I’ve had my HTC Hero now for over a month, and have already settled on a number of apps, after much installing, trialling and uninstalling. I therefore thought I’d share my results, all neatly categorised.
I haven’t linked to any of the apps, as they should all be searchable in the Android Marketplace.
Oh, and I haven’t listed games (they’re a lot more of a personal choice, I find).
Information
The BBC news widget is particularly useful, providing easy access to the various BBC news feeds.
Movies, by Flixster, uses GPS to good use by displaying nearby cinemas and listing for their current shows. However, when viewing other information, such as trailers, it does appear to have constant network issues and this feature therefore doesn’t appear to work. A shame.
Google Sky Map is a fascinating educational tool that lets you point your phone heavenward and view the stars and planets whilst moving around.
ShopSavvy is a barcode scanner that will then look the product up to try and find prices. Useful for when you’re out shopping.
WikiMobile provides a mobile interface to Wikipedia.
Media
Until an official BBC iPlayer app appears, beebPlayer will help – it will let you view iPlayer TV content, along with listening to live Radio. Sadly, there’s no iPlayer radio content available.
Amazon MP3 provides access and purchasing capabilities for MP3 tracks from the Amazon website. They also have free tracks, although it’s best to look these up on the main Amazon site and then search for them on the app, as there’s no option on the app to list free tracks.
Last.fm is a streaming music player for the popular website, whereas Simple Last.fm Scrobbler will send details of all the music you’ve listened to, to the very same site for statistics purposes.
And for those who haven’t come across Shazam before, it may come as a bit of a revelation. The next time you’re at the pub and can’t identify a piece of music, simply use this app and it will work it out for you.
Lastly, I come to Podcasts. I initially used Google’s own Listen app but that simply failed to pick up new episodes of subscribed “shows”. I’m now trying out BeyondPod, which is only free for the first week. So far, it seems to work nicely.
Messaging
Meebo is a good, all-purpose instant messaging client.
And, if you find the default text messaging software a little bland, you could try Handcent, which includes speech bubble style conversation threads and is generally, well, a little more inspiring.
By default, reminders on Android are a bit lacking – you get a text or a missed call and you don’t get to hear about it after the initial reminder. Missed Reminder will keep nagging you and has a plethora of options, from LED colours to flashing the trackball.
Network
3G Watchdog is an excellent way of monitoring your data usage (you just need to know what your data usage limit is and when it runs to/from).
In an attempt to preserve battery power, the phone will automatically drop wi-fi connection when the phone is in standby. This option can be changed via the settings, but you may want to be able to switch this on/off as required. Wi-Fi Lock is a useful widget to do just that.
Office
AK Notepad is, well, just that – a useful note facility. However, if you want to stick a note on your screen, then I’d recommend Sticky Note.
Integrating with my existing online services, Quick Save will add a facility to quickly add links to Read it Later, and Astrid will synchronise and allow me to update my Remember the Milk to-do lists.
A more recent find is cloudList which allows you to create “tick lists” which can be accessed on both your phone and on their website.
WordPress have released their own app, WordPress for Android, which allows the quick editing of posts.
Sadly lacking is an app for Google Reader.
Social Networks
Facebook have their own App and, for eBay, Pocket Auctions works well.
I’m not mentioning a Twitter client right now, as I’m in the middle of reviewing a number – more on that in a later post!
Tools
Advanced Task Manager provides quick lists of running apps and ways to quickly “kill” them. There’s even a widget to perform an instant kill.
For file management, I’d turn to ASTRO which, erm, does just that.
Profilechanger is not very pretty but does exactly what I want – allows me to change profiles at certain times of the day – in my case, it goes silent overnight.
One the facilities sadly lacking in Android is the ability to backup your data and your apps. MyBackup Pro does just that – both onto your SD card and online. However, unlike most of my other recommendations, this isn’t a freebie. Give the trial a go though!
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What they don’t tell you about Android & the HTC Hero
Before I bought my Hero, research highlighted a few things that I suspect (and, indeed, looking at forums I know this is the case) many first-time users won’t realise at the time of purchase. What I’m not so sure about is where the dividing line is between T-Mobile, HTC and Android, so some of this information may only be relevant to one of these. Or a combination.
So, in no order what-so-ever, here’s my list of what you need to know.
Which version of Android?
The HTC Hero comes with version 1.5 of Android. There is a 1.6, but HTC have decided to not release this, instead waiting for the recent 2.1 version (which the Nexus One comes with). I believe the upgrade to 2.1 is due in the next few months. Once HTC release this, you will need to wait for your network provider to create their own version.
Bluetooth is Flaky
The hardware is fine, but the software is only part implemented. And by “part” I mean the ability to connect to a headset works, but sending files doesn’t. I believe version 2 of Android rectifies this, although I could be wrong!
The Manual
Well, I don’t know how it is with other Hero providers, but the T-Mobile version comes with a Quick Start paper sheet and that’s it. There’s no manual. After perusing the SD card that T-Mobile provided, I came across it! However, unless I missed something, I didn’t find any mention of this elsewhere. Just head to the PDF reader app and it should be listed!
