Database Users

Advantage of Rooting Telus HTC Hero

Hey guys, i recently got a HTC Hero from Telus then unlocked for usage on the fido network(In canada) as well.
I notice i don't see a lot of apps on my market, paid and free.
I guess it is because the Hero is on Android 1.5.
Also Telus/Fido supports tethering but the HTC Hero from Telus disabled this.
I was wondering other than additional to tethering, what do i gain by rooting the phone?
This might be a newbie question, but i looked at the MoDaCo features, and that is basically what i get right?
I am thinking of waiting for the official 2.0.
Thanks,

There are no paid apps in Canada yet. I have no idea when we will be getting paid apps. I tried writing HTC and asking, but they never responded.
If you are successful in rooting your Hero, then you can get the app: Market Enabler and use it to get paid apps.
What kind of tethering do you mean? Connected or wireless? I think you can use azilink for wired tether without being rooted, but wireless tether you have to have root.
The only necessity for me to root would be to get paid apps. However, the rooting method for the Hero is a painful one and I have not been successful in downgrading. The stock rom that Telus Hero comes with is not rootable yet. You must downgrade to an older rom and root that.
I am a bit sketchy about ditching the stock rom for a custom rom as well. I've seen so many custom roms that I don't like or a bit buggy. Also, once you ditch the stock, it seems that we cannot easily get it back. However, I would like to get paid apps as there are a few that I use frequently.
Hopefully Canada gets paid apps soon...

Thanks, i'm going to try Azilink!
I might wait til it gets rooted, unless i can get 2.0 early, i don't see the need of putting my new phone in danger for paid apps for my personal use as of now.

If you don't care about paid apps, or wireless tether, I see no reason to root. The TELUS Rom is actually quite good. Have fun with azilink, I've never actually used it

Other than putting the market enabler on, can you still push APK's over to install with a USB and ADB..? Or even email yourself the APK and install that way?

should be able to as long as you allow installs from unknown sources in the settings.

Raspster said:
Other than putting the market enabler on, can you still push APK's over to install with a USB and ADB..? Or even email yourself the APK and install that way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I prefer to copy my apk's to the SD card and then on the phone, use a file manager like Linda File Manager to browse to the apk file, click it and install it that way.

EVO startup applications

Any way to control which application launch at startup? Judging by the long list of "open" applications in ATK immediately after a reboot, there's a lot of junk there. I know that "open" programs should not affect Android performance due to the way it multitasks, but it certainly can't hurt and will probably speed up boot time.
thx

Most things that get started at boot are either services from apps designed to run all the time (like Locale), or things the system has called to sync data (facebook, twitter, gmail, etc), phone services...trying to tweak it down without knowing what each and every one does is dangerous and has, historically, caused more problems than helped performance.
To my knowledge, the only way to keep something designed from starting up at boot from starting...is to uninstall it.

Here's a list of startup apps that I'm sure don't need to be launching...
Sprint Nav
FM Radio
Sprint Zone
Sprint Football Live
News
Amazon MP3 store
Footprints

ajd6c8 said:
Here's a list of startup apps that I'm sure don't need to be launching...
Sprint Nav
FM Radio
Sprint Zone
Sprint Football Live
News
Amazon MP3 store
Footprints
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unusual...Sprint Nav doesn't launch on mine until I actually click on the thing and clicking the "back" button repeatedly when in it, closes it gracefully. Does it have the little icon on the top bar that shows it as running?
FM Radio isn't showing as running on mine either.
The sprint stuff is usually safe to remove (as is the amazon MP3 store and foorprints if you don't use it). In fact, they all *look* safe to remove (the only one I'm not fairly confident on is "News").
If you root, you can probably just remove the .apk files associated with the things you don't want. Most all of them look similar to ones on the hero as "safe to remove"...but no guaruantees (we've had some surprises before ).
<insert time break here>
Well I just rebooted and all those DO start up with mine too...but they disappear after a while of non-use (android shuts them down gracefully). Once the custom rom's start coming out, a lot of those probably won't end up included. However, since root access is easy to get right now, you *could* just uninstall the stuff you'll never use anyways (go into adb, back off the .apk files (on the off chance it breaks something and you need to put it back) and then rm them).
I haven't tested ANY of the above except on my Hero so...keep that in mind.

Thanks for looking into that. I didn't realize that some of those close after a while.
I think I'll stick with the old adage "if it ain't broke..." and not try to root or remove these just yet. The phone works great as-is... I'm just kind of a stickler for memory use.
APK does the job of killing these too. And it remembers which programs you kill on the regular, so it's literally a 2-click process.
All in all, it's no biggie so long as the phone stays snappy (and boy is it ever!)

What is starting APPs, how can I stop them ?

