A beauty but what a quality beast - 8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General

G'day all
I recently got myself a lovely HTC wizard (branded O2 XDA Mini S, ). It's a device I've been researching for a while so I was very much excited to try out my first WM product when it arrived this morning.
However, for all it's beautiful design, it's really been a bit of a big pain on several ways. Most significantly and immediately noticable is the very sluggish interface. Some things, like notifications, I can dismiss fine, but the majority of actions, such as starting a program, opening one of the left-hand buttons or switching to landscape mode, take several (maybe 10) seconds to happen and even then the screen will only be partially and very slowly redrawn. This seems to only occur at the 'today' screen (other programs are pleasantly snappy). Anyway, it's rendering the today screen pretty useless and since it's the starting screen it means everything is taking much longer to do. Is this just my device or is this a recurring issue?
Cheers

Have you reinstalled without the o2 Active stuff (basic mode option I think). It the real hog.
Other than tat have a look around the messages is the forum for various registry hacks to speed this baby up.
It does work well, you just have to tweak the heck out of it.

So it's a matter of going around deleting stuff that 02 put on?

Basic install plus something like SPB or Magic button to close apps properly (apart from the ones you regularly use, such as phone/messaging/IE) makes the device at least twice as quick.

wilesd said:
Basic install plus something like SPB or Magic button to close apps properly (apart from the ones you regularly use, such as phone/messaging/IE) makes the device at least twice as quick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly what I've done on my mini S...O2 Active is really doggy, the interface looks fine, but mini S can't affort....
Basic intall with SPD Plus work fine for me....I can now play mp3 & mp4 files smoothly with beta player, connect BT GPS receiver with TT5...

To really clear all the clutter, perform a hard reset and when you get to the 'about to customise' step (short countdown) perform a soft reset.
This results in a completely clean OS thats much more responsive. SPB pocket plus is a good app to install next.
There are other registry tweaks such as disabling menu animation that make an additional improvement to the responsiveness
There are plenty of discussions about this in the other threads - have a search around.

Dunno if this works on the Wizard but on the magician, if you map one of your buttons to the "Start" menu, then you can do a lot of program switching without going via today page - and the whole re-draw of it.
Particlulrly if you chose wisely the 5 programs that you can specify for the start menu.

jacro said:
To really clear all the clutter, perform a hard reset and when you get to the 'about to customise' step (short countdown) perform a soft reset.
This results in a completely clean OS thats much more responsive. SPB pocket plus is a good app to install next.
There are other registry tweaks such as disabling menu animation that make an additional improvement to the responsiveness
There are plenty of discussions about this in the other threads - have a search around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The soft reset method is OK if you don't use MMS as the MMS app will not be installed, if you want to use MMS though the Basic install is better

I cleaned my mini-s the hard way
Hard reset, soft reset, then installed some of the extROM cab files manually and setup the GPRS manually too. Wizard now runs ok, its not fantasticly fast, TTN5 still takes time to load, and incoming calls while it loads cause problems (but thats only 15 secs!). Magic button is great, pick the apps you need to keep open (phone, text messages, etc) and "keep alive" and "hide when inactive" then just use close all to keep the RAM free.

Alright - I'll try one of these hard/soft reset cleans. But...
Another problem I've been having is that ActiveSync refuses to detect my device over USB. The USB connection seems fine (Windows XP detects new but unkown hardware - seems to lack an RNDIS driver or something), but a sync I can't make work.
So I can't install anything again. After a hard reset will applications such as phone and messaging be restored or will the require a reinstall (that I can't do)?
Also, remapping the buttons sounds like a brilliant idea. I'm not so big on IE so if I made that my start menu toggle I could reach a whole load of things one-handed. One thing that oft annoys me is when you have to close a program or dialogue box with the cross in the top-right. Can that be remapped to, say, the voice recorder button so I don't have to keep awkwardly touching the screen?
That Magic Button sounds handy also - freeware by any chance? I'll google it in a sec. It's annoying (well, peculiar, coming from a PalmOS background) to have several applications running at once - all that's needed is the phone/messager apps and perhaps the music player.
Thanks for all yer replies!