PC Software
Again, nothing is provided, but it can be found on the included SD card. Having said that, I’d just head to the HTC website and download the latest version.
The only software that’s provided is a combination driver and sync application. The latter lets you synchronise contacts, etc, with popular PC programs. Personally, I don’t use it as all of my mails, contacts, etc, are online.
With the driver installed you can connect your Hero to your PC and view it as a removable drive1. You can then browse the content of the SD card where photos, videos and music are stored by default. This means you can use applications such as Windows Media Player and Picasa to synchronise and import automatically.
Backups
With the aforementioned lack of software, an obvious omission is the ability to back the handset up. Of course, much of the data is automatically synchronised online, especially if you make use of the Google services. In my case this includes mail, calendars and contacts. Music and photos I mentioned before you can synchronise from your PC – however, items such as installed applications, SMS’ and even dictionary additions are not backed up.
ASTRO is an excellent free file manager that just happens to also have the ability to backup your applications. And it’s free. There is also an SMS Backup App as well. In both cases, these save the data to your SD card, so you still need to remember to regularly copy this data away.
Of course, this still doesn’t cover everything anyway.
The best solution, if you’re willing to put your hands in your pockets is the MyBackup Pro app, which costs $4.99 (approx. £3.13). This not only allows scheduled backup to your SD card but also an option of backing up to their own online servers as well (although the option to backup apps is only available when storing to SD card). A 30 day trial is available.
Connection
There are just 2 connections – a headphone jack on the top and a USB connector on the bottom.
The USB appears to be proprietary, but it’s not – a standard mini USB cable will connect to it. If you connect a USB cable to your PC, it will trickle charge it as well as provide the data connection. However, in the box you are provided with just this one cable PLUS a mains socket which this cable plugs into, doubling it as a mains charger. This provides a much quicker method of charging the phone.
The headphone socket needs just one thing saying about it – there is a know bug where plugging in headphones won’t cause the phone to switch off its own speakers and divert sound to the headphones. This can be worked around by an application called toggleheadset – there is a separate one for Android 1.5 and another for 1.6.
Managing Applications
Unlike, oh I don’t know, the iPhone, you can run multiple applications on Android. However, the method of managing these are not obvious.
Some Apps will have an “exit” option which will cause them cleanly end when selected. Most, however, will continue running, particularly if have to use the “Home” or “Back” button to exit from them.
If you press and hold the Home button it will display up to 6 recently used applications. You can then select and switch between them.
To “kill” or uninstall applications you need to go into the “Manage Applications” option in Settings. This is slow to launch so isn’t really a good method of quickly handling apps. Needless to say there are applications available to assist, including the previously mentioned ASTRO.
WiFi and Standby
After a pre-determined amount of time your phone will enter “standby”, which is when your screen blanks and any security activated. When this happens, by default, your WiFi will turn off. This is for power saving reasons.
You can override this via the Advanced Menu within WiFi options. Or you can use a free app named Wi-Fi Lock to toggle the options from the front screen.
The On-screen Keyboard
You can switch between different keyboard types, including traditional numeric phone keypad styles. The typing is, okay, but an improved keyboard is included in Android 2.1. Meantime, there are (paid) apps available to make improvements until you’re able to upgrade.
Personally, I’d suggest using the keyboard calibration facility as soon as you can – it made an immediate, and very marked, improvement with my sausage fingered typing.
Linking Accounts
When you first starting using the phone, you’ll be asked for account details to link your phone. I don’t think any are necessary but, at least, a Google account is very handy. Why buy a Google branded phone otherwise?
When I did this it automatically connected to all my Google services and started downloading my contacts. Very, very handy.
You can also link Facebook and Flickr accounts (but no Picasa?). Any friends with these accounts can then be connected so when you bring up their contact details it will also display Facebook status’, photos, etc. You can also use their Facebook profile photo as their display picture.
Screenshots (added 19/02/2010)
If you want to take a picture of the screen contents you can do this automatically with an iPhone. The Android, however, doesn’t have this feature.
There are plenty of apps to do this in the marketplace BUT you need to root2 your phone for them to work – it would appear that the ability to do this is not available to “standard” apps. For the same reason, Opera Mobile is not available for Android (although Opera can get around this by getting phone manufacturers to bundle the browser with new phones).
32GB Memory Cards (added 22/04/2010)
Due to a bug in Android, although phones such as the HTC Hero will accept microSD cards up to 32GB, a card of that capacity cannot be formatted within the device. Instead you will need to perform the initial format of a 32GB card on your own computer.
Anything Else
I don’t realise this at the time but have since read about on Wikipedia…
And that, I think, is it. For the time being anyway.
As I’m new to all this, I may have got bits wrong but, I’ll be honest, it’s not always clear what the situation is with many things and you have to do some digging around forums to get an answer. So I’ll blame them
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