Database Users

HTC Hero - Éclair [2.1] Information

HTC HERO ECLAIR 2.1
written by MysteryHero
After the success of HTC Hero's debut, it is time that we are all getting ready to update our beloved device. HTC Hero will become one of the very first Android phones to power the new 2.1 Android firmware. HTC Hero has truely made it's debut unique through proudly presenting the features such as the new Sense UI from HTC, but you may be wondering what has actually changed in this new firmware update? So let's begin and take a exclusive preview on the upcoming features.
This post will be updated regulary and you can even re-post this article with my authors credit.
Futhurmore if you wished to contact me, please PM me via XDA-Developers Original topic at: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5080445#post5080445
Please note that all this information is gathered from the Lox v1.4 rom which can be found at HTCpedia, information may change while the article develops.
Bluetooth submited by habibas
You may now send files to other phones but this is restricted to the type of file your media is.
Browser
The browser hasn't been updated alot, but there has been a few tweaks that make it easier to use. Firstly the navigation tab above is now attached to the top instead of overlaying the top page. This has solved the annoying google problem where you would not be able to select the navigation links under the overlay for example, On Google's homepage you couldn't select the mail/news/images link until the page fully loaded.
Another minor UI change is featured in the loading bar, the input url box will now feature a sparkling green bar which will fill up as the page loads, this has removed the thin green loading bar below the screen in 1.5.
One final change which will effect the HTC browser is that the Google search in landscape mode will now function correctly. That's right folks! no more bouncing keyboard.
It seems the Flash has been improved, don't hold my word on it but it seems like it's running Flash 10? The lite version before didn't let me load Imeem's flash player but it seems like it's running like a charm now, Youtube desktop version also worked. Maybe not at it's best but it works.
Google Navigation
Googles GPS has finally arrived onto HTC HERO. You will ofcourse need to hack the application if you're from United Kingdom (Which works with Lox 1.4) You need to install the Voice data/ Nav Launcher and ofcourse the Maps 3685 (?) build? (I opted for non-rotted apk)
Home
The highly rumoured Landscape Rosie has been introduced, you can now rotate your Hero sideways. The clock, application short cuts will be left intact, and usable. Although phone panel on the right is not finished, the icons aren't properly positioned, but this should be fixed by HTC in a more recent build.
You can now pinch zoom the home screen and be welcomed by an overview of the seven different states. You can tap a screen to quickly change state which may come handy if you don't want to slide through multiple states.
Icons
New icons are presented in the Application menu:
Google Talk
Youtube
Maps
Market
Call History
Calculator
(HTC icons seems to be unchanged)
Loading
While the device loads, there is now a new spinning spindle. It looks alot better even if it is a small touch but makes it very nice.
Market
Updated to the new market, you can now see top paid, top free or all. It's more organised and the usability has improved overall. Expect to see a more friendly version of Googles Market.
Settings
The new settings menu have been organised into more precised catergories. This change was seen on the Droid and will be in 2.1. You can navigate through the settings easier and will be able to select some new options.
Sync
RRS Reader is inbuilt and you can read RRS feeds without installing any applications. You can also sync to Flickr and Google. HTC has also newly added sync options for Plurk, Exchange Active sync and Htc Facebook (Revised?).
Text-To-Speech
Text-to-Speech added, Google Navigation anyone? Yepp Text-to-speech is the library that is used with Google Navigation. You can now type text and it'll speak it out. You can also change/install new languages.
Weather Animation
Weather Animation makes a return in this new firmware. The removed feature in the revised 1.5 rom disappointed alot of users but it's now made it's return. The animation effect is basically a home screen effect inwhich when you greeted with weather animations occuring on your home screen which occurs if it's raining/snowing/lightning etc. Eye candy.
Notification Bar
There is a new icon for SD card, this will be shown once a memory card is inserted/loading/removed.
(Recent) The background of the Notification pull down is transparent, you can see through the overlay.
Messages
The Messages application has now been slightly updated, the text is larger. Although the people application isn't correctly working for me, I'm unsure wither it's actually for the better or worse since the text was completely fine before. Let's hope the final smooth build will fix some of the small problems introduced in this update.
Wallpapers
You can now select Wallpapers from your Home Gallery which includes all the original wallpapers in the default Android Gallery + the ones you add. You can also choose the Rosie wallpapers which have been left intact.
One feature that seemed amissed was the missing option of choosing a Rosie wallpaper for your lock screen, well good news! You can now select a Rosie wallpaper with a few simple clicks.
Widgets
There seems to be a new option to get more HTC widgets in the widget panel. This could be updates to the current widgets in the future or new skins (clock) or brand new widgets like the power control.
There is a new power control widget that can be added to your home screen. This widget is basically a quick switch for turning on/off the following: WiFi, Bluetooth, Mobile, Sync. You can also switch different brightness levels through the last button. (Dimmest, Normal, Brightest)
Untouched submited by JBNAquatics
Music Application
Calender
Slightly Modified submited by JBNAquatics
The call settings now have a "Silent" and a "Speaker" button that you can press directly like the Sprint Hero
Gmail appearance has been slightly modified but there are no new features
Camera and Camcorder has a slightly new appearance modification to match Donuts, but no new features
Rings extended (app) finally works on this ROM
You can now choose to link which accounts you want (Google, Facebook, or both)
Ask a Question!
Ask a question if you are interested in a certain feature or function above. Ask anything! (Related to the Subject Topic)
Last updated @ 08:02 PM 6th December 2009

when will it be available for download?

blitz89 said:
when will it be available for download?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the Lox ROM is already available, in fact you can download it at HTCpedia, but be warned as the ROM is not complete and it's not a final build. A more recent rom has been leaked by Kingklick but is only available for G1/Magic 32B.
Here is the link to Lox Rom 1.4: http://htcpedia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1417

Will the newer rom leave me with less usable memory on the device?
Pete

you forgot to mention the bluetooth has been enabled to send and recive files
but the type of the files are limited to the media only that's disappointing

Can you please explain what you mean by this??
"
Weather Animation
* Weather Animation makes a return in this new firmware. The removed feature in the revised 1.5 rom disappointed alot of users but it's now made it's return. The animation effect is basically a home screen effect inwhich when you greeted with weather animations occuring on your home screen which occurs if it's raining/snowing/lightning etc. Eye candy.
"
Is there now weather animation under the clock?? Or do you mean there is animation when you are using the weather application?
Thanks

NewYorkLaw said:
Will the newer rom leave me with less usable memory on the device?
Pete
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I believe I only had around 100mb when I first upgraded the firmware. However this might change as this is not the final build.
habibas said:
you forgot to mention the bluetooth has been enabled to send and recive files
but the type of the files are limited to the media only that's disappointing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will add that, thank you
bunt83 said:
Can you please explain what you mean by this??
"
Weather Animation
* Weather Animation makes a return in this new firmware. The removed feature in the revised 1.5 rom disappointed alot of users but it's now made it's return. The animation effect is basically a home screen effect inwhich when you greeted with weather animations occuring on your home screen which occurs if it's raining/snowing/lightning etc. Eye candy.
"
Is there now weather animation under the clock?? Or do you mean there is animation when you are using the weather application?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just fired up my nandroid build and saw that the widget on the home screen can reproduce the same weather animation, therefore I think it's just an option to switch the animations on and off. However, the clock widget isn't really working, therefore there still could be hope.

The Bluetooth and Browser sections are somewhat mixed.

Alright here's what I've gathered from the posts on HTCPedia and from my own user experiences:
-Rings extended (app) finally works on this ROM
-You can now choose to link which accounts you want (Google, Facebook, or both)
-Music player is left untouched
-Camera and camcorder are left untouched (they do not have the "new" 1.6 Donut look)
-Calendar is also left untouched
-Gmail has a different look to it but virtually untouched
-The call settings now have a "Silent" and a "Speaker" button that you can press directly like the Sprint Hero

WPA2 Enterprise
Are WPA2-Enterprise Certificates supported in 2.1? I am wondering, because it was already built into 1.5, but when hitting the button "add certificate" it wouldn't work (Settings > Wireless > WLAN > Advanced > Security Certificates). This was obviously a bug. Does this work now, or was it removed?

what about the rumours that eclair will support 262k colors, and enhance the onscreen colors of the hero from 65k to 262k. can anybody confirm that?
i can't imagine this happening, but still wanted to ask

