Living with the HTC Hero

Why I wont be buying another android handset…

frontieruk — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:55:14 +0000

Why I wont be buying another android handset… direct from the manufacturer again. With Google selling handsets which always carry the cutting edge of android tech and receive OTA updates, being stuck with a manufacturers vision of android ala sense or motoblur while the main platform moves on is just plain unappealing. As a Hero owner it’s happened once already that we missed a platform update, and as Froyo is being frosted as we wait for HTC to bring us Eclair we’re going to be a build behind again.

Brian Swetland, Android’s Kernel guru mentioned that Gingerbread has been chosen as the name for the build following Froyo, meaning work for it is being planned, I can see Hero owners being left behind again, as will Legend etc owners, so sorry HTC as nice as sense is, I’d rather be rocking the latest build of Android than have a few nice widgets that others have copied and improved on.

quick rant

frontieruk — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:42:32 +0000

Why the **** ****etty **** **** **** does the Hero insist on losing it’s Scenes on swapping of SIMS??? I understand it dropping back to default incase it was a different user but it should still have the user defined ones available FU HTC.

Quick post while I get around to the next 5… Honest!

frontieruk — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:23:31 +0000

Strange but true fact, going to Settings / Locale and Text / Touch Input / Text Input and turning off Sound feedback and Vibrate when typing improves the responsiveness of typing on the Hero.

Hopefully HTC are aware of this and improve it when the finally release an update for the Hero, which will hopefully be this side of Armageddon.

The problem with Text Messaging on the Hero pt.2

frontieruk — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:02:02 +0000

Ok I’ll admit I’ve slacked off a bit… Well ok ALOT, but I’m still living with my HTC Hero, and I’m still bugged with the complete lack of foresight by HTC to time stamp text messages, there are fortunately alternatives to HTC’s SMS solution.

There are solutions such as that offered by FlyScreen, for those who don’t know Flyscreen replaces the android handsets lockscreen and through what I can only believe to be voodoo adds live feeds such as twitter or your text messages on it, you can interact with those feeds by ‘smiling.

Let me explain, when you touch the screen to use a feature it gains a ‘smile’ which acts as a lock, dragging you finger from the left to the right of the smile unlocks the feeds to interact with, this app as already mentioned has a sms solution (widget) built in, so you can see a message from your lockscreen and respond, you are able to scroll through all your received texts and they are all date and time stamped, but it’s here that the widget falls over in my opinion, longer texts get cut off on the screen and there is no way to interact with them to read the whole message, also not being able to see what a message was in response to can be a problem if like myself you never bother to delete a message ever. The app is a simple solution to my original gripe with the Hero, and for the things that it is capable of doing as well I’d still recommend downloading the app and giving it a try.

There are a lot of more involved solutions but I’ll suggest two free options… ChompSMS and Handcent, both of which you can use as a complete replacement to the SMS frontend provided by HTC.

ChompSMS (Review here) and Handcent (Review here) both offer a level of control over your messages that HTC took from you with their SMS implementation, both allow you to theme your sms inbox to look like the Iphones (but why anyone would want to have those stupid plastic childish looking bubbles is beyond me) and control text size and colour, Handcent has a few more themes and allowed for a more business styled look but with the transparency options for background colours allowed for a backdrop image which was a nice idea. But overall they are both pretty even for features and they both TIMESTAMP messages.

To use them install as you normally would an app and then replace your message shortcut on your scene with a shortcut to the app, if you normally reply from the HTC SMS widget don’t fear, if you’ve started the app you installed clicking on the HTC SMS widget to reply toa message will bring a pop up asking which app to launch just click always use this selection and choose the one you’ve installed (if you uninstall the app it’ll default back to HTC message app), voila time stamped SMS you’ll probably want to spend some time setting the themes of either app as they both default to Iphone bubbles pfft.

Missed Calls grrrrrr

frontieruk — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:05:45 +0000

Ok I missed a call this evening, when my phone was just next to me, kind of annoyed I then rang myself with my other phone and found after taking in network connection times I have ~10 seconds to answer! WTF!

Anyway I went perusing the handset settings and couldn’t find anything to change it (did find under Call Settings / Call Forwarding the number that I needed for the following guide), anyway not settling for that I did a search for a solution and stumbled onto this guide over at IluvAndroid which I tried and it worked so I’ve copied here :-

This is a guide to easily change the time before your mobile diverts the call to voicemail from anything from 5 to 30 seconds.

