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

Yes, I know Symbian is not nearly as good as iOS or Android, and yes I know I have slagged off the N8 in previous posts. But man the E7 is an awesome piece of hardware. Forget about Apple, forget about HTC, forget about Samsung, forget about Motorola, forget about SonyE. Those okes build boring phones. Nokia’s hardware design rules. The hardware is so good that it makes up for the software. And I don’t know what Nokia has done to achieve it, but Symbian runs and feels better on the E7 than the N8.

I bought mine at Incredible Connection (yes it is freely available in SA) and as soon as the sales person removed the phone from its box, I desired it. It is large and sleek and shiny in an understated classy way thanks to the aluminium casing. The edges are round and smooth, which makes a welcome change from the sharp iPhone 4 edges. The 4 inch screen, an AMOLED capacitive touch screen with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, is beautifully bright with deep colours, and the 4 inch size hits the sweet spot for me. The 3-5 inches of the N8 is too small for me, ditto for the iPhone’s screen. You can get a 4.3 inch screen on some Androids these days but that results in too big a phone for my liking. 4 inches is perfect. You will notice the difference when you read a PDF using the bundled Adobe PDF reader. On the E7 you can read a page without having to scroll from left to right, while on the N8 the smaller screen size means you have to zoom and scroll, which makes it a very frustrating experience.

The E7 has 5 stylish buttons, the usual power button on the top, a volume rocker switch on the right, the menu key on the front face, a camera button and the screen lock slider button on the left. The slider button has gained cool features. You can associate specific phone functions with the switch, and if you slide and hold it down for a second or so, the phone’s camera flash light turns on and you can use the phone as a flashlight. Pretty cool.

The camera is flush with the phone, unlike the N8′s one which sticks out. It is an 8MP affair, versus the N8′s 12MP, but 8MP is still industry leading compared with the iPhone and most Androids out there, which tend to use 5MP. The E7 takes good pictures, having a flash is great, and the dedicated camera button is the cherry on top. I see there is some photo and video editing software on the phone also.

When you have finished drooling over the beautifully crafted exterior of the E7, slide it open. Maybe slide is not the right expression, it more likes, jumps open. The screen mechanism is spring loaded and the screen opens up at an angle. The mechanism feels very well made and solid. So does the keyboard it reveals. Nokia has outdone themselves with this keyboard. It is large with 4 rows and well spaced keys. It even has arrow buttons to move the cursor around with. Typing on this phone is joy, and yes I know you can type fast on the iPhone, but you do not, can not, get the physical tactile pleasure offered up by the E7′s keyboard.

And then there is the HDMI output. Very cool. Lets you plug your phone into your TV and play movies from your phone directly on your TV. Of course it is a drag having to copy the movie on to the phone first, so Nokia equipped this phone (and the N8) with USB-on-the-go technology. So don’t copy the movie on to the phone, simply stick a USB memory stick containing the movie into the phone and off you go. When I tried the HDMI movie playing business on the N8 I wasn’t that impressed as the N8 didn’t support enough video formats to my liking, e.g. it couldn’t handle XViD (which my Samsung Galaxy S could by the way). Hopefully the E7′s can do better.

Some other cool hardware features on the E7 include a SIM card slot in the side, non-removable battery, no back panel to slide off, compass, accelerometer, and of course it is a quad band phone, which means it will work pretty much everywhere in the world, even in the US. And of course as you would expect, call quality is good.

Ok, so I guess I can’t ignore the elephant in the room any longer. I have to say something about the software on the phone. As you probably know Nokia has ditched Symbian as its top-end OS in favour of Windows Phone 7, and you can see why. Don’t get me wrong, Symbian is not a bad phone OS – it even has proper multi-tasking – but the interface is old and clunky compared with iOS and Android. And there are few apps, a situation that will worsen now that Nokia has ditched Symbian. For example using the iPhone I can control my Crestron home automation system using an app from Crestron, I can control all the TVs in my house using an app called Plugplayer which connects DLNA compatible media sources to media players. The list goes on. Try finding similar apps that will run on the Nokia. Good luck.