Related

Phone Application

I am new to the whole PDA form so please forgive me if this is obvious but I have not found the answers on this site.
I have an O2 XDA mini s and am slowly getting the hang of it.
Problem: On closing all running programs in task manager I loose the use of the phone keypad, pressing the green call button brings up the phone application but minus the number keys, calls can still be made through contacts. A soft reset is required to recify.
?Related problem: In task manager, there are programs running that are not visible on the list (if I press below the last visible item something is selected and I can "goto" it.
Plus on occation the listed item takes me to a different program ie. selecting media player takes me to Word (no set pattern though).
All help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
StefanF: what task manager are you using?
V
Sorry, just to clarify, PDA is "as out of the box", so just the WM5 task manager.
Thanks for your interest, I have followed several of your posts and seen your site. You have some great programs I would like to use, particually like the big phone buttons and close application tool but am quite scared of this thing.
It may be a while before I mess to deeply.
Stefan: that sounds like an odd problem.
The built in task manager is useful but not very comprehensive.
If you want to view all running tasks etc, there are much better programs out there, many are freeware. If you can't find any better, check out one I've posted here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?p=190257#190257
It's not written by me, I've just re-added some features.
Note - closing the phone (cprog.exe) is not a particularly good idea unless you really need it, because some other apps expect it to be loaded (eg contacts)
My programs
Some are ok. You might want to try my program VJOkButt if you just want to close apps to keep your memory healthy. But that's subject to taste and it's not clear how useful - although on the Wizard, it might be helpful.
The big phone buttons are actually just for the universal, it's not designed for Wizard. Basically it's for VGA phones that are using the ful VGA hack.
I've got some other stuff coming out soon. Stay tuned :wink:
V
Phone application
Thanks for the info.
I think, from what you have said, I need to know what I am doing to shut down the phone application as it is never my intention.
Pitty about the big button program. Why is there not full customisation of the screen (as in desktop PC's, can change the size of buttons, scroll bars... both of which are to small for finger use on this)
As a side note, when I am in an application the menus and any selections within make a click upon pressing ie. in word, Menu>Cut each selection makes a click. I have all tap sounds off but the only way I can stop it is to turn the master volume all the way down. Any ideas?
Once again, thanks.
You have to overwrite some of the default sounds with empy sounds to disable all click sounds. At least that's what I did, but that was a long time ago..basically you use your pc, make an empty .wav file, and overwrite the necessary files in your \windows\ folder. If you're interested in doing this and need more help, shout out!
Closing the phone - yes, you would probably not close it without knowing what you're doing. I presume when you're not using the task manager you're not having the phone problems?
Try a program called CETuner to help play around with your scrollbars etc. It's good for modifying colour themes and various settings on the go. Another program worth looking at is Tweak 2k .net.
V
Many thanks.
Personally i'm currently using Magic Button to close apps and act as a task manager. http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities/magicbutton.shtml
It allows you to close or minimise apps, and by clicking the "house" icon on the windows bar you can also close all, soft reset etc. Final point on it is that you can see X number of running apps and touch to swap to them, or "hide when inactive" and "keep alive" so you dont close (or even see) some apps - i keep messages & phone in this state to improve response times but close use close all to kill everything else.
Danger using Task Manager
Stefan,
I had the same problem. Ideally you should use Start/Settings/System/Memory/Running Programs to close down active tasks. Yes, the Task Manager does it and you can launch it from the menu, but it is a bit dangerous (as I found out). The Phone app appears in Task Manager as an unnamed icon and its icon looks like the Windows Media Player one (at least it does on my XDA Mini S). Shutting this down will do exactly what you describe (I started a thread called 'Help I'm stuck in Contact History on this).
By all means use Task Manager if you want to, just don't shut all apps, leave the unnamed 'media player lookalike' icon.
Cheers. :wink:
To the original poster:
I had this problem when i got my XDA at first. To be honest, i think its the o2 active stuff that messes up the phone app.
My suggestion is this: back up any important data, then do a hard rerset of your phone. When the screen comes up about Standard, Corporate or Basic install choose the Corporate option and use the passcode 0506. this will allow you to use the phone without any of the o2 crap and since i done it i've had no problems with the phone.
just to let you know, this will stop the phone setting up its own GRPS and MMS settings, but if you phone o2 ar go into a shop then they will happily send them to you.
Hope this helps.
Task Manager or Active ?
I suspect that it is shutting down the phone app that's causing the issue not Active. I agree, get rid of Active if you don't like it (I use Basic so I still get the MMS settings), but I don't think Active is the cause.
Just my humble opinion of course.
I'd completely overlooked that StefanF was using o2. I'm an O2 and Orange user, but O2 active has never touched my system. Sounds like that's quite an oversight by them if the O2 Task Manager allows you to close the phone app... not recommended!
V
Oooer indeed
My friend has an XDA Exec (Universal) and he had lots of problems with the phone app which I strongly suspect were much the same thing. (although his apps in task manager were not unnamed, he had multiple phone apps running). I didn't know the Task Manager was an O2 add-on, I assumed it was a WM5 feature.

