Hey all
I got my HD2 a month or two ago, and I really like it. Especially the HTC Sense interface. A thing of beauty, truly. Especially once you get the tweaks done to improve battery life a bit and add on some extra features.
BUT, I'm hugely disappointed in the lack of decent apps via Windows Marketplace, and trying to find an app that works properly on the HD2 by searching online seems to be marginal, at best. (I've tried several that seem to simply...not function.)
So, I'm wondering if it's possible to get Android on this hardware. I'm a total noob when it comes to phones--never flashed a ROM before--though I've built my own desktop computer, so I'm not a technical idiot. Basically, I'd feel comfortable doing it IF someone tells me that a) it's possible, and b) it's worth it.
Is it possible to put Android on my HD2? And is it worth it?
Things I consider 'necessary' to having this be 'worth it':
--Can make calls, text, MSMs, etc
--Internet access with 3G working well
--GPS works well (I'd LOVE to get a decent geo-caching app)
--Music player (Big fan of Slacker Radio)
--Camera/Video player that works well
Any thoughts? Is it worth it to try to go Android?
TheUkieVillain said:
Hey all
I got my HD2 a month or two ago, and I really like it. Especially the HTC Sense interface. A thing of beauty, truly. Especially once you get the tweaks done to improve battery life a bit and add on some extra features.
BUT, I'm hugely disappointed in the lack of decent apps via Windows Marketplace, and trying to find an app that works properly on the HD2 by searching online seems to be marginal, at best. (I've tried several that seem to simply...not function.)
So, I'm wondering if it's possible to get Android on this hardware. I'm a total noob when it comes to phones--never flashed a ROM before--though I've built my own desktop computer, so I'm not a technical idiot. Basically, I'd feel comfortable doing it IF someone tells me that a) it's possible, and b) it's worth it.
Is it possible to put Android on my HD2? And is it worth it?
Things I consider 'necessary' to having this be 'worth it':
--Can make calls, text, MSMs, etc
--Internet access with 3G working well
--GPS works well (I'd LOVE to get a decent geo-caching app)
--Music player (Big fan of Slacker Radio)
--Camera/Video player that works well
Any thoughts? Is it worth it to try to go Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While they have made a great leap towards getting Android on the HD 2 it is not yet available. Do a quick search for "Android on HD 2" and you will find the thread where they are talking about it.
Thanks
Thanks for the heads up. Answers my question. Perhaps I'll just have to be content with WinMo for a while and keep making tweaks.
Watch out for the fake vid on youtube if your going to be google searching!
While there has been a huge leap forward in getting a bootable Linux kernel on the HD2, the time window for a "fully functioning with all the drivers" Android is still a ways out. If you want Android, go to the Nexus One (for the best GSM Android phone out there). If you're willing to switch networks to a non sim card, CDMA network, check out the Incredible on Verizon or the EVO on Sprint.
Hope this helps.
Also, try the search feature. XDA-Developers has an incredible website and it'd be a shame to let all of its fun forum search tools go to waste. I can think of tons of threads where people have asked this question. It's out there, just find it.
Thread Closed
Hello everyone,
I am going to purchase a XOOM as soon as I can on sunday morning when the wifi version releases, but am concerned with the support the wifi model will get on XDA. I have a quick question regarding the wifi xoom. Any help would be much appreciated!
Will Xoom owners be able to flash any ROM onto the tablet? For instance, can we flash a 3g rom onto a wifi model (my guess is no)? This isnt really a problem we've encountered with phones yet and worries me. Development within the xoom community could become really fragmented if we have to develop for seperate devices.
Thanks in advance!
You'll be able to do it all the same way just without 3g. Much like a phone's ROM that has support for everything under the sun, but since some phone hardware doesn't allow those features, the extras just don't work -- simple as that!
You'll be good to go... no real need to worry!
The support should be pretty much the same i would think
Best news I've heard all day! Thanks!
I am getting my T-Mobile Tab on Friday and have a few questions. Based on what I have read, my desire for flexibility, oc ability, and conservative battery use when needed are met pretty good if I use the Overcome rom and kernel.