JBNAquatics said:
Alright here's what I've gathered from the posts on HTCPedia and from my own user experiences:
-Rings extended (app) finally works on this ROM
-You can now choose to link which accounts you want (Google, Facebook, or both)
-Music player is left untouched
-Camera and camcorder are left untouched (they do not have the "new" 1.6 Donut look)
-Calendar is also left untouched
-Gmail has a different look to it but virtually untouched
-The call settings now have a "Silent" and a "Speaker" button that you can press directly like the Sprint Hero
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will be adding your newly found experiences!
discostu105 said:
Are WPA2-Enterprise Certificates supported in 2.1? I am wondering, because it was already built into 1.5, but when hitting the button "add certificate" it wouldn't work (Settings > Wireless > WLAN > Advanced > Security Certificates). This was obviously a bug. Does this work now, or was it removed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They have removed this, or re-located it to somewhere else. I've tried finding it but no luck
Shahpur.Azizpour said:
what about the rumours that eclair will support 262k colors, and enhance the onscreen colors of the hero from 65k to 262k. can anybody confirm that?
i can't imagine this happening, but still wanted to ask
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought this was aimed specifically at XPERIA 10, but I've really not noticed other than the menu may seem a bit crisper than before.

Have they managed to fix the alarm in this buld?
There was a bug on the current build that stops the alarm from working correctly. You turn it on and the alarm goes off but it doesn't make a sound at all, or nothing happens when it is supposed to go off.

Official rom
Anyone have any information about when the official room with Android 2.1 wil be released?

naruc said:
Anyone have any information about when the official room with Android 2.1 wil be released?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, my pet wombat said it would be by wed this week.

habibas said:
you forgot to mention the bluetooth has been enabled to send and recive files
but the type of the files are limited to the media only that's disappointing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any idea which files? I asume jpegs and mp3s would be fine? Although perhaps I shouldnt assume anything!
The one thing I would like to see is the HTC slide to answer when receiving a call that was present on the Touch Diamond - slide left to answer slide right to reject!

Hi guys,
little offtopic question of you don't mind..
Can someone PM me what the normal price is for HTC Hero?
I'm using Kaiser and before Herald. but will switch
Thanks...

will htc hero eclair update provide the option to switch to standard android apps.
in example i think the default android calendar looks much much better than the htc sense calendar since htcs version has no week view and no timelines on monthview.
Is this possible? Or did htc at least add timelines to their calendar app?

I want rubber-band effect on all scrollable pages, e.g. settings.

another question:
will the 2.1 update swipe the old device again, like the first HTC Hero update did?
So this means setting up the phone completely from scratch again? Or is this an update which will keep the current settings/apps and so on...im afraid this is not the case

[CHANGE LOG] XWKI8 / XXKI3 (2.3.5) - Full list

XWKI8 - For Nordic Countries
No differences found as yet, only that its much quicker than KI3 and also has improved battery life.
Stuff we already know:
1. Over scroll glow (a yucky one that too) - NO more bounce effect (THANK GOD!)
2. New firmware number (umm… )
3. More detailed power saver mode (under settings)
4. If profile is "Sound + Vibration" a vibration logo appears in the notification bar (BUG)
5. Endless loop scrolling between home screens
6. SIP no longer supported
7. Improved battery life
8. Improved sound quality
9. You can now change discovery period for BT devices. -rickytenzer
OTHER GENERAL STUFF NOTICED:
1. More blueness across the board added, maybe bracing for ICS?
2. Ridiculously smooth notification pull downs and smoother graphics and animation rendering everywhere.
3. At least 30% quicker than my older KG1.
4. Back button works lethally fast.
5. Anti-aliasing on fonts a leap better than older builds
6. Faster and better response in Voice talk app
7. New video maker app (not sure if that’s new ☹ )
8. Notification icons take lesser space in the notification bar
9. Support pulled for many older bluetooth devices
More detailed Changelog:
CLOCK:
1. Multiple alarm entries can be selected and deleted at one go. (in alarms press menu> delete)
2. World clock is revamped, where the clock goes dark if indicating time of a country that is currently sleeping.
3. New desk clock feature (in clock, scoll the top tab where alarms, world clock etc are located to your left)
4. Overall, the themes are going more blue across the board.
CALENDAR:
1. Week view is more comprehensive now (not meant for the big thumbed!)
2. Improvements in creating calendar entries.
MUSIC PLAYER:
1. Still sucks like hell!
2. New animation when changing songs by swiping the cover in the “now playing” screen.
3. Wider sound stage, better sound management, better 5.1
4. Lower volumes via speakers and Bluetooth headsets
BROWSER (INTERNET):
1. New animation and look when switching tabs.
2. Removed tab numbers in the open tabs overview
3. Speed improvements.
4. New animation when opening a new tab
5. C-Grade over scroll glow, but non intrusive.
6. Still didn’t fix multi touch on the browser. (Try moving around the page using 2 fingers touched) – BUMMER!
CAMERA:
1. Improved cam quality
2. Improved UI and multi touch support when viewing recently clicked via camera.
GALLERY:
1. Now can directly access camera from Gallery (Top right)
2. New revamped path bar (on the top, when accessing folders or pictures)
3. Much faster thumb-nailing scripts and quicker rendering
4. Revamped options bar (the one that comes up at the bottom of every pic with options send via and delete)
5. Can see picture previews before entering any folder (just pinch any bunch outward to see a photo flow)
6. New zoom in and zoom out buttons when viewing pictures (on top right)
MARKET:
1. New market (takes some time to update after flashing)
2. Minor speed improvements
MY FILES:
1. Option to view as thumbnails.
2. UI improvements
GTALK:
1. UI improvements (look at your username, much smaller / look at the look of the bubble representing open chats)
VIDEOS:
1. Revamped UI when playing videos.
2. Now supports portrait playback (and will need to rotate for landscape view)
3. Power button while playback locks the screen (didn’t do that in some builds)
4. Can trim video (press menu while playback and select trim)
SETTINGS:
1. More options under “Call”
2. New vibrations options under “Sound”
3. New “Battery usage” link under “Applications”

