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Posts Tagged ‘htc magic’

CyanogenMod for HTC Magic

October 31st, 2009 No comments

Yet another HTC Magic Rom.
Yesterday I tested some more HTC Magic roms. One of those roms was the CyanogenMod for HTC Magic (32a) + Android 1.6.
It’s a very nice rom, very quick. It does not have the HTC Sense UI that in my opinion is great looking but not so useful.
While trying out roms I was looking for efficiency and CyanogenMod was the choice.

You can get the CyanogenMod rom here.

Categories: android Tags: , , , , ,

HTC Magic + Sense UI

October 24th, 2009 No comments

This post comes late. I’m using a cooked ROM on my HTC Magic for some time now.

I’m using MyHero Rom and it’s working well!

I only had to Root my HTC Magic (how to root HTC Magic) and then load a custom Rom (how to load a custom rom). It’s a very easy process.

Categories: android Tags: , , , , , , ,

A few weeks using Android

August 30th, 2009 2 comments

I’ve been using my HTC Magic/Android for the past weeks. It’s not true that it is totally Google dependent, but it was made buy Google and the google services are, of course, very well integrated. In another perspective it is very Internet dependent and if you can, subscribe a data plan. Currently I don’t have one but I’m working on that.

I didn’t change any default applications, I tried chompSMS but I didn’t see why it was better than the default one. Besides the colors, I think it’s basically the same thing. All the others are good at least from my point of view and for my usage.

I did install some additional applications:

  • A bunch of CurveFish widgets
  • TaskKiller free – Lets you close running apps.
  • APNdroid – Prevents the phone from connecting to the internet over 3G/EDGE/GPRS
    • It has a problem, it also prevents MMS. I have been in contact with APNdroid developer, Martin Adamek, and the future version of APNdroid will support this (choose if MMS are also disabled or not).
    • I made a simple change on the code to test it and I have a working workaround, I posted the function I changed here. I have been with so little time to make the proper changes to APNdroid myself but here is a working version that does not affect the MMS APNs. Copy it to your SD and use eoeAppInstaller to install it.
  • Toggle Settings
  • WiFi Scanner
  • Astrid Task/Todo List
  • OI Shopping list
  • eoeAppInstaller – SD apk installer (lists all apk’s in the SD)
  • twidroid – twitter client
  • ASTRO File Manager
  • Babbler Lite for Facebook – full-featured native Facebook client
  • EboBirthday
  • SMS Popup – shows a popup dialog when a SMS/MMS is received (very configurable)
  • ConnectBot – SSH client
  • Ndrive
  • ShopSavvy – shopping assistant
    • I haven’t really tried this one yet, still waiting for a opportunity.
  • Any Cut – Allows to create home shortcuts to anything

Some other apps you may want to consider (they are said to be the best around):

  • Snap Photo Pro – Camera App
  • imeem Mobile – Streaming Music App
  • CoPilot Live – GPS Navigation App
  • WeatherBug – Weather App
  • chompSMS – Communication App
  • Weather Widget
  • Sherpa – Location Based App

Of course and as I have commented above, I have been looking into android development. You can read all about that at http://developer.android.com. The android plugin for eclipse is nice and works very well. I only had some initial trouble with the debugger but not a big problem.

Another thing that I haven’t tried yet is WiFi with WAP Enterprise. I’ve been lazy to try it out at my university but I’ll give it a go very soon.

I have also been tempted to change the ROM version from the original to a HERO based ROM, but there are some things still aren’t working so I’ll wait.

Categories: android Tags: , ,

Hello Android World!

August 9th, 2009 7 comments

image_htc_magic_01

This is my first Android related post. Thanks to the iPhone 3G S release last week, my mobile provider made a nice promotion to fight it. They sold the HTC Magic for 50% of it’s price. The stock for this promotion was about 200 units and they were sold out in 30 minutes. It wasn’t easy but I managed to buy one.

 

After a week using it, I have to say.. it’s just wonderful! The phone/android platform exceeded my expectations!

But I also had some issues.

Pros:

  • Nice design
  • Superb screen quality
  • The trackball
  • Android platform
    • User Interface
    • Navigation (navigation between menus, UI, using the phone)
    • Google Apps Integration
    • Android Market

Cons:

  • Internet dependency
  • The camera hasn’t got flash
  • No keybord/phonepad
  • As it is open source it should sync with evolution (or some other) :-(
The phone has no pen (those pens to use on the screen) and you will not need one. I was astonished with the facility and by the fact that it worked perfectly with touch. If that wasn’t good enough the they added a trackball that let me say, it’s just perfect!

I didn’t put the battery in the cons. It holds up to 2/3 days of battery with normal use (sms, phone calls) but if you use the GPS it will drain the battery’s power allot faster.

About the cons, the Internet dependency is a con only if you don’t have a data plan. If that’s your case, you MUST have APNdroid! This app allows you to enable/disable the internet use but still has one problem… no mms get by, although this is the most requested feature and will be added soon.
I don’t use the camera that much but my old Nokia had flash so there is no excuse for the HTC Magic. The keybord.. the virtual keybord is very nice, I can use it very well and still I only have few days of experience, but for bigger tasks like for example connecting via ssh to a remote machine and solving a problem… well it might be challenging.

The first thing I tried was to get all the contacts out from my Nokia 5320 into the HTC Magic. I made a sync with outlook and made backups in pst and csv just in case. I had a hard time synchronizing the HTC Magic with outlook. First I tried windows 7 witch wasn’t a good idea, it lacks support for software and drivers. Then I tried to use a windows xp that I have in a virtual machine but still couldn’t do it. I ended up using my sisters laptop with windows vista and HTC Sync worked perfectly there.. although some of the contacts were messed up. I think the reason for this to happen is several syncs thru 4/5 mobile phones along the years (I had “invisible” contacts that I didn’t even know about). The prefect solution to sync the contacts was to import the csv file in gmail and then sync the phone with my gmail account. Worked like a charm and I have a backup of my contacts in my gmail account, witch I can access from anywhere.

I’m still testing the phone and it’s features but I can tell you, my next android related post will be with the “must have” apps. Stay tunned!
Categories: android Tags: , , ,