My Adventures in Flashing a New ROM

     I rooted my HTC Hero (Sprint) a few weeks after I got it back in October but have not put a custom ROM on it for several reasons.  One, I was very nervous about bricking it, and two, all the ROMs available were either still 1.5 or partially functional 2.x ROMs.
     I have been watching XDA closely looking for a 2.1 ROM.  A few weeks ago they got a hold of a leaked Eris ROM.  It still had a  few things that were not functional on the Hero.  Then I looked on Friday and they had two ROMs based off a Sprint Hero leak.  100% functional. Okay time to flash a new ROM.  This is when the fun (read STRESS) began.
      I downloaded the Fastrec one click rooting method and an Amon Ra recovery image. Rebooted, again and again.  I finally realized that the procedure to access fastboot is different for the Euro version and the Sprint version of the Hero. Finally got into fastboot, selected recovery.  NOTHING.  My phone rebooted and locked up.  Pulled the battery, did the same thing, over and over.  I called it quits for the night.
      New day, I reach out to the twitterverse for help.  Discovered that I had I bad recovery image. I got a new recovery image flashed via terminal on the phone and did a nandroid backup.  Here is where I made a mistake.  Fellow noobs pay attention.  I did the nandroid backup BEFORE I created an ext partition on my SD card.  Thus erasing my backup.  I didnt realize this until many hours later.  I rebooted, put a new ROM on my SD card and booted into recovery.  I installed the ROM and rebooted.  It started to boot fine then, NOTHING, phone locked up.  Not again. Tried several more times.  Still nothing.  Not good.  It wasnt a big deal when I couldnt get into recovery when I had a functional ROM but now my phone is unusable.  I pulled the battery again and booted into recovery.  I put a different ROM onto my SD card and tried again.  25 minutes later, NOTHING.  Not good.  Pulled the battery and tried again.  I discovered I was in a boot loop.
        I getting really nervous at this point.  I know its been said that if you can get into recovery all is good and can be fixed.  But as a noob I was nervous.  It didn't help that my wife follows my twitter stream and was on my case about breaking my phone.  Okay neither of the 2.1 ROMs I was interested in were working.  Phone is not a brick at this point but might as well be.  I decided to go with an older 1.5 ROM that was used by alot of people and try it.  IT LOADED!!  Wow, my phone was functional  again.  I let it sit and charge for a while then decided to try a 2.1 ROM again..  It worked this time.
         I have no idea what caused the 2.1 ROMs not to work the first time thru but they are working now.  I have tried both of the ones I was looking at and settled one one. When I flashed to the second 2.1 ROM it went flawless and was really easy.
        I think I spent about 3+ hours trying to get a functional ROM back on  my phone from the time I flashed the first time.  I want to thank @simms22 and @chickenfudge over on Twitter for helping me thru a very trying time yesterday afternoon.  The reason I was trying to use Fastrec and not the Android sdk was my computer was being tempermental and would not let me access my phone thru the sdk.  I tried changing the drivers but my Windows 7 64 bit OS had its own ideas for what the drivers should be.
        Feel free to leave any comments or questions below.

The Phone Wars: Google vs Apple

Unless you have been living under a rock lately you know about the fight going on between Google and Apple.  This fight had been escalating for a bit now.  In my opinion here is how the fight is going:

Apple: blocked the Google Voice app from the iPhone. If it was at AT&T request is not the point they still did it and there are jailbroken phones that could of used it off of AT&T.  

Google: Launched the Nexus One even though it obviously was in development for a bit Apple's punch came first

Apple:  Mr Crapple (aka Steve Jobs) trashed Google at the Apple all employee meeting

Google: Turned on mutlitouch in Google apps on the Nexus One

Handicaps:  

        Apple: AT&T's network is being severely strained by data users.  To make matters worse for AT&T, they approved the SlingPlayer app for use over their 3G network.  I see data usage going up even more now.  More dropped calls on the iPhone now.

       Google:  the Android Market & app storage.  The interface is not great and there is no real good way to browse the market on the web. The App store may have more apps but that means more junk as well.  Developers are slowly moving apps to Android from the iPhone.  Google is working on Apps2sd as a default to make more memory for app storage, but currently storage is an issue.

Current state of the fight:  Google ahead.  The Nexus One running it's current enhancements is a stronger phone than the iPhone.  Once Google gets apps2sd running and the market in good shape the iPhone is in serious trouble, but we will just have to wait and see who lands the next punch and what it brings.  

Rogers Fails Android Users AGAIN!!

