1. Getting to Know Your EVO 3D
In this chapter, you learn about the external features of the EVO 3D and the basics of getting started. Topics include the following:
• Your EVO 3D’s external features
• Installing synchronization software
Let’s start by getting to know more about your EVO 3D. This chapter covers the device’s external features and how the Android operating system works.
Your EVO 3D’s External Features
The outside of your EVO 3D is what you’ll be touching first, so let’s go over the external features including the buttons and cameras.
• Proximity sensor Detects when you place your EVO 3D against your ear to talk, which causes it to turn off the screen to prevent any buttons from being pushed inadvertently.
• Light sensors Adjust the brightness of your EVO 3D’s screen based on the brightness of the ambient light.
• Front-facing camera A 1.3 megapixel camera for taking self portraits or engaging in a video chat.
• Earpiece
• Power button Press once to wake up your EVO 3D. Press and hold for one second to reveal a menu of choices. The choices enable you to put your EVO 3D into silent mode, airplane mode, or power it off completely.
• Touchscreen The EVO 3D has a 4.3″ 540×960 pixel Super LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen with capacitive touch. The screen is also an auto-stereoscopic display with a parallax barrier that allows it to produce 3D images and video.
• Volume Up/Down button Controls audio while playing music, watching a video, or talking on the phone.
• Camera Mode button This button enables you to switch the camera between 3D and 2D modes. In 2D mode, only the camera toward the edge of the EVO 3D is used as opposed to both.
• Back button Touch to go back one screen when using an application or menu. This soft button doesn’t actually press in. When you touch it, your EVO 3D vibrates briefly to let you know it has detected the touch.
• Menu button Displays a menu of choices. The menu differs based on what screen you are looking at and what application you are using.
• Home button Touch to go to the Home screen. The application you are using continues to run in the background.
• Search button Touch to type or speak a search term. Your EVO 3D searches your phone and the Internet for content that matches the search term.
• Dual 5 megapixel camera with autofocus Takes clear pictures close-up or far away. In 3D mode the cameras take 2 megapixel pictures, whereas in 2D mode the one camera takes a 5 megapixel picture.
• Dual LED (Light Emitting Diode) camera flash Helps to illuminate the surroundings when taking pictures in low light.
• Speakerphone Audio is produced when speakerphone mode is in use. Keep your EVO 3D on a hard surface for the best audio reflection.
• 3.5mm headphone jack Standard 3.5mm headphone jack allows you to plug in any industry standard headphone or headset.
• Micro-USB port Use the supplied Micro-USB cable to charge your EVO 3D Incredible or connect it to a computer to synchronize multimedia and other content.
Fundamentals of Android
Your EVO 3D is run by an operating system called Android. Android was created by Google to run on any smartphone, and there are quite a few that run on it today. Android works pretty much the same on all smartphones with small differences based on the version of Android installed and the interface tweaks that each manufacturer has made. Your EVO 3D is running the Gingerbread version of Android with enhancements added to it by HTC using the HTC Sense User Interface (UI). Read on to find out how to use Android on your EVO 3D with the HTC Sense UI enhancements.
The Unlock Screen
If you haven’t used your EVO 3D for a while, the screen goes blank to conserve battery power. To unlock your EVO 3D, do the following:
1. Press the Power button.
2. Slide the ring toward the middle of the screen. This unlocks your EVO 3D.
3. Slide the Phone icon into the ring to unlock your EVO 3D and immediately run the Phone app.
4. Slide the Mail icon into the ring to unlock your EVO 3D and immediately run the Mail app.
5. Slide the Camera icon into the ring to unlock your EVO 3D and immediately run the Camera app.
6. Slide the Messages icon into the ring to unlock your EVO 3D and immediately run the Messages app.
The Home Screen
After you unlock your EVO 3D, you are presented with the Home screen. The Home screen contains application icons, a Launcher icon, status bar, and widgets.
• Widget Application that runs right on the Home screen. A widget is specially designed to provide functionality and real-time information to the Home screen. An example of a widget is one that shows the current weather or provides a search capability.
• Application icon These are application icons that have been dragged to the Home screen from the Launcher. When you touch one, it launches the associated application.
• Launcher Touch to show application icons for all applications you have installed on your EVO 3D.
• Status bar Shows the time, signal strength, battery level, and which type of network you are connected to: Wi-Fi or cellular. Also shows any notification icons, such as New Mail.
• Phone Touch to launch the Phone app.
• Personalize Touch to personalize your EVO 3D. Read more about customizing your EVO 3D in Chapter 12, “Customizing Your EVO 3D.”
• Home screen indicator Indicates which of the seven Home screens you are currently viewing. Swipe left and right to move between Home screens.
Using Your EVO 3D’s Touchscreen
You mostly interact with your EVO 3D by touching the screen—what’s known as making gestures on the screen. You can touch, swipe, pinch, double-tap, and type.
• Touch To start an application, touch its icon. Touch a menu item to select it. Touch the letters of the onscreen keyboard to type.
• Touch and hold Touch and hold to interact with an object. For example, if you touch and hold a blank area of a Home screen, a menu pops up. If you touch and hold an icon, you can reposition it with your finger.
• Drag Dragging always starts with a touch and hold. For example, if you touch the status bar, you can drag it down to read all of the status messages.
• Swipe or slide Swipe or slide the screen to scroll quickly. To swipe or slide, move your finger across the screen quickly. Be careful not to touch and hold before your swipe or you will reposition something.
• Double-tap Double-tapping is like double-clicking a mouse on a desktop computer. Tap the screen twice in quick succession. You can double-tap a web page to zoom in to part of that page. Double-tap also works in the camera application. Double-tap to zoom the camera.
