I have moved to Android on my HD2 since last one month. The wonderful guys at XDA-Developers have rooted android and ported it to HD2 from HTC Desire, and now it is in a position to be used as the daily build on the phone. In fact I have not thought once about changing back to Windows Mobile ever since I got my hands on Android.
The first time I actually saw an Android phone was in April 2010, when I had a chance to see the Motorola Droid at AdTech in San Francisco. I found it to be very confusing when compared to my awesome HTC Sense interface on HTC HD2. I have been a die hard fan of Windows Mobile and to think of any other OS was taboo for me. I used the Nokia E71 for some time and I found the stupid Samsung Omnia i900 better. When I compared Android with Windows Mobile, I thought it was still work in progress. Having said that, the adventurer in me still provoked me to try Android but my wallet didn’t allow for a change of the phone in less than 6 months, when we were talking about more than $800!
I was tracking the project on XDA, where the super developers were trying to port Android to the best phone of times, the HD2. I finally learned that a port was available where voice calls weren’t available. I went ahead and downloaded the build and ran android on the phone for the first time. It was not even close to a beta but I searched a bit more to find www.gamesquare.co.uk, where there were usable builds of Android for HD2. I immediately changed the build, which only meant replacing the Android folder on the SD card.
Android has become my choice of OS on the phone now. Initially there have been problems like a robotic voice and high echo to the other party receiving the call, I have even used a tape to cover the mic because the sound was too high. The development of android was faster than one could expect and there was soon a well designed build available for daily use. The only problem was high battery drain, a full charge would last for about 6 hours under normal usage.
SetCPU solved this problem as well. It is a program that sets the clock of CPU according to your usage and requirement, to ensure that you do not waste battery when the phone is idle. The mail application connects to Gmail, Google Apps Accounts and any other company Exchange account with ease. During the time of writing this post, I heard that Microsoft released Exchange ActiveSync for Windows Live Mail (aka Hotmail) but as the website rightly says, there is still an issue with connecting to m.hotmail.com for PUSH updates.
So much for Android at the moment. I will be glad to share more details once I continue using it for a longer period.
Windows Mobile and HTC make the best phone combination, which is difficult for any other company to match. I got an HD2 as a gift sometime back and I have been in love with the machine. It has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor which is the fastest available at the moment. Add to it the half gig RAM, which is one full gig in some versions, and you have a phone faster than my some laptops available in the market.
The icing on the cake however is the HTC sense interface, which makes the otherwise dull Windows Mobile intuitive and interesting. HTC sense that is a part of these phones is called Manila and it is in it’s version 3 as far as I remember. It is a set of screens, which help you in doing your commonly used tasks on the phone like messaging, tweeting, Facebook surfing, email access, weather and stock reports etcetera. This makes using the phone a charm and I have been in love with it since my HTC Diamond. I have used two other HTC phones before this HD2, Diamond and 3300. I loved the fact that Windows Mobile could access Hotmail and other Windows Live Mail accounts in real-time, like blackberry. This was the only reason I bought WinMo because a Blackberry and the service cost seemed too expensive at that time.
I was happy with my WinMo and the fact that I could change the phone at any time, well virtually, with a new flavor of WinMo, thanks to XDA-developers. This is one of the most active and most amazing community support system a company can dream of. I visit XDA developers website more times in a day than I opened HTC site in my entire life. This community introduced me to something more exciting for my phone, Android.
I found out one day that rooted Android images could be used to boot HD2 to power this device. I needed to have a big enough memory card and the courage to run a half baked operating system on my phone. Of course, I had both!!
I downloaded a folder with all the files in it, browsed it from my file manager in WinMo, ran clcrad and haret.exe and Viola! I had android on the phone. I skipped the parts where the phone didn’t boot initially and I for once thought that the phone bricked! All in all, I never imagined that the process could be that simple. Or should I say that the people worked really hard to make sure that it was simple for people like me, who had literally no knowledge of Linux or coding.
I am enjoying the seventh ROM now, with almost everything working on the phone. I can’t connect to my Ford Connection over Bluetooth to listen to songs or make phone calls, the battery life seems to be a concern and the phone responds a bit slowly at times but it is probably this particular build.
I am loving the entire Linux experience and the sheer beauty of Android. More than anything, I am enjoying the feel that I am using something entirely developed by the people for the people. I can not thank XDA team enough and I believe HTC should be exalted that people so selflessly work to make their products better.
I will be willing to help anyone who is trying to install Android on HD2. You can write in the comments and I will be glad to assist in whatever little way I can.
Written on the WordPress application for Android!!
