If you're in the UK, Chromecasts are now £18 in bank holiday sales. Currys have stock and John Lewis will price-match, or you can order with a bit of a wait on Amazon.

When your brother goes to upgrade he won't get the discount, it'll just add another 30 some to the bill.

This ****ing amazon prime music app... my tilt levels are high. So I downloaded a bunch of music to my phone, but with my ****ty internet connection some of them timed out. Yadda yadda yadda, I have a notification now saying I have a download queued up. But nothing is in my download queue when I actually click on it. And I can't get the notification to go away. It's still there after rebooting too. Any thoughts?

ETA: Wow... scratch that... after reboot number THREE it's finally gone. Jeez.

If it makes you feel any better the almighty Googles music cloud option is buggy as hell, too.

So I played around with trying to put CM on my phone this weekend and results were not good... probably because I ended up using a few different sets of instructions because various things didn't work (instructions out of date probably)... I can take this over to XDA but if anyone can offer a quick diagnosis that would be sweet.

Verizon Galaxy S3 running 4.4. Steps may/may not be slightly out of order, cliffs at the end.

1) Tried to install CM using CM installer, device is not supported
2) Tried to install CM using instructions on CM wiki, device would not root
3) Set up some sort of Odin program -- didn't understand why though at the time so I forget what steps I actually took with it
4) Dead end, find different instructions

1) Download Towelroot, root successful
2) Download Rashr and a flash recovery image from TWRP
3) Follow the video instructions and reboot -- this is where things get dicey

When the thing rebooted it now gives me a screen at startup that says "we've detected non standard software here, please kill yourself and/or go to a VZW store so we can lol@u" and won't start up. If I boot to that download feature (power home down) it brings up Odin and just hangs. If I boot using power home up it says "you wanna try to load this custom stuff?" and if I hit yes it takes me back to the error message... if I say no, my phone boots and behaves normally.

So, cliffs:
--Tried installing CM on a Verizon S3 running 4.4, hilarity does not ensue
--Successfully rooted w/Towelroot but Odin and or this Rashr thing are making my phone spaz out
--Need to boot through a menu for my phone to work

Is there anything I can do to move forward (get CM on there?) or backward (just have this thing back to how it was)?

ETA: looking back on it I think I was using THREE different sets of instructions... doesn't matter though. Obv came in with little understanding and tried to learn as I go but things did not work out. Any thoughts appreciated. Just need things thing to survive until I can grab an N6...

OK nvm doing more and more reading...

So, that's that I guess. May try to use this safestrap thing and install SuperLiteRom which seems to be the only one that is viable at this point... or just gonna leave it.

Yep, Verizon sucks

looked around a little but couldn't get a clear answer.

i currently am in a group text with 4 other people. we're all iPhone users. if i switch to Android, will that still be possible or will my texts arrive to them as separate messages and the same when i receive messages from them?

Yes

From my personal experience, group texts don't work very well cross-platform. My friends and I ended up switching over to a dedicated group texting app. We use GroupMe, but there are quite a few popular options. We all agree it's a significantly better experience, even when you take the cross-platform compatibility out of the list of benefits.

Maybe I could have found a different texting app that would work better, or maybe it's been fixed since the last time I tried group texting with the native app, but yeah I'd recommend going that route.

Thanks

Group messaging really can be the worst. When A sends a message to 25 people, and C responds to "A" more like AKA the group amirite. So fun reading a conversation for 3 weeks that nobody cares about.

Just get onto Whatsapp, so much better in so many ways than text.

Personally I used to have tons of troubles with group messaging and then it all fixed itself. That being said I've never been on a 25 person text lolthat. Ymmv I guess.

Just some of the benefits to a group messaging app:

-better compatibility between platforms
-remove yourself from conversations that you don't care about
-mute specific conversations that you want to follow but not be bombarbed with notifications every 10 seconds
-better handling of images/gifs/links
-chat from a web browser when you're at the computer
-not having to pay for unlimited texting

Most people involved on a text I can think of was 18. It was my work phone though so I just ignored it.

I have a daily active group mms with 2 ios and 4 android, no problems at all. I use hangouts but have used Verizon Messaging, textra, others.

You can mute individual convos on most/all sms/mms apps.

Is WhatsApp not widely used in the US? Most people I know here in the UK use it, I don't think I've sent an actual text in weeks.

I can't imagine a better app for group messaging; the only thing it is lacking is a desktop/web client.

Really? Aren't people all excited about imessages finally allowing individual conversation muting in the upcoming iOS 8 because it can't currently do it? That's the biggest texting platform out there.
GroupMe has a web client. Not sure how else it compares to whatsapp, I don't have much experience with that.

Haven't heard of it, but cool. Not a deal breaker for me, it'd just be useful.

Perhaps Facebook are working on it or will make the API public soon (or not!). If the day ever comes where Facebook integrates into WhatsApp or vice versa, I will ditch it so fast.

You could be right, or that's just a lol-ios thing. I know I could mute on the last 3 I used which were hangouts, vz msging, and the Samsung stock messaging.

Looking for tablets around Craiglist. What's too much for a Galaxy Tab 3? Looking for 10+ inches. Should I consider a Xoom or other brands? There are so many oddball names on Amazon. What's the minimum internal storage I should target to operate well with the OS?

Needs:
-- prefer 10" or more
-- Android 4.0 or newer
-- 1024+ res
-- 1+ gig RAM
-- 32+ gb min SD capability
-- Bluetooth
-- the more access to the Play Store, the better

I have no problem with WiFi only, btw, as it's primarily for home or coffee shop usage. Mainly just for browsing, offline reading, Netflix.

I'm surprised that no Android developer targets the handheld market. There are tons of cheap 7" tablets but nothing in the 4"-5" pocketable area. The ipod touch stands alone (well plus the 3DS I guess)

Samsung use to have the Galaxy but that line hasn't been updated in awhile.

I guess the closest answer is the Boost Mobile/Verizon version of the Moto G phone. You can buy unactivated for $75 but it only has 8 GB of storage. The 16gb Moto G is $180 You can use either without a cell plan.

Thought I'd check out Nova Launcher again as I have Premium but haven't used it since I got an N5. It's much better; I can deal with not having the Google Now page immediately to the left and replacing it with the widget.

The updated Google News and Weather app is nice.

Any advice on what rom to root/flash a new s5 to please?