HTC posts Android 2.1 update for Hero phone HTC has posted the long-awaited - and much promised - Android 2.1 update for its Hero smartphone. Early online reactions suggest the installation process is neither as smooth nor as quick as it might be, but once past the system hangs - real and seemingly so - your Hero will emerge with the latest version of Google's OS. HTC …
No update has been released for Orange branded Hero's, we are still waiting for the OTA part one which was release 2 weeks ago!
According to the customer services agent I spoke to last week, there is no update for the HTC Hero and if there was they wouldn't release it as the phone works ok as it is....
I must be dreaming about the poor battery life, numerous bugs and lack of bluetooth file transfer...
i cannot abide noisy cameras. the 2.1 on my htc hero has made the camera click mandatory. if the camera is set to silent then it is quiet, but there is no way to make the camera silent like there was on 1.5. so to use the frickin camera i have to keep switching the device to silent, and i hate the walled garden and itunes dependency that is iphone.
also at last the calendar app has an option to change the default time on reminders for new events but there is no way to make the default reminder = off. bloody annoying. i use the reminder alarm on only about 1 in 100 events that i add to my device.
quiet sluggish and has also crashed once in the hour i've had it.
if i knew about the camera stupidity then i wouldn't have updated.
thinking about giving up android over the camera stupidity. i threw away nokia e71, n70 and e61i after those camera started making noise that only leaves iphone which has a simple switch on the side to make it silent.
it may sound trivial but the whole cameras have to make noise debate is just stupid. the video cameras on these phones take far higher res images than the early still image cameras that were first afflicted by these stupid laws but they don't make the video cameras make noise. i could take the device apart and manually eliminate the speaker and just use a bt head set for phone calls but that would require work every time i get a new phone. its nothing but security theatre!
Go into the camera app and grab the tab at the top of the screen. This reveals a menu where you can select Settings / Shutter Sound - set this to off ;-)
The camera is much improved but is still a bit laggy so I find the shutter sound useful as it tells me when I can move again. I used to find that you had to hold the phone impossibly still not to take a blurry picture but this seems to have improved, however I haven't been able to check this properly yet.
I bought a cheap white label HTC Tattoo and am using an Orange contract sim originally from a crappy Nokia 6100, also works with 02 and Orange PAYG sims ? I think i might be waiting a while for my update :(
Oh and network branding sucks ass, seriously why to they screw up your nice new phone on purpose. I had it with a Viewty :(
....with the exception that the Bluetooth phonebook access profile doesn't appear to work with my Garmin Nuvi. Reports on the net say that the Desire with the same Android version is generally working with PBAP but I have not had time to try that out yet.
It's definitely faster and smoother and it doesn't forget to sound alarms or run scheduled applications.
A definite win, until the Desire gets 2.2 and I'm behind the missus again :(
...so all my contacts and calendar data are in the cloud. However, there's a free CSV export tool on the marketplace if you have handset based contacts.
The good news is that the update didn't wipe any of my data. Vids, music and database files all stayed intact. All the settings for TwitFace, email, WiFi, etc were preserved too. The only thing that was lost was my screen layout, that reverted to the default.
Some notification settings got borked, but didn't take more than 5 mins to sort that out.
Responding to my earlier post - thanks for the suggestions from the other respondents. I used MyBackup Pro to save apps and contacts etc before running the update. I'm somewhat surprised (and no less pleased) to say that the upgrade kept *everything*, apps, contacts, personal info.
It was a long time coming, but seems that HTC have done a thorough job.
I don't know if it's different in different countries (I'm in Sweden) but the 2.1 update left all data and applications intact on my Hero. The email, contacts and calendar data was wiped but, as already pointed out, these all sync automatically from the cloud again when you connect. The only thing that was lost was the "Scene" data i.e. the layout of of widgets and icons on the 7 virtual home screens. This had to be manually restored.
No, but as always, don't trust ANYTHING you read on the internet, have a decent backup.
You can get a free 30 day trial of MyBackupPro on the marketplace, and it's well worth the asking price.
2.1 running VERY nicely here. They have taken a couple of bits out. (live wallpapers, and friendstream for some reason), but other than that, full satnav and other 2.1 niceties all the way.
Hmm, when I originally installed BT on my XP desktop it had software to go with the driver that handled things like PIM synching between Outlook (contacts, calendar) and my (Sony Ericsson) phone and allowed me to browse my phone's memory card in MS Explorer.
Now I have Windows 7 and there is only a driver available for my dongle. Windows doesn't give me the option to synch my contacts and I can't see the phone in explorer. Boo! Not sure if the necessary profiles are supported in Android 2.1 but this isn't what I was hoping for. More research required...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