Thanks for pointing them out, Nice. Can you share the Swype version too?

ithehappy said:
Thanks for pointing them out, Nice. Can you share the Swype version too?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Swype version now 3.8.86.28077 - if that helps in your desicion

other issues.
pptp vpn over 3g still not working...
damn when will they fix this.

Does flash video from the stock browser play in proper full screen? Or do they still have the bug that always displays the top notification bar?

Finally I can create appointments in Exchange Calendar marked as private

LouisJB said:
Does flash video from the stock browser play in proper full screen? Or do they still have the bug that always displays the top notification bar?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't know.
Doesn't do on YouTube atleast

Do you know when this will be available through Kies? Nordic.
I just got 2.3.4, but battery sucks, so I'm not happy. If I'll have to wait a long time, then I guess I'll have to learn to deal with Odin and rooting...

How's the Yellow Tint?

I don't know if it's me or what, but when I unlock my phone I see a flash image of my homescreen and then the lockscreen appears.
Happenning to someone else?

rj.camargo said:
I don't know if it's me or what, but when I unlock my phone I see a flash image of my homescreen and then the lockscreen appears.
Happenning to someone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i got that too!!

Battery usage link under applications was always there.

i think the vibrate icon is NOT a bug, i think they changed that to!
because..
when you put your profile on Ringtone+ vibration, the vibrate icon appears right ?
now drag down the notification bar and put it on silent, you wil get an icon of a speaker with a \ stripe( a new silent mode icon?)
so i think they did this on purpose, as i have never seen the speaker icon appear when myh phone needed to be silent( not that i ever put it to silent, but i have never seen this icon!)
Grtz

Can someone upload the TwLancher.apk from this firmware please????

rj.camargo said:
I don't know if it's me or what, but when I unlock my phone I see a flash image of my homescreen and then the lockscreen appears.
Happenning to someone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same here..

skimminstones said:
same here..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed tthis right away. It seems to have something to do with deep sleep.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

rj.camargo said:
I don't know if it's me or what, but when I unlock my phone I see a flash image of my homescreen and then the lockscreen appears.
Happenning to someone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has happened in 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 for me also. I think 2.3.5 was better..just in my case anyways. Could be that the phone is running a bit quicker

hey guys, if i use the browser and browse to www.wieistmeineip.de (german ip identify and speed test site) and stay there for some seconds my browser just close and go to homescreen... same problem by anyone else? Maybe some Webelementbug?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hm i revisit this site and now it works perfect... maybe an advertisement crashed the browser... sorry for posting

rj.camargo said:
I don't know if it's me or what, but when I unlock my phone I see a flash image of my homescreen and then the lockscreen appears.
Happenning to someone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya, it does it on all stock builds I used so far.

Any improvements on the gradient colour banding with 2.3.5?

