Against SOPA and PIPA

No matter how small a voice I have, lots of small voices, including the big ones (such as wikipedia) are protesting as of the 18th of January. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are two acts (that are yet to be put in place) that will prevent access of any website that contains copyright materials. Although this sounds like a good thing it will mean several websites (such as Wikipedia and Youtube) are likely to be completely shut down. Much of the internet from big websites like Wikipedia to little blogs all over the world will be protesting against SOPA and PIPA by turning their websites black. I will be doing so too from midnight of the 18th (GMT).

Read More about SOPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Read More about PIPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act

Thank you.

Desire HD Full Review, Pro's and Con's

Well I have had my Desire HD for a while now, and I love using it in the main, but obviously it has its little issues that I would prefer to have been sorted out, but nothings perfect right?

Pro's
The Desire HD is generally a great phone, its fast, yes by today's standards it doesn't have a dual core, but the 1Ghz single core is perfectly adequate for the OS and games you might like to play on it, plus backed up by the heavy 768MB of RAM, makes it a great at multi-tasking since all your previous apps can stay open without it getting slow.
It is (was) also really easy to gain root access to allow for customization and overclocking, a tool called Visionary+ is used to do one click rooting, (EDIT: An software update for the Desire HD, made the one click rooting impossible, although a roll-back to an older version is possible and then you can root and flash custom ROM'S)

One I obtained root access I found on XDA that the Desire HD is very overlcockable, even up to 2Ghz, I originally had mine at 1.6Ghz, but poor battery life became a pain and now it is comfortable at 1.22Ghz alongside the Android Revolution HD 3.2 that I am currently running. The phone is generally very snappy and the wide range of Sense and Non-Sense ROM's that support this phone is pretty good and it is pretty easily rootable even with the newer firmware.

Con's
The Desire HD's con's are mainly build quality, I feel that HTC's build quality in the main is good, and the phone is very aesthetically pleasing and feels very solid in the hand. Yet mine seems to be falling apart, apart from a small dent in the top where I dropped it, it hasn't sustained any other fall damage, the things I am about to talk about just generally happened in day to day usage.
Volume rocker, well I cant put it any simpler, it fell off, one day it became loose, and I intended to glue it in the centre, where it rocks, but on my way home I must have lost it when putting it in and pulling it out of my pocket,

This makes it very hard to operate the volume controls as you might imagine, but I can still just press the buttons if I stick my finger nail in there.

The next thing that I hate is the fact that the aerial cover, falls off, continuously, it just wont stay on, I had the phone for about a month, and that's when it got loose and just started to slip off the phone whenever I pull it out of my pocket etc, this is the most irritating thing ever, since, imagine this situation. Your phone is ringing in your pocket, you pull it out to answer it and the aerial cover falls off, the phone call dies due to having no signal since the cover fell off. I'm presuming the clips that hold it on are just weak, but I think this shouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

As you can see, the cover just slides off from the bottom of the phone unless you phone is sideways in your pocket, it will fall off whichever way up it is placed.

Other than these too irritating issues, the Desire HD is a great phone and I would recommend it to anyone.

Absent Time!

Sorry for the complete lack of posts! I have been busy doing my A-levels and haven't had time to write anything in the lovely world that is Android. I will be posting more often from now on due to time off.

Expected Articles:
HTC Desire HD (Pros and Cons)
Android 2.3 + Android 3.0
HTC Flyer, Motorola XOOM and other tablets (coming to the UK)

HTC Desire HD!

I got my HTC Desire HD today to finally taking my aged G1's place, its been a good 19 months for my G1, I did many things like root it and install CM6 (Android 2.2 ROM) with it but it just got too slow and was limiting my Android Experience too much, but now I have my HTC Desire HD, with its 768MB of RAM and a 1Ghz latest Snapdragon processor which makes it epically fast (no its not a dual core, unfortunately), So here I am sharing my excitement for my new phone. It ends up tops in a Quadrant benchmark test above the Nexus One 2.2 which is currently at the top.
Here it is next to my G1 with its score running CyanogenMod 6 Froyo 2.2, you see the Desire HD's screen is much better.

The screen is great and its 4.3 inch'ness makes me super happy because I hated using my G1's lousy screen againt all my friends better Android Phones, but now I can hold it over them.
Anyway I will making a video soon comparing it to my old G1 and showing how far Android has come in the world of Hardware. Stay tuned for that!

How to get Angry Birds to (sort of)work on your G1/HTC Dream

I believe this works with either the Lite Beta version and the full version but I have only tried it with the full version.
As you may know I've had some trouble with getting the Angry Birds app to work on my G1, well I spent a while rooting around on the internet until I found a way to make it work and I thought I'd share it with you poor G1'ers.
What you've got to do is open up the Angry Birds application on your phone like normal but DO NOT rotate your phone to landscape keep it in portrait/vertical, once you see the Angry Birds image witth he main red bird in the center constantly tap on the screen in a circle around the red bird, I know this sounds stupid but it seems to work ??? no idea why, worked first time with me, as far as I know this works for the G1 and the myTouch (HTC Dream + Magic). I'm not sure exactly but I can only presume that the constant tapping of the screen is (maybe) preventing the system of killing the application due to low memory. Anyway hope this helps!

Angry Birds!

Hurrah, Angry Birds full version is here!
I've been waiting for this for ages since the first lite beta release. Unfortunately the Beta Lite wouldn't work for some reason on my ancient G1, it would simply begin to load and after about a minute or so looking at the Angry Birds boot image it would send me back to the home screen. But now the new full version is available to download from getjar fro free,  http://www.getjar.com/mobile/43600/angry-birds (be warned it is an 15MB file so i recommend downloading onto your SD if you have 2.2 Froyo) Once I'd got the app on my phone I was delighted that it installed (finally) and as soon as I opened it things were looking promising, the boot screen has changed and it was all going well, right up until the point where it sent me back to my homescreen, you cant imagine my anger at Rovio! I tried moving it to my phone storage leaving me with a mere 1.2MB internal storage, this did not work either. Despite this and my anger at Rovio I recommend you get this from http://www.getjar.com/mobile/43600/angry-birds or if you want to wait a paid version will be available in the market soon! I hope it works for you as it is a great game (having played it on a friends iPod Touch) Good Luck!

What I want from the next gen of Android Tablet!

I wish these thousands of companies who are forever making cheap android tablets that are giving Android a bad name to all the new users, imagine it, you've brought a new Android tablet its your first device and yes it came from a company you've never heard of but it was cheap so you went ahead anyway, but then when you finally get it you find its slow, hasn't got access to the Android market and it feels like it might break in your hands. This means all the new Android users are being completely put off our great OS because they haven't experienced it properly yet.
So what should be done? Well I think if any 3rd-party manufacturer when using Google Android OS in their tablet/devices should have to meet a minimum set of requirements set by Google.
I would want these requirements to include at least:

• 512MB RAM 

• 256MB internal storage for apps unless Froyo is included with apps2sd

• A version of Android 1.6 for devices with screens of 7" or larger (due to Android 1.6 supports different resolutions)

• A 500Mhz processor or faster 

• Some version of an app store included if it doesn't meet requirements for the Android Market.

So there you have it, I hope this might become true one day to give those new people a better first experience of Android to see its true beauty.

Comments below of what you think and if you agree/disagree, What should be the minimum requirements for Android, if any?