Some quick questions

hi everyone
got my xda exec yesterday, I love it, its performance , its speed, everything, but
some apps keep restarting for example pocket msn and activesync,
it only takes a bit of memory but it is anoying when they flicker open by themselves
also is there a way to full turn the phone off instead of sleep mode, wouldn't mind a fresh turn on like soft reset every morning
all help appreciated
thanks
You can't close apps on Windows Mobile ("officially"), the OS is supposed to close them itself. You can close them with the Memory control panel, or a proper task closer like VJOkButt, SmallMenuPlus (Excellent app, get it now!), HTC Task Closer etc.
For a soft reset, try soft resetting. Poke your stylus into the little hole on the back near the USB port.
The device can be put into a more long term sleep mode, but it's not a standard feature.
V
exemike said:
some apps keep restarting for example pocket msn and activesync
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to set active sync to MANUAL otherwise, every set of minutes it would automatically open itself up, because the default is set to AUTOMATICALLY sync every 2 minutes or so. Go to the UNIVERSAL WIKI page to look for the instructions on how to set it MANUALLY. You need to create a dummy server for that then the options will be available.
thanks for the swift answers guys, I've sorted my activesync
but now I'm lookin for something that can shutdown my phone like soft reset but so it doesn't restart
know anything bout some software or key remap or somin
thanks
Check out ButtonMax, I think Resco have a button mapper and various other companies too.
AEButtonPlus is always my top choice tho.
V

weird sluggishness

Hi all, I've owned my Mogul for about 3 weeks now and I love it. I reffer to it as my iPone killer. Until 4 days ago I had no complaints. but now it just acts odd. I have to reboot it multiple times a day, even when I've used Oxios and SKTools to periodically clear up RAM. Unfortunately my big problems are thus: when texting, randomly the letters will not appear wile im typing; i have to slide the lid closed then open again to reveal what I've typed. Also applications have suddenly begun to take much longer (30 seconds) to open. I'm talking about things like file explorer. the heavy lode apps I use or have loaded would be the HTC home and slide to unlock (newest hotfixed version). Im confused why this might be happening. I havent changed anything lately and suddenly its just not working.
any insight will be appreciated. thanks!
I been having the same exact problem, programs basically take forever, and the clear text thing too. I have Slide2unlock and htc home too. I am in the process of removing custom stuff one by one as i really dont want to do a hard reset
I haven't used slide2unlock yet, but I can confirm that the htc home plugin definitely slows the phone down. I noticed shortly after installing the home plugin that things just weren't as quick as they used to be. I tested this by doing a hard reset and bypassing sprint customizer to get a fresh, snappy OS. Only installed program was PHM Registry Editor and basic registry speed hacks applied (Glyphcache and FATFS cache) makes it blazing. Then, sure enough, installed htc home and after about an hour it's back to a crawl. This was without the weather tab activated or any customization, just the base installation of the plugin. It sucks, cause the home plugin is sweet, but unfortunately it's not cool enough to put up with so much lag. Hope that helps.

Messed up Opera

Ok I fiddeled around too much and end of story deleted the settings file in the opera folder Settings.
Well I'd really love to get that file back, or even better the standard shipped opera touch hd version.
Can someone upload or tell me where to get it? Would be awesome.
Buttons are too small and the zoom levels are wrong.
Thanks.
Heaven871 said:
Ok I fiddeled around too much and end of story deleted the settings file in the opera folder Settings.
Well I'd really love to get that file back, or even better the standard shipped opera touch hd version.
Can someone upload or tell me where to get it? Would be awesome.
Buttons are too small and the zoom levels are wrong.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
google for opera 9.5 build 2682...
A hard reset should fix it...you silly sausage
dogbreath said:
A hard reset should fix it...you silly sausage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that is... start/settings/system/clear storage...
Problem sorted for now, I hope. I have done a soft reset
_________________________
I seem to be getting a messed up opera.
Everytime I open opera, it loads the page correctly in potrait, but then rotate the HD to get a fuller view of the web page that I am browsing, but all the sudden my phone pad opens. It seems that everytime that I am in opera and then I turn the phone sideways, the phone pad opens. How can I stop that? Its so annoying!!!
Previously, I had installed gyrator 2, but this app completely messed up everything, so I've decided uninstalled gyrator 2. Afterwards, I hard reset to make sure I got rid of gyrator 2 and did the usual of sync with my pc, etc.
I have also uninstalled HDtweaks, not sure what good would that be (maybe someone could clarify).
I have installed and customised my HD with:
S2U2-1.35-VGA.cab
1SdkCerts.cab
Colored Top bar WWE.cab
TFL3DIconsV3.cab
CorePlayer. V1.2.5 Build 4506
I noticed S2U2 on your software list... All I know is that S2U2 has Always, on Every phone I have tried it on, screwed something up. Don't get me wrong it is great software and probably not even the cause of your particular problem, but S2U2 has given me very strange and too much annoying problems to rule it out of anything.
The worst thing was lately when I decided to try it on the HD... I just hard reset my HD after having tried a million applications, tweaks, driver changes etc. So a clean start, and since S2U2 was so buggy for me in the past I decided to install it first, to completely rule out that it would perform crap because of any other aftermarket software.
For a little while it worked. Changed some settings, the thing always tended to get confused... so changed the settings to default. Couple of unlocks later... Nice, now I only see the background when I am trying to unlock my phone to make a friggin phone call... The program is called Slide To Unlock and ironically the slider is missing meaning I cannot access my phone. Not a single area on the screen responds, of course. Pressed home key, showing TouchFLO for 100ms before S2U2 takes over again. So in a window of 100ms, I had to press the tasks button on the top right to invoke the close all apps button... crap.
So I decided I'd wait for a more stable version, and tried to uninstall it, lol yes I said tried... On the Diamond, and also on the HD, somehow this has to take like 5 or 10 minutes, for a friggin tiny itsy bitsy <1mb installer package. It just hangs and hangs and you wonder has my phone crashed. Nice. This is just a small pick from the problems I had with the software.
Edit: This is probably not the fault of S2U2, but rather my phone not wanting any iPhone-lookalike software on it
problems still persist with opera. everytime i rotate the HD, it switches to phone pad.
i think as you said it may be a bug with S2U2, im gonna uninstall S2U2.
So far so good....