I am sick of all the apps that I never use like peep, twit, facebook, footprints, friendstream, stocks, starting themselves like 2 seconds after I kill them. What is starting them and how can I get them to stop it ??? I do not mind them being in there, and actually have heard of problems deleting some, so if I can just keep them from starting ??? Grazi ;-)

I've deleted every single one of those and then some without issues. You have to root and then remove them. Trust me, the reward is well worth the steps involved. Once you're rooted you can download Startup Manager from the market to select which apps will startup automatically upon reboot. That won't help you control those other apps you mentioned running though. You need to remove them or disable them in adb.
Sent from my rooted Incredible using XDA App

Just set all of those apps to never sync with whatever account they are tied to. Really a running application that isn't doing anything uses no resources.
But yes, if you root you can remove them.

[Q] Recommendations for Desire Z?

Previously an Iphone user and now have come over to the Android scene. Really loving the Desire Z so far but still learning about the phone.
I am looking for input and recommendations on how to achieve the following things and the processes for doing this. The phone is a Bell Desire Z which I have unlocked and am using it on Rogers. I have also been able to use VISIONary to perm root the phone but haven't done S-OFF.
1. What program is used for loading music onto the phone?
2. My main goal is to have a phone which is super stable, fast, good battery life and best reception. It seems there are tweaks for all of these but some seem still in development or are complicated to perform. I have added the vision_oc.ko to my phone and ran the insmod command to overclock it but it resets on a reboot. How can I make this permanent? I have seen a few mentions of Radio tweaking but don't know what is safe and an improvement over what I have now.
3. If I was to flash a new ROM to the phone would I lose all of my email accounts, contacts, installed applications etc? Would I have to reinstall or re-add all of these things?
Thanks in advance for helping me

Stealth1985 said:
Previously an Iphone user and now have come over to the Android scene. Really loving the Desire Z so far but still learning about the phone.
I am looking for input and recommendations on how to achieve the following things and the processes for doing this. The phone is a Bell Desire Z which I have unlocked and am using it on Rogers. I have also been able to use VISIONary to perm root the phone but haven't done S-OFF.
1. What program is used for loading music onto the phone?
2. My main goal is to have a phone which is super stable, fast, good battery life and best reception. It seems there are tweaks for all of these but some seem still in development or are complicated to perform. I have added the vision_oc.ko to my phone and ran the insmod command to overclock it but it resets on a reboot. How can I make this permanent? I have seen a few mentions of Radio tweaking but don't know what is safe and an improvement over what I have now.
3. If I was to flash a new ROM to the phone would I lose all of my email accounts, contacts, installed applications etc? Would I have to reinstall or re-add all of these things?
Thanks in advance for helping me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When it comes to loading music, all you need to do is connect the phone with the usb cable to your computer and make sure after it's connected, to slide down the notification bar on top of the screen and in the left hand side, there's a usb connected icon that you press and choose the "hard drive" option so your computer has access to the memory of your phone. Goto "My Computer" and the 8gb microSD card should be there and you just open it, then you can just copy and paste whatever music you like into the microSD card of the phone. There's no itunes for Android, so you do it as if you're copying music from one folder of your computer to another
Regarding having the S-OFF and flashing roms, you must follow the tutorial thread. It is very straight forward for everything you want to do.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=835777

Thanks, would prefer to have something to organize my music if possible. I believe I saw something being developed in the android general forum but it was in BETA still.
For the ROMS, I am curious if there is something without downsides. Many of them seem to kill some features of the phone like wifi etc. I basically want to remove all the BELL crap, overclock, improve radio and that's about it.
If I insert a new SD card, what do I lose? is there a way to re-install all the apps I previously had without having to go through 1 by 1?

Stealth1985 said:
Thanks, would prefer to have something to organize my music if possible. I believe I saw something being developed in the android general forum but it was in BETA still.
For the ROMS, I am curious if there is something without downsides. Many of them seem to kill some features of the phone like wifi etc. I basically want to remove all the BELL crap, overclock, improve radio and that's about it.
If I insert a new SD card, what do I lose? is there a way to re-install all the apps I previously had without having to go through 1 by 1?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used the tutorial to get S-OFF and then I used this ROM and it just took away all the Bell crap off the phone and added the HTC Locations option which downloads the maps onto the microSD card. Follow the steps and you wont have any problems
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=837390
With this ROM, you dont have to lose anything on your phone. You will not have to erase your phone before applying this ROM. Regarding the overclocking, I would wait. I personally am not in a rush to do it because I want sometime to pass and get a feel for how people's Desire Z's are doing while overclocked. Just a cautious move from my end. The Desire Z and G2 developement forums both offer GUIDES for all the tinkering you want to do with your phone.

