Yesterday I posted up an article on HTC’s statement saying that the HTC Desire will not be receiving an upgrade to Gingerbread. However, earlier today they changed their minds and have created a new post which says:
Contrary to what we said earlier, we are going to bring Gingerbread to HTC Desire
This is great news for everyone, all though of course they’ve not published any estimated release dates yet!
Thanks to reader WeeJockey for noticing this!
Bad news for all folks that have been eagerly waiting for news of the Gingerbread (2.3) update for the HTC Desire. Unfortunately HTC announced earlier today on their UK Facebook page that the HTC Desire will in fact not be receiving the long-awaited update to the latest version of the Android OS.
Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones. However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you.
The reasoning might not appear to be most convincing to some users, especially considering that a number of 2.3 Sense ports for the Desire are already available on XDA, however it’s a shame for users who aren’t familiar or confident in rooting their phone and are forced to stick with the current installed version of Android on their HTC Desire.
I guess the biggest let down is the fact that at the start of this year HTC actually stated that the Desire WOULD be getting the Gingerbread update and got many of us impatiently waiting for June to arrive and bring us our ginger flavoured treat.
It’s a shame that the only real update HTC were able to provide Desire owners was Froyo, and that was only 2 months after the phone release date. Sad day for Desire owners, but I know plenty (including myself) are happy to use their phone as it is and will continue to use it for the foreseeable future.
Google Goggles was one of the novelty applications that I downloaded when I got my phone, but quickly forgot about. A new update to this application today added a series of tweaks and improvements (making it faster and results more reliable) as well as a few new features:
If you don’t have Goggles already you can download using the QR code below (click it if you’re browsing on your phone):
Once downloaded you can try out the Sudoku feature on the puzzle below:
The video below shows one of my favourite childhood games, Worms, running on a HTC Desire.
The game is already out, but unfortunately not available on the Market. To download you need to visit EA’s mobile game store on your phone and purchase from there. Payments are processed by Bango.
If you don’t trust Bango, or can’t see the game on the EA site yet then we can only hope EA see the sense in releasing it to the Android Market. Personally I’m holding off buying if and until its on the Market, but it’s still exciting news to finally have this game on the HTC Desire and other Android phones.
If you’ve rooted your phone, then you’ve most likely heard of the MIUI ROM. If you haven’t, then it’s about time you found out about it!
MIUI is a custom ROM built by a team of developers in China. Unlike most other ROMs, MIUI not only gives a complete UI overhaul to Android (iOS like in some cases) but it also introduces a massive range of new features.
The newest version of MIUI is due for release on 31st December, and the video below shows a preview of what’s to come:
If you’re interested in this ROM then the place to lookout for is: http://miui-dev.com
Gingerbread is the latest version of Android (version 2.3). It’s currently unknown whether or not the HTC Desire will be getting it. However, the good news is that the source code for it has just been released on AOSP (Android Original Source Project), which means that it’s available for developers to download, tweak and compile for use on devices. We can expect custom ROMs to start being released over this weekend for the Desire from talented developers such as AdamG and RichardTrip who you can find in the Desire Development section of XDA-Developers.
This morning users with the Kindle application will have received a new update in the Android Market for this application. The new update brings a series of new features, 2 of my favourites being scrolling through pages using the volume keys, and having the store accessible within the app instead of opening a new browser window. The full list of changes is as follows:
EA games has just released their Need for Speed Shift game into the Market. The official description being:
THINK FAST! DRIVE FASTER! OPTIMIZED FOR ANDROID™! Drive 20 awesome cars including the BMW M3 GT2, Lamborghini Gallardo, and Pagani Zonda. Features 18 tracks in 3 stunning locations, Quick Race and Career Modes, 3 difficulty settings, and physics-based accelerated 3D graphics.
I guess they’re a little late as the latest console version is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (also available on iPhone), but any 3D game being added to the Android Market is welcome by me.
If you want it, here’s the QR code for you to download it from the Market:
Unfortunately, it won’t let you play PlayStation games on it, but it’s still useful in the sense that you can access your PlayStation Network (PSN) account to see your friends statuses, learn about new games and share news via social networks. Whilst that doesn’t sound like a lot, we’re promised lots of new features to come. You read more about it on the Official PlayStation Blog
The past few weeks have introduced several new changes to the Android Market, most of which you’ve already noticed but here’s a summary in case you haven’t:
As you can tell, this week’s mostly been about application updates. People on Facebook can enjoy a new update to the Facebook application which allows:
If you missed the previous announcement, App Inventor is a way for anyone to develop Android applications using a simple web browser based interface.
You learn more about it, and signup to start using it here
This is a first post for a while and rather an important one (to me anyway).
I know that MyHTCDesire has been followed and read by thousands of visitors per day, and watching the stats grow over the months, hearing all the positive feedback and even reading some of the emails that people had taken time out just to say thanks was beyond rewarding for something I set off to do as just a hobby.
More recently I’ve gotten more and more sidetracked by other tasks until this morning I noticed that it had been a full month since the last article I published. I want to apologise for the lack of new posts but the past month has been one of the busiest in a long time – I work full-time, been working overtime and on top of that I’ve been doing a lot of work freelance so I hardly get the opportunity to even play around with my phone, let alone taking the time out to write up my experiences.
Work’s finally calming down so I’m hoping that I’ll soon be able to go back to spending some time, every few days, if not every day to providing you with the same standard of news and articles as I previously did.
This tutorial shows you how to remove system applications that come installed on your phone, or ROM of your choice that you don’t actually want.
Notes
Requirements
Video Tutorial
This video shows you how easy it is to do everything below!
Making the System Partition Writable
This change isn’t permanent, meaning that when you leave recovery mode your system partition will revert back to read-only. It’s only temporarily writable so that you can get rid of those unwanted apps.
Backing Up Applications
Before you start deleting apps, I’d strongly recommend backing them up onto your computer first. Here’s how:
Deleting Apps
Note: PLEASE make sure you’ve backed up any applications before deleting them.
Also, be sure that you’re not deleting any important system apps like Rosie (the HTC Sense framework!). Deleting things like Quick Office, Peep, Teeter, Facebook etc is fine.
Rebooting
Once you’re done deleting your applications you can restart your phone and if everything went well then it will start normally and you’ll find that the deleted applications no longer show up in your app drawer.
Restoring Applications
If for whatever reason you decide that you want to reinstall those system applications you backed up, you can do the following:
ypmount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
This guide shows you how to convert the 3GP videos that your phone records into videos that you can play on your computer and on other gadgets and devices, like the Sony PlayStation 3.
Requirements
Installation
Usage
Notes
Alternative
Instead of converting to an MP4, you can also convert to an avi (in case you get issues playing the MP4)
Here’s another dose of FAQs based on recent emails to MyHTCDesire:
