, and a pain
in the butt if some of your friends cell’s are mislabeled as
work or home numbers

o Large font

 Self explanatory

o Show Smiley images

 o Show Contact Photos

• Notifications (If you do nothing else, do this part. It’s

important)
o Notification

 Check this or you won’t know when you get a text

o Notification Icon

 If you want to change your icon, go ahead

o Ringtone

o Vibrate

o Vibrate Pattern

 These three choose how your phone will react when you get
a text

o LED Blink Color

 Doesn’t matter bc the moment doesn’t have one

o Screen Comes on

 I’d check this one. If you don’t like it in the future, turn it
off

o Show Ticker

o Test notifications

• Quick Reply Popup

o Quick Reply Popup

 If you set this to Always, then whenever you get a text, a

popup window will show you what the text is and give you
the option to reply right away. I find this very useful.

o Mark As Read

 Wouldn’t recommend checking this one.

o Everything past here doesn’t matter. (in the settings list…. The
rest of this guide IS helpful)
To Finish Setting up Chomp

Right now we have chompSMS set up the way we want it. However, we get two
notifications for every text. This is because the default program is still trying to
handle our texts for us. We don’t want it to.

Find your “messaging” program.

Click

• Menu

• Settings

• UnSelect “Notifications”

Now we’re almost done. Chomp will get our messages for us and tell us they came.
However, the phone doesn’t know what program to use to send a text.

• Open “Contacts”

• Choose on at random to send a text message to

• Click on “Text Mobile”

• You should get a menu saying “Complete Action Using…”

o This menu will pop up whenever you try to do something and

you have two programs that can do it.

o You have two choices

 Choose one to use this time, and don’t set a default. The
menu will pop up the next time you try to do whatever it
is you did

 Choose one, and set it as default. The phone will

remember your choice and won’t ask you again

o In this case we want to set Chomp as our default.

 Click the checkbox for “use by default for this action”

 Click on ChompSMS

You don’t need to actually send a text, but you might as well. At this point you have
ChompSMS completely set up. HOORAY!
A SideNote About Defaults

If you didn’t choose the one you meant to, or decide to change default programs,
don’t worry. It CAN be done.

From the home screen

• Menu

• Settings

• Applications

• Manage Applications

• Find the program you want to deselect (the one that’s currently the default)

• Select it

• Scroll Down and choose “Clear Defaults”

Done!
Using ChompSMS

Ok so now you’ve got this new text messaging program, but you don’t know how to
use it. Lucky for you, it’s mostly intuitive. With a few twists and surprises.

Sending your First Text

• Open up ChompSMS

• Click on “new message”

• At this point you have two

options

o Type in the box

o Click on the plus

• Typing in the box

o You can type someone’s number

o You can type someone’s name

o Either way, Chomp will try and guess who you’re trying to text

 Either continue typing

 Or click on their name

o Once you’ve chosen a number / name, chomp will insert a comma after
it. Then you can start typing the next number / name

• Clicking on the Plus

o This brings up a list of your contacts

o There are three tabs

 All contacts = exactly what it says

 My contacts = contacts that are in your “my contacts” group on

gmail
  Groups = This is the most powerful feature. If you set up a group
of contacts in your gmail account, this lets you text all of them
at once. Think messages like “Hey everyone, the meeting is
moving from 1 to 2.”

• You can also combine the two and type some and then use the plus or vice
versa if you feel like it.

Now you’ve chosen your victims for your first text.

Click on the white space to the left of the send button, and start typing. You can use
either the on-screen keyboard or the physical one. When you’re done writing the
message, hit send.

Now you’ve successfully started a conversation. You’ll notice the program looks
different now.

Instead of only having a “New message” button, you now have a list of people
you’ve sent/received text messages with. ChompSMS organizes your texts by
conversation. No more having to scroll through pages of texts to re-read what you
sent someone an hour ago because you’ve been texting other people in between.

ChompSMS TOOLS

When you receive a text message, you may want to forward it to someone else. Or
perhaps you want to copy what it says and paste it into a calendar item. Or maybe
you want to call them right then and there.

At first glance it appears that none of this is possible. There aren’t any buttons for
this, and hitting the menu button only lets you delete messages…. However, it’s
actually quite simple.

Long press on the text message you just

received.

The menu that pops up gives you all of

those convenient options.

• Call John Doe

 o Calls whoever sent you the text

• Forward

o Starts up a new message, with the text of the one you just received.
Simply choose the new recipients and hit send.

• Copy Message Text

o Fairly self explanatory, this places the contents of the text message on
your clipboard. From there, you can long press and paste it wherever
you want. Ex: Someone sends you a text about when a meeting is,
and you copy it. Then paste it into a new calendar item.

• View Message Details

o Only really important thing here is that it will tell you exactly when
they sent the message

• Delete Message

o Deletes the single text message that you selected

• Speak text

o Exactly what it says, it reads the text message out to you

Blacklisting and Ringtones

If we go back to the conversations screen (the one that displays all your
conversations, and the “new message” button) and try long pressing on a
conversation, we get a similar, yet
different list.

• Call John Doe

o Same as b4

• View Contact Details

o Brings up the details of

whomever you’re
texting

• Delete Conversation

o Deletes all text messages between you and that person

• BlackList

o That crazy ex-coworker of yours still stalking you? If you select

blacklist, their text messages will never show up again to bother you.
It’s basically the “ignore” feature.

o If you decide you want to see what they sent, after blacklisting them,
hit Menu, then settings, and select “show blacklisted”

o If you decide to “unblacklist” them, follow the above instructions to see

their texts, then long press and select “unblacklist”

• Set Ringtone

o This lets you choose a different ringtone for each person.

o NOTE: This only affects their text messages. Phone calls will still be the
standard ringtone.
Quick Settings

Accessing the settings menu every time you want to change your screen
brightness, volume, WiFi settings, ringtones, etc. is a pain. There is, however, a
program that gives you quick access to these and
other settings.

Installing Toggle Settings

Scan the barcode and install the program called

“Toggle Settings (Cupcake)”

This program gives you quick access to many of the

most used settings on your phone in two tabs.

Tab 1 Tab 2

Airplane Mode: Disables all connections to wifi / cell networks. Useful to conserve
battery life.
Auto Sync: Turned on, your contacts / calendar / email will automatically check for
updates.

Turned off, they won’t and you’ll have to manually check.

Bluetooth : toggles the Bluetooth

Fast Bright: Immediately sets the brightness at 100%. Turning it off will return it to
wherever it was.

GPS: The program can’t change this setting for you, so it brings up the menu that
lets you.

Screen never timeout: Turn this on if you’re watching a video, or using your
phone to display photos, or

Doing something else that would be better if the screen didn’t turn off.

Silent Mode: Silences the phone

WiFi: Turns the WiFi on and off. However, you must go to the full settings menu to
set up connections.

2G/3G Network: Toggles Whether or not you’re connected to data. Necessary for
any internet stuff.

Battery life is better when it’s off.

Screen Brightness: Set the brightness of the screen. Anywhere from 0% to 100%

Notification Ringtone: Sets the ringtone for all things that aren’t phone calls

Phone Ringtone: Sets the ringtone for all phone calls

Ringer Mode: This one changes name based on its setting, but it allows you to
change the sound profile

Of your phone. Options: Ring only, Ring+Vibrate, Vibrate Only, and Silent.

Screen Timeout: Sets how long the phone waits before turning off the screen

Volume Control: Gives you quick access to Ringer, Music, Phone, Notification, and
Alarm volumes.