Thursday, January 10, 2013

Android and me

Well, it comes as a surprise to me that I haven't really done a post about my (1 year, 4 months and counting) experience with my Android-powered HTC Desire S smartphone and the Google Android ecosystem. It's been a long while since I posted anything geek-related so this shall be a little biography of sorts, to commemorate 1 year and 4 months of Android and me. 

(A mostly subjective post on Android - if you're a fellow 'droid, someone considering taking the plunge, or just an Apple user interested in "the other side", read on)


The Beginning


It all started back in August 2011, during a time when the smartphone revolution was in full swing. Apple's iPhone was THE phone to get, while I was still tottering away on my 2 year old Nokia E63 (physical buttons ftw!). It was about time for a re-contract, and as almost everyone does nowadays, a re-contract equates to a new phone. I knew long ago that the iPhone 4 and the Blackberries weren't for me, mainly due to the nature of their highly restrictive ecosystems. I was impressed by the user-interface of Windows' mobile OS, but baulked at the lack of apps, so I settled on Android.

The Phone

At the time, the two major Android phones in contention were the newly released Samsung Galaxy S2 and the HTC Sensation. Both were equally matched in terms of features and specifications, but I didn't like the S2's plasticky look and preferred the nice, hefty feel of the metal-encased Sensation. Of course, being the budget geek that I am, price was the deciding factor - both were going for around $300-$400 for my preferred plan, which was way above my $200 budget.


I settled on the next best alternative - the Sensation's little brother, the HTC Desire S, which was on promotion. At that time I thought, "Why the heck would I need a dual-core processor? A single core would do fine! And besides, battery life would be so much better!". Little did I know that in just one year's time, quad-cores would be the industry standard (lol). On the bright side, I ended up paying only $48 after trading in my old Nokia.



The HTC Desire S
I won't do a review of the DS here simply because many sites have done it, and the fact that it is a very, very outdated phone by current standards. I still love it to bits though, for its compact 3.7" screen, aluminium body, the subtle "lip" at the bottom, and the fact that it still remains relevant in today's iPhone 5, S3, Note 2 and One X dominated world.

The Early (and dark) Days

It was a little hard getting used to a touchscreen after a decade of using physical buttons. Still, thanks to the matte screen protector that I slapped on it (I hated the squeaky smoothness of clear ones), I was soon swiping my way with ease. Unfortunately, HTC's Sense 2.0 user interface wasn't as user friendly and smooth as I expected.


One of the first obstacles I faced was migrating my contacts from the SIM memory into the phone. Somewhere along the migration process I screwed something up and promptly (and accidentally) deleted every contact I had. I had to rebuild my contact list the hard way, but thankfully I had an existing Gmail account which helped tremendously.

Next was the frustratingly lag-infested crap that HTC called Sense. Mind you, the current Sense 4.0 coupled with Android's Ice-Cream Sandwich/Jelly Bean has come a long way since those dark days of Sense 2.0 (and even 3.0). Visually, Sense was beautiful - widgets were well designed, menus were attractive, even the icons matched the whole theme well. Unfortunately, the poor single core processor couldn't handle all the visual goodies, which also negatively impacted battery life tremendously.

The iconic HTC Sense clock widget
I also had a minor scare when the phone refused to boot up and got stuck at the HTC logo, despite repeated attempts of removing the battery and rebooting (which I later learnt was actually a very dangerous thing to do). The problem solved itself after a few hours though, thankfully.

Delving into the world of root and custom ROMs

Things started looking up after I made the decision to go turbo (if you've watched the movie Wreck-it-Ralph, going turbo refers to going rogue lol). Thanks to the amazing community at XDA Developers, I found easy to understand instructions for rooting the Desire S, along with loads and loads of custom ROMs undergoing development. The forums contained many newbie-friendly guides for just about everything Android-related, including the seemingly crazy world of ROM flashing.

XDA Developers
Just in case you're the owner of an Android phone, and like me have decided to go turbo too, just a quick reminder that rooting your phone voids the warranty, so only do it if you're absolutely sure (well, there are ways to reverse the root process, but I won't talk about that here).

And so with the help of XDA and YouTube, I rooted my Desire S and promptly installed my first custom ROM - Saga LBC mod. I'm not sure what made me choose that, but I believe I was watching a tutorial for flashing a ROM on the DS and it just so happened the guy used that as a demo. Of course, I was still a total n00b at custom ROMs back then, so I didn't really know what to look out for when choosing one.

