HTC Hero :: Replacing Original 2Gb Mini SD With Larger 8Gb Mini
Sep 30, 2010
I have an HTC Hero with a 2Gb Mini SD that is almost full, so I bought a 8Gb mini to replace the small original 2Gb SD. The 2Gb is 75% full so I am sure there is data and config that I need but is on that 2 Gb SD. What is the best way to replace the card without losing the data and config.I tried HTC Sync, but it only wants to back up my Outlook, which I don't sync anyways. I also mounted the phone as a HD and looking at the file system, there seems to be no way to copy and replace what I need.One other question. Is the SD card the only storage media on the phone? Is there internal built in storage other than a BIOS type boot strap?
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Oct 24, 2010
Have owned an xperia mini pro for about 2 weeks now. It has a problem that every few days or so the screen locks up and becomes unresponsive and the only way to reset it is to do a battery pull. My question basically is should I take it back to the shop, or is it likely to need to have android reinstalled or something?
It did this on the very first startup after unboxing, it froze up when choosing the language setting, so obviously it is unrelated to any other apps i have installed. At the time I didnt think it was too much of a problem but then as I say, it started doing it every few days.
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Mar 29, 2010
Had the phone a couple of days and had a fair old play, so thought I would share my first impressions.
I have had various smartphones over the years, but my last was an iPhone 3G, so some of the comments may make comparison to that. This isn't intended as a direct comparison or comment on the respective platforms, but simply early observations.
Hardware
In the box
Quite a small box, contains the phone, some documentation, Mini-USB cable, plug adapter, headphones (havent even opened these yet, instead electing to use my good quality seinheiser in ear buds), battery and that is it. Only a quick start guide included, the manual is on PDF on the phones SD card.
Looks
In my opinion it looks really classy. I know many people are saying it lacks the style of the Legend, but without having seen the Legend in person, I think that the Desire stacks up pretty well.
Size/Weight
It is almost identical in size to an iPhone 3G with similar weight. Subjectively it probably weighs slightly more, but feels really good in the hand. The screen fills the device nicely with probably an ideal amount of space round it to allow you to grip and hit the buttons without accidentally hitting the screen.
Finish
A combination of metal round the screen/top section of the phone and a sort of rubberised finish on the back, with a glass screen. Again, feels really good in the hand. The back surface means it is easy to hold and gives a good grip.
Buttons/Controls
There is a power button on the top, click to lock/unlock, hold for power and profile options. This sits on the slope of the top and always seems to come to hand really nicely. Volume buttons on the side are standard fare. Click all the way down for silent and then down again from vibrate on the home screen. Home, menu, search and back keys are well placed at the bottom and a lot more responsive than the iPhone dimple. There is also an optical trackball which you can click to select (used in camera app amongst others). You can use it to swipe between homescreens without having to touch the screen which is useful. I haven�t really used it that much, but is nice to have the option.
Connections
3.5mm jack at the top, slightly angled so a bit of a strange fit for normal headphones, but nor real problems, seems to fit standard headphones with no issues. Mini-USB connector at the bottom which sit out slightly from the curved back. The mini-USB cable supplied has a nice rubberised feel to match the back of the phone. J
Rear
Rubberised finish with embossed logo and camera, flash and speaker placed at top. Camera extrudes slightly, but not significantly Has metal surround and glass cover. LED flash sits next to the camera and there is a speaker grille next to that.
Screen
I will come back to the quality etc. of the screen, but in physical terms it is big (obviously), bigger borders than say an HD2, but smaller than the iPhone. It is nice to use, I have seen some comments saying it is slightly sticky, but I haven�t really noticed this. Does collect fingerprints, but I wouldn�t say it is that bad, no worse than the iPhone 3G or any other glossy screen.
Final points
My only other point or reservation is that there is a slight join between the screen and the metal facing and between the metal facing and rubberised back/main body section which does seem to collect dust. Think I may get a
protector soonas I wouldn�t want anything getting in-grained. The little finishing touches like the slight chrome surround on the front speaker, embossed HTC logo on the rear and discrete HTC branding are pretty classy.
