Archive for May, 2011
Probably flowing out of Nokia’s deal with Microsoft, Nokia has started the rebranding of its Ovi products (store, music, maps, etc) to Nokia Services. Good move I say. I never got the Ovi brand, and the company’s brand value has always been in the name Nokia.
If you are also a Samsung Galaxy Tab owner, watch out for the Android Gingerbread update that Samsung has started rolling out to Tabs. Italy was reportedly the first country to receive the over-the-air update. Maybe South Africa will be next – ha ha – probably not. If you can’t wait for Samsung, and are up to flashing your own roms, you will find them at xda-developers.com.
The Nokia N9 was announced last year as Nokia’s next flagship device running on the new MeeGo software. But then Nokia got into bed with Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 software, so the N9 apparently got canned. Now it is surfacing again, this time through a filing at the FCC, which is one of the regulatory steps phones have to go through for release in the US. As part of the filing Nokia requested the FCC to not disclose any details of the phone before 24 June 2011, which may mean that the phone will be announced by that date. Also according to the filing it will run on both CDMA and GSM networks. It is not certain that the phone will be released with MeeGo, it may instead run Windows Phone 7, but I think Nokia has already announced an E7 upgrade that will run Windows, pointing to MeeGo for the N9. MeeGo brings one thing to the party that Windows Phone 7 doesn’t – it runs on tablets also. Nokia needs a tablet OS. Check the pictures. The phone has a distinctly Apple Macbook Pro look doesn’t it?
The HTC HD2 remains one of the favourities for fiddling with. The phone launched in late 2009 as a WinMo device, with world beating hardware specs. I think it was the first 1GHz device at the time, as well as having the biggest screen at 4.3inches. Now, a year and a half later, its hardware capabilities are still very good.
Now, if you want to make your HD2 sing with the latest version of Android, namely 2.3 aka Gingerbread (Android 3.0 is out I know but is for tablets), then read on. The modding community has been working on various Android incarnations for the HD2, many of which I have experimented with, but for the first time now I think the state of the art is good enough to be used on a permanent basis. Forget about WinMo. With Android Gingerbread your HD2 will be as good, if not better, than the new HTC Desire HD. The latter is essentially an Android remake of the HD2, but runs Android 2.2 only, ha ha.
Take a deep breath and then follow these steps:
1. Backup and format the sd card in your phone.
2. Install Hard SPL (SPL3) a custom bootloader available on XDA. HSPL is required to update the radio and flash custom ROMs to the phone. It is safe to install and can be uninstalled by rerunning the program setup file.
3. Next update to a new radio. Radios and installation instructions can be found at XDA. Be sure to use a compatible version. 2.15.50.14 is a good one.
4. Install MAGLDR bootloader. MAGLDR serves as a second bootloader, which runs after HSPL, and can be used to Flash Nandroid ROMs to the HD2. Download MAGLDR from the forums at XDA.
5. To install Gingerbread on the HD2 first download any of the recent Gingerbread Nandroid ROMs from the XDA HD2 Android NAND Development forum to a PC and extract it. I recommend NexusHD2-Gingerbread V2.5 [Android2.3.3][Kernel: tytung_r8.3].Then perform a soft reset while holding down the power off button until the MAGLDR boot menu appears. Select the “USB Flasher” option and connect the HD2 to a PC using a USB cable. Once the USB connection is established run the Android installer EXE file that came with the NAND ROM to complete the installation.
And there you have it. You are now running Android Gingerbread, recently released by Google for use on the Google Nexus S. RIP Windows Mobile.
You will have to tweak some of the phone settings to get the best battery life. I use the following:
1. SetCPU changes the phone’s CPU clock speed automatically. Get the paid version from the Android Market. If you live in a country that has not yet been enabled by Google for paid apps, check this post of mine on how to enable paid apps. Pay with your credit card. Otherwise google the free version.
2. Ultimate Juice Defender, also available from the Market in paid and free guises, will switch various juice sucking features off and on, e.g. data connection, wifi.
3. Reduce the number of accounts that sync automatically, under Settings -> Accounts, or even disable automatic background sync if you are happy to manually sync your emails.
4. Set the radio to 2g only under Settings -> Mobile Networks
5. Don’t use a live wallpaper
So, after one week my Nokia E7 starting acting up. It didn’t freeze completely, but the home screen did. I could still get into the menus but could not start most apps. Soft reset made no difference. I couldn’t do a hard reset via the Settings menu or via dialling *7730#. The three button hard reset also didn’t work. I couldn’t get it connected to my pc as the pc wouldn’t see the usb connection. This left me with one solution only, take it back to Incredible Connection, from whom I bought it 7 days ago. And guess what, they swapped it, no questions asked, as it was within the 10 day period. Now I have a new one, and touch wood, it has been behaving very nicely. The E7 really is an excellent phone.
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