Just follow these steps:

Enter *#61*11# and press Send/Talk on your phone.
Write down the number your calls are currently forwarded to. This is your voicemail deposit number.
Decide how long you want the phone to ring in 5 second intervals. The maximum time is 30 seconds. I have mine set at 25 seconds.
Now enter **61*[number from step 2]*11*[number from step 3, use 2 digits]# and press Send/Talk.

Example: **61*441234567890*11*25# Then press Send/Talk

This will now change your default ring time before voicemail answers to 25 seconds. To test if it was successful, enter *#61*11# and press Send/Talk for the new value.

So thanks to the guys over at IluvAndroid for this pro tip! I’m sure popping over there you’ll find more cool Android related news and features.

Easy market access

frontieruk — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:10:16 +0000

Another short post today :-

If like me you find searching the Android market from the handset a chore, help is at hand in the form of http://www.cyrket.com/ yes search from the luxury of your PC, but can I suggest before going you take one last venture into the market from the handset to download Barcode Scanner by ZXin Team as this will make using Cyrket even easier as you can just scan the QR barcode from your monitor and get the app that way.

Pro Tip :- Gmail failing to sync

frontieruk — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:58:05 +0000

Ok I recently had an issue with gmail not syncing, I was getting notified of new emails but the app was refusing to load any new email, tho it showed that there was new messages for me.

A quick browse to Settings / Data Synchronization / Google showed a red exclamation mark with the message ‘Sync is experiencing probles, it’ll be back soon’ I left it for 6hrs and it didn’t improve.

I resolved the problem by going to Settings / Applications / Manage Applications / Gmail and clicked ‘clear data’

Open Gmail, pres Menu, then refresh Gmail starts to resync and all was good in the world.

Hope this helps some ppl

The problem with Text Messaging on the Hero

frontieruk — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:08:29 +0000

So it’s time to air a grievance I have with the HTC Hero, one that has bugged me since I have had the handset, it doesn’t time stamp a text message after a few hours, for someone who needs to know when a message came through it’s a complete nightmare, especially after the care that HTC have lavished on the call history as shown in the images below :-

view contact details

call details per contact.

As you can see for the call history you can view each call, how many days ago the call was made / received, and at what time the call was made (also the duration), this is excellent as you get to refer back and see when you made plans etc.

Now compare that to the Message Centre :-

Once you get to the message details all you see is the date the message was received on, which is actually shown in the message, the only extra detail that gets added is the number it came from, but who really cares about that when the number is in your contacts?

Perhaps my role is a bit odd in that it requires things like that to be noted, but when the Hero does everything else so (almost) right this seems a huge oversight.

App review : My Tracks

frontieruk — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:37:27 +0000

My Tracks is possibly crack cocaine for fitness freaks and geeks alike, it isn’t flashy, doesn’t do anything special it just tracks routes that you take while you exercise (it assumes exercise but you could use it to see what someone did that day if you turned it on for them… Just saying). So why is it like cocaine you ask? Well it’s because those geeks at Google (my tracks being a 20% project) have packed the app full of stats!

stats of my bike ride to work

As you can see there are figures galore, distances, speeds everything that a geek could want to get from a phone all worked out from the GPS, and for the fitness freak, targets to aim for and improve upon, the app is even polite enough to offer to upload the details to Google Docs, which by the looks of it allows you to separate data via the activity not by the route (something that would be cooler imho) but anyway here’s a grab of the Docs format :-

: Stats for my bike rides

As you can see my route to work is shorter and a fair bit quicker (mainly cos it’s downhill… mostly) the route I take home is more scenic route and a less steep incline back up to my hilltop residence, anyway I’m loving this app, just as I can get a proper look at how I improve as I ride to work more frequently or the opposite as the weather degrades

To Install Manually:

Go to the “Market” on your Android phone
Select “Search”
Enter “my tracks” in the search field
Once you’ve found the My Tracks application, select it to install
Follow the installation instructions

Or if you have Barcode Scanner:

1. Scan this :-

Link to My Tracks on the Market

A quick brief

frontieruk — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:40:36 +0000

So it’s been a month since the release of the HTC Hero, and overall it recieved a positive vibe, but with comments such as ‘Tragically flawed’ because of the Sense interface suffering from lag (which was quite harsh it didn’t make the phone unuseable and there are definately other flaws that are worse), I thought I’d start writing about my experiences with the handset.

This is going to be my little corner of the intarwebs to talk about the Hero and android in general, it’s not going to be updated on a daily basis as I’m far to lazy for that but it will recieve regular updates as I find things I like and things I’m not so happy about with the Hero.

I may even find the time to write up reviews of apps that I install, and reasons why I have them installed, and perhaps some tips and tricks I’ve found out about during my time with the Hero.