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Posts tagged HTC Hero
Android apps you should check out!
Jan 10th
My last few posts have all been related to the HTC Hero, so I guess I might as well keep the Android-related stuff coming. Today I’d like to talk about a few of the Android apps I use regularly. Don’t worry, this list will be short for now (I haven’t been too adventurous in the Android Market just yet)… however, I reserve the right to post my opinion on other apps in the future!
Pandora
Pandora - This was the very first app I installed when my Hero arrived. I had it on my Palm Pre and for whatever reason it bogged that phone down horribly (it was bad but still usable). Luckily Pandora performs far better on the Hero! So, for the three of you out there who aren’t familiar with it, Pandora is a free music streaming service that will automatically queue up songs it thinks you might like to hear based on some initial information you give it. As each song plays, you have the option to rate it with a thumbs up, a thumbs down, or skip it and come back later. Giving it a thumbs up tells the service that you like what you’re hearing and that you’d like to sample other music that they deem similar. For example, I started mine out with O.A.R. and after serving up some O.A.R. songs, they shifted to Dave Matthews and other artists they thought I’d like. Giving a song a thumbs down stops and removes it from your playlist forever, causing the next suggested song to queue up and start playing. If you’re not sure whether you like or hate a song and think you’d like to listen to it again sometime, just skip it and move on to the next. Overall, Pandora has done a great job of exposing me to bands that I probably would have never discovered otherwise. I do hit thumbs down now and then, but overall the service is a good judge of what I like (or maybe I’m just a sadly predictable person).
Price: Free
Pros: It’s a great way to discover new music or listen to stuff you already like without having to load your phone up with MP3’s. No commercial interruptions!
Cons: Ads! You can close them manually but they pop up again down at the bottom of the screen after every new song begins. The program is somewhat data intensive (I believe the “high quality” setting has your audio streaming at 96 Kbps, which comes out to around 40 MB per hour of music). As you probably already know, any time you’re downloading data, you’re using your phone’s radio – that means that it’s a battery killer. Best to use this app when you have AC or USB power nearby or when you’re in your car with a mobile charger. Still, even on battery power you should get several hours of streaming.
Dolphin
Dolphin Browser – The stock web browser that ships with the Hero is not bad at all but Dolphin has more features and (in my opinion) runs faster than the stock app. Some of Dolphin’s perks include pinch zoom, the ability to save photos and YouTube videos, and tabbed browsing. Definitely worth checking out.
Price: Free
Pros: Tabbed browsing, better download / file save features, seemingly faster operation than the stock browser, pinch zoom, skinnable interface, optional hand gesture interface, RSS capabilities, cool URL sharing features.
Cons: Ads! To be fair, you only see ads if you use the default homepage, when you do a search, and when you’re in the menu system. No biggie. A paid version which does away with the ads may already be in the works.
NetSentry
NetSentry - This program lets you keep track of how much data you burn through on your phone every month. If you somehow don’t have “unlimited” data from your carrier (which would be awfully foolish with a phone like the Hero), this app would be extra useful since you can set your limits in NetSentry and have it alert you when you’re getting close to them. Even with an “unlimited” data plan though, I still love being able to compare NetSentry’s numbers to what Sprint claims I’ve consumed. So far both have been within about 5 MB of each other. In addition to allowing you to keep track of your 3G usage, NetSentry can keep track of your WiFi too. I don’t really know why you’d want to do that but hey, it’s there if you need it.
Price: Free
Pros: With this app you no longer have to rely on your carrier’s potentially inflated consumption numbers. User definable alert thresholds for both 3G and WiFi, very accurate!
Cons: None to speak of; if you want to get really nitpicky, it’s always running in the background and consumes a minor amount of CPU and battery.
Facebook - It’s Facebook on your phone. What more can I say? When I first got my Hero and tried out this app, it was pretty lame. Not quite as bad as the one for the Palm Pre (which is a TOTAL joke), but still lacking a lot of basic functionality. Since then, the app has improved by leaps and bounds. The latest version has 90% of the features that the full blown website has but presents it all in a much more streamlined way. In my opinion, the Android Facebook app is on par or possibly even better than its admittedly awesome iPhone counterpart.
