At the end of last year my HTC Desire HD got its firmware upgrade to the new version of HTC Sense - the same version that the HTC Sensation is running.
At the time I thought it was quite cool, having shortcuts on the lock screen is great and the new eye candy looks pretty nice too.
But there were some very unwelcome changes with this new version too... lag and poor battery life!
I generally keep my phone on charge at work, so I didn't think this would bother me, but it got so bad that if I went out after work, by the time I got home it was flat (from 6pm to later that night). Even swiping between home screens would lag! So I figured it was time for a new phone, but in the meantime I thought I may as well experiment with rooting and other OS's.
To root the Desire HD is quite simple. The first thing to do is go get the "Advanced Ace Hack Kit" from the XDA Forums. In the zip file is all the tools you need to run the hack and most importantly, the aptly named "effen-manual.html", which is very important!
The manual explains everything you need to know, but the first step is checking that the version of android that you are running can be exploited.
I had software version 3.12.405.1, which judging by the effen manual, the hack tool can automatically downgrade to version 2.50.405.2 where there exists a flaw that can be exploited to give you root access.
Keep in mind that doing this will wipe your phone, so backup everything.
The effen manual also explains how to setup your computer to enable the hack tool to work properly. There are very few steps for linux which was great!
If you follow the instructions correctly, you will then have a stock standard install of an older version of HTC Sense. There are some advantages to having root access such as apps like titanium backup, ad blockers, etc. but the real fun comes from installing new Android ROMs.
I looked at 2 third party ROMs, the first was Cyanogen Mod and the second was Android Revolution.
Android Revolution looks pretty good. Visually it looks and behaves just like HTC Sense but they have made lots of improvements under the hood which in turn increases performance and battery life. As good as this looked, I haven't actually tried this option yet. Instead, I opted to go for a bigger change of scenery and give Cyanogen Mod a go.
Cyanogen Mod does not look like HTC Sense at all. Instead it is based on stock standard Android 2.3. They have then implemented a slew of changes that come as default, such as an audio equaliser, ADWLauncher, the super-user app, a completely customisable button widget in the notification bar, customizable lock screens and a pretty cool torch app that lets you over charge the LEDs for super brightness!
This mod also lets you overclock the hardware, put limiters in place and lots of other options I was not used to seeing in the HTC Sense ROM.
The 2 most important advantages of this change are that the UI is now quick and responsive again, I now have complete control over which effects are used and things like how long the animations should last, etc. and I have the best battery life I've ever had with this phone - I can now use the phone pretty heavily all day without needing a charge until I go to bed!
Very happy with it now and it should keep me tied over until the Samsung Galaxy SIII is released :)
Spam defence
For quite a long time I used to use Yahoo! Mail.
Even though I was lucky enough to get an invite for Gmail in its early stages, Yahoo! Mail had (IMO) one killer feature: Address Guard
The idea behind Address Guard was simple, you make your primary email address, say john.smith@yahoo.com, and then a secondary "base name", such as johno007.
This base name was not just another email address, infact all mail sent to johno007@yahoo.com would get dropped.
Instead, use that base name to create an unlimited number of "disposable addresses", such as johno007-facebook@yahoo.com, etc.
The idea was that if you follow the simple 3 click process (settings -> addressGaurd -> add new address!) to create a new disposable email address every time you signed up for a new website, if ever they spammed you, you simply delete that address and they wont be able to bother you any more - brilliant!
I avoided Gmail because they didn't have the same "whitelist" approach to email addresses, but when I bought my domain name and started using Google Apps for email, I decided to use Gmail as my primary email provider.
Naturally this forced me to look for a similar way to defend again spam (albeit Gmails spam filtering is quite good).
Google Apps provides "nicknames", which works in much the same way, you can have an unlimited number of aliases for an account, except the process was a bit longer (settings -> manage domain -> users -> Your user -> Add a nickname) and I got too lazy for that after a little while.
I still use nicknames for certain things, but not for every website I sign up for.
That's when I discovered the + symbol in Gmail. Unlike Yahoo! Mail that uses the "whitelist" approach (only addresses you created will accept mail), you can use Gmail with a "blacklist" approach (all addresses accept mail unless you block them).
Assume your email address is john.smith@gmail.com, you can append a + and then any (valid) characters you like to the end, such as john.smith+facebook@gmail.com and it will still get delivered.
If some rogue website starts sending spam to john.smith+dodgysite@gmail.com, then you can go into the Gmail settings and setup a filter to delete all mail that is sent to: john.smith+dodgysite@gmail.com.
I don't think it's quite as nice as Address Guard, but it is a bit more convenient because there is no set up. The biggest downside is that quite a few websites consider an email address to be invalid if it has a + symbol in it, but most are fine.