I am not married to that idea, but it looks good. One of the many tipping points for me when choosing the Tab over the Streak 7 was the Samsung customized calendar app and the ability to make calls on the Tab with the rotohammer modem switcher.
So, my questions are -
1) Is it possible yet, in any rom, or by some method, to make voice calls on a T-Mobile Tab and keep the 3G data capability? I dont care if I can surf and talk at the same time, but do I have to look forward to calls and EDGE or no calls and 3G?
2) What service plan do I need to be sure I have if the answer is yes I can now have 3g and voice calls without a reboot
3) If I can only have 3g or voice, where should I look for tweaks to make the Tab reboot as fast as possible?
4) Does the Overcome rom specifically, or any rom, keep the customized Samsung apps, especially the calendar?
5) What is the best way to do a test of measurable battery life? Some way to keep the display on while streaming a movie or something, until the device shuts off on a low bat? I want to measure the actual battery life under the same conditions with the stock rom and some custom roms. This summer I will be camping and may not have charging capability when the Tab needs it, so I'd like to know positively that the changes I make are really improving battery life in measurable ways, not just subjective guesses.
Thanks
Keith
P.S. I'm not a dev, but nowhere near a n00b either. My current device is a Droid A855 with Simply Stunning 5.1, and the only reason I haven't flashed on something else in the last 2 weeks is because I knew this Tab was gonna go thru, so I have focused on learning what to do to make the Tab a reasonable replacement for my tablet PC, an IBM Thinkpad x41T running Lubuntu 10.10. Just so whoever responds knows, I'm just new to the Tab, and not opposed to gutting an OS and replacing it with another one
1) In regards to this question, I believe CDMA version by Sprint has some tweaks done to it. How good is it and if you have to do switch roo on it I am not too sure....I suggest research CDMA version in XDA forum
2) None that I am aware of as I am looking for the same. However, I have a international version which supports both CDMA and GSM network and I am wondering if I can use a prepaid sim and then sign up with Sprint or Verizon on their data plan...dont have answer to this yet personally
Regards
I'm wanting to try and get the HTC Trophy, and wanted to get some thoughts from you guys. I apologize if this is already started, but I couldn't find it... Anyway:
-Is Google lacking from WP7?
As in, can I integrate my Google Account with WP7 as in use my gmail for Email, Google Music as media store, etc... What would the limits of that be?
-Is the HTC Trophy a good/reliable device?
I played with one at the Verizon store and I loved it, but I never used it beyond tinkering around to check it out. Does the phone keep a consistent service and good network speeds? Should I wait for the next WP7 device to come to Verizon?
-Camera?
I use my x2 as a personal camera, It has 8 MP and can record 720p video. That sounds good, but truth be told, the Video recorder SUX and the only way to get 720p is to put CM7 on it(and we just got that ROM like in January; 8 months after the release of the x2) and it is still a little buggy. The Camera however is pretty nice, I like it a lot anyway.... How does the Trophy Perform in the Camera area?
-Market Apps?
Is there a decent amount of games and market apps available for WP7? All that would really matter to me is a few key apps that I use on a regular basis; one of which is Evernote. I use this as my lyric notebook for my music that I write for when I'm on the road or away from a notepad, I can use my phone to jot down a few lines of a song or try to complete a song when I get spare time. YouTube.. I think I saw this on the phone by default but can't quite remember. And just a good assortment of games. Also, is the paid/free apps a good combination and not ridiculous prices? Android offers a great combination of free and paid, on the iPhone, the only thing I see that is decent is like 4+ dollars so just wondering on what the users feel about the market?
-Rooting?
Is the development pretty spiffy with the HTC Trophy? Android offers Rooting and I see something like HSPC or w/e for WP7. What exactly is this and what would the benefits be if I tried to do this?
-Overall opinions?
For those that came from Android can you let me know what the biggest 'let-go' you had to take? and just an overall opinion of your satisfaction with WP7.