Price: Free
Pros: Shake to update (on the main page), almost the same level of functionality you get directly from the Facebook website.
Cons: None, other than being a little slow sometimes. It remains to be seen if that’s due to the app, the network I’m accessing it over, or slowdowns on Facebook’s end (or a combo of all three).
Speed Test
Speed Test – You’ve been to Speedtest.net before, right? Well, this app from Ookla gives you the ability to determine how well your cell connection is performing. Lots of factors will affect how fast you’re able to download or upload to the Internet; there’s radio interference issues, tower congestion (lots of other users competing for limited bandwidth), and cheapskate backhaul links (carriers love to use lame 1.5 Mbps T1 circuits to connect their towers back to the the rest of their network rather than put in more efficient ethernet connections whenever they can). This is one of the apps that I always envied on the iPhone. It’s simple, but works beautifully.
Price: Free
Pros: Works like a charm! Tons of options too. Just like Speedtest.net, you can choose which city and ISP you want to test with, you’re given a little screenshot of the results that you can share with other people online, and the app even keeps a record of all the tests you’ve ran over WiFi or 3G.
Cons: None; I have yet to experience anything negative about this app. Ookla really outdid themselves with this one.
PdaNet
PdaNet - Wow, this app could end up being the most important app you download for your phone depending on what kind of user you are. In a nutshell, PdaNet lets you tether your PC to your phone via USB or bluetooth. You can then use the phone as a modem, which can be extremely useful if you travel a lot and don’t want to pay for WiFi, and it can also come in handy when your electricity or home Internet connection goes down. The free version lets you tether via USB with no restrictions for 30 days, then after that it stops letting you use port 443. For the less technically inclined, this means you cannot access pages that use the https protocol like banks or other secure websites. If you’re a cheapskate you should be able to get around this limitation by setting up a home VPN, or you could just pony up the one time fee and get the full featured app. Just be careful though because your cell carrier thinks you should pay them even more for the privilege of using the bandwidth you’re already paying them for on your laptop instead of on your phone. In other words, don’t get their attention by torrenting stuff. Note, you don’t need PdaNet if you root your phone and install the MoDaCo ROM, which has Wifi-to-EVDO tethering built in.
Cost: Free (with some limits) or $29 for the full version.
Pros: Lets you use your laptop anywhere you have a cell connection without having to pony up extra fees to your cell carrier just to use the bandwidth you’ve already paid them for. Extremely handy when WiFi isn’t available. I’ve gotten as much as 1.5 Mbps down and 950 Kbps up, which as far as the upstream goes, is actually on par with the highest tier that my ISP at home will give me via cable modem. As an added bonus, your phone recharges itself when you tether via USB.
Cons: Can suck up lots of battery if you’re tethering via bluetooth, has the potential to get your cell carrier upset with you if you use the connection constantly, especially if you do obvious stuff like run torrents.
Seesmic
Seesmic - Twitter clients are one thing that the Android platform has plenty of. I’ve tried out my fair share of them and in my opinion, it really comes down to two apps – Seesmic or Twidroid. Both have some really nice features and honestly I’d recommend Twidroid over Seesmic if its alert system weren’t all goofed up. I’ll probably switch back to Twidroid after that gets sorted out. Anyway, Seesmic is a great app with lots of nice features. It has support for lists, tweet searches, and just a really nicely polished interface. You can do just about anything in Seesmic that you can on the Twitter website. I haven’t used the desktop version but it looks really nice too.
Cost: Free
Pros: Excellent feature set, allows you to do all your Twitter stuff on your phone instead of having to use the website or Desktop apps.
Cons: Unlike Twidroid, lacks the option to automatically start the app when the phone boots up.
Of course, with over 20,000 apps in the Android Market, there is a mind boggling amount of other stuff out there that you should check out. Even the paid apps are typically only a dollar or two, so get out there and download away! If you find something you think is especially cool, please let me know in this article’s comments section.
