Tag: desire

The HTC, slowly feeling their way around

All my current phones

HTC you got to love them…

From obscurity they rose via Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. I’ve always been a fan because frankly they packed in a ton of technology into their devices and then sold them at a reasonable price. Mainly because they signed exclusive deals to the likes of Orange in the UK.

When they started producing Android devices, things really picked up and HTC started making a real name for themselves with the general public. Hackers also enjoyed Android HTC devices because they were more like a PC than anything else. HTC must have understood this when they jumped on the Social media bandwagon…

However they may not have expected the 2 way nature of the early adopters. Here’s their backtracking in action…

First case… HTC decides to lock all there bootloaders on future devices

Then… HTC changes its mind after all the comments on its own Facebook page…

Second case… HTC says the Desire won’t get Gingerbread

Then… HTC backtracks, says the Desire will get Gingerbread after all‎…

A month into my rooted HTC Desire

With help from a friend, I rooted my HTC Desire so I could put CyanogenMod on it using the Rom Manager.

When I first rooted it, I didn’t do anything to it but after a while the same problems started happening with the lack of storage again even under Android 2.2 Froyo. This time, I installed Rom Manager and wiped the whole thing clean.

The Rom was the CyanogenMod 7.1 which means I’m now running Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread)

For the first week I wasn’t sure I liked everything, it was too basic. I had to install all the apps which usually come preinstalled. I had the basic Google apps but for some reason some of them were not installable so for a long time I couldn’t install Google Maps and Amazon Reader for example.

Having the raw Gingerbread Android operating system took a little while to get use to but its just so great not having all that Orange crap on the phone and not being able to remove it. Memory for storage was always a issue and because not every application can be moved to the SD card, it became a balancing act of not installing too much and clearing the cache a lot. But now those days are long gone, thankfully.

One of the highlights so far is the personal Wifi hotspot (MyFi) which was introduced in Froyo but for some reason never worked with my Kindle ever. Now it works and seems pretty stable, which is great. On the other hand the standard Gingerbread camera application is pretty crap and I’ve not really found a replacement worthy of keeping.

It is a real shame I had to root the device just to take control of the HTC Desire. I’m glad to see HTC finally did the right thing and decided not to lock down the bootloader.

Rooting your phone isn’t for everyone and I do have quite a bit more respect for what Orange do to a operating system to provide a usable experience for the most people. Its just a shame they also put all that crapware on the device too. If they allowed people to uninstall the crapware, I wouldn’t have had to root my device.

do you have a desire for froyo too?

Today my HTC desire made a weird noise and I looked at the screen to find it wanted to download a massive update and it was asking if it should use wifi or a combination of 3g and wifi. Looking at the update it was trying to download, I saw those magical word… FROYO!

Yep for ages I’ve been waiting for Froyo because although I love my desire phone, I keep running out of space. Which is stupid because I got a 8gig micro Sd card in the device but for some reason android pretty much ignores it. Froyo came out a while ago with the perfect solution for using the Sd card for apps, but I’ve had to wait for Orange and HTC to put up a update before I could upgrade.

Anyway time for the upgrade… i’ll let you know how it goes

If you want to upgrade yourself, there’s a quick and easy way to do it. (I wish I’d done it myself a while ago to be honest)

  1. Download the Android 2.2 firmware for the Desire – here is the link to download
  2. Rename the file update.zip and copy it to your microSD card via USB. [Note: make sure the file is named update.zip and not update.zip.zip.]
  3. Power down your Desire
  4. Hold down the “Volume Down” button as you power the phone back on.
  5. A screen should appear showing your phone’s system searching for various files. Scroll down to “recovery” and press the “Power” button.
  6. When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.
  7. From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
  8. When the screen displays “Install from sdcard complete” select “reboot system now” and wait for the phone to power back up.

I can happily say I’m upgraded and enjoying Android Froyo, thanks Google, HTC and Orange.

The best phone I’ve ever owned so far…

HTC desire

So I finally got my HTC desire from Orange.  It took a bit longer that expected due to Orange changing the upgrade process but I finally laid my hands on this sweet handset.

I was comparing it to my old HTC Touch Hd 1 which also now runs Android thanks to the amazing job the guys at Xda developers have done. Although they have sorted out the scrolling issue and started to get the bluetooth working it good to finally have a real android phone. And you can’t go wrong with the snapdragon 1ghz processor, it really makes things go along super smoothly. Some more memory would not go a miss but generally its fine.

I can honestly say this is the best phone I’ve ever had. Its so good move away from the windows mobile camp and I thought I might have to give up some of the features like the usb tethering option but its still there thankful. Theres also a ton of tethering apps which I can use if it wasn’t included. I’m so glad I switched over as this operating system is something else.  My next step is to root the phone because I want to mess with the inners of the phone a little bit. So hopefully that will be a simple task….

I know the iphone4 was out at the same time but honestly I couldn’t buy one even if it had a better resolution than any other phone on the market. I did consider other phones but to be honest there was little else on the market to consider except the sonyericsson’s and samsung’s. The iphone4 may have the better screen but to be honest its a nightmare for a user like myself. The whole iTunes integration means the phone has no chance with my current operating system (Ubuntu) and why would I lower myself to that type of integration when theres a better way? I really did put my Apple hate to the back of my mind and reviewed the iphone4 on practical grounds and it was certainly not for me.

My own grumble about the desire is the USB connection which is micro USB instead of mini USB, which means I got loads of USB mini cables which are now pretty useless. I should get a few adapter because I got so many of them and only one Micro cable. Very tiny grumble but one never a less, at least its correct with the EU regulation now.

I’m looking to hopefully sell my old Hd1 but to be honest if the price is right I’ll sell it to CEX, although the idea of selling it as a android compatible device is a little far fetched for now. Give me a shout if your interested in buying it.