I can’t wait for Nokia to bring out an E7 running Microsoft Windows Phone 7. It will be fantastic. In the meantime, I am using the Symbian E7. I will run the Crestron and Plugplayer apps on my iPad and use my iPhone as an iPod.

Not to be outdone by HP, HTC launched 5 new phones today and one tablet. The tablet is a 7inch Android device a-la Galaxy Tab with one party trick – it comes with a special stylus that works on its capacitive screen. Should be cool for those who want to write on their tablets. It is called the HTC Flyer.

Among the 5 phones there are two that are interesting. The ChaCha and the Salsa each have a Facebook button on the front. These are the first of the so-called Facebook phones that Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about. The royal blue button is context aware with a pulsating light surrounding it any time there is an opportunity to share whatever you are doing on the phone through Facebook. For example, take a picture, press the Facebook and the picture is uploaded. The Facebook junkies are going to like these phones.

While the Salsa looks similar to the usual Android formfactor the ChaCha has a Blackberry formfactor with a dedicated keyboard.

To top it off HP simultaneously announced they are going to ship all of their PCs with WebOS pre-installed! Instead of Windows! Bad news for Microsoft, as HP is one of the largest pc manufacturers in the world and has been a Windows faithful for many years. But good news for WebOS, as more devices means more incentive for developers to build apps for WebOS. To make development for the various WebOS devices easy, HP also announced a new developer toolkit which will enable development of WebOS apps that are screen resolution agnostic, i.e. the same app will work on WebOS phones, tablets and PCs. Way to go HP.

Anyway, the full text of the press release appears below the picture, courtesy of Engadget. I doubt that South Africa is included in the ‘select markets’, but the Nokia faithful will hope nevertheless.

The press release contains no mention of Lotus Notes Traveler, so stay away if you are a corporate Notes user.

The press release from Nokia:

All-in-one business smartphone, the Nokia E7, arrives in stores

The new arrival offers drive or walk navigation in 80 countries. The latest commercial version of Ovi Maps, available immediately via Ovi Store or Ovi Suite, adds visibility to subways, trams and trains, real-time traffic, safety alerts, visibility to parking and petrol stations, speed limit warnings, and improved search and location sharing capabilities.

I wasn’t surprised when the phone prompted me for a code to unlock it. My supplier, CA-Cellular, warned me that the phone was locked to Verizon, and that they will email me the unlock code. When the code arrived a day later, I was however surprised when entering it failed to unlock the phone. A few email exchanges later I received another code from my supplier, which also didn’t work. I then bought my own unlock codes through Swiftunlocks, but knew I had a problem when these guys sent me the same two codes I had received from my supplier previously. With the aid of Google I soon discovered that the anal suits at Verizon have implemented a sophisticated locking mechanism that changes the lock codes continuously over the air. So apparently the only way to get the code is to phone Verizon and ask pretty please. Except they won’t give it to you if you are not a Verizon customer, which of course I am not, living in South Africa. So I had to send my phone back to my supplier, and am now waiting to see if they succeed in unlocking it. It has been more than a week, so am getting worried…

Don’t know about you, but I think these restrictive business practices are really irritating, out of sync with customer sentiments, and am convinced that they don’t result in the outcomes the providers are seeking. Why lock the phone to your network? If the customer wants to buy a contract from a particular network he will. And a willing customer is the best kind. You know why I don’t have an iPhone 4? Because once I have replaced my normal sim with a micro sim, it makes it that much harder to use another phone again. Apple clearly went the micro sim route as a way to lock in their customers. This kind of strategy can work in the short term, and possibly even for a long time, but at some point it will back fire. Look at Egypt. Mubarak’s customers have had enough of being locked into a single party dictatorship, even if it has been benevolent to a degree. They want freedom of choice of their service provide aka government. Take note Verizon, and Apple. Upshot of all this is that I am still using my HTC G2, and am still happy with it. I know I have called it boring in a previous post, but it is a good phone. Excellent keyboard, fast processor, Android 2.2. Everything works well on it, except that it loses cellphone signal from time to time in places where other phones don’t.