Got a Hero? Root that sucker!
Jan 4th
One of the things that attracted me to the Android mobile OS platform is its ability to be customized by those willing to do a little tinkering. In stock form the Hero is vastly more customizable than the Palm Pre and it goes without saying that the system is far more flexible than a pre-jailbreak iPhone, but if you want complete control over your Android device then you’ll need root access to it. What is root access? The easiest way that I can think to explain it is that root access is “God Mode” for your phone, or for that matter, any other computing platform which employs a tiered method of user permissions. But what can you do with this God Mode? Well, for starters, you can erase those lame apps that the Hero ships with (like the NFL, TrashCAR / NASCAR and Sprint TV apps) or even move your apps onto your SD card. Of course, there’s lots of other stuff you can do when you have the freedom to access any part of the system you wish but what it really all boils down to is either being content with your phone as Sprint sold it to you, or taking the reins and customizing it with your own touch.
So why all the talk about rooting today? Well, my friend William Ruckman is also a Hero owner / fanatic and he saw fit to send in the following steps to take if you’d like to gain root access to your Sprint Hero. It should be noted that rooting your phone can be potentially dangerous (worst case scenario, you screw up and brick your phone). Also, I’m not 100% clear on whether William wrote this procedure completely on his own, borrowed heavily from other resources on the web, or some combination thereof. Bill, if you’d care to clarify that for me, I’ll be happy to update this post.
Presumably this would work on a non-Sprint Hero but since we’re both Sprint users, we can’t really verify that with complete certainty.
In case you want root, do this:
Download the Android SDK to your desktop.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
Open CMD.exe (Windows) and change directory to the tools directory in the Android SDK.
Make sure your phone is set to development mode under applications, and make sure you have the Android SDK and drivers installed.
Download asroot2 to the tools directory from here:
http://code.google.com/p/flashrec/source/browse/trunk/assets/raw/asroot2
In CMD.exe type:
———————–
adb push asroot2 /data/local/adb shell
cd /data/local
chmod 0755 asroot2
./asroot2 /system/bin/sh
mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/bin
cat sh > su
chmod 0755 su
chown root.shell su
exit
exit
———————–ROOTED!
Just copy a file and run the commands above! No installing, no flashing custom ROMs, no worries about bricking your phone!
Give it a restart and enjoy.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me, but again, proceed with caution. I know he says “no worries about bricking your phone” but don’t complain to me if you goof something up and your phone stops working, your boss fires you, your daughter becomes pregnant, the bank repossesses your farm, aliens invade, or the Mona Lisa disappears.
For those of you that would like to give Bill a shout to thank him or shoot him a question about this procedure, you can do so by stopping by his website.
Thanks again for the heads up, amigo!
Update: Bill wrote in to update me on the genesis of this procedure:
About 70% of the procedure I came up with. The rest I got from various forums. However, I found the exact same procedure after the fact in the XDA forum. The asroot2 binary is the key, the rest is just Linux basics.
So there you have it – proof that great minds think alike!
YouTube on the HTC Hero – what gives?
Dec 26th
Sprint's HTC Hero
I’ve been enjoying my HTC Hero immensely since I got it earlier this month, but having said that, it hasn’t been a completely problem-free ride. One complaint that’s cropped up so far is that I’ve been experiencing problems watching videos via the kickass YouTube application that the Hero ships with. At first, the app worked perfectly; I could stream all the videos of newlyweds dancing to the altar or Geordi requesting apple juice clips to my heart’s content in either standard or high res, via EVDO or WiFi. Everything ran great! Then, as of about a week ago, I started getting intermittent error messages stating “Sorry, this video cannot be played”, even on videos that had worked before (like my own). Initially I dismissed it as a problem with YouTube not being able to serve up the video stream but when a few hours (and then a few days) passed with the message still popping up, I decided to research and experiment a little to see if I could pinpoint the exact cause of the problem.
To date, this is what I’ve learned:
EVDO
- It’s very rare not to get the “Sorry, video cannot be played” message now.
- When a video does play, opening the menu and then selecting “Watch in high quality” leads to the failure message 100% of the time.