Getting Started
Turning on for the first time, it takes a minute or so to boot up seems pretty quick from a standing start. There is an intro /tutorial to run through with guides for setting language, using the keyboard, network type, Google location, sign in to Google account/other mail accounts, sign-in for Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, but no Picasa (there is the option to upload to Picasa, but no obvious way to download), finally date and time.
Signing in to Google downloaded all my contact and filled all the relevant fields (first time I have had a phone I haven�t had to add all my contacts again) J. Also pulls in all your Facebook pals, you can then quickly link in a Facebook profile to a Google/phone contact. Not sure if it updates back to your Google account if you add contacts/make changes, havent checked this yet. Minor irritation, is if you link to Facebook, it appears to overwrite the contacts picture with their Facebook profile pic. Also imports calendar and automatically signs you in to all the relevant Google sites.
I wont discuss the out the box set-up as Android is so configurable it isn�t really relevant. Suffice to say, there are a good range of apps/widgets/wallpapers etc to get started.
First Impressions
Screen
First things first, the screen is gorgeous. I havent been able to test it in bright or direct sunlight (as I live in Scotland and we don�t get that here). But in general conditions so far, no problems with readability. Viewing angle seems excellent compared to LCD, brightness is great and colours are fantastic. Back to back comparison with the same photo on the iPhone 3G and the Desire, both in the default gallery apps, the Desire is much brighter, much better contrast and a lot more colourful. Some colours may be artificially bright, but in general it just looks super crisp and clear. Blacks are dark and the contrast is excellent.
General and first time Android user
I will start out by saying that this is the first time I have really used Android or Sense in depth. First impressions are it is really nice. Basic operations, phone messaging etc are intuitive and easy, everything is very slick, fast and responsive. As previously mentioned, all my contacts were already imported, so I simply linked them up to their Facebook compatriots and that was that. Got some texts in from the network, so got to see first-hand the notification system which is excellent, just so much better than the disappearing vague icons in iPhone OS. Zipping about the homescreens is super fast and scrolling through menus equally slick. There is the occasional judder, I have noticed this in the notifications tray and others at times, but nothing significant. Opening and switching apps is also super quick.
There is an obvious learning experience here too, probably a good deal more so than with the iPhone. I can�t immediately put my finger on what it is, but it just isn�t quite as obvious as some other Oss. I started to think of the Desire more as a mini-PC rather than a more dedicated OS and things became clearer.
Screen responsiveness is excellent, no real problems and nothing obvious like the infamous Nexus One screen videos (this may well still be present, not checked, but not once has the screen done anything I wouldnt expect). Overall everything is super slick, the basics are pretty slick and intuitive and the screen and OS in general are gorgeous.
I have had a few forced closes, not sure if this is to do with something I have installed or something more general. But it appears to recover pretty quickly and I have only had one occasion when I have had to do a re-set when one of the games I downloaded wouldnt close even though it didnt appear in running tasks, but still continued playing the music.
Battery Life
I have been trying to get a few charge cycles through the battery, but so far it has been reasonable. Even with really heavy use with just about everything on, it lasted most of a day on its first full charge. 5 hours into my second day and having fiddled a fair amount and still with everything on, it is just over 60%. Certainly comparable or better than my admittedly slightly tired iPhone 3G. Will see how this pans out.
Included Apps
Picture Gallery
As I mentioned earlier, couldn�t see any way to (easily) pull photos off my Picasa. Copied across several folders full of photos to the default images folder. Imported into the gallery with no problems, though did put all the photos in a single folder in the gallery app despite the fact they were in named sub-folders on the drive. Scrolls through the photos no problem. Amazingly quick considering I have over 600 decent sized photos in the gallery. Thumbnails appear almost immediately. There is a trick to quickly scroll to a given date, if you start a scroll then �grab� the scroll bar at the right, you can then browse by date and quickly move through the gallery. Again, photos appear almost immediately. You can view by grid or a sort of filmstrip view. Overall the default gallery is decent, but I think the Nexus gallery looks neater.
Also no way of filtering, for example to see all videos etc. only options are Facebook and Flickr tabs. Would be nice to have tabs for videos etc. Finally seems to pick up all photos on the SD card, with no real options to set where it looks, for example picked up the Jpegs for some comics I copied across into a separate Comics folder.
