Shashank Rana

Android on HD2

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!!

Using my iPad

I recently received an ipad to use for some time. This is a first generation iPad and therefore it doesn’t have any 3G. I was very sad because I didn’t know how would I use the iPad instead of the laptop at all times. I tried to look for the details online and didn’t really find anything interesting. Apple didn’t allow any Bluetooth tethering on the device which means that I couldn’t connect my phone to the iPad for internet sharing. I couldn’t find a device like MiFi in india, which could work as a 3G wifi router (also because there is only one service provider for 3G). I was wondering how could I make this a more useful device for travel.
After reading about the Mi-Fi, I recalled something really great that my phone has. I recently got an HTC HD2 for myself. This is a Windows Mobile based phone, and has among the best hardware available at the time. The phone is very powerful and the best part of the phone is that despite it being the ‘windows mobile’, it is awesome. I am sure a lot of people may not agree with me on this one but HTC and Windows Mobile are the best possible combination in mobile phone technology!
HTC HD2 has the capability to work as a WiFi router. This means that whenever I wish to connect to the Internet, I only need to start my phone’s wireless router and share my Internet connection. With an unlimited data plan, there is no issue with the download charges and I can browse, mail, chat and blog using the iPad. In fact this blog is also posted using the same connection!
Technology helps, and it always pays to invest in it at the right time.