- Selecting the same video over and over sometimes works. For example, I repeatedly selected a Christmas themed LEGO movie featured on the main page of the YouTube app, resulting in the fail message. On the 9th try, it played without any problems. I then paused it and selected the “Watch in high quality” option and immediately got the fail message.
WiFi
- Most videos fail to play the first time, but I can generally get them to work after a couple attempts. Occasionally a video will load right off the bat. All in all, WiFi seems to be much more consistent than EVDO.
All EVDO testing was done with two or more EVDO signal bars in different parts of the country (thereby eliminating the possibility of local tower / backhaul congestion). WiFi tests were conducted via five different ISP’s – three in Ohio, and two in Florida.
I've gotten pretty used to seeing this now.
In researching this issue online, I’ve found that I’m not the only one having trouble with the YouTube app. The frustrating thing about it though is that two other friends with Sprint HTC Hero’s can watch any YouTube videos they want without any trouble whatsoever. Given that this doesn’t affect everyone, it would be difficult to pin the blame on Google / YouTube; likewise, some folks online have theorized that this is Sprint’s way of trying to cut bandwidth usage but that also doesn’t seem like a very plausible explanation because again, the problem does not affect all Hero users. Another important point to take into consideration is that it doesn’t seem to matter if your phone is modded or completely stock. My own Hero has not been rooted, so it’s running the stock Android 1.5 ROM that all new handsets are shipping out with (version 1.56.651.2). Some Hero owners have reported that removing the SD card, rebooting, and then replacing the SD card seems to clear up the YouTube problem. I tried this but it had no effect for me. Another user pointed out that (s)he has better luck when accessing videos in landscape mode vs. portrait mode. As with the previous tip, trying this made no difference with my phone’s symptoms. Still, other users have reported that using YouTube Mobile works, but that also fails for me regardless of whether I’m on WiFi or EVDO, or whether I select the YouTube app or HTC’s Flash Player when prompted. Suspecting that one of the Android Market apps that I’ve downloaded may be partly to blame, I did a complete factory reset of my Hero and made another attempt to watch YouTube videos while everything was in 100% stock condition. Sadly, this still had no affect.
I’m continuing to keep an eye on forums and message boards but it still looks like this is a widespread problem without much in the way of a fix just yet. The more people that report the problem though, the more likely it is that Sprint, HTC, and YouTube will take steps to investigate. Not being able to watch YouTube on my phone certainly isn’t a huge deal and even if the problem persists for a while, it won’t do much to sour my opinion of the Hero or Android in general. Who knows, maybe the impending Hero software update (Android OS 2.1) will be the magic fix. Until then, I’ll continue enjoying the other aspects of this kickass phone… which still beats the pants off the Palm Pre.
Update, 12.27.2009 – I spoke with one of the friends I mentioned up top that has a Hero but was not experiencing problems streaming from YouTube. It turns out that now he is in fact unable to watch anything via EVDO too, so this issue seems to be spreading. I personally believe it to be a software bug with the app itself, but I’ve started hearing unconfirmed rumors that Palm Pre users are also having problems with YouTube. Is this a coincidence, or is something afoot?
Update, 1.6.2010 – Cellular South user “RV” wrote in to let me know that he is experiencing the same YouTube problems on his Hero too. Between that and reports of this affecting VZ’s Eris users, my theory that this is either a server-side problem with YouTube or a software problem with the app itself seems more and more likely. I’m still leaning towards the problem stemming from a glitch in the app though.
Update, 1.7.2010 – I was able to confirm that YouTube videos will not work via EVDO on the brand new VZ Eris that another friend purchased today. At this point I don’t know anyone with a Hero or Eris that isn’t having at least partial failure when trying to stream video from YouTube.
Update, 1.10.2010 – As of today, I am running the custom MoDaCo ROM on my Hero and the YouTube app still doesn’t work (not that I thought it would).
…
Do you have a Hero and want to share your experiences using the stock YouTube app with the rest of the Interwebs? Well, what are you waiting for?! Leave a comment, sucka!