• Pinch To zoom in and out of images and pages, place your thumb and forefinger on the screen. Pinch them together to zoom out or spread them apart to zoom in (unpinching). Applications such as Browser, Gallery, and Maps currently support pinching.
• Rotate the screen If you rotate your EVO 3D from an upright position to being on its left or right side, the screen switches from portrait view to landscape view. Most applications honor the screen orientation. The Home screen does not.
Using Your EVO 3D’s Keyboard
Your EVO 3D has a virtual or onscreen keyboard for those times when you need to enter text. You might be a little wary of a keyboard that has no physical keys, but you will be pleasantly surprised to see how well it works. Let’s go through the main points of the keyboard.
Some applications automatically show the keyboard when you need to enter text. If the keyboard does not appear, touch the area where you want to type, and the keyboard slides up ready for use.
To make the next letter you type a capital letter, touch the Shift key. To make all letters capitals (or CAPS), touch and hold or double-tap the Shift key to engage CAPS Lock. Touch Shift again to disengage CAPS Lock.
To backspace or delete what you have typed, touch the key with the left-pointing arrow. To type numbers or symbols on the virtual keyboard, touch the Symbols key.
Using the virtual keyboard as you type, your EVO 3D makes word suggestions. Think of this as similar to the spell checker you would see in a word processor. Your EVO 3D uses a dictionary of words to guess what you are typing. If the word you were going to type is highlighted, touch space or period to select it. If you can see the word in the list but it is not highlighted, touch the word to select it.
When on the Number and Symbols screen, touch the 1/2 key to see extra symbols. Touch the ABC key to return to the regular keyboard.
To enter an accented character, touch and hold any vowel or C, N, or S keys. A small window opens enabling you to select an accented or alternative character.
To reveal other alternative characters, touch and hold any other letter, number, or symbol.
Speak Instead of Typing
Your EVO 3D can turn your voice into text. It uses Google’s speech recognition service, which means that you must have a connection to the cellular network or a Wi-Fi network to use it.
1. Touch the Microphone key.
2. The microphone pops up. Wait for the message “Speak now” and start speaking what you want to be typed. You can speak the punctuation by saying “comma,” “question mark,” “exclamation mark,” or “period.”
3. After you have spoken what you want to type, you briefly see “working,” and then your text is placed in the text field. The text remains underlined so you can touch the backspace key to delete it. If you are satisfied with the text, continue typing on the keyboard or touch the Back button to close the keyboard.
Swype Keyboard
The Swype keyboard is a revolutionary keyboard that enables you to swipe your finger over the keyboard to type as opposed to touching each key individually. Theoretically this enables you to type more quickly. The Swype keyboard is preinstalled on your EVO 3D. Here is how to switch to the Swype keyboard.
1. Touch and hold in the text entry area.
2. Touch Input Method.
3. Touch Swype.
Editing Text
After you enter text, you can edit it by cutting, copying, or pasting the text. Here is how to select and copy text.
1. Double-tap a word you want to select.
2. Move the green end markers left and right to select more or less text.
3. Touch Copy.
Starting Applications and Application Groups
You can read about applications for your EVO 3D in Chapter 11, “Enhancing Your EVO 3D with Apps,” but to get you started, here is how to start applications and switch between them. Each application has an associated icon. Those icons can be on the Home screen or in the Launcher. The Launcher displays every application you have installed.
1. Touch an application icon to launch that application.
2. Touch the Launcher icon to see all installed applications.
3. Swipe up and down to see all apps.
4. Touch to see all applications.
5. Touch to see only favorite applications. The list of favorite applications is automatically created for you based on how many times you open applications.
6. Touch to see only applications you have downloaded.
7. Touch the Menu button to see more options.
8. Touch to see all applications in a list view. Touch again to switch back to the icon view.
9. Touch to remove one or more applications.
10. Touch to change the sort order of the applications when displayed in the Launcher. You can sort them alphabetically, most recently used, or order they were installed.
Menus
Your EVO 3D has two types of menus: Options menus and Context menus. Let’s go over what each one does.
Most applications have Options menus. These enable you to make changes or take actions within that application. Sometimes the Options menu has a More item that enables you to see more options. Touch the Menu button to see the Options menu.
A Context menu applies to an item on the screen. If you touch and hold something on the screen (in this example, a link on a web page), a context-appropriate menu appears. The items on the Context menu are based on the type of object you touch.
Installing Synchronization Software
Your EVO 3D is designed to work in a disconnected fashion without the need to connect it to your desktop computer. However you might still want to synchronize some content from your computer to your EVO 3D. One of the most common uses for this software is to synchronize music and photos. Examples in this book use an application called doubleTwist. Other applications also provide synchronization for your EVO 3D, such as Missing Sync from Mark/Space, but I’ve used doubleTwist here because it is free. Before beginning this section, download the version you need (Windows or Mac OSX) from www.doubletwist.com.
Installing doubleTwist on Windows
1. Double-click the doubleTwist install file. On the first screen, click Install.
2. When the install is complete, make sure the Launch doubleTwist box is checked.
3. Click Finish.
Installing doubleTwist on Mac OSX
1. Double-click the doubleTwist disc on your Mac desktop.
2. Drag the doubleTwist icon to the Applications folder icon.
Creating a doubleTwist Account
The first time you run doubleTwist, it asks you to log in using your doubleTwist account. You probably don’t have one, so take the following steps to create a free account. The steps and screens are the same for the Windows and Mac versions of doubleTwist.
1. Touch Create Account.
2. Type in your name, choose a password, and type in your email address.
3. Agree to the doubleTwist EULA.
4. Click Sign Up.
5. The next screen tells you to check your mailbox for an activation email. Switch to your email application and follow the instructions in the email. After your account is activated, switch back to this screen and click Continue to start using doubleTwist.