Saga LBC Mod, based on Sense
One of the first things that I did, having rooted my phone and installed a custom ROM which supported it, was to overclock the processor. The euphoria of having overclocked the stock 1 GHz processor to 1.5 GHz  lasted just 4 hours (lol), having drained 50% of the battery. Other stuff I did was to install awesome apps like Tasker and Titanium backup, which needed root (I'll elaborate more on the apps in a separate post).

Even with the added functionalities that came with root and the custom ROM, I still wasn't satisfied with the performance without compromising on battery life. And then I discovered CyanogenMod, or CM in short.

CyanogenMod

If you've ever done a search on custom ROMs, inadvertently you'd have come across CM, considered one of the most (if not THE most) popular custom ROM for Android.

CM7 on the Desire S
In a nutshell,
CyanogenMod is an aftermarket firmware for a number of cell phones based on the open-source Android operating system. It offers features not found in the official Android based firmwares of vendors of these cell phones. - http://www.cyanogenmod.org/
In other words, CM is stock Google Android, with added awesomeness! One of the first things I noticed after flashing CM7 (Gingerbread) was the whole cyan theme embedded into every nook and cranny of the phone, which felt so natural as if Android was made to be blue - I loved it! (And Google too, for they also incorporated a bluish-cyanish theme for Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean).

The second thing I noticed was the added smoothness CM actually gave my lag-plagued phone, which was no longer a pain to use. Part of the reason for this was the fact that CM based itself upon the stock Android operating system which was lean and optimized for use the way Google intended it, unlike the lumbering beast called Sense.

One of the additional features in CM that I found indispensable was the ability to tweak the settings for auto-brightness - I could adjust brightness levels for specific ambient lighting conditions - which did wonders for my battery life (screen brightness is usually the number one culprit of battery drain). Other not-so-functional-but-still-awesome features included customizable lockscreens, embedded power toggles in the pull-down notification menu and (in CM9 and later versions) sweep2wake!

Sweep2wake basically enables you to turn on/off the screen just by swiping across the four physical buttons at the bottom of the phone (the home, menu, back and search buttons). Sweep left to lock, sweep right to wake (hence sweep2wake), no more pushing of the power button! This function very nearly became a lifesaver when I dropped my phone a few months back, denting the power button and causing it to cease functioning. Thankfully it popped back out after a few hours (my phone seems to have mysterious regenerative powers lol).

Breaking the upgrade cycle

Cid, the (new) mascot for CM
And so here I am now, in 2013, holding onto my HTC Desire S flashed with Andromadus CM 10.1 running Jelly Bean 4.2, when many of the S3s, Note 2s, One Xs and whatnot out there are still stuck on ICS or even Gingerbread (gloating time lol).

And herein lies the reason for flashing a custom ROM, especially if you're not using a Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 - you won't get upgrades until your phone manufacturers say so, which is often several months after the official Google release. Nexus users don't have this problem as they get upgrades the instant Google announces them (lucky them!)

And if you're using an outdated phone, destined to be relegated to the scrapheap? Tough luck trying to get an official release.

One of the things I love about Android is the dedicated developer community that keeps 2 year old phones like the Desire S viable in today's quad-core, 5 inch screen world. After trying CM7 for a couple of months, I got the itch again when Alpha builds of CM9 were released, promising an upgrade to ICS. Then came CM10 which brought Jelly Bean and Project Butter to the Desire S, followed most recently by CM10.1 with JB 4.2. Amazingly, CM9, 10 and 10.1 weren't even official releases, just test builds by a handful of extremely dedicated developers (shoutout to Nexx, nk111 and Flinny from XDA, you guys are awesome!). Sure, I'd get a couple of random reboots in a day, but that's a small price to pay for having the latest Android OS on an ageing phone :D

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Prologue

How long will I keep this up, I always wonder to myself. Will I upgrade my phone to a Nexus 4 if/when it becomes available locally? Will I be tempted to get a new phone when my line is up for recontract in August? Will I stick with the Desire S until it finally dies?

Sorry A-chan and Kashiyuka >.<
In the meantime, I'll be happily munching on jelly beans until the time comes to make a decision ;)