Just got a T-Mobile HD2? Read Jamie’s "New to WinMo and absolute newbie tweak guide"

Just got a T-Mobile HD2? Read Jamie’s "New to WinMo and absolute newbie tweak guide"
I wanted to write this guide due to the number of “THE HD2 SUCKS!” threads I’ve seen floating around. Guys, what did you think you were getting into here? This phone runs Windows Mobile. The very core of running this OS involves tweaking it beyond recognition, but, however, once you do that it can run quite beautifully. I wrote this guide to appeal to beginners. I try to avoid things like, "Oh, edit this registry value...What does it do? No clue, but it saves battery life." Those types of tweaks are for a different guide.
About the phone and Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is old. Really old. Try ten years old, and, sometimes, it really does feel like it's age is apparent.
The phone crashes. A lot. Get ready to soft reset a lot. Turning off Sense can help with the crashing, though.
The interface is called Sense. You can turn this off and revert back to Titanium, the default Windows 6.5 theme.
The HD2 is not like an iPhone. Get an iPhone if you want an iPhone. Apps that run on the iPhone do not work (and probably will never be ported) on Windows Mobile.
Yes, the screen is glass. It's scratch resistant, not scratch-proof. I hear mixed opinion on whether you can get away without using a screen protector, and plenty of people complain about how easy it is to scratch. It's your call, but keep in mind that glass is 6-7 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Hardened steel is 7.5. Your keys will scratch the absolute hell out of it. Some partials of sand and grit can scratch it, keep that in mind. And a drop from only a few feet will completely spiderweb the screen. Don't drop your phone.
The phone ships with two browsers: Opera 9.7 and Internet Explorer. Yes, that is an older version of Opera, but I feel it works fine. Opera 10 does not support pinch-to-zoom, and to my knowledge there are no tweaks to enable it.
The HD2 comes with Voice Command. To activate it, hold the green call button until it beeps at you. Then speak your phrase. A guide to using it can be found here. Your phone can read your SMSes to you.
Don’t like a tweak or application you installed? Uninstall it, and it reverts back to how it was originally.
Please see the Flashing Rom section on the different versions of Windows Mobile (6.1, 6.5, 6.5.3, etc)
Contrarily to the desktop version of Windows, hitting the X button does not exit a program, it just minimizes it. Please see the section about task managers.
WAIT ONE MINUTE
Wait! Hold on. Before you complain about ANYTHING (especially about messaging, lag, a pink camera hue, etc.), please make sure you have the newest stock ROM. To check, slide all the way to the right to Settings, then to About Phone, then to Software Information. What does it say under ROM version? Does it say 2.13.531.1?
If it doesn’t, you owe it to yourself and your sanity to flash to the new ROM. It’s real easy, too. Just go here and follow the instructions. http://dl.htc.com/ruudownload/t-mobileUS/DeviceDownloads.aspx?pid=leo
If you notice some weird-ass screen sensitivity issues (I never did), you should try installing this cab. Hey, it’s the first sticky; you should know this.
How to install a .CAB (You’ll be doing this a lot): First, download it from wherever. DO NOT EXTRACT THE CAB. Connect your phone via Activesync (Or Windows Mobile Device Center) . Drop the file onto your phone somewhere. Open File Explorer on your phone, run the file and install it to the device or storage card. I normally install to the device because you have plenty of storage, and if you connect the phone via disk drive to your computer, you temporarily won’t have access to any programs on the phone if they are stored on the card. If you need more instruction on installing cabs, please see my post here.
Killer Apps (That means required)
Cookie’s mod: This is my favorite tweak for Windows Mobile, especially more so now that version 1.8 is out. Install Cookie’s mod and it makes your whole life easier. What is it? It contains a bunch of features, but its main feature is to customize your home screen. By default, it makes it looks kind of iPhoneish, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. You can edit the home screen with more icons, widget things like toggles and an MP3 player, different types of adjustable (in size and layout) clocks including analog ones, and so forth. But, the cool part is that if you swipe up on the home screen, it turns into this iPhone-like icon grid interface--actually--more like an amalgamation of the iPhone and Android. You can scroll left and right to access more pages. Fill up the 3+ pages with applications, contacts, toggles, widgets, and you have the easiest and most convenient way to launch them. You could fill up an entire page about Cookie’s mod, though, and it’s important to download the editor for the program. Without the editor there won’t be much editing going on.
Check out this picture for a basic example of what you can do with cookie's mod. Note: The top picture is what you switch to when you swipe down on the main home screen; the bottommost one is when you swipe up on the home screen, left screen is a swipe to the left, and so forth. That was kind of hard to explain. Please see the thread for all of the features, customization options, etc. This is what Sense should have been like from the start.