Write your review of ICS

I want to read your review of ICS on your Iconia. What do you like, what you think is lacking and should have been different as compared to HC. Positive and negative reviews are important so don't feel like you only have to pick just what you like or what is wrong with it. Write it all. Your first impressions and if you want, a followup later - once you've had some time with it.
I'd like to ask that you put some thought into it. Not that it has to be long but no single sentences. I'll just get a mod to clean the thread of them.
I'll get the ball rolling:
I went ahead and installed and can report no issues so far. A couple of things though.
After it booted [after the install] it wouldn't connect to the network automatically - I had to manually tell it to connect, though it still had the credentials and has since connected fine upon multiple reboots.
The browser bookmarks synced automatically. My problem was with HC - for the life of me it wouldn't sync my browser - all my other computers synced up fine with my primary and I tried everything I could to get it to sync with HC but it wouldn't and that was from a fresh reset a few weeks ago. After rebooting into ICS I found all my bookmarks synced up quickly so I'm happy again.
No screen issues and it's far more snappier than it was on fresh vanilla HC. To be fair, I reset a few weeks ago and only installed about 5 apps - aldiko, dropbox, docs etc... the basics. Even vanilla HC was a bit of a bear sometimes but ICS is not.
No more stuttering when swiping through homescreen in orientations other than normal which is great to see.
I much prefer the new app drawer. It's a much more unified experience and swiping is so snappy! That's is the biggest things for me. But it's also nice to see a clean area. The HC apps/widget/wallpaper nightmare was just that. Not in terms of navigation, it just looked fugly and dropped me out of the whole HC look. Now it's far more complimentary to the ICS experience.
The whole swiping apps/notifications features is nice but I'm not sure it's really doing anything. I opened Gmaps and saw it listed in the running apps list in Settings - went to the homescreen - opened up the recent list and swiped Gmaps out - went back to settings>apps and it was still present. It wasn't a solid test, to be sure, but I'm not sure how significant the swipe to remove tasks is and whether it is actually meant to kills tasks or just remove them from the list. [confusion on my part] Second to that, I'm pretty ambivalent about the swiping notifications feature - an X to press, a tab to swipe - it's all the same and neither adds to or takes away from that basic function.
I could care less about the ring and I haven't read anywhere that we were suppose to get it at all so it's no surprise to me to not see it. Same with face-unlock. It's not something I would use.

Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium

Looking good so far.
Since the update I have been testing all of my apps. So far all are working correctly. I was disappointed that I lost root, however that was an easy fix. I searched the forum and found an easy way to get full root. Had a few hickups at first with the browser and network connections, but they seemed to correct themselves as the day progressed.
Overall I am very happy.

nishka256 said:
Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Screen flickering is what I am also experiencing quite a lot with ICS. With honeycomb, that was never an issue but a lot of apps make the screen flicker in ICS. For me, the stock browser and scrolling is blazing fast with ICS. It had a bit of lag when on honeycomb. Also, I just tried uninstalling zinio and I was able to. Couldn't do the same with tegra games, however, though!
So far I am really liking ICS but there are definitely a few issues that need to be worked on. The update process in itself was not smooth. I had to try 4 times, reboot and even factory reset before I was able to update the tablet to ICS.
Overall, I am having mixed reviews.

I had no problems downloading or updating. I just don't see much difference from honeycomb. I can now use some ics only apps, so that's ok. Switching home screens seems to have less lag. I guess I just expected more from this update.
Overall I guess it is nice to be up to date but it still feels llike the same old tablet.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium

ICS + A500 : Home Screen Long Press Disaster
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!

So far, so good. I never expected the Ultimate Tablet Nirvana from ICS... just incremental improvements. The A500 is smoother and more responsive. I really like the new media player, especially the row of movies/clip thumbs, etc at the bottom. Chrome is a big thing. I've used about every browser out there and was never fully satisfied with any of them. Chrome, for the first time, gives a desktop experience on a tablet. That alone makes the ICS upgrade worthwhile.
On a side note, my 64gb micro-sdxc card arrived the same day I updated, so that's another nice In Your Face to the iPad rabble out there. 80gb of storage.

idroids said:
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to realize that ICS is written for use on phones and tablets, not just tablets. The old way may have been quicker on tablets but wouldn't be very useful for phones (and their much smaller screens). It was a necessary sacrifice.
I personally don't have an issue with the new way, just because I'm not adding 10 apps or widgets to a screen anyway and I don't find the movements that time consuming vs. the old way. If I WERE adding lots of apps or widgets to a screen then I suppose I'd agree completely. I however prefer the widgets in a bigger area instead of having to scroll forever through them, in fact to me it seems a better trade off for the widgets.

