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We know you have your reasons for buying an Android phone instead of an iPhone. We won't judge you. If you bought a WinMo phone, however, we'd judge. Just a warning.
Here are some tips and how-tos to get your Android phone working with your Mac almost as well as an iPhone. Almost.
Difficulty Level: Easy
What You Need:
> Android Phone (we used the Motorola Droid)
> doubleTwist
> Rings Extended (available on the Android Market)
A majority of this how-to utilizes doubleTwist. If you haven't downloaded and launched the app already, hold off until you've read the entire article. This will make more sense once you see the portion about syncing music.
Hooking it Up
The Android's main feature is that it works seamlessly with the "Google Cloud." That's great, if you've invested all of your media and communication through Google. If you haven't, you can still plug your Android phone into your Mac and sync your media thanks to a handy--albeit somewhat buggy--piece of software known as doubleTwist. The app is similar to iTunes in appearance, although we wouldn't use it to play media. What we would use it for is syncing third party devices, like the Android family of phones, the Palm Pre, WinMo phones, and the Sony PSP; the entire list can be found on the doubleTwist site.
1. Attach the phone to your Mac via the supplied USB cable. Before you yell out "Nothing's happening!" relax, you have to turn on USB mounting on the phone. Launch doubleTwist.
2. To turn on USB mounting you can touch and pull down the menu at the top of the phone. From there you will see the ability to turn on USB mounting. Turn it on and you should see the Android phone under the Devices area in the left hand corner of doubleTwist.
Photo Times
You're Android's SD card will show up in iPhoto for importing ease
Once the Android phone is mounted, iPhoto should automatically launch much like it would if an iPhone or any camera was attached to your Mac. You can import your photos and videos just like the iPhone, attached SD card, or attached camera. Easy as pie.
Adding Your Photos
Now that you have your photos off the Android phone, lets put some new photos on the device so the world can see just rad your halloween costume was. Like a majority of this how-to, we'll be using doubleTwist to place photos on your Android phone.
1. Your iPhoto library and albums should appear in doubleTwist in addition to the Pictures folder on your Mac. If you happen to have two iPhoto libraries like me, both will appear.
Drag and drop photo action (click to embiggen)
2. You can drag individual images, a selection of images, or an entire album to your Android phone. The Android OS can handle JPG, PNG and GIF files.
3. After copying over, you'll need to unmount the Android phone and unplug it and then launch the Gallery app.
You can set any image in th Gallery app as Wallpaper. You can crop the image to fit on your phone.
4. After getting your photos on the phone, you can start to customize it with your own desktop image. In the Gallery app, find the image you want as wallpaper. Tap the, Set as option above the picture and you'll be prompted to create a Contact icon or Wallpaper. We created a 640x480 image so the world knows we're still Apple Fan Boys and Girls.
NEXT: Sync your Music and create ringtones
Sync Music
Like the iPhone, Android phones ship with a media player. Unlike the iPhone, Android phones don't play nice with iTunes. To get your favorite, DRM-free tunes on your Google-based phone, you'll want to fire up doubleTwist again.
NOTE: doubleTwist will choke on any files with DRM and will refuse to continue syncing your playlist. We recommend using option two and creating a smart playlist without DRM-filled files.
1. Option one is to just create a playlist in doubleTwist and fill it with your favorite music. Once the playlist is ready, drag and drop it onto your Android phone.
2. Option two is to import a playlist from iTunes. If you had a playlist ready to go before launching doubleTwist for the first time, you can easily import all of yout iTunes' playlists.
NOTE: There is one problem with that method. If you create a playlist in iTunes after launching doubleTwist for the first time, doubleTwist won't import the new playlist. LAME!
3. To get around this, we used PreferenceCleaner to delete the doubleTwist preferences. Once those were gone, we just signed back into our doubleTwist account upon launching the app and re-imported the playlists.
Tada, our Android playlist from iTunes is now available. We just dragged this playlist onto our Android phone for mobile rocking.
Ringtone
Unlike the iPhone, the Android OS will let you make a ringtone from any audio file you have on your phone. As long as it's MP3, AAC, or AMR.
1. To create a ringtone, add the audio of choice to your phone and launch the Music app.
2. Select the audio file you want to be a ringtone. Press and hold on the track for a second, when you let go you'll see the above prompt. Choose ringtone. That's it.
3. On the phone, navigate to the Settings>Sound & display>Phone ringtone to select your new ringtone.
Create a Text Message Alert
This is an option that is sorely missed on the iPhone. Sure, you can jailbreak the iPhone to change the text alerts, but it's hardly a proper solution. With Android, you download one app and it takes care of your text alert changing ways.
1. The first thing you want to do is download Rings Extended from the Android Market. It's free!
2. Open the Messaging app. Press the Settings button, scroll down to Notification settings, tap on Select Ringtone. You'll be prompted to select either Android System or Rings Extended. Choose Rings Extended. Select Music track to find the track you want to use when you recieve a text message. Be sure the audio you want as a text alert is 1-3 seconds long. Anything longer gets annoying real quick.
We used Wild Epp as our text alert sound.
Next: Video, contacts and calendar.
Sync Videos
Like audio, video sync can be accomplished with doubleTwist.
Click to embiggen
1. Drag and drop your MPEG4 H.264 videos onto your Android phone. Like audio files, don't even bother trying to sync DRM-laden videos on your Android phone.
2. The oddest thing about the Android OS is that videos are stored in the Gallery app with your photos. Launch that app and you'll see your videos in the All videos playlist.
Sync contacts
If your contacts are tied up in Address book, there's a simple way to sync them with Google.
1. Open the Address Book app. Navigate to Address Book>Preferences. click on the Accounts tab. Turn on Synchronize with Google. You'll be prompted to Configure. All you need is your Gmail address and password.
Sync calendars
Calendar sync isn't available without third-party applications. Waht you can do is set up your Google with iCal and move all your appointments to the Google Calendar.
1. Launch iCal. In the menu bar, select iCal>Preferences. Select the Accounts tab. Select the + sign to create a new calendar.
2. iCal already has a setting for Google in the Account Type pull down. Plug in your information and you're ready to go.