Any task manager: Okay, you really need a task manager to make multitasking useful while not slowing your phone down to a crawl. Touching the X on a program does not actually exit a program, it just minimizes it. Map one to a specific part of the screen or a button, and easily switch programs. Hey, it’s you real advantage over the iPhone here; stream some Slacker radio or Grooveshark while you edit that Word document. Personally I use Arkswitch, but there are other great ones like Duttys. Hell, here's another one. At least add the default Windows Mobile task manager to a quick link at the very least.
BSB Specific Tweaks
Okay, so you have the newest official ROM and Cookie’s mod and you still think this phone is a piece of junk? Don’t fear yet. My next recommendation is to install BSB Tweaks. Download it here. What is it? Basically a bunch of settings you can modify that you normally can’t edit without a registry editor. This program is literally a godsend as it allows you to change, like, 50 popular settings that you couldn't do easily.
Don’t like lock screen and wish you could turn it off? Slide the off switch on “Auto Lock”.
Want to access the Windows settings through the Start Menu? Slide “Windows Settings” to on.
This is my opinion, but you can turn off “HTC Vibration” to make typing on the onscreen keyboard a bit more accurate, and you probably save battery life, too.
If you don’t like the phone’s screen turning on whenever you get a text message, slide “SMS Wake Up” to off.
I recommend turning on “Album Close,” because I don’t see the need to always have it running in the background.
Do you feel that the back button is a bit too stiff, and backing out of texts with it is a little uncomfortable? Turn on “Manila Send Butt.” to get a nice graphical send button, and it changes the left softkey to “back”. Very handy if you’re a big texter.
I recommend adjusting the LED notifications to however you see fit. Personally, I like having it flash for SMSs, but not anything else. Your opinion obviously differs.
I hear turning on “Wifi N” apparently helps improves, well, everything. I’ve heard, “Oh man, it’ll load pages instantly,” “You’ll get a wifi connection faster,” and other stuff, but I haven’t really noticed a difference. But I hear enough clamor that it probably doesn’t hurt to turn it on.
I highly recommend turning on "Opera Tabs". By default, you are limited to 3, which is laughable.
You can tinker with the other settings. A lot of them are a matter of personal taste.
Touch Tools Specific Tweaks
You might be asking why you need two tweaking programs that are 90% similar, and the answer is that Touch Tools does some stuff that BSB Tweaks doesn't See this post for the differences. Beware that Touch Tools is a lot more powerful and not as user friendly.
Slim Volume Tweak : Like the volume bar you get in apps like Youtube? You know, that transparent one that doesn't completely obscure whatever you're doing? Go into the Touch Tools folder, go to Slim Volume, hit Add, open the app you want to change the volume bar in, and shake your phone. I like doing this to whatever plays music.
Battery Life Tweaks
Tweak #1: Okay, I have no idea why, but the battery on this phone doesn't last very long. I recommend turning the backlight off automatic mode and setting it to a nice low, barely visible percent. Hey, you got to make it through the day, right? To do this, mosey your slider all the way over to settings, then to Sound & Display, then to Backlight. Joking aside, I feel it is perfectly readable indoors at 20%.
But there is a problem: once you go outside into the sunlight (the light, it buuuurns), your phone’s screen is nearly unreadable. Now you could take the time to crank up the backlight or turn it back to auto, but an easier way is to install this cab, map it to a Quick Link, and bam, you can quickly switch the auto backlight on and off.
Tweak #2: Turn My Location off. I have no idea why, but turning this off helps greatly--apparently it uses the data connection too much.. To do so, slide the slider to settings, and then click on Location. Make sure you turn off Location Service Settings and not AGPS.
Tweak #3: Turn off the various data synchronization. This phone can sync with various emails, Outlook, Twitter, the weather, your medical records, Facebook, the monolith, Youtube, and probably some others I am missing. Turn them to manual or put them to sync every couple hours to save battery. NOTE: It is extremely annoying to turn Facebook on and off (contacts pictures vanish, etc) so I recommend against turning it off.
Tweak #4: Web browsing takes a truly crazy amount of power. If you are going to do a lot of browsing, enable WiFi instead of using 3G, but be sure to turn off the WiFi if you're not using it, however. Also consider using Opera Mini 5 to browse the internet if battery is a concern. It uses less resources (bandwidth, processor, etc) than Opera Mobile 10.
Other tweaks: If you turn off Sense (Settings Tab > Right softkey > All settings > Today > Items) you’ll gain a huge battery life increase. I, however, feel that turning off Sense goes against the spirit of the phone. I like the Facebook integration and all the eye candy. And most of the tweaks have to do with Sense.
Useful Tweaks
HTC Flashlight: For whatever reason, the stock flash light does this stupidly infuriating demo where it scrolls through the flashlight settings. I have no idea why it does this; it conveys no useful purpose. It feels like this takes an eternity to do when you’re just trying to find something under your bed. Download this to fix that problem.
Lock Screen Icon at the Middle or Bottom: Okay, so our phone has a giant screen. I have pretty small hands and it was a bit of a reach to unlock the phone when the icon was at the very top of the phone. Install one of these and you can have it at the respective location. Very…handy. See what I did there?
