Following on from a number of email requests from people looking for custom ROMs for specific handsets, we’ve started collecting together information on the best of the custom Android ROMs for different handsets.  This is very much a work in progress and we will continue to update this section as and when we hear about new ROMs.

The Custom ROM pages can be found here or by using the navigation bar under the site banner.  There are only a few pages in there at the moment, but more will be added as time allows.  For those looking for Motorola DROID ROMs, one of the better DROID ROM is probably SholesMod and there is an ongoing issue with the creator’s site at the moment, so when everything is back up and running we’ll be able to provide the relevant information for the SholesMod ROM.  In the meantime, the information on one of the other main DROID ROMs, the Bugless Beast ROM, is available.

If you use and like one of the custom ROMs, please consider making a donation to it’s creator where possible.  These guys and girls invest a lot of time in making our Android experience that little bit better.

If you know of a ROM that we haven’t inclulded and think we should, or if you are a creator who would like a ROM removed, please let us know.

• Push the menu button
• Tap Settings
• Tap Applications
• Tap Manage applications
• This should open a list of all of the apps installed on your machine.  If you tap on one of the apps, you will be brought in to the application info page.  From here, you can clear any stored data and/or cached data for the app.  Bear in mind, doing this removes all data related to the app, including account settings (eg, your GMail account will need to be re-entered)
• When you have gone through all of the apps, reboot the phone and see if the force close issues have gone

• Push the menu button
  
• Tap Settings
• Tap Data Synchronization
• Tap Google and you should be prompted to re-enter your data  (if this doesn’t work, move on to the second option below)
  

• Press the menu button
• Tap Settings
• Tap Security
• Tap Factory data reset.
• On the Factory data reset screen, tap Reset phone and then tap Erase everything.

• With the phone turned off, press and hold the HOME and BACK buttons, and then briefly press the END CALL/POWER button. The reset process will start after a few seconds.
• Wait for the phone to finish the reset process and then press MENU.

This week, I decided to take a look at the Android SDK, to see how straightforward it is to develop applications for Android. Now, my programming skills are pretty basic; I’ve not had to do much in the way of programming, other than simple scripts, since my university days, so I don’t expect to be knocking up anything particularly spectacular, or publishing anything to the market, but I would like to get a feel for how the development process works.
I’ve found a few excellent resources for new Android developers (which I’ll detail a little later) and I plan on working my way through them with a view to creating a few very simple “Hello World” style programs. I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to share my journey on the blog.

First steps
==============
Ok, the first thing I needed to do to create Android apps, is get my hands on a compatible Development Environment. The Android SDK system requirements list Eclipse IDE, JDK5 or JDK 6 and Apache Ant as being compatible, with Eclipse IDE being recommended by the google development team. So, I went for Eclipse, downloading the Eclipse Classic version from the list of available downloads.

Having downloaded and installed Eclipse, the next requirement is to get the Android SDK itself. The Android 1.6 SDK can be downloaded here. The guide to installing the SDK at the Android Developer site has all the details, but in essence all I needed to do was extract the SDK files somewhere appropriate (like C:\Android SDK for example) and add a PATH reference to the Tools subfolder in the environment variables.  Next, I  used Eclipse to download and install the Android Development Tools, using the following method-

1. Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Softare.
2. In the Available Software dialog, click Add….
3. In the Add Site dialog that appears, enter a name for the remote site (e.g., “Android Plugin”) in the “Name” field. In the “Location” field, enter this URL:

   https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

   Note: If you have trouble aqcuiring the plugin, you can try using “http” in the URL, instead of “https” (https is preferred for security reasons).
   Click OK.

4. Back in the Available Software view, you should now see “Developer Tools” added to the list. Select the checkbox next to Developer Tools, which will automatically select the nested tools Android DDMS and Android Development Tools. Click Next.
5. In the resulting Install Details dialog, the Android DDMS and Android Development Tools features are listed. Click Next to read and accept the license agreement and install any dependencies, then click Finish.
6. Restart Eclipse.

Through following all of the steps above, I now have myself all of the tools necessary to start developing Android apps.  I’ve started working my way through a couple of example apps, and I’ll report back my findings as I go.

I mentioned above that I’d found some useful resources for learning to create apps in Android.  The main resources I’ve been using are the Android Developers site, which contains everything you need to get you up and running, as well as tutorials for learning the basics.  It’s an excellent introduction to Android development.
In addition, I’ve also been looking over some of the tutorials at the Hello Android site.  They’ve got some slightly more advanced tutorials there, such as creating a basic audio player and using progress bars.  Both look like they will be very useful whilst learning the ropes.

I’ve updated the Best Deals section to reflect a couple of new HTC Hero deals I heard about this week, including one superb deal which sees you potentially getting a contract Hero at an overall cost (after cashback) that’s a good £40 cheaper than buying an unlocked, SIM-free Hero outright!
Check my findings out here.

One common gripe among new HTC Hero/DROID Eris/G2 owners is wi-fi connectivity.  Some folks find that they just can’t get their shiny new Android smartphones to connect to their home wi-fi setup at all.  Considering how data hungry Android phones are, and how stingy some carriers are with their data allowance, wi-fi issues could be a major headache.  I thought I’d collate together some of the troubleshooting tips I’ve come across to help narrow down the cause of the problem.

First off, if you use a wireless N router or access point, you should know that the Hero (and most other phones) can be notoriously fickle when connecting to wireless N devices.  Happily, most folks do seem to be able get the phone connected with a little perseverance.  If you use an N device, make sure that you turn on B/G Compatibility mode if the device supports it in it’s settings.  Check for the latest firmware for the router too as a lot of folks have found that simply updating to the latest version resolves the issue.

