roms

Thinking of rooting my HTC Incredible. Hmm, which rom? Here is one I've never heard of till today.

A short list:

• Miui
• Cayanogenmod w/ unrevoked

Who names these things? 

FWIW, Jonathan has Gingerbread on his incredible.

hey android - how about fixing the volume issues

My phone does it, many other phones do it. So the problem is in android itself.

Connect your bluetooth device. Use it. Then disconnect.

Guess where your volume is set? Somewhere so loud that it sounds like you're on speaker phone - through the normal ear speaker!

People say that if you turn the volume all the way up and then down again it is fixed. Or reboot.

I say Google should fix this crap. Remember, details matter.

hey android - turn of the f*(#ing screen

The phone is an HTC Incredible. I have a blue tooth headset, a nice one.

Phone is in my pocket, I answer with headset. Phone screen unlocks and turns on. If I go to retrieve it I push something.

Hangups happen. Frustrating.

Google Reader for android: I already read that

When I click "mark all as read" I expect stuff to stay that way. Reader for Android instead remarks the items as new. Only happens on the Engadget feed....

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Get the most from your HTC Sense enabled phone

So you have a shiny new HTC Sense enabled phone (or any other recent Android phone)? Now what? Out of the box, after setting up exchange etc you'll see that the battery life is pretty poor. 

What to do? The #1 thing to do is change the update frequency of your apps. The default for exchange is to update in real time - this absolutely kills the battery. Changing that to 10 or 15 minutes fixes this. Same for twitter, facebook, weather apps etc. Extending the time between updates is the best way to get more up time from your device.

Essential apps? I'm repeating myself somewhat here, but I recommend you get :

• audio manager 
• way better than going into settings->Sound & Display
• Bonus: it is the only way to turn down the phone dialer volume (at least on the Incredible)
• battery snap
• great historical graphs of battery usage (how much did watching that video kill it?)
• realcalc - a sci/eng calculator, even has RPN mode!
• Listen - for podcasts etc
• Pandora, or whatever you use for streaming music
• y5 Battery Saver – remembers wifi spots you connect to, manages waking up wifi, looking for those spots and keeping wifi off when those hotspots aren’t available. 
• Weather Channel. Disable the HTC sense weather widget (by removing it from your home screen) and get the weather channel's app - it uses less battery, and can monitor more places more intuitively. It also has many more choices for home screen widgets. 
• Bonus: it has weather maps in motion and you can set alert levels (and the method that alert is signaled) for severe weather.
• Skyfire - an alternative browser with a neat trick for streaming Flash that the phone doesn't yet support (like comedycentral.com).
• Traffic! - I know google maps supports traffic, but last I checked it doesn't give very good details on why a place is congested and how long the travel time is through the congestion. This app does that.
• If you listen to music on the phone - get the Cubed Music Player - visually the best one I've seen. Functionally good too.
• For the best outlook experience, if you don't mind spending the money, get TouchDown.

Got one to add to this list - put it in the comments!


Update: I just got a travel app called Kayak. This app (and web site) make all the other travel sites I've used (orbitz, travel.yahoo.com etc) look like junk.

Must have Android Apps

Two weeks with Verizon's HTC Incredible.... here are some must have apps:

• audio manager 
• way better than going into settings->Sound & Display
• Bonus: it is the only way to turn down the phone dialer volume
• battery snap
• great historical graphs of battery usage (how much did watching that video kill it?)
• weather channel widget
• realcalc (sci/eng calculator)
• Listen
• Pandora

What are your must have apps? I have urban spoon, but it isn’t must have.... So, what are your top 3 or 4 must have apps?

What apps are so good you paid for?

Maximize your Verizon HTC Incredible's Battery Life

Want your Android phone, such as the HTC Droid Incredible, to be usable all day? Too much to ask? Seems like it might be - what with reports that a hardly used Verizon HTC Droid Incredible is at 50% battery capacity after just 4 hours off the charger. This contrasts sharply with Laptop Magazine's assertion that they ran the phone from 9am to 11pm with no trouble.

From the Android Forums thread on the topic, here are some things you can do (that aren't the bunk about battery charging/cycling etc):

1. Slow down widget update frequency. Stock widgets, weather widgets, twitter, facebook, email are doing what they do, keeping you informed. But you can save juice by making them update less often.
2. Lower the screen brightness manually. Auto is nice, but it is very bright most of the time.
3. Disable bluetooth and GPS.
4. Try out battery optimizing software like Power Manager. Also try WISync, Locale or Toggle Settings.  These can turn off your network radios, saving power. Some can do things like turn them off for 14 minutes then on for one minute, or according to location, time of day etc.
5. Read this guy's post on doubling his battery life.

Best post in the thread:

What is the point of having the device if everything needs to be turned off? 