4 Row Start Menu: By default the phone’s start menu ships with 3 rows. In my opinion, this is a huge waste of screen real estate. Install this CAB to fix it and make your Start menu so much more useful.
Power off icon: Want an icon to turn the screen off that you can put in the Quick Links? Check out post #3 here.
Turn off Weather Animation: Holy crap, it must always be cloudy in Kentucky or something as my home screen was always filled with clouds. A bit of a roundabout way to turn these animations off is to click on an empty Quick Link square, and pick "Weather Animation On/Off shortcut". Now you have a nifty icon to toggle the clouds (maybe sunlight in your case) on and off, and maybe even save some battery. Want less clouds? Install this .CAB. Wait, you said you want more home screen animations that aren't weather related? Bam and bam.
Is Activesync or WMDC annoying the absolute hell out of you by popping up on your computer? If you want to charge your phone via USB and you turn the phone's screen on for any reason, it starts syncing which can lag both the phone and computer. The simplest way to fix this is to start up Activesync on your phone (it's probably in your task manager already, damn thing's like a zombie) without it being connected to a computer, and then hit the Menu softkey, and then go to Connections, and unclick the check box for "Synchronize all PCs using this connection." Yeah, your computer beeps whenever you turn the screen on, but you won't get the annoying pop up.
A word about the WiFi's Power Save Mode (Com Manager> Wifi > Advance > Power Mode): Yeah, it probably does save you battery, but it does this by limiting your download speeds. I don't like slow page loads so I recommend setting it to performance, but the call is yours. I just don't think sacrificing page load times for battery is worth it.
If you hold down the red end key for a while, a handy menu pops up with some options. Make it even more useful with this thread. It adds a bunch more features like the option to restart Sense.
Mimic an iPhone or Android device when browsing. Guys, like mobile sites? Yeah, not many support Opera 9.7 and if you go to the m.website.com, you usually get the mobile website designed for your "niece's ****ty eight-year-old Boost mobile phone". An easy way to get the more feature rich website is to trick sites so it thinks you have an iphone or Android browser. I recommend doing this for Android because there are many Android devices that support 840x480 while the iPhone does not and many websites appear kinda busted.
To do so, fire up Opera. In the address bar type only "about:config" (not http://about:config) sans quotes. Scroll down to User Prefs and go to Custom User-Agent and type in whatever one you want. I recommend using the Nexus One user agent, even if the iPhone usually has better mobile page support.
Nexus One:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
iPhone:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3
Hate mobile sites with a bloody passion and would prefer the desktop version no matter what? Try using the desktop firefox user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6
Commonly Asked Questions
I want to enable pinch-to-zoom in X program: BSB Tweaks can enable a few programs to work with pinch-to-zoom. You can also add your own application, but the caveat is that it literally zooms onto the screen like a magnifying glass. Not too useful in my opinion.
How do I take a screenshot of the screen? BSB Tweak can do this, too. Just go into Menu, pick screenshots, and shake your phone whenever you want to take a picture. Very handy....literally.
I am going out of the country. How do I easily disable data? BSB Tweak.
I want to add rotation to X program: BSB Tweak.
How do I change the softkeys: BSB Tweak.
How do I increase the number of tabs in Opera? BSB Tweak.
How do I watch flash videos? Internet Explorer has Flash, Opera 10 has a setting to enable it, too, but I recommend using the Skyfire Browser to view Flash Content.
Wait, what is the best browser then? Oh boy. It depends on the person. Why not try them all? I primarily use Opera 9.7 (the phone ships with this), and it does a great job of rending pages accurate and relatively quickly. Opera Mini 5 uses server-side page compression so pages load extremely fast, but you get some screwy pages (Engadget), and pages aren't fluid. Skyfire also uses server-side compression, I think the interface is god-awful, and I do not like how it renders pages. However, it has excellent Flash support. There are other browsers like older versions of Opera, Bolt, and Uzard--which I think has great potential if it would actually work. I recommend sticking with the first three.
Awesome Applications
First off, we have a subforum dedicated to Windows Mobile Apps and Games. You won't find the cool programs on the Windows Market Place; they're here on XDA. Another site with a huge repository of software is www.freewarepocketpc.net. It's hard to find the real gems. It seems like half of the programs are high schooler's computer app projects or something. What follows are my recommended programs. I mean, you have this nice phone and you need some applications you can show off, right?
Slacker Radio: One of my favorite music applications, which comes with the phone, however, you probably need to update the software anyways. So make an account and enjoy streaming internet radio. It actually has, you know, working buttons unlike the Pandora application.