I thank anyone that would answer these. If anyone knows of someone that would want to sell the HTC Trophy or trade for a Droid x2, would you please PM me or post on here. I'm a contributor for the Droid x2 and many users can vouch for me in the Droid x2 area of XDA. My ROM is headlined on DroidForums.net in their forum area for the x2 and it is also here on XDA(which is where it is mainly supported).
Again, Thank you for your time,
Peperm1nt
Peperm1nt said:
-Is Google lacking from WP7?
As in, can I integrate my Google Account with WP7 as in use my gmail for Email, Google Music as media store, etc... What would the limits of that be?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google Account works fine. You can use it to sync your calender, contacts, email, etc. Google Music and such... still no support as far as I know, its not a service I use.
User snickler is working on an app for Google Music called "CloudMuzik." I don't know anything about it, but.. well.. its there.
I take normal mp3's and load up my phone with music via Zune sync, and that works just great for me. The Last.fm app rocks imo... I love using that to stream music.
Peperm1nt said:
-Is the HTC Trophy a good/reliable device?
I played with one at the Verizon store and I loved it, but I never used it beyond tinkering around to check it out. Does the phone keep a consistent service and good network speeds? Should I wait for the next WP7 device to come to Verizon?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The HTC Trophy is much better with reception and speed then my last two phones, the HTC Eris (Android) and Touch Pro2(WM6.5). I do still feel that the network speed is being held back by something, but I have yet to test it right next to a VZW tower to see if its simply my imagination.
When I was using the shipping radio (that came with NoDo), the phone had issues staying in 3G mode and switching from 1X to 3G was really slow and iffy, but this is resolved with Mango v1+ radios installed.
However, due to my situation of using my phone as my primary internet connection, it sits in the window sill whenever I am at home. To improve reception in situations like that, I have a beast of a heavy duty case on my Trophy (that and since the phone has a tenancy to fall off my window sill with my dogs go crazy...). This makes a huge difference in my reception.
Peperm1nt said:
-Camera?
I use my x2 as a personal camera, It has 8 MP and can record 720p video. That sounds good, but truth be told, the Video recorder SUX and the only way to get 720p is to put CM7 on it(and we just got that ROM like in January; 8 months after the release of the x2) and it is still a little buggy. The Camera however is pretty nice, I like it a lot anyway.... How does the Trophy Perform in the Camera area?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the camera is great for still shots, but keeping it clean is key. The 720p video recording leaves much to be desired, as it seems speed is much slower then the 640x480 mode.
Peperm1nt said:
-Market Apps?
Is there a decent amount of games and market apps available for WP7? All that would really matter to me is a few key apps that I use on a regular basis; one of which is Evernote. I use this as my lyric notebook for my music that I write for when I'm on the road or away from a notepad, I can use my phone to jot down a few lines of a song or try to complete a song when I get spare time. YouTube.. I think I saw this on the phone by default but can't quite remember. And just a good assortment of games. Also, is the paid/free apps a good combination and not ridiculous prices? Android offers a great combination of free and paid, on the iPhone, the only thing I see that is decent is like 4+ dollars so just wondering on what the users feel about the market?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Evernote appears to be available for the phone, and is rated currently at 3.5 stars. I think that most apps are decently priced. The most I have paid for an app is $9.99 (Natural Japanese), but for what the app does, its still a fantastic value. I do think that the games market is fairly mature now. You can still get classic games like Angry Birds (that they even give XBL points if your into that!), with new games/apps launching every day.
There is also the "Bazarr" app store for full unlocked phones that has awesome stuff like Opera for WM6.5 ported to work on WP7.
Peperm1nt said:
-Rooting?
Is the development pretty spiffy with the HTC Trophy? Android offers Rooting and I see something like HSPC or w/e for WP7. What exactly is this and what would the benefits be if I tried to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"Unlocking" this phone by installing HSPL is a straight forward process (I wrote a guide to doing it on the Verizon Trophy), and it is WELL worth doing. HSPL allows flashing of 3rd party roms to the phone, but the Verizon Trophy (and Sprint Arrive) were only made available on 2-15-2012, so no public roms have hit for the Verizon Trophy yet. You can private message mwang to test DFT Freedom for Verizon Trophy... it's worth it.
