Android: Give your smartphone a second chance
Looking at the constant evolution of the Android platform and how bad the phone manufacturers are supporting it on their older phone platforms, it is clear that a smartphone is not a "life companion". With about one or two major versions of the Android platform coming out each year, its lifetime is clearly short. At some point:
My phone lacks storage space every day, each time an application update pops in for instance. It is impossible to update the good old Google Talk application: Hangouts is a no-go. Worse, it does not get any firmware update from HTC for more than a year: it is probably very insecure and anybody with a bit of Android hacking expertise can hack his way into my personal phone data.
The last point started to worry me a bit; not that I got tons of super secret stuff on my smartphone, but well, I would be pissed off to get hacked my accounts that way. I started to think, I should do something about it... Buy a new smartphone?
Right, these days, the prices are dropping and for half of the price of my good old Legend, I could get a very nice fancy smartphone. But wait...
When my father introduced and teached me about computers he told me about what he though was an important rule/principle when working with a PC; in short, he told me something like this: "try to maximize the use your PC until you really reach its full potential, before thinking about getting an upgrade". Yes, I was young :-) and the PC technologies - mainly processors - were evolving very fast: 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486; I always wanted to follow this movement in order to be able to install the latest MS Windows and games. Somehow he managed to convince me as I "only" went through the 8086, 80486 and only later to one of the top end Pentium (233 MHz?).
So, finally, I did not buy [yet] a new smartphone. Instead, I started to explore some alternative tracks and give my smartphone a second chance.
The most advanced alternative is definitively CyanogenMod. Just open the forum page and be amazed how many devices are supported in there. So far, this is what I am running: the last stable 7.2 build for the HTC Legend; wooooooooooot what a step, from Android 2.2 to 2.3.7. My phone is fast again (*) and I have plenty of space now. Almost (**) everything works as before, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS.
Another alternative for finding another firmware is to browse the XDA forums. This one is more developer oriented, so a developer "hacking" hat is usually needed :-)
(*) Yes, of course, it is still under-powered when it comes to run the heavy default Facebook application, but for the rest, it is really!
(**) There are some small glitches, but usually there is always a workaround :-)
That said, as my Legend is still working fine hardware wise - cross fingers - I will try to keep it for a while. I wish I had more developer time to try out to compile and build my own CyanogenMod image, and, why not, try to improve it further! But well... evenings are too short!
- It gets "stuck" in one particular Android platform release.
- There is no more main storage (flash) space.
- It is getting slow running some applications.
- It does not support anymore the newest market applications.
- It is not as "fancy" as recent phones :-)
My phone lacks storage space every day, each time an application update pops in for instance. It is impossible to update the good old Google Talk application: Hangouts is a no-go. Worse, it does not get any firmware update from HTC for more than a year: it is probably very insecure and anybody with a bit of Android hacking expertise can hack his way into my personal phone data.
The last point started to worry me a bit; not that I got tons of super secret stuff on my smartphone, but well, I would be pissed off to get hacked my accounts that way. I started to think, I should do something about it... Buy a new smartphone?
Right, these days, the prices are dropping and for half of the price of my good old Legend, I could get a very nice fancy smartphone. But wait...
When my father introduced and teached me about computers he told me about what he though was an important rule/principle when working with a PC; in short, he told me something like this: "try to maximize the use your PC until you really reach its full potential, before thinking about getting an upgrade". Yes, I was young :-) and the PC technologies - mainly processors - were evolving very fast: 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486; I always wanted to follow this movement in order to be able to install the latest MS Windows and games. Somehow he managed to convince me as I "only" went through the 8086, 80486 and only later to one of the top end Pentium (233 MHz?).
So, finally, I did not buy [yet] a new smartphone. Instead, I started to explore some alternative tracks and give my smartphone a second chance.
Getting more flash storage
That is the first easy thing to try out. Of course this is not necessary an easy task as it requires to get advanced access to the Android phone platform: in other words, root the phone. My 2 years warranty being over, it was time to do this :-)
Luckily HTC finally gave an official way for unlocking, properly, the phone boot loader. Thus no need to digging for the dark art of rooting. This worked pretty well for me.
After that, installing a special "recovery image" (called ClockworkMod Recovery) gave me full access to the default Android file system at boot time, enough for removing the default unnecessary applications/games that were included in the system: "adb shell" <3 <3 <3
That helped a lot, at the beginning.
Cleanup :-)
Yes, that's a simple advise. A smartphone is not a PC, but somehow, it is like your MS Windows PC: keep installing applications, utilities, services, games and crap and at some point it gets slow. For a PC, there are plenty of ways to deal with that: system utilities, restore or even, a full clean install :-)
On my smartphone I did not try utility applications (although I guess this exists), but I started to think: what is really useful to have here? What do I need the most? Why do I keep this application? Ouch, why is the last Facebook application eating all my storage? Also I started to look for alternatives applications, using less space (e.g. TweetDeck is amazing when it comes to replace both Twitter and Facebook Android applications).
That helped too, for a while...
This is the final step I took, so far. I really like the Android platform and its community for that. Indeed one should realize that there are plenty of alternatives to the default stock Android platform installed on a smartphone. Some are experimental (e.g. running the latest Android ICS on a Legend - lol) and some are more stable, more convenient for a daily usage of course.On my smartphone I did not try utility applications (although I guess this exists), but I started to think: what is really useful to have here? What do I need the most? Why do I keep this application? Ouch, why is the last Facebook application eating all my storage? Also I started to look for alternatives applications, using less space (e.g. TweetDeck is amazing when it comes to replace both Twitter and Facebook Android applications).
That helped too, for a while...
Try out a firmware alternative
The most advanced alternative is definitively CyanogenMod. Just open the forum page and be amazed how many devices are supported in there. So far, this is what I am running: the last stable 7.2 build for the HTC Legend; wooooooooooot what a step, from Android 2.2 to 2.3.7. My phone is fast again (*) and I have plenty of space now. Almost (**) everything works as before, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS.
Another alternative for finding another firmware is to browse the XDA forums. This one is more developer oriented, so a developer "hacking" hat is usually needed :-)
(*) Yes, of course, it is still under-powered when it comes to run the heavy default Facebook application, but for the rest, it is really!
(**) There are some small glitches, but usually there is always a workaround :-)
That said, as my Legend is still working fine hardware wise - cross fingers - I will try to keep it for a while. I wish I had more developer time to try out to compile and build my own CyanogenMod image, and, why not, try to improve it further! But well... evenings are too short!
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