ICS appears to be more polished than hc when it came out. Hc 3.0.1 was not a refined experience. There will be some changes when 4.0.4 is pushed, but it is enough to prevent me from going out and purchasing the next new tablet.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

The Good:
Everything is more responsive, period. Moving around is quicker, switching home screens is quicker, moving through apps and widgets is quicker. Not that the A500 was slow before, but it had its hiccups. This gives the tablet new life, imo - it really feels like a different piece of hardware.
The interface is more streamlined. I've never been into form over function, but in this case everything works well together. Many apps now written for ICS fit in with the whole scheme of things which creates a more uniform experience and aesthetic. Many ICS App widgets now allow you to choose either their default or black, which fits in with the ICS color scheme.
Some, dare I say most? video issues seem to have been addressed as I can play files I'd needed to use 3rd party apps to play on the included player now. Flash also seems more fluid.
Notifications are easily closed (with one X vs. many).
Widgets are laid out in a drawer vs. scroll bar making it much better and easier (for some) to go through and add them to screens.
Settings have been improved; for example, there's now a setting to see the data apps use, factory reset is now under a more obvious tab and other settings are found more easily as well.
Booting is fairly quick vs. Honeycomb. Seems to boot in under a minute no matter how many apps are installed. Booting is generally fast based on the amt. of apps that are installed, but I seemed to boot in roughly the same time before installing apps as after installing over 200 of them.
Some of the new features are nice, the screenshot ability is definitely welcome and swiping away apps is also great. Note: some apps will never fully close as they use services that run in the background.
The Bad:
Some users preferred the long press, split screen and 1-click adding of apps and widgets to the home screen vs. the App Drawer approach. I am inclined to agree that this method can be faster for adding multiple app icons and widgets to the home screens.
The Ugly: (bugs?)
The native browser still doesn't seem to be able to handle encrypted content from Google Chrome, and so the native browser cannot be synced with a Google Account which has had its content encrypted. It can only handle accounts with their passwords encrypted (which is the default).
How I see it is, if Chrome Beta can handle it, I don't see why there wasn't a setting added to the native ICS Browser to allow for it. To me, this doesn't make sense. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
***At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates (apparently).
Will append to list as I come across stuff.
***Update: This doesn't seem to be specific to ICS. After further investigation it seems this WAS caused by something on Acer's end (as of 4/29/2012, updated 5/22/2012).
UPDATE:
As of 5/22/2012 I have not been having/seeing any issues. I have noticed that when the tablet is extremely low on power (under 10% or so) it turns the wifi off when sleeping, even though I've set it to never turn wifi off. I'm not certain if this is a bug or working as intended in ICS as some power saving feature. This never, ever happens when the tablet is on A/C power or docked. When I wake the tablet, wifi is connected to automatically. I'm personally happy that it does this, but I can see it being a problem for some people...so I don't really want to file this under bug/issues.

Neoprimal said:
At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm betting this is simply they message they're sending because their servers are being overloaded from the ICS push.

Why ICS for Tablets AND Phones?
Taking the split screen feature away from my A500 is like taking my steering wheel and my automatic transmissions away from my car! Argggghhh!
Cutting corners on an OS so that it works exactly the same on phones and tablets makes about as much sense as saying that the engines used on a 2-seater plane, in a jet fighter, and in a 747 should all work the same so as to give the passengers the same experience. That is "plane" old silly. What is even SILLIER is to insist on putting a plush airliner seat into a 2 passenger plane or to insist on keeping a propeller on jumbo 747s.
I totally get that the split screen (showing ALL the home screens at once above and the Apps and the Widgets below) would not work well on an small phone but why should it since it's NOT designed for a small screen? Why do tablet users have to put up with taking 3 steps backward just so that phone users can take 3 steps forward.
Tablet users should simply be given the choice to customize their experience so that they can take advantage of the extra real estate on their screens instead of being forced to put up with restrictive aspects of an OS that is trying to be everything to everyone. Sure ICS is a big improvement on Honeycomb, but why did some aspects of its OS have to be amputated simply to satisfy some designer's need to have a single OS for 2 VERY different gadgets?
So PLEASE, when the next version of ICS comes out PLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEASSSEEE give us tablet users the split screen again through the long tap on the Home Screens! Think about it! How often are you going to change your background? Making the long tap lead ONLY to the background change screen is such a WASTE of a unique gesture!

Well if you absolutely want long press to open drawer, try Apex launcher, it's based on ICS launcher but there's an option for binding long press/double tap to any function of the launcher. There is many more options that should suits you. Nova launcher is another alternative you can try.

