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Stefan Helander

Android mail token files fills up my SD card

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I use a HTC Desire HD android mobile. My 8 GB SD card was getting full so I removed photos and videos that had already been copied to my PC. But I became a bit curious because of the 8 GB, the images and videos where not consuming the entire space.

To investigate further I connected the android phone using USB to my PC and used the PC:s explorer to dig into the SD-card.

I found out that the mail program stores images and other parts of emails in the Downloads folder on the SD card. After 1,5 years of use there where a significant amount of files there.  

After deleting them i noticed there was a folder called .Mail (i.e. Downloads/.Mail) which contained >21.000 files consuming some 700 MB of space. The filenames began with "token". After some Googleing it seemed by the discussions I found that these are temporary files created each time a message is pushed to the phone. I decided to take a shot and delete them.

After deleting all files in the .Mail folder I opened the mail app on the phone. For a short moment a text was displayed "Preparing SD card". Then my inbox showed up and everything worked normal with the only difference that the mail app seemed a bit quicker now.

My conclusion is that it is probably safe to delete the content of the .Mail folder once in a while to free up some space.

 

 

Stefan Helander

Navigating with HTC Locations

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HTC LocationsWhen I bought my latest smartphone, HTC Desire HD, a navigation software called HTC Locations was preinstalled. HTC Locations is a product by HTC but navigation and maps is powered by the well known Route 66. 

It is free to download maps but to be able to navigate in an area you must buy a navigation license. Additinally you can also buy license for traffic information and speed cameras. The navition for Scandinavia came with a 30 day free trial. After a bit of testing I decided to buy navigation for entire Europe, life time updates. It is a big plus that all maps are on the SD memory so you don’t need a data connection to use it.

After a couple of months of use there are some issues with the software (which I have reported to HTC).

  1. A feature I miss from other navigators is to set a town centre as destination. If you are going to a large city for example, you might not know a street name you want to go to. You just want to get into the city centre. This is not possible in HTC Locations. You must enter a street as your destination. Picking one at random and your target is a larger city, you risk ending up in some suburb.
  2. I bought the navigation license with my Swedish SIM in the phone. On a trip to Italy I put an Italian SIM in the phone. Doing this the navigation did not work unless I put my Swedish SIM back in. HTC has not yet responded to my question about this.
  3. Zona Traffico Limitato and video camerasOn a trip in Italy from Bergamo to Tortona the route goes by Milan which is a major city. Milan has a circular motorway surrounding the city ("tangenziale") in order to lead traffic outside the city centre. HTC Locations however, routed me straight through the city centre. Worse is that in larger cities in Italy they have ECO-zones. Without a permit you will get a fine if you drive into an ECO-zone. The streets are monitored by video cameras and fines are sent to you by mail, even to foreigners. HTC Locations tried to lead us straight through the Milan ECO-zone. Luckily enough I spotted the ECO-zone signs so I manually could avoid it. A couple of days later a similar thing happened in Torino where the navigator tried to lead us through a traffic limitation zone (ZTL, zona traffico limitate) even though our destination address was outside the ZTL.
  4. When going from Münich in Germany to Venice in Italy HTC Locations routed us through the alps on small, beautiful roads. The trip took several hours longer than calculated because the calculations are probably based on the speed limit of the road. Even though the limit is 80 km/h it is impossible to keep that speed on narrow serpentine roads. The roads should probably be encoded with lower speeds so the navigator will make the route on larger roads.
  5. Several times when waiting for a red light the HTC connected to an open Wifi hotspot. When doing so the navigator exited the map mode to the menu, loosing the destination. I quickly had to reselect the destination from the history to contine the navigation. Once it had found my position and recalculated the route to the destination, the red had turned to green and the Italians behind had started honking their horns a long time ago.

Apart from that I think the navigation works well and it is very practical to have a good navigator in your phone. To be able to use it as a navigator (opposed to buying a separate product) you will need a car mount and a car charger. 

 

Stefan Helander

A nerd’s survival kit – extra power for your smartphone

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PowerPackThe arrival of the smartphone (iPhone, Android) etc is a blessing for the true nerd who now can be constantly online and up to date with important things (aka the Internet). On a professional level it is a way of giving good service to your customers be being able to quick reply to emails etc.

The problem with the smartphones are battery capacity. With a couple of apps running and checking things now and then you can easily be drained in 2-3 hours. For an upcoming trip abroad I started to investigate solutions. I looked at solar cell chargers which turned out to be quite big in order to supply sufficient current. They also have built in batteries. Since I will not be hiking in the himalayas I figured the thing I really needed was extra battery capacity. I will after all stay in hotels where there is possibility to recharge over night.

PowerPackMy choice fell on a 5 Ah PowerPack from Kjell.com. One thing to investigate thoroughly before choosing the pack is that it can deliver enough current to charge the smartphone. It will require at least 1 A and there are power packs on the market with lower current ratings supposed to be used only with MP3 players and similar. If you want to do this stunt with an iPad you need even more current (2 A).

First I tried to use up my phones battery and then hook it up to the powerpack to recharge it. This wasn’t a good idea since a dried out smartphone will consume too much current which the powerpack can’t deliver. So instead, already in the morning when leaving my hotel, I hooked the smartphone up to the powerpack and run it on both the internal battery and the powerpack. This way my power lasted for the entire day.

When abroad I don’t have data roaming (otherwise the charges would be sky high). There is a little smart Android app called WeFi. It runs in the background and scans for open hotspots and connects to any it finds, no matter if it has an SSID that is not already known by your device. Once hooked up it verifies if it has Internet connection and plays a little sound. Then your phone pulls down new emails etc. Just walking by for example a McDonalds and you’re all up-to-date again 🙂