Got it rooted, S-Off and flashed with the ROM from Paul Obrien.
Hoping someone comes out with a stable overclock for the phone. Did you have any issues removing some of the apps included after using titanium backup? I tried to remove soundhound and it took me to a screen with the android and exclamation mark.

I didnt use titanium backup. I did a nandroid backup and used an app called "mybackup pro" before flashing the new ROM. Then I used Root Explorer and deleted soundhound that way.
If you dont know how to do that, Get "Root Explorer". You open up Root Explorer and go into the "system" folder then the "app" folder and you will press the "mount R/W" button on top and then find the app you want to get rid of and hold down on the screen and you will be given an option to delete that file. Thats it

Remember when you put your music folders on yor phone to rename the album art AlbumArt.jpg that will insure ask your album art is shown
JD
Sent from my HTC Desire Z Beast

A while ago there was a music app called DoubleTwist, which also had a Windows program to go along with it. I believe you could use it like iTunes to sync music and playlists

maybe you can try winamp for the music.
Its free.

Thanks, will try root explorer to get rid of the junk I don't want.
How do I stop apps from randomly starting. Everytime I open app kill it shows that a bunch of apps ive never opened are running. Is there a tutorial on how to setup the phone for best battery life?
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

Stealth1985 said:
Thanks, will try root explorer to get rid of the junk I don't want.
How do I stop apps from randomly starting. Everytime I open app kill it shows that a bunch of apps ive never opened are running. Is there a tutorial on how to setup the phone for best battery life?
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AutoStarts from market may help you.

dont kill running apps. android does that without your interaction.

[Q] Android / Glacier Noob Questions

So, I've been a long time WinMo user and I just switched to Android (the Glacier) Great phone. A lot is foreign to me, though.
I'm a software developer and a Linux user so I'm pretty comfortable finding my way around the Android dev tools and the terminal (although I found it odd that the phone comes with neither a file manager nor a terminal)
Anyhow, I have a few questions:
-I've seen a lot of threads declaring how awesome Android's process management is and how it's bad to kill processes manually. I don't understand this. I've been playing with my phone non-stop for the past few days and on a number of occasions, have met with slow performance and even not-enough-memory prompts. This is usually after installing a dozen (or dozens) of apps back to back and playing with them all. So long as you are aware of the ramifications of killing a particular process, what's wrong with doing so?
-I've rooted my phone. If I ever get an OTA update, would it be a good idea to unroot prior to applying the update?
-When I select "Allow automatic updating" in the Market for my purchased apps, how exactly does that work? Are updates looked for my Android? Are they looked for when the Market is launched? Are those individual apps first loaded and then look for updates?
-I imported my contacts from WinMo Outlook into Google via ActiveSync in order to get them on my phone. Consequently, I have GTalk contacts and stuff on my phone that I don't want. If I delete them from Contacts, will they be deleted from my Google account? That is to say, if I delete [email protected] from my Contacts, will he suddenly disappear from my IM client?
Thanks for your help! I appreciate it!

LOL you see like you I been also using *nix for ages far as I can count 10+ years and I am Unix Admin. When I got MT4G as it was my first AOSP device I was like yourself shocked it didn't have file manager, basic console, or anything.
It seem that if you wanted to do anything it was required you waste your life installing some backward software though Market that claimed it to be freeware but IRL is actually adware. Also if you want anything done it is required you have root lol and if you do want root you void warranty its like whole catch 22 statement to me. So here I am doing what I do best and owned AOSP along with google market.
UPDATE:
So here ill actually answer some of your questions as I didn't want to due to it being very long but hey it might help you out.
1) Far as the process goes as you know in *nix world we have saying "unused memory is wasted memory" same apply as mostly its cached and does not treat it same as in WM. When you "exit" task if you call it exit that is in first place its put on dormant status so if resource is required then its reallocated. This is why you don't exit them forcefully as data may not be synced and saved. In this case my best advice for you is disable service from booting up in first place and also auto close it if it restarts.
2) Don't worry about OTA as you will more likely get update via dev of XDA long before you officially get it though carrier. You have S off so don't worry about it as its no factor.
3) It is tracked via google account and though your carrier I think, I don't know as I didn't ever officially buy single package however I did cURL 8.1gb of paid app archive of market before getting banned. From what I know once app is installed if you have auto update the current version is checked though market to see if any new version is available. Now when you buy app its under your acc so you can use it in diff device or install it many time as you want even if its updated.
4) I can't say about GTalk as I never used but far as AutoSync goes mostly your TMo data and email is synced though Google accounts like gmail.

I see. I can see how task management is rather pointless then, heh. I wonder where my "out of memory" issue came from. Leaky app, perhaps.

Is there a way to rename applications in the "All Programs" list?