SciLor’s Groovemobile: This is an interesting one. Typing in the name of a song and it starts playing. Ridiculously cool. Guys, I promised myself I wouldn't post any registry edits as I feel they are beyond a beginner's level, but the music stops playing when you use the hardware key to turn the screen off. For people who know how to edit the registry, follow this post to keep the music playing in standby until I can find a .CAB for this.
Bing: So HTC finally decided to start making phones where the GPS actually works (I did a side-by-side comparison with the Touch Pro 2 and I felt like crying for the TP2). Take advantage of this with free turn-by-turn navigation courtesy of Microsoft.
Opera Mini 5: Yes, the phone comes with the full-fledged Opera Mobile 9.7 which I like a lot, but Opera Mini is ridiculous with how fast it loads pages. Very useful when you’re on an Edge connection, or if you want to web browse for a few hours because it is much less resource intensive.
Deluxe Moon: Want an application full of eye candy that you can show off like all those annoying-ass iPhone users? You want this. It shows the phases of the moon. It has very good aesthetics.
FpseCE: The famous PS1 emulator. While it only runs about half of the games I throw at it, nothing will wow people like playing Metal Gear Solid on your phone. Snake? SNAAAAAAAKE. Though, you have to donate to get the better version with multitouch for the HD2.
Morphgear: Not a fan of the PS1? Want to emulate nearly everything else? Download this modular emulator to get started. By default it only plays SNES games, and you have to pay for the other modules to emulate other system. It can get rather expensive, too. It is also a little difficult to set up. Check this post for a how-to.
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"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
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Sporty Pal: While I advise against bringing your HD2 cycling or running, this is an extremely nifty application to play around with. Walk around your neighborhood and it’ll give you a map of the area with a line of where you walked, various stats like top speed, and so forth.
MyMobiler: Install on computer. Hook up phone via Activesync, control phone from computer screen. Pro Tip: Select “zoom 50%” to actually have it fit on your computer screen. This makes texting your girlfriend with the slide-out qwerty keyboard soooo much easier.
My recommended MP3 player: I still haven’t found one that is as good as the iPhone’s. iMulator comes close to its feature set, but it crashes a lot for me. Yes, Sense does come with a built-in music player, but I think it is pretty terrible. Tweaks for this is for another episode--guide, I mean. Another great one is Nitrogen, which I tried out due to a suggestion. It is incredibly finger-friendly, but finding that one song you want to hear can be a chore. I also keep hearing this clamor for Pocket Player, but it is not free. I took that trial for a spin and it performed admirably. Finding a specific song was a breeze too. Lastly, don't forget that Windows Media Player does come with the HD2, and it's not that bad, honestly. You have to tell it to cache your library, but it performs rather well. It even works with voice command and all that cool stuff.
Dude, my phone still sucks. It lags, freezes, whatever.
My last suggestion is to flash a custom ROM. These are where people pretty much customize their own ROMs with newer builds of the default software, programs they personally like, their own tweaks, etc. You’ll find a lot of these are much more stable and responsive than stock ROMS. However, there is a small chance of bricking your phone, and it voids your warranty (although you can flash "to stock" and no one is the wiser. Get started reading about it here. And I mean read the damn thing. Don’t flash the wrong thing to your phone, brick it, and then make a new thread talking about it. If your SOP is to glance over the red, bolded text, maybe flashing ROMs isnt' for you? It really isn’t that hard if you just carefully read the directions, though. I guess there is always the option to wait for Android to be ported over.
Just for your information, the HD2 ships with Windows Mobile 6.5. There are newer versions out, namely 6.5.3 and 6.5.5, and these pretty much make the OS more finger-friendly (but you are using Sense which also tries to correct this). 6.5.3 has the bigger, more finger-friendly buttons and the remapped Start button. See this page for a picture. Personally I like this layout better, but it involves flashing a custom ROM to get. You also have your people who prefer 6.1, a really un-finger-friendly version of Windows Mobile.
I need more tweaks and applications!
Check out these threads here and here.
Part 2: Custom ROMs.
I really wanted to stay with the stock ROM, I really did. It worked pretty damn well out of the box. It was miles ahead of the Touch Pro 1. I appreciated nearly everything working without me having to immediately flash ROMs. I, however, began to get fed up with it more and more, mainly with the keyboard. As always, it just didn't seem to be able to keep up with me. Plus, the phone was freezing now and then. So I finally broke down, hard SPLed my phone, and flashed a new ROM only because I saw that a new version of the soft keyboard was much improved. And you know what? The keyboard finally worked how I wanted it to work. So on that reason alone it was worth flashing a new ROM. But there is another thing about flashing custom ROMs:
They fix things but break others.