Positives
A couple of the things I noticed right off is that when recording you don't get the terrible background noise you always seemed to get on hc supports avi video format now which I was happy with and the camera and video app seem to be recording at better detail not sure if its me or my cam? The browser is also blazing fast for me now. Layout is also crisp and clean the ring is useful makes taking screenshots a snap.
Negatives...have noticed some apps cause terrible lag for me there was also a lot of lag and freezing the first couple of hours I had the update. Also sometimes the screen flickers stated above ^^^^ none of these are big issues and shouldn't keep you from updating to enjoy

I had a lot of issues with the ICS update. I finally had to do a factory reset. Some issues were solved, but others remain:
Seems to be solved:
- Unstable applications (flashing and crashing, including Gmail).
- Unstable folders (flashing, crashing and all icons on the desktop disappearing).
Unsolved:
- Wifi is unstable and does not auto-connect (I have to connect manually when I restart the tablet or when I get home... it was working fine before ICS).
- The GPS does not work (I am not sure if it was working before ICS... as I had not had the time to test, so maybe it is not new).
- System update does not work (indicates that network coverage is insufficient despite the signal being strong and staying beside the wireless router).

ICS = bitter pill to swallow!
Well I learned the hard way that I shouldn't have jumped on the ICS bandwagon too early!
I cannot believe that in 2012 we have people designing MAJOR OS updates that have MAJOR problems and bugs!
Why not just wait another month or so and work out these major problems before unleashing ICS on everyone.
I mean didn't the ICS designer and programmers TEST ICS ON ALL TABLET AND PHONE platforms BEFORE releasing it to the world?
I'm going to milk my airplane analogy some more and say this:
Releasing ICS without having thoroughly tested it across ALL platforms is like building a plane and not knowing if it is designed well enough to fly at different altitudes and even worse not being sure it can actually land well in ALL major airports in the world in spite of different weather conditions.
Can you tell I am SICK of designers and programmers NOT having done their homework and using the general public to test their new OS for them?!
This HAS GOT to change!

I have one huge problem. In HC 3.2.1, when I press the volume button, it brought out the volume bar, and by taping the speaker icon, I can turn the volume to off, now it doesn't do anything!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's really annoying to have to hold the volume button to turn off the sound.

One Giant bonus I like in ICS is you can make native folders without the need of a secondary app.
Having one strange flaw which is my tablet randomly vibrates for no apparent reason other than that so far so go and the whole UI just seems a bit smoother than it was before on HC. Browser seems Way more Responsive than HC as well.

I'm pretty happy with ICS but GPS is not working at all. I need to check the gps.conf but it was working on HC.

Best feature of ICS: Chrome browser.

[Q] Just upgraded to CM9 ICS.....

.... and I have some questions that someone can hopefully answer. I've searched thru the Nook Color forums but couldn't find anything relevant.
First: Installation to EMMC on my Nook Color was flawless and all my apps installed and ran without problem.
This CM9 release is AWESOME! Everything looks and works great!!! Its so nice to have all the icons look great without having to screw with LCD density.
Questions: First question really important... other two just annoyances.
1) Full Screen Apps: I have Auto Hide checked under System>Combined Bar. Yet the status bar will not go away when running full screen apps such as Angry Birds, PowerAmp, and Repligo Reader. Is there another setting somewhere for this???? Or is this something that's broken and waiting to be fixed????
2) Soft Buttons in the status bar: There are three buttons showing: Back, Home & Recent Apps. The Home button is redundant as the Nook button does that. The Recent Apps button is totally useless for me and I would like to change it to a Menu button. But I can't find any settings for the Soft Buttons like there was in CM7 under the CyanogenMod settings.
3) Power Control Widget: I was able to turn buttons off and on in settings for the Power Control Widget in CM7. That appears not to be the case in CM9.... I only need and want the WiFi and Brightness buttons. How do I select Power Control Buttons in CM9?????
Running CyanogenMod version 9-20120703-UNOFFICAL-encore

Take a look at the AOKP port for the nook by Krylon360 in the dev thread. All that is possible.
Sent from my NookColor using xda app-developers app

Some things fixed....
I was unable to download Zeam Launcher from Google Play.
Said my device was incompatible.
Bullfeathers......
Found the newest Zeam version v3.1.10, downloaded and installed it, and it works just fine.
Running Zeam fixed problem number 1 above.... with Zeam running, the status bar is moved back to the top and all my full screen applications work perfectly now.
Problem number 2 has changed somewhat.... no soft buttons now in the status bar. This isn't a real problem as I'm used to using Button Savior, which really helps when in a full screen app. It would still be nice to move the status bar back to the bottom and have the Back and Menu soft buttons, but I can live with the way it is now.
Problem number 3 is still valid and I hope someone out there knows something about it.

