When Verizon decides that the Galaxy Nexus is fit enough to launch, the first thing many of you will attempt to do is remove the two pieces of bloatware that have been pre-loaded. Thanks to the “disable” feature built into Ice Cream Sandwich, you can essentially complete this task without rooting. It may not remove the item for good, but it will shut the app down from using up any resources other than internal storage space.

To complete the task, head into Settings>Apps, tap on the app you want to disable, and then click “Disable.” The app will then be removed from your app drawer and blocked from doing anything that you wouldn’t want it to do. 

Your new DROID RAZR may need some help in the battery department just as much as any 4G LTE phone on Verizon does. With phones only able to run the current 2011 LTE technology, there isn’t much that can be done except by tweaking your OS as much as possible or swapping out a dead battery for a fresh one. Since Moto decided to make this phone the thinnest on the planet, you won’t find extra life coming through an extended or backup battery. That leaves phone hackery.

Through Motorola’s new Smart Actions app, they are attempting to give you the tools to help your phone last longer on a single charge. Smart Actions allows you to customize your life by adjusting settings or launching apps depending on your location, time of day, etc. While I haven’t found a single way in them to truly extend battery throughout the day, I will say that the idea itself is fun. Having your phone automatically launch your workout playlist when headphones are plugged in is convenient. If you really want battery extension though, I’m afraid that turning off 4G and GPS is about the only way you are going to do it.  

Since the DROID RAZR doesn’t have a removable battery, you may be wondering what you are supposed to do if the phone were to lock up. No chance for a battery pull, right? Thankfully, you can apply the same trick we do on the Motorola XOOM, a device that also does not have a removable battery. In fact this morning, I had to utilize that same trick since my RAZR’s touch screen refused to react every time I touched it. It wasn’t frozen – the soft keys all worked, I just couldn’t make anything happen by pressing the screen. And without the ability to touch your screen, you can’t hold power and then tell the phone to “Turn Off.”

So what do you do? It’s simple.

Press and hold Volume Down + Power for 10-15 seconds and your phone should power all the way off. Then, power it back on as you normally would and get back to reading Droid Life.

Since Google Music and its Google+ sharing feature went live, I took to my page to start spamming off full tracks for many of you to listen to. But then I got to wondering if all of this new music goodness was available in the actual G+ Android app. Turns out that it is. You can stream tracks from inside the app and see the notification of it happening in your pull-down bar. It works really well.

What’s even better though, is that you can access the full music store on your Android device in the market before you have been activated by Google. It appears as if the current 3.3.11 market is set up for the new music store, but we all need to be given the go by Google in order to see it. If you don’t feel like waiting, find one of my shares on G+, click the “Buy” link and cruise into the music store that way. From there, you can preview tracks, purchase them, and even share them into the G+ app.

The only problem is, that if you click the “Back” button for the market, you will be stuck without music access. So what you need to do is navigate down at the bottom of each listing by Albums, Similar Artists, etc.

It’s a minor work-around that should get you feeling out the music section of the Android market ahead of time.

Have fun!

Verizon has been operating on a 14-day return policy for most of the year. Since this went live, we have seen a variety of devices get spaced out by 14 days to help decrease the number of returned devices. With new top tier Android smartphones coming out almost weekly these days, this move – while unpopular for the most part – makes sense. We have some good news though thanks to some eagle-eyed readers who noticed that Verizon had made a slight tweak to this policy.

Starting tomorrow (November 15), you can purchase a smartphone and have until January 9, 2012 to return it for something else. With the RAZR, Rezound and Galaxy Nexus all becoming available over the next few weeks, this is incredible news. If you are dying to have a new smartphone, but can’t wait for the G-Nex to finally arrive, then you may want to check out a RAZR or Rezound knowing now that you have until the first week of January to swap it out if you decide stock Android is indeed your cup of tea. You will have to pay a $35 restocking fee if you do bring your phone back. I guess that’s the price you pay to test drive.

Via:  Verizon

Cheers Greg and Nick!

Within the first couple of minutes with both the DROID RAZR and HTC Rezound, I noticed something that I had never seen before on an Android smartphone. Every time I opened up certain apps, like say the Android Market or Google Voice, I was being told that WiFi was automatically turning on and that I should use it. It was actually sort of frustrating, especially since both phones run on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, which is faster that most home cable connections. To tell you the truth, I tend to leave my phones’ WiFi off when at home for the most part for that simple reason. Speed rules, baby.

So why were both phones continually asking that I use WiFi whenever I opened up an app? Because they require data connections – it’s as simple as that. In an era of tiered data plans and ultra-fast download speeds, features like the one you will see on both of these new Verizon phones are going to become the standard. We may have the ability to gobble up data in seconds, but that doesn’t mean the carriers or our tiered data plans are OK with that.

Now that unlimited data plans for new customers or new lines are long gone, features like auto-WiFi notifying will more than likely come in handy. Automation at its finest. For those of us locked into unlimited data (for now anyway), you can turn these off with a couple of taps. Head into Settings>Wireless & networks>Wi-Fi settings> and uncheck the box for “Notify me.”

When you pick up your DROID RAZR tomorrow (or if your pre-order arrives today), you’ll probably notice that Verizon has slightly changed their stance on the bloatware that will come preloaded. It still has a boatload of it, but after long pressing on a couple of the ol’ standards, I was greeted with some interesting new options. As you can see in the screenshot on the left, Guided Tours may not be uninstallable, but you now have the option to at least “Hide” it. In previous versions of Blur, this wasn’t available and you were forced to download a third party launcher or create a special app drawer folder in order to complete such a task.

On the right, we are seeing Blockbuster, an app that we just can’t seem to get rid of. On the RAZR, you can. Same thing with GoToMeeting, Let’s Golf and Madden. Also, after cruising around the phone over the last few hours, I don’t feel the excessive amounts of bloatware spammed across every screen. There are a few VCAST apps, just not nearly as many as were once loaded onto these devices.

It may still come pre-loaded and hidden away in a system folder somewhere if you try to remove it, but at least we are moving in the right direction.