Android phone compatibility

[techguy378]

Does anyone know what phones are compatible with the new Android TomTom app for the USA? TomTom originally said the app would work on every single Android phone that runs Android 2.2 or later and has a screen resolution of less than 1280x720. It now appears that TomTom has a specific list of phones that the app will run on because it's not available for download on my Motorola Droid Bionic running Android 2.3.4.

 

[mvl]

The current app only supports 800x480 and 854x480. The bionic has a higher resolution.

Higher res support will come by end of year.

 

[techguy378]

Thanks. Still doesn't make sense though. Even if the graphics in TomTom's app display at a lower resolution than the screen's native resolution Android will still scale the graphics to fit automatically. They wouldn't look any worse than they do on TomTom's 5-inch screen standalone units.

 

[mvl]

If you purchase the app on a compatible resolution device, and manually transfer/sideload the apk over to a non-supported hi-resolution device with the same google play ID, it will work.

The car icon is uncentered, status bars have weird gaps, some items dont fit in their boxes, etc. But it mostly works. And high res devices usually have fast cpus, which result in amazing performance.

Formal Tomtom support is coming by year end, but you can still get a great near finished experience today if you take a few extra steps.

 

[jonstrong]

If you purchase the app on a compatible resolution device, and manually transfer/sideload the apk over to a non-supported hi-resolution device with the same google play ID, it will work.

The car icon is uncentered, status bars have weird gaps, some items dont fit in their boxes, etc. But it mostly works. And high res devices usually have fast cpus, which result in amazing performance.

Formal Tomtom support is coming by year end, but you can still get a great near finished experience today if you take a few extra steps.

Hey mvl - long time no chat. I sort of keep an eye on the other forum, but my work over the past year has been consuming, so I've barely been able to make half a dozen posts there. Anyway - I've been living through the whole Live Traffic issue in the northeast US, and after more than a year of loving my 2535M Live I've found that the "fix" implemented a few short weeks ago seems have to killed my ability to connect quickly when I start off a drive at either rush hour; unless TomTom puts out another add-on to let me connect to Live Traffic and avoid AT&T's 2G network, I fear the device is nearing end of life. All a long-winded way of indicating my extreme interest in the Android implementation -- and disappointment in discovering the resolution limitations. I would love to know what fraction of Android devices fall into the support resolution parameters...certainly none of the recent high end devices on any US carrier.

I'd be happy to purchase and sideload the apk -- I've got both a Galaxy Nexus and an ASUS TF700T Infinity 10" tablet - would love to try it on both. Only problem is having no access to a compatible device on from which to buy it, and Google has gotten much better at locking down the Play store to prevent device spoofing in recent months...

If you have suggestions or ideas, please share. Otherwise I guess I'll have to wait until the official APK supports higher res devices like mine...

Jon

 

[- et -]

If you purchase the app on a compatible resolution device, and manually transfer/sideload the apk over to a non-supported hi-resolution device with the same google play ID, it will work.

The car icon is uncentered, status bars have weird gaps, some items dont fit in their boxes, etc. But it mostly works. And high res devices usually have fast cpus, which result in amazing performance.

Formal Tomtom support is coming by year end, but you can still get a great near finished experience today if you take a few extra steps.

I'd be happy to purchase and sideload the apk -- I've got both a Galaxy Nexus and an ASUS TF700T Infinity 10" tablet - would love to try it on both. Only problem is having no access to a compatible device on from which to buy it, and Google has gotten much better at locking down the Play store to prevent device spoofing in recent months...

If you have suggestions or ideas, please share. Otherwise I guess I'll have to wait until the official APK supports higher res devices like mine...

I believe that it is possible to have more than one Google Play ID on a phone, and that you can select which one is "active" at a given time. (I've heard about this but have never done this myself, so I may be wrong.)

IF I am right, if you have a good friend or family member with a phone with the appropriate resolution, you might have a solution. You might be able to add your ID to that phone, make that ID the active one on that phone, download the app to that phone, sideload to your own phone, and remove your ID from the phone of your friend/family member.

If that works, you will have a mostly functional app on your own phone that should be usable until the resolution of your phone is supported. As mvl says, the shortcomings are basically just a matter of the quality of the screen image.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

 

[mvl]

HD traffic connectivity is unbelievable on the Android app, no connection has ever taken more than 5 seconds to launch. And on the Galaxy S3 the performance is amazing, every tap responds in under a second.

When you compare the Android app on the Galaxy S3 to the 2535LIVE: the modem is light years faster, the ui is faster, the screen is almost the same size, but the whole device is smaller & lighter. It's like there's absolutely no reason to use a PND any more.

I know Google allows multiple email accounts, but last I tried, it made me factory reset the phone to change the Google Play account. I'm wondering if you could download it at a store demo phone, eg:factory reset the phone, log in with your google play acct, buy/install the app, use a backup tool to backup the app to an apk, email the apk to yourself, and factory reset the phone again.

 

[mrg9999]

App compatability

Does anyone know what phones are compatible with the new Android TomTom app for the USA? TomTom originally said the app would work on every single Android phone that runs Android 2.2 or later and has a screen resolution of less than 1280x720. It now appears that TomTom has a specific list of phones that the app will run on because it's not available for download on my Motorola Droid Bionic running Android 2.3.4.

I've personally run the beta on
ZTE blade
HTC Wildfire
Samsung Galaxy S2/S3
HTC One
HTC Desire
Asus Transformer
Google Nexus

It seems to run fine on Cyanogen 7/9/10

I expect it to be available for many models soon.

 

[- et -]

I know Google allows multiple email accounts, but last I tried, it made me factory reset the phone to change the Google Play account. I'm wondering if you could download it at a store demo phone, eg:factory reset the phone, log in with your google play acct, buy/install the app, use a backup tool to backup the app to an apk, email the apk to yourself, and factory reset the phone again.

FWIW, there are a couple of people at the xda-developers forum who have bypassed the Google Play restrictions and provide the details of how they got the app on their Nexus 7 tablets.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

 

[janolsen]

Suppose lower resolutions will never work with TomTom ? Have Samsung Gio.

The current app only supports 800x480 and 854x480. The bionic has a higher resolution.

Higher res support will come by end of year.

 

[mvl]

Suppose lower resolutions will never work with TomTom ? Have Samsung Gio.

Correct, no lo-res support is planned at this time:

http://discussions.tomtom.com/t5/TomTom-App-for-Android/320x480-support/m-p/340664