Yeah, you'll hear people say nothing is wrong with their ROMs, but I think that is always nearly a lie. When I flashed that ROM a while ago I had several other weird bugs pop up. Like, if I received a text while in Opera, the keyboard would pop up with no way to remove it from the screen. Yeah, it seems like bugs are just the norm with Windows Mobile. It would also freeze frequently, sometimes several times a day, and picture messages would work with one build, but not the other. It seemed like community efforts to get MMS working completely failed. I flashed a few more ROMs, some older, some from different people, but I have finally settled on one I really like.
The newest ROMs seem to fix most of the freezing issues due to that new Tilt Sense version. I recommend getting one with that. Eventually these chefs will put newer Sense and Winmo builds in that are prone to freezing. That is nature of ROM flashing--you have to do it until you find a good one. I still have to put up with the keyboard popping up in Opera, but it's worth it to having a fast keyboard and it not freezing all the time. If I flash a new ROM, it may fix that, yes, but it will probably break something else.
Afraid to flash?
Yes, it does void your warranty. Yes, you can brick your phone. Yes, you can end up with a ROM that may be more buggy than you were led to believe. You, however, have been gifted with the ability to read and comprehended. It really isn't that hard if you read the instructions on how to do it. The T-Mobile USA specific ones.
I reccomend Nitrogen for playing music. Runs perfect on my HD2 running Energy Rom, with no stutters or skipping, or stopping once the screen turns off.
http://nitrogen.wmskins.com/
For some reason, unlike the older versions of Windows Mobile where you could have the option to make hitting the X-button permanently closing the program, Stock 2.13 only minimizes it. So I think you should either make it a good hint for people running stock to add the Task Manager to the shortcut on the homepage to check it from time to time.
Cheers.
PoisonWolf said:
For some reason, unlike the older versions of Windows Mobile where you could have the option to make hitting the X-button permanently closing the program, Stock 2.13 only minimizes it. So I think you should either make it a good hint for people running stock to add the Task Manager to the shortcut on the homepage to check it from time to time.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on that, esp for people new to the phone
This is still a great guide Jamie, thanks for the effort! Maybe we can get it stickied, or at least added to the "start here" list already at the top of the forums.
Stickie
sirphunkee said:
+1 on that, esp for people new to the phone
This is still a great guide Jamie, thanks for the effort! Maybe we can get it stickied, or at least added to the "start here" list already at the top of the forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I 2nd that!
awesome!!!! great post.
It's stuff like this that makes me really appreciate this forum. Thanks!
Absolutely brilliant post!
great post.
that's all.
This thread saved my life
I just bought my Tmobile HD2 on craigslist everything was fine until i rebooted it. I had never seen an HD2 lag the way it did like i mean where is the snapdragon when u need it my friend's HD2 on the other hand ran circles around mine. I don't think i've ever had a more painful experience of htc sense but thanks to this thread i found the answer to my problems it was running the older version of the stock rom
SD Card
For those people having lag problems with the HD2. Try formatting your SD card i noticed a great difference in speed when i formatted my card then did a hard reset also i would advise you to get a better memory card like a class 6.
Thank's very helpful and excellent tuto.
thanks
thanks very informative but I still dont know what to do with this phone
Thank you for taking the time to make this, its very informative, and a fun read.
super helpful post! thanks a million!
hmm
Quick question, (I apologize, I am new to the HD2 and winmob)
I have installed and set cookie + editor along with bsb tweaks and noticed that while texting, I dont have the ability to rotate the phone into landscape mode, in other applications (photos for instance) it works just fine.
I've looked over both tweaks a few times to see if I missed anything and cant seem to find the reason why.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Robbie
QUICK FYI for you all. I just tried to download and install the RESET BUTTON...ranster_reset file downloading off of rapidshare. Sent my firewall virus program and about every other red flag jumping off my PC screen saying the file is infected with a trojan virus.
FWIW
BatVette said:
QUICK FYI for you all. I just tried to download and install the RESET BUTTON...ranster_reset file downloading off of rapidshare. Sent my firewall virus program and about every other red flag jumping off my PC screen saying the file is infected with a trojan virus.
FWIW
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I removed the link until I can investigate further.
Edit: okay, so I found the .CAB here, a bigger tweak guide for the HD2.
Edit 2: Okay, I ran the file through http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus and it came up completely clean. I also ran it thorough 19 scanners here and it totally came clean: http://i49.tinypic.com/2wd3n9s.jpg. I honestly have no idea why it tripped. Can you share more details?
In conclusion, Anyone who is using it is probably safe. Check it out yourself, it's been in another guide forever. I think someone else would have said something about it if it really is a virus. Maybe the advertising on rapidshare tripped your scanners? Anyone else is free to try and verify, however.
I'm new to the T Mobile HTC HD2 phone how do I download the apps onto to my phone? I can't seem to figure it out

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