Peperm1nt said:
-Overall opinions?
For those that came from Android can you let me know what the biggest 'let-go' you had to take? and just an overall opinion of your satisfaction with WP7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I first moved to Android, the biggest let go was Internet tethering. Using the stock Verizon rom, tethering is not enabled.
However, with the advent of HSPL, DFT Freedom for Verizon Trophy includes Internet Sharing, so the phone can be used as a 5 device hot spot.. and it is awesome. Compared to using my Eris as a hotspot, its just sweet. The rooted free tether on Android is crap compared to Mango's built in support, as NAT support is completely supported (so my XBox 360 logs on and works perfect vs not working at all).
The other big draw back for me was no Swype. I wouldn't mind it so much if Verizon would of gotten the HTC Arrive (GoldC) instead of the Trophy (SparkW), but the advantage of the Trophy is that it is a world phone, so you can still put a GSM Sim card in and roll with that later if you wanted to switch carriers or travel.
Thanks for the reply. I really want to get this phone, but no one is messaging me back for trades or buys. Do you know anyone?
Btw, I play xbox all the time, so the xbl integration has me too.
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
Unfortunately no, I know no one that wants to trade. I know I have mine, and I am keeping it close. lol
Lol its fine,i get paid monday, probable going to get one on ebay.
Forgot to ask this in the op:
Battery Life:
I use my x2 throughout the day moderately...one full charge gives me 8 to 15 hours of battery life. I disconnect the auto sync and try my best to increase battery life, but the display DRAINS the life horribly...like 1 hour of display will put the phone to 10 % or lower. What are the thoughts on that?
Development:
I develop for android. What is the developm went like on wp7?
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
The Trophy produces similar battery results for me, but I charge it everyday and I live in a fringe region. I turned on Mango's battery savor feature when the power is low, but I haven't really been able to use it yet.
Battery life on the Trophy is okay... You should be able to make it through the day no problems with moderate usage. If you're on the edge or frequently go out of service the phone will drain very quickly. On the flip side there are days where I rarely use the phone, and with the stock battery it will go almost 3 days with no usage.
One thing that I found out is that the EVO / ERIS battery is almost the same... It fits in the phone and the phone will use it, but the back cover won't snap on correctly. If you were looking for a larger battery the first thing you'll need is an extended battery cover. Also, the snaps for the regular trophy and Verizon are slightly different which makes it even harder to find the cover. I think you can just break a few of them off and it will fit.
The camera is okay but it's definitely nothing special. If you have good light and still shots it will produce a decent image. It's about on par with the D2 which I think is slightly worse than the X2.
The one thing that I'm kind of missing is a few networks apps. There really isn't a good app to do things like ping, wifi scanning, or speed tests. Since there is no flash you can't just load up speedtest.net in the browser.
For music I would say that using Zune works fairly well. It loads the songs very quickly over wifi, and if you had it setup to sync automatically you should be able to just put songs into the folder and the phone will download them whenever you're at home.
Youtube is not officially supported but at one time there was an HTC Youtube app but I think they had to pull it from the market. It looks like there is an app called youtube pro that gets good reviews and is free. The nice thing about the marketplace is that there are a lot of decent free games and apps like there is on android, but there are also trials of paid apps so you can try it before you decide to purchase.
My overall satisfaction with the phone is pretty high. It's definitely a step up from a D2. Just using it for simple tasks it performs a lot better although there are still some gotchas that you might have to work around. (If you use skydrive putting documents on the phone is easy, if you don't want to use skydrive then it becomes a lot harder)
That's odd.. my Eris and Touch Pro2 batteries are identical in size and fit... but neither are hi-capacity.
Thanks guys.. ordering one for Monday hopefully unless I can get one for trade on here
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
Found a trophy!! Lol hopefully be deving here soon.
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
Awesome. I hope it works well for you. Poke around the dev forum for guides on HSPL for SparkW...