Thanks j8048188 (wild handle there!)
I'll check it out, but at the moment I'm now totally happy with this version of CM9 as it sits.
Started playing with this upgrade at 4:30 this afternoon and now have everything the way I want it for a while. Time to actually use it instead of hacking it!

About wifi and brightness buttons.
I don't think you really need them, as when you touch the clock a mini menu appears with sliding bars to adjust them both.
Unleashed from my Revolutionized Desire HD

I see what you mean... controls available by tapping the clock.
But that window is still two touches away before actually changing the brightness or turning the wifi on or off. While the power control bar is just one touch.

[Q] Custom quick settings tiles (as in slimroms): How do you get those?

Hello,
I'm using Slimkat 4.4.4.8269 since its release. It has a neat feature called the custom tiles which is the feature that keeps me on that rom because I was unable to find a similar function in another ROM.
The Slimroms custom tiles basically lets you set unlimited "custom" tiles in the quicksettings which you can set with apps, os functions or whatever. They take a second action for a long press and they can cycle through multiple apps on that one tiles.
This is basically a quickstarter for apps. The thing that makes this marvelous is actually that opening an app doesn't get that app into the foreground, that statusbar stays in the foreground such that I can open a second and third, etc. app through very few taps.
An example what I use this for: My worst but not rare case here:
Navigation+speedcam warner+mozilla stumbler(wifi and cell existance to gps mapper)+openwlanmap.org (wifi to gps mapper)+openbmap.org (wifi and cell to gps mapper).
The best approach is to use a directory on the homescreen, if my launcher supported it. This way i don't have to search in the app drawer.
So I would open the directory, start app 1, press home screen, start app 2 and so on.
Until i started the 5 apps, I have done (swipes and presses+ app-open-taps combined) 15 actions.
Using custom tiles as slimkat offers it in the status bar I swipe to open the quick settings and then open my apps, 1 swipe+5 taps=6 actions.
This is for me much faster and allows me to pay much less attention to my phone while starting what I want.
However, I would like to update to Lollipop or M, anyways, go with CM most likely but that feature isn't there. I found out that the GravityBox with the xposed framework offers some kind of similar features but it only features 2 custom apps, currently I have a bit more than 20 in my status bar.
I could use "Tasker" for this approach as well, but actually that configuration is rather weird and static to one action/app (condition) which I first have to fulfill. That approach fails if one of the apps is already started and I only want to start one app especially if that meets Taskers condition. I end up using the app drawer and search for my app.
This post pretty much covers the configuration and outcome of the custom tile in Slimroms in two pictures:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/orig-development/rom-slimkat-hammerhead-stable-5-0-t2511512/post51495728#post51495728
Have you seen any other ROM with decent updates (that seems to be only CM for the hlte at the point of writing) or way to accomplish something similar? It doesn't need to be in the statusbar, even though that is quite easy to access.
Parts of my post I took from my post to a CM feature request at JIRA:
https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-2227?jql=text%20~%20%22custom%20tiles%22
Thanks in advance!

Try Layers, http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4/themes-apps/systemui-overlays-5-0-t3025183

Thanks for the reply. I think layers is some sort of theming app overlaying the normal icons with other colors. This is something new to me and interesting, but not what I wanted in this thread.
I found something that goes a bit in that direction: Hangars. It displays some appbar in the notification area. Upon opening an app the area disappears and I would have to open the notification area again. Still better than the homelauncher and its folders.
Something I tested previously going into the same direction is the PIE control as well as some sidelaunchers like omnirom and such. Still the custom tiles allow a faster operation.

If anyone is interested in those, you could vote for this as well:
https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-2227, It enclosed this feature.
From time to time I changed to CM or something like it, but return very quickly to my custom quick tiles as they are irreplacible and other roms waste time and I can hardly operate them blindly like slimkat.

Just heads up, Google finally may have thought those tiles to be useful and they were added in Marshmallow. You can only go there using the System UI tuner (google for it, if you don't know what it is. You'll need another app to configure those nicely, like custom quick settings. Due a bug you can't add more than 18 tiles in total, but if you like it and don't need more go ahead. Right now I have 40+ and they're in color.
So far I can't think of changing from the lovely slimkat.