Movie Playback
Videos seem to sit in the photo gallery for some reason and not a separate video gallery as discussed above. Playback is pretty basic, doesn�t seem to be any options for subtitles chapters etc. Basic scroll selector to move through the video which is really quick, option to stretch to screen and that is about it. Doesnt auto rotate, always defaults to full screen landscape view. I will look at alternative video players in due course. Drag and drop works without any problems. Quality wise, I have only been able to test with a iPhone encoded movie at 480*208 H.264, but even this looked pretty good. Problems with Handbrake means I have been unable to encode a DVD at a higher resolution, so I will comment further when I have had a chance to play with this. Would have been nice if they had included a high quality sample video to show off the
AMOLED display.
Music Playback
Built in music app is pretty good. Cover flow style album selector and the usual options (shuffle, repeat etc.) Havent had a chance to see if there are any more in depth settings for quality, enhancements etc. but there is nothing obvious. People have mentioned a Dolby Mobile enhancer, but havent been able to find this in the T-Mobile OS.
Email
Had to manually set up my Google push account to work with the mail app, but now set-up appears to work well. Usual views and filters, only issue so far is not being able to select multiple emails for example to mark read/un-read.
Messaging
Works exactly as expected, you can email from contacts, reply to groups etc. all the usual options. No pop-up preview, just notification, unless you install another messaging app e.g. Handcent, but I am undecided which to go for at the moment.
Widgets
Good range here, like the clock with nice little animated weather animations. Power options etc are useful and things like the news feeds all seem to work well. These are all so configurable that it is hard to make any real comment. Only minor problem is that if I change one of the default scenes e.g. Work, it does not let me save over it, so you either take what you are given or have a whole heap of different scenes.
Live Wallpapers
Really funky, love maps with Google Maps 4, like the HTC sense bubbles as well and the snakes like Nexus one is there too.
Keyboard
Keyboard is excellent, love the slight vibrate on keypress. Even in portrait I haven�t had any real issues with typing. Auto complete/suggestions works really well and intuitively. No text to speech though which is disappointing! L Hopefully this will be resolved in due course as I had been looking forward to this.
MarketPlace
Looks pretty comprehensive, a lot more on here than I was expecting. J Confusing that some prices are in dollars and some in pounds. Not sure if you are charged a fee if you buy an app in dollars from a normal bank account.
Like the list of apps I have downloaded, search is pretty good, though I would like to have seen suggestions as I type. Not sure how updates work, do I have to manually update or will I receive notification when a new version becomes available.
Conclusions So Far
Overall I am super impressed. The hardware is fantastic, the OS is really nice and there is so much potential for tinkering and improvements. The Desire is simply the best and most complete Smart Phone I have ever owned. My only reservations are minor, I hope that T-Mobile or HTC release the full retail OS as some of the missing features are a little frustrating, but overall no complaints whatsoever. Awesome phone, would recommend it to anyone with a little bit of tech savvy.
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Mar 15, 2010
I am looking to purchase a new phone so I have decided to opt for a HTC mainly because of the innovative features. I am interested in the two that are set to release next month, Legend and HD Mini. However I am not too sure which one to go for.
I understand that the Legend is running on Android and that this is an Android forum so there is obviously a degree of bias lol, and the HD Mini is on Windows Mobile. I'd like to know how extensive is the Android apps market right now, and is it set to continue to grow.
All in all I have never owned a phone on any other OS but Symbian. So I'm just wondering what you think is the best option.
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Sep 12, 2013
I'm puzzled as to why I randomly get shortcuts added to my phone screen. They are smaller than all the other icons, and when I select them they take me to the appstore to download that specific app. These shortcuts are for apps I have not downloaded. I can't find them in my programs to remove, either.
I'm certain this is a result of another game I have downloaded, but I can't see where to shut it off. I've witnessed my phone flash something like 'Shortcut for Play Castle Crash created' while on a phone call or in another app. I'll remove it from my screen, but it'll reappear after a few hours. And if I don't remove them, they will fill all empty shortcut spots.
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