Here are Most Wanted killers for battery life:

1. Sense 2.1
2. Widgets
3. 3G
4. Flash media -watch a few videos and check your battery status. No point in mentioning Flash games, since not many work correctly with touch-only anyways (no harm no foul). Should be much better with 10.1 and gpu support.
5. Pushing mail
6. Social apps running in background are killer- especially if they use GPS 

The main issue is manufacturers keep making thin devices that have to ship with wimpy batteries. I seem to also notice the main people that complain about battery life are some of the same ones that LOVE thin & light devices. Ironic.

The extended battery will be a must for anyone expecting to use many of the features.

If all else fails, get a bigger battery. Here is one that fits inside the existing battery door, adding 450 mAH over the stock battery  -  a 35% increase. (Note some say 1750 mAH is not what you get).

If you don't mind making the phone thicker, a I have seen mention of a 2150 mAh battery. I could not find a solid link to it though. Reports say is will be made available by VZW soon. These reports also claim that this battery will add about 1mm to the phone's thickness. Not bad.

HTC Incredible Simulator

Gotta try it before you pre-order it, but can't touch one yet? Try the simulator! 


Not really a simulator, but still fun to look at.

Engadget Droid Incredible review, plus it does tethering

Engadget gives the Incredible a generally very positive review. Particularly the Sense UI. They did not review:

• Tethering
• Friend view
• Footprints
• FM Radio

Here are some notable comments:

HTC has included a handful of its own widgets alongside some of the familiar stock ones which Google offers. Of course, the widgets (and their corresponding apps) which HTC offers generally offer far more functionality than Google's options, and they're also tied together with Sense in way that makes the experience of using them within the OS feel complete -- something notably missing from the Google-only experience. To say that this UI is competitive with something like iPhone OS 3.1 (or 4 for that matter), or Palm's webOS is an understatement; in many ways it's superior to what Apple and Palm are offering.

Besides just the cosmetic stuff, HTC has also done seriously heavy lifting in the details department, continuing to improve the music, video, and photo browsing options on their devices, as well as making their fantastic on-screen keyboard even better in this higher resolution version. We found finger tracking and typing speed to be considerably improved, as well as word prediction and correction. Apple, watch your back... HTC has done a damn good job of sneaking up on your tech, and maybe improving on it. We can't stress this enough: HTC has made a really good OS (Android) into a truly amazing and competitive OS.

Overall the experience with 2.1 and Sense was a complete pleasure -- using the phone felt fast and efficient. We'd like to point out that we've been running the Incredible without any third party task managers, and without manually killing any applications. Android is designed to multitask without the need for utilities of the sort, and based on Steve Jobs' words from the recent iPhone OS 4 event, we were extra curious to see how this brand new build of the software would fare. We can tell you this -- it hasn't let us down yet, and we're not seeing any sluggish behavior or force closes on apps. If this OS has a need for management of its processes, we haven't experienced it yet.

Still no official word on cost (or lack of cost) for tethering, but it is something the phone can do and Verizon is saying so publicly.

Android for Intel Atom devices spells trouble for ARM - Really?

"Android scored another victory this week, as chip-giant Intel announced at its Developer Forum in Beijing it had ported Google's OS to its Atom microproccesors, the latest move to ensure the tiny chip supports a plethora of operating systems."

via Android for Intel Atom devices spells trouble for ARM - RCR Wireless News.

Yawn, I'd be more worried if Intel came out with a ~1ghz Atom chipset that used less than 2+ watts of power

Microsoft gets it - KIN equals win

KIN is Microsoft's second new phone system this year after Windows Phone 7.

Best described by this short quote:

Windows Phone 7 is the "generic" smartphone platform to target a broad audience, Kin is for a specific subset of super-connected kids.

I think Microsoft gets it. The Facebook, MySpace, Twitter generation. They may be coming in later than Apple and Google, but their new stuff is very compelling. And the target audience is going to eat this stuff up. I bet the data plans will be cheaper too, as in less than the current $30 a month. We'll see when Verizon makes an announcement.


As for KIN itself, you can watch the UI videos on Engadget explaining how it works. If you only watch one, watch the fourth one on photo sharing. All photos are automatically backed up to the cloud - so now you don't have to worry about losing the phone or how much memory is on the phone (well not as much anyway). A great concept - I love it.

I believe KIN, along with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, will bring Microsoft's phone business back from the brink.

Snapdragon running Flash 10.1 on 3 devices with 3 different OS platforms

The Lenovo Skylight, the HTC HD2, and the Google Nexus One, each using a different OS (custom Linux, Winmobile 6.5, and Android respectively) all running Flash 10.1 on live websites. Very impressive.

Apple may not be in the Flash camp, but flash still runs many many web sites and video content. Flash will continue to do so for many years. I’m glad Snapdragon devices support it.

