Category: Android

psa – advanced wifi settings on the samsung galaxy s4, disabling at&t automatic wifi

whbeebe

I use a Samsung Galaxy S4 and have AT&T as my provider. I am, for the most part, satisfied. But when I’m not satisfied, I’m truly annoyed. Two cases in point are auto network switch and auto connect to AT&T WiFi hotspots.

The reason I dislike auto network switch is that it interferes with any attempt use WiFi in a non-standard manner, such as using Olympus’ Image Share with my E-M10, or any WiFi connection that the software deems is “unstable.”

The reason I dislike auto connect to any AT&T WiFi hotspot is that there are so many out there and they are now so poorly maintained that the link is dead, killing the wireless connection when it connects. Or else when you do connect you have to “log into” or “agree” to lawyer weasel-words that remove all liability from the WiFi provider, which is not AT&T, but some other company. In Orlando FL the best example of this is McDonalds’ and their so-called free WiFi.

In both cases I went hunting all over the phone’s configuration menus, trying to find where in the menus I could disable both features. I finally found them with the following steps:

  1. Pull down the notification bar by dragging down from the top edge of the screen.
  2. Touch the gear on the upper right, bringing up Connections.
  3. Touch WiFi on the left. This brings up the list of all known WiFi connections.
  4. Touch the menu key on the lower left, next to the single physical button at the bottom.
  5. Touch Advanced on the menu.
  6. You’ll see the screen shown at the top left. If Auto network switch and Auto connect have checks, touch both to uncheck them and turn them off.

adding library dependencies in android studio beta 0.8.9

whbeebe

In creating a new Android 5/Lollipop app that uses the latest Material Design, I created a new project and selected Android 5 (API 21) (NOT API 20+: Android L (Preview)!). In the process of bringing up the application, Android Studio threw exceptions that it couldn’t find Java class android.support.v4.view.View, among others. To solve this problem I had to add a support library (also known as a library dependency) to the project. This is accomplished via File > Project Structure (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S) to bring up the Project Structure window.

To add a library dependency, select the Dependencies tab at the top right, click on the plus symbol on the far upper right (see big red arrow above) and then click “1 Library dependency.”

This brings up the “Choose Library Dependency” dialog. I’ve stretched it out to show all that are available to me. You selection will be dependent on the all the APIs you’ve chosen to support. I’ve highlighted the v4 support library. Once you’ve selected the dependency library you need click “OK” all the way back. Once that’s done the project will resync itself, and if you’ve found all the dependencies that project says it needs, Gradle will complete successfully.

Editorial Comment

I realize this is beta code. But this was a new project and all dependencies should have been automatically settled during the creation process. The way Android Studio is behaving right now it’s as if it were still late stage alpha code.

This is also one of the worst UI examples I’ve ever come across, bordering on disastrous. None of this is intuitive, all the way from digging out the main dialog. I know that Google didn’t write the IDE, but they selected it, and they now share responsibility for how bad it is. And this is very bad indeed.