Tech That!

I have long been anticipating Android 1.6 ( nicknamed Donut ) for the HTC Hero, but HTC have been unusually quiet as to how far along they have gotten. This has been quite annoying as my new piece of software for the Android requires Android >= 1.6 to work.

Today, however, HTC admitted that they will be skipping 1.6, and go straight for Android 2.0. 2.0 sports plenty of new upgrades and features, and already had its SDK released earlier this week. HTC has not made any official statement as to when we can expect this update to come, but the rumors are saying mid-November. Probably after the release of Motorola Droid – November 6th – which will be the first phone officially featuring Android 2.0.

The reason why we won’t get 2.0 straight away is that HTC’s proprietary Sense UI has to be adjusted to Éclair ( 2.0′s nickname ). Hopefully though, work started immediately after the SDK was released, and allegedly, HTC has had access to it before it was released to the public.

For updates to this, I suggest following HTC on twitter: http://twitter.com/htc

See:
http://www.gadgetvenue.com/htc-hero-android-20-10285331/
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/28/htc-confirmed-to-be-cooking-up-android-2-0-update-for-hero-othe/
http://www.androidguys.com/2009/10/28/european-htc-hero-skipping-1-6-update/

A couple of weeks ago, I came up with a great idea for a piece of software for the Android platform ( i.e. for my HTC Hero ). I have programmed quite a bit using Java before, but the Android SDK is quite complex, and frankly not entirely well-documented, so there were quite a few issues to stumble across.. Developing the whole thing took the better part of a weekend, only for me to discover that it would not work properly on Android 1.5 ( Cupcake ) which my phone uses, since I had developed it for Android 1.6 ( Donut )… In theory, there should be no relevant differences, but everything is tossed around when I run the program on my phone or a 1.5 emulator.

Rumour has it that HTC will release a new ROM for the Hero based on Donut by the end of October, so I am hoping I get to use my application then. When it has been tested in real life, I will publish another post explaining the purpose of the application and how to get it, but for now, all I will say is that it is a free application that will be a great tool when holding speeches in any setting.

I just received my brand new HTC Hero today, and full of excitement I immediately unwrapped and booted the new phone. This was a pre-update phone, so the first order of business was to update the firmware.

Since I run Windows 7, I had to follow the following workaround to properly install HTC Sync and connect my phone to the computer, but this was nothing but a minor speedbump. After pulling my contacts of the phone, I updated and rebooted the phone. There is no such thing as the smell of a newly flashed phone!

Next order of business was syncing my contact list with Facebook, something was surprisingly simple. Either you can mass-sync, or you can go through each one if you, like me, do not find the sync all button at first glance…. Then, Gmail and Twitter was soon synced, and finally, I connected my email. Everything went seamlessly, and you can easily see that HTC put a great deal of thought into their Sense UI. Furthermore, Android provides a great foundation upon which to build such a system.

The only thing I find annoying after using my phone for a day is the lack of a way to convert “Phone” contacts into “Google” contacts that are automatically synced to Gmail contacts. There is a piece of software on the Market called “ContactSync” which does exactly this, but there have been reported stability issues with the HTC Hero ( though allegedly the problem is not with the software itself, but the Google Sync software which cannot handle more than a certain number of contacts ).

To finish off; if you are considering buying a HTC Hero – do it. You will not regret!

PS: Just remember to check if a microSD card is included. It is supposed to be, but for some reason mine did not have one which disables a couple of cool features like Footprints, the Camera and downloading attachments/files from the web/email.