Even though I was lucky enough to get an invite for Gmail in its early stages, Yahoo! Mail had (IMO) one killer feature: Address Guard
The idea behind Address Guard was simple, you make your primary email address, say john.smith@yahoo.com, and then a secondary "base name", such as johno007.
This base name was not just another email address, infact all mail sent to johno007@yahoo.com would get dropped.
Instead, use that base name to create an unlimited number of "disposable addresses", such as johno007-facebook@yahoo.com, etc.
The idea was that if you follow the simple 3 click process (settings -> addressGaurd -> add new address!) to create a new disposable email address every time you signed up for a new website, if ever they spammed you, you simply delete that address and they wont be able to bother you any more - brilliant!
I avoided Gmail because they didn't have the same "whitelist" approach to email addresses, but when I bought my domain name and started using Google Apps for email, I decided to use Gmail as my primary email provider.
Naturally this forced me to look for a similar way to defend again spam (albeit Gmails spam filtering is quite good).
Google Apps provides "nicknames", which works in much the same way, you can have an unlimited number of aliases for an account, except the process was a bit longer (settings -> manage domain -> users -> Your user -> Add a nickname) and I got too lazy for that after a little while.
I still use nicknames for certain things, but not for every website I sign up for.
That's when I discovered the + symbol in Gmail. Unlike Yahoo! Mail that uses the "whitelist" approach (only addresses you created will accept mail), you can use Gmail with a "blacklist" approach (all addresses accept mail unless you block them).
Assume your email address is john.smith@gmail.com, you can append a + and then any (valid) characters you like to the end, such as john.smith+facebook@gmail.com and it will still get delivered.
If some rogue website starts sending spam to john.smith+dodgysite@gmail.com, then you can go into the Gmail settings and setup a filter to delete all mail that is sent to: john.smith+dodgysite@gmail.com.
I don't think it's quite as nice as Address Guard, but it is a bit more convenient because there is no set up. The biggest downside is that quite a few websites consider an email address to be invalid if it has a + symbol in it, but most are fine.
XKCD + BeyondPod
On my Android phone, I use an app called "BeyondPod".
BeyondPod is great because unlike Google Reader and Pulse (which are other great RSS readers), BeyondPod will download video and audio podcasts on a schedule.
What this means for me, is that at 2:30 AM, my phone will use my home ADSL2's off-peak downloads and fetch a bunch of regular podcasts so when I wake up and make my way into work, I will have all the latest episodes of my favourite shows to watch and listen to on the train.
One of the feeds that I'm subscribed to is XKCD. If you look at the comics online, you probably already know that if hover your mouse over the image, you get to see an extra message about the comic.
On Google Reader, you can tap and hold the image and use the menu to get to the tooltip, but with BeyondPod, there is no such option.
This means that the tooltip is actually included in the feed, so I thought it would be pretty easy to write a little proxy that pulls out the "title=" attribute and appends it to the body.
Before I started coding, I thought that surely someone would have already done this, so after a quick Google search I came across a Yahoo! Pipe from "Benjamin Cook" that does exactly that.
Ben's Pipe appends a "<br />" and then the tooltip, but the "<br />" seems to be getting escaped, so I copied the pipe and removed the "<br />" and the end result was exactly what I wanted.
If you have a similar problem, you can add my version of the pipe to your reader and here's what it'll look like:
BeyondPod is great because unlike Google Reader and Pulse (which are other great RSS readers), BeyondPod will download video and audio podcasts on a schedule.
What this means for me, is that at 2:30 AM, my phone will use my home ADSL2's off-peak downloads and fetch a bunch of regular podcasts so when I wake up and make my way into work, I will have all the latest episodes of my favourite shows to watch and listen to on the train.
One of the feeds that I'm subscribed to is XKCD. If you look at the comics online, you probably already know that if hover your mouse over the image, you get to see an extra message about the comic.
On Google Reader, you can tap and hold the image and use the menu to get to the tooltip, but with BeyondPod, there is no such option.
This means that the tooltip is actually included in the feed, so I thought it would be pretty easy to write a little proxy that pulls out the "title=" attribute and appends it to the body.
Before I started coding, I thought that surely someone would have already done this, so after a quick Google search I came across a Yahoo! Pipe from "Benjamin Cook" that does exactly that.
Ben's Pipe appends a "<br />" and then the tooltip, but the "<br />" seems to be getting escaped, so I copied the pipe and removed the "<br />" and the end result was exactly what I wanted.
If you have a similar problem, you can add my version of the pipe to your reader and here's what it'll look like:
