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!!
I always found it strange that Apple locks devices even when the customers pay the full / unsubsidized price for them. All that I could think of was that it is their product. They are free to market it the way they want and there is no reason anyone should be bothered! You like it, buy it, otherwise there are more customers and more sellers! (On this note, I use ONLY Windows Mobile because I think it is the best mobile platform)
I got an iPhone because I wanted to see what is it in the phone that people don’t mind waiting in queue for weeks to buy it. I got it last November and used it for a couple of days, finally realizing that it was meant for my wife who is a casual techie. I wanted my Windows Mobile back, which meant getting the all new HTC HD2, the powerhouse!
When I heard about iOS 4, which is funnily termed as the world’s most advanced mobile OS by Apple, I wanted to see what was in there. I connected my jailbroken and unlocked phone to iTunes and it was quick to offer me the upgrade to the World’s most Advanced Mobile OS!
The *primary* features that iOS4 offers are Multitasking, Folders, FaceTime, app Platform, performance and stability, security and the fact that it works World over. Is it all that is required to make an OS the world’s most advanced mobile OS? I have been using all these (except FaceTime) on the Windows Phone platform since the first phone I bought!
I call Windows Mobile OS a platform because I think it is not an OS but actually a platform that allows people to develop on it and improve it. Any of the above features, which are a part of the OS (not hardware dependant like the phone works world over), have always been available on Windows Phone. The ability to manage apps in folders sounds as if we are getting something still in it’s infancy, Windows allows you to manage the entire file structure! You can manage all the files, applications, pictures and whatever is there on the phone in an explorer like structure.
XDA-Developers and HTC make a great software and hardware combination for the Windows platform. The fact that I can change anything, even the OS flavor on my phone, in max 30 minutes without thinking about anything, gives me the satisfaction that I own what I paid for!
I think the openness (and I have not used android yet) of Windows Phone makes me love the platform. Apple may make great products and they may be ‘cool’, I want something that works according to me and not according to the manufacturer!