Bonus - the Skylight has a wireless USB mouse plugged into it. Looks great using standard equipment like that.

Google's Navigation app blows away your GPS NAV system

I had no idea that Google would use street view photos in there NAV software for Android 2.0. I like the dock and the way it automatically enters NAV mode.

But what really blows away other NAV systems is the voice recognition. Sure its staged, but if they get close to what is in the video - I’m at a loss for words. Google did some very amazing thigns with one text box interface in search. Looks like they are doing the same thing for NAV devices. Really unbelievable feature set.

He also searches for an "event" at a museum, not knowing which museum it's at. Because Android does the search in the back end at google.com it finds it. Check out the video.

Verizon store very excited about Android

A colleague of mine posted to our shared internal blog his experience at a Verizon store:

I visited a local Verizon store last night to look at phones for one of my kids. People were coming in with hopes of seeing a demo of the Droid and Android. The sales rep was very excited about Android products. He said he had six hours of training on the Droid and Android. He loves the new Android OS, “Its really fun to use!  I prefer it to WinMobile.  I believe its going to take over the market.”

Verizon will also be offering the new HTC Eris Android (MSM7600) phone for sale tomorrow. For $99 I just read!

Verizon will launch to Android phones tomorrow.  The HTC Droid Eris and the Motorla Droid. Turns out Droid on Verizon is a series of phones - not just a phone from Motorola.

Both phones feature a 528 MHz processor. The Eris’ CPU is reported to be from Qualcomm. Both will have a 5 M camera, Eris does not have a flash. Also missing from the Eris is a physical keyboard. Finally since Eris will run Andriod 1.5 it will not have 2.0’s Navigation features. What Eris does bring to the table is the HTC’s own sense UI.

Engadget has posted an un-boxing of DROID ERIS.

I gotta say, I'm excited too.

Android is coming everywhere - Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, everywhere!

Perhaps the most plausible contenders against iPhone are Google’s Android and Palm’s webOS.

Pause for a minute here - the top most talked about smart phone operating systems did not exist (as something I could buy) 3 years ago. Amazing.

What are people using these for? Take the top of the three, the iPhone. People use that for many many things - but it can be boiled down (excluding the phone feature) to, in no particular order: web, apps, music, and email/sms.

As a new contender, PC World’s David Worthington says that Droid Faces Uphill Battle Against iPhone. They don’t talk much about the phone’s hardware. They talk about the software. Telling is the discussion of iTunes:

“However, that would involve switching carriers, and would leave much of my iTunes music library orphaned. My music, video and phone are all-in-one now, and I do not want to have to carry around a separate iPod.”

Verizon’s ad campaign for Droid says “Driod does“. This means that Android does - since the HW does nothing without the SW stack on top of it.  Android does offer features in web, apps, music and email/sms. PC world is correct however, the biggest electronic seller of music is Apples iTunes and there are 30 million iPhones (or so) out there. Perhaps Qualcomm or some other group should make a seamless way to get iTunes data on their phone.

One could go the route that palm took and spoof the iPhone. Or you could champion any of the many open source projects aiming to unlock iTunes data for other devices.  Without a path from iTunes to your music playing smartphone it will be difficult to convince people to switch from iPhone.

But does any of that matter? David Worthington says:

The question is, does the average user care about things such as open development? I’m an iPhone owner, and Apple’s draconian policies don’t really affect my overall experience. There are still plenty of apps to choose from. I haven’t met too many disaffected iPhone users, probably because the user experience-while imperfect-is pretty great.

Maybe, maybe not.

Regardless of the outcome here, Android phones are exploding onto the market place. Sprint launched the Samsung Momenttoday. Also today, T-mobile brings out the Motorola CLIQ. Rachael may be officially revealed this week.

One thing is for sure, these are exciting times to be working on smartphones.

Update: HTC’s Eris will also come out this week.

Verizon Android

As I said a couple days ago, Verizon called to remind me about my new every two promotion. I told them I wanted an iPhone.

But that's not 100% true. I'd also be temped by an Android phone.

I didn't need Verizon's There's a Map for That ads to know that ATT might not work for me. My friends iPhone gets no service in my home.

So I wait - stuck on the "best network" - without a smart phone that I actually want.

That might change with Verizon announcing support for Android phones. I'm pretty excited that they might come this year!

But what are the phones? All this year there have been rumors that one will be the Motorola Sholes. At a recent press conference it seemed the two phones were revealed. Today I see that an update to customer support software at Verizon stores has been updated - it shows two Android phones. The phones are the Motorola Sholes and Calgary. The HTC phone shown at the press conference is not there. That's a shame.

In any case, whatever the phones are, I can't wait to read reviews and see these for myself. Who knows, maybe I'll get one. Here's to choices!