27 September, 2010 in Personal by Aonghas

Review: Froyo on HTC Legend

Ever since I got my new HTC Legend earlier this year, I’ve been somewhat satisfied with its performance running the stock Android Eclair 2.1 operating system with HTC Sense. What I liked about HTC Sense the most was its ability to integrate the phone’s contacts with Facebook contacts, which meant the contacts dynamically updated when they posted new photos on Facebook or updated their status.

HTC Sense had quite a tight integration with the core Android operating system (you can read about it elsewhere online) but a slight noticeable lag started creeping in after text messages piled up (in excess of 15000+ text messages) and after the contacts disk space size increased. Since applications could only be installed on the phone’s internal memory, the “Low Space” notification was almost always a problem since I could no longer update existing applications, let alone install new apps. Live wallpapers were also disabled for the Legend, possibly due to the fact HTC thought they would slow the phone down. Furthermore, the most annoying problem I quickly discovered on the Legend was its audio/video synchronisation issues during video playback (I’m sure all you other Legend owners know what I’m talking about).  The audio and video was always approximately 0.6 seconds out of sync both during local video and online videos such as Youtube. This problem was particularly frustrating during videos involving speech because the lips were never in sync.

When Google announced and subsequently released the next version of Android, Froyo 2.2, I was excited to see if HTC was going to update the Legend with the new system. After some intial doubts, it looked apparent that the Legend was in fact going to get the update to 2.2 as well, which was nice to know. Then the wait started. Originally HTC said they would start releasing 2.2 updates for the 2010 models in the third quarter of this year. I found myself checking the news everyday but to no avail. That’s when I started looking into the possibility of “rooting” my phone. The process of “rooting” a smartphone is analogous to “jailbreaking” an iPod/iPhone. Basically it allows the user to install custom ROMs on to the phone, so I could then flash my phone (wipe the current system) with a Froyo ROM, before HTC released the official update for the Legend. I tried to resist the urge to root my phone at first, but as days turned to weeks, and then to months, I finally cracked and decided to take the risk.

I must say it was pretty scary at first. I didn’t really know what I was doing and I was trusting the online tutorial to walk me through the whole process. I won’t go into detail about the actual rooting process (you can read about it here) but it turned out to not be that daunting. You just have to follow the instructions really carefully. And it’s important to backup everything on your phone first too! There were a few other technical difficulties I had since my phone’s current firmware version was newer than that specified in the tutorial, so I had to flash my phone to an earlier ROM before I could continue with the process. It’s also a bit nerve-racking when your phone’s screen turns into a DOS-like command prompt with text scrolling up the screen.

HTC Legend running Froyo 2.2

After a near-sleepless night, I finally made a breakthrough and my phone finally launched into a new environment – Android Froyo 2.2! I installed the Azure-1.0.1/CyanogenMod-6.0.0-Legend mod since it seemed to have quite a lot of features and seemed to be quite popular in online forums I read. The first thing I noticed when I booted the phone was the custom Cyanogen boot animation that replaced the standard HTC one. I thought I might try to change that in future but for now it’s not a biggie. I didn’t know how I’d feel without HTC Sense on top of the Android system but after tinkering with the phone for a while, I think I’m starting to prefer the phone without HTC Sense.

The phone is now noticeably faster and live wallpapers are available. All the apps in the market that require root access (such as screen capture apps) can now be downloaded too and the apps can be moved to the SD card to save more space in the internal memory. All the updates in the Android Market can now be performed in one click. The only real disadvantages I’ve found since upgrading to 2.2 is the absence of Adobe Flash player and the FM radio (which is supposedly proprietary HTC code). Other than that, everything works flawlessly. The animations are all smooth and the phone no longer feels weighed down by HTC Sense (not that Sense reduced the performance terribly). The contacts open quickly and still integrate with Facebook though you no longer have the thumb tabs at the bottom. Being able to move apps to the SD card is a godsend, because now I can install so much more than I could before. The only problem is that when you mount the phone via USB to a computer all your apps installed on the SD card become unusable. There are heaps of little modifications you can make including screen colour tinting and a raft of other nifty features like a torch application that doubles as a strobe light. Hopefully there will be a fix for the missing Flash player (you can still watch Youtube videos though) but I think the decision to root my phone was definitely worthwhile! Oh and by the way, YES the audio/video sync problem is fixed now!

Feel free to ask me anything about my new configuration or if you want any specific screenshots!

More screenshots coming soon.

31 July, 2010 in Development, Update, Website by Aonghas

The Official Re-opening of AONGHAS.COM

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to my renovated and restored website. It has been exactly two years since my last major update; many of you will remember the midnight launch on 31st July 2008. Over the last four months I have been working hard to revamp and upgrade many features on my website and I apologise for website being down during this time. Much of the code has been re-worked from scratch, including some of the layout methods and graphics. Some of the major changes in this launch include:

• A new wider design layout, increased from 800px to 1024px
• Re-designed headers and page titles
• Dynamically updated home page
• New Contact page using AJAX
• Links page with automatically updating RSS feeds
• Remodelled full-featured multimedia Gallery including photos and videos
• Custom image animations with FancyBox
• The official launch of the AONGHAS.COM Store
• Detailed About Me page (still growing)
• Related posts fetches other similar posts when viewing a single blog entry
• New footer area with useful links and calendar with upcoming events
• Dynamic sidebar with page-sensitive content

There are still minor changes I need to work on, but I hope you enjoy having a look around the site. Let me know if you find any bugs or errors so I can try to fix them up. And before you go, make sure to leave a comment on my guestbook!