I will soon be writing a guide to keeping the newest (Mango V2) radio while still retaining HSPL. I will probably be adding it to my radio guide sometime today/this weekend. I need to upload some files/roms that will be needed to make it work.
Also, a word of warning, do NOT install any updates via Zune!!! I recently discovered when performing the Zune upgrades that the Mango V2 drivers might disable the availability to flash roms the normal way, and force using the GoldCard method (which I will add to my HSPL guide soon enough).
Thanks for the heads up.
In android we can sbf to fix bootloops and make our phone stock for warranties and such. Also to get on specific kernels or android versions. How exactly does wp7 do this or is there an option? Also HTC has unlocked bootloaders in android. Is it the same here... most of this will probably get answered when I get the phone. Just wanting to get a start in the right direction.. again, thank you for the help.
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
My HSPL guide covers returning to stock at the end. It involves loading the bootloader and running DFT's unlocker tool, but flashing the OSPL (Original SPL). You then flash the factory rom as I have outlined.
Peperm1nt said:
Thanks for the heads up.
In android we can sbf to fix bootloops and make our phone stock for warranties and such. Also to get on specific kernels or android versions. How exactly does wp7 do this or is there an option? Also HTC has unlocked bootloaders in android. Is it the same here... most of this will probably get answered when I get the phone. Just wanting to get a start in the right direction.. again, thank you for the help.
Tapin' the Talk on the xSquared
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey peperm1nt, at Microsoft Stores, they are letting you trade in any smartphone, android, iphone, blackberry, etc towards a free, new in box, no contract WP7. you can choose from the trophy, titan, focus, radar or nokia 710 until Mar 29. link (http://slickdeals.net/f/4120241-Swa...-contract-Microsoft-Store-B-M-Only-thru-3-29?)
Thanks, there aren't any microsoft stores in my area, but I got the Trophy the past week.
Thanks tho for the info
BTW, I wish I had got this phone instead of my x2!!! like seriously, I love this phone. Only problem is the graphix of games aren't as smooth as my x2, but i guess thats the difference between nVidea & qualcomm. But other than that, this phone rox!!! UI is so smooth and the Facebook integration is nice. I'm looking into the whole modding aspect of this, still haven't got the grasp of 'rooting' this phone and making buckups to later restore if something goes wrong, my ultimate question is this:
In android you can 'sbf'(flash the phone with stock firmware). Is that a possiblity on here?
I read the restore thread; is that the equivilent to what I'm looking for?
Yes, in the HSPL thread, restoring to stock is the equivalent. You replace the moded SPL (HSPL) with the OSPL (or original SPL), and then flash a stock rom.
As for backup, I have yet to find a backup method that works after flashing a different rom, or even flashing back to a rom that I made the backup on. I'm not sure if this is an issue with CDMA Trophy or not.... perhaps I should start a thread on this since you brought it up (yes... I think I will do that now). lol
I'll look into the setup once I get the 'guts' to HSPL'ing my device, and break into the file structure. Once, I do that, I'll look at making a script or something to auto install like android does with the system folder, if this is possible or w/e.
I'm sorry for bringing android into this, But I'm not good with terminology on the WP Platform yet, but I do this to compare and show you what I'm talking about if that makes since.
Well, your Windows Live login that you used will have a record of your apps you installed, much like your Google login for the Play Store. Your contacts are on whichever account you choose, I keep mine on my Gmail account still, since I switch between my Trophy and other Android device. I also have an unlocked HD7 that I use for travel.
Just like when you were first learning to root Android, you followed the guides step by step. As long as you do the same here, you will be fine. DFT has done some awesome work, and WP7 would prolly not be where it is without them.
If you have your Trophy activated, you can use it as a hotspot, but only with HSPL and a custom rom. I never bothered doing it with my Trophy, but it's definitely an incredible thing to have, especially if you have any wifi devices you carry around.
Its great to see the development for the Trophy taking place, I had one last year but moved onto another OS/Device. Considering a return to the Trophy again and will read a bit more into the custom ROM's.