WOW!!  Rogers (Rogers is a Canadian mobile phone/cable tv provider)  has really been failing their subscribers lately. First they have a  911 GPS issue on BOTH the Magic and the Dream.  Okay, not a big deal just push a fix and go on right?  Wrong!

Rogers tells everyone they  MUST install the patch by 6:00am EST on 1/24/10 or their internet access will be temporarily suspended ( http://bit.ly/7umNGy ).  Well in the biggest fail of them all they pushed out the fix on 1.5 taking anyone who had custom ROMs back to 1.5. With this they disabled the existing root path eliminating the possibility of putting custom ROMs back on the phone.  In a conversation with one Rogers customer he ended up losing at least 3 apps, including Google Goggles.

As a very poor consolation the new 1.5 was pushed with HTC's Sense UI.  As nice as the Sense UI is I would be pissed if my OS was downgraded and I couldn't fix it.

Wonder what Rogers subscriber base is going to look like in the next six months.

Theft of Android Apps

If you know of any developer's or know the support email for any paid apps you have please send them the following information or send them here.

http://www.mediafire.com/thakidtok is hosting HUNDREDS of paid apps for free download.  The email for www.mediafire.com is abuse@mediafire.com.  The site is hosted by DNSMadeeasy.com
 DNS Made Easy 
Tiggee LLC
PO Box 145
Oakton, VA 22124

 The site is registered thru godaddy.com.  Please be sure that the developer's you know see this so they can file a DMCA takedown notice with Mediafire and DNSMadeeasy so they can get paid for their apps they worked so hard on.  

The files are being put up by Twitter user @thatkidtok.


EDIT:  Here is a link to some information on how to submit a DMCA notice:  http://www.hooverwebdesign.com/articles/how-to-file-a-dmca-copyright-violation.html

Disney killing free NASCAR

I was watching ESPN the other night and they were talking about the upcoming NASCAR broadcast schedule.  9 of the 10 Chase races will be moved off of the free ABC network feed to the paid ESPN channel.  They are moving several of the "regular" season races to ESPN as well. By doing this Disney can theoretically make more money on the broadcasting of the NASCAR races.  By broadcasting on ESPN those NASCAR fans that do not have cable will either miss the races or have to get cable.  ESPN makes money off of every subscriber that every cable and satellite company has. (And they charge ALOT for the right to carry ESPN)

Now this doesn't really have any affect on me since I have ESPN.  But it does go to show how much power Disney has and how major media companies can control what and how we watch television.  It would not surprise me at all to see the major media companies move all live sporting events to their cable networks over the next 5-10 years to guarantee more income from those show.

HTC Hero Gets 2.1 in February

I read an article at www.androidguys.com earlier and they were quoting sources that the HTC Hero in Europe will start receiving the 2.1 upgrade in the middle of February.  I am happy for them.  Now to us Sprint Hero owners, what about us?   This announcement that the Euro Hero getting the 2.1 update next month is very promising.  I read at one point last month that the Sprint Hero was getting an update to the Sprint Navigation app in the middle of February 2010.  Hmm, Europe 2.1 mid Feb, Sprint nav update mid Feb.  Are you seeing what I am?  It's not hard to form an opinion that the Sprint Hero will get the 2.1 update in February as well.

Now granted this takes that we are assuming a few things.  We have to assume that Sprint knew approximately when HTC would have Sense UI ready for 2.1 and they were able to get their developers to have the navigation app ready to put into the ROM when HTC needed it.  Obviously since HTC built the NexusOne they have had their code writing paws on 2.1 for some time now.  Now granted I could be assuming a lot, but hey, isn't it fun to try and guess what's going on?

Avatar 3D in Your Home

I read some very good articles today.  What I previously thought was going to be is not.  Samsung has announced a deal with RealD to use RealD 3D in their TVs.  JVC and Sony are reportedly working on deals with RealD as well.  This is a very good thing.  Why?  RealD uses a passive 3D technology.  By Sony, Samsung and JVC using it in their TVs it will mean lower priced glasses for us to use in our homes.  The RealD glasses used in the theater are rumored to cost in the area of $0.65.  We will probably end up paying $20-30 for them but that is still cheaper than the $100 active technology glasses used by other 3D companies.  

The second bit of 3D news today is that ESPN and Discovery Channel both announced 3D channels in the works.  ESPN will launch by this summer.  Scheduled for transmission - 2010 World Cup Soccer and the 2011 BCS National Championship game.  I can't wait to see what Discovery is going to come up with.  Their Planet Earth series in HD was amazing.  Anything is 3D by them should be just mindblowing.