The next stumbling point for the Hero smartphone is often the wi-fi security settings that are in use.  If you are having problems connecting, try dropping all wi-fi security temporarily to see if the Hero will connect to your wi-fi network when it’s wide open.  If it does connect, you’ll know that something to do with your security is causing issues.  Try testing each security type (WPA, WEP, etc) in turn and you’ll be able to work out which encryption method it is that’s causing the issue.  It’s also worth checking your router’s settings to see if MAC filtering is turned on, or if the network SSID is hidden, if one or the other is on, try disabling them temporarily to see if you can connect.

Another troubleshooting method is to try connecting to another wi-fi network.  Maybe you could use a friend or relative’s wi-fi network, or perhaps an open public network in a coffee shop?  I know I can’t walk 5 minutes in any direction without my phone picking up at least 3 or 4 different wi-fi networks.  If you can connect to another wi-fi network, you’ll know the wi-fi on your phone does work.

There are a few apps on the Android Market that can help troubleshoot wi-fi issues too, Wi-Fi Buddy is an excellent wi-fi network scanner with a tidy and clean interface which is straightforward to use.  WiFi Scanner is also pretty good.

If you are having wi-fi issues, leave a comment or drop me an email detailing your setup and hopefully we can get you up and running.  From what I’ve seen, most of the people who have problems with the Hero’s wi-fi do resolve the issue.

Most HTC phones have the same layout, so if you need help setting up your new HTC Desire visit the DialAPhone blog.

• If you’ve not done so already, install the Android SDK.  Make a note of the install location (for detailed instructions on installing the SDK, check out this link, it’s not as daunting as it first appears, honest!)
• On your phone push the menu button (or tap the Settings widget if you have one)
• Tap Applications
• Tap Development
• Ensure that USB debugging is checked
• Connect your phone to your PC via USB
• From the Android SDK installation location you took note of in step 1, open the Tools folder
• Double click ddms.bat
• Highlight your phone from the list on the left hand side (it won’t be called ‘HTC Hero’ or ‘G1′ for example, my one reads: HT98BL900608)
• From the menu at the top, click Device and then Screen Capture and, hey presto, a screenie from your phone!  You can now save the image if you’re happy with it, or, browse to the screen you want from your phone and hit refresh to refresh the screenie.

Edit- As pointed out in the comments (thanks for the input), it’s worth mentioning that there is an app on the market called PicMe that will allow you to capture screenshots too, but it only works on rooted phones.  The guide above will work for both rooted and unrooted phones.

***UPDATED- 2nd October 2009***

Looking for the best price for an Android phone or device?
This is the first of what I hope to be a regular feature for the blog.  I’m going to have a scout around for pricing on Android devices and post up the best deals I can find.  Please feel free to let me know of any deals you’ve heard of that you feel are better than I’ve listed, or even let me know if you’d like an Android device added to the best deal list.  (for phones, I’ve based my findings on the phone being free, or as close to free as possible)

I thought I’d start with two of the more popular Android handsets at the moment-

HTC Hero on contract – T-Mobile are, in my opinion, the best of the Hero carriers with regards to data usage as Orange and Vodafone have an acceptable usage limit of 500MB, whereas T-Mobile’s is 1GB.  With this in mind, the best deal from T-Mobile’s own site has the HTC Hero free with a £36.50 pm 18 month contract.  However, as usual, it’s better to shop around the independents for a better deal.  Far and away, the best deal I found was from Mobile Phones Direct.  There you can get a T-Mobile HTC Hero for £31.99 on an 18 month Combi 20 + Web ‘n’ Walk (unlimited internet, 200 minutes call time, 200 texts) contract at £24.47 pm, add on to this a £30 cashback from Top Cashback (note the link has me as a referer, here is a link to the site without the referal option) and you’ve got yourself a phone for £1.99 plus a contract that’s over £10 per month cheaper than T-Mobile are offering for getting the handset free.

Another option, which makes the overall cost a lot cheaper, but involves paying a bit more per month for the phone, is to get it from Beepy Phones.  Beepy have the following deal-

Free handset on a 12 month, £39.15 per month contract (Combi 35, Plus Web n Walk).  The deal gives 500 mins talk time, 375 texts plus internet, as well as £100 cashback.  On top of this, Quidco offer £40 cashback for going through them first.  This makes the total cost of the phone £329.80, which is a good deal cheaper than you can buy an unlocked SIM-free Hero phone outright!  The deal can be found here.

Samsung i7500 on contract -  For now, O2 are the only choice for the i7500.  Their own website has the phone available free on a 24 month contract at £40 pm and you can get £35 cashback from most of the cashback sites (such as Quidco and Top Cashback).  If you’ve seen it anywhere else, or if you’ve seen a better cashback offering, let me know.

• Connect the phone to your computer via the USB cable
• Open the Notifications screen on your phone (pull down a finger from the top of the screen to the bottom) and select the USB Storage notification
• Choose “Mount”
• Browse to the SD Card on your PC
• Look for a folder called media, if it’s not there, create it by right clicking and choosing New Folder, then rename the folder to be media
• Inside the media folder, you need a folder called audio, again, if it’s not there create it as above
• Inside the audio folder, you can create a subfolder for the sound category you want to change-
  • ringtones – for sound files you want to use as ringtones
  • alarms – for sound files you want to use for any alarms
  • notifications – for incoming notifications such as SMS alerts, emails, etc
• Copy the sound or music file which you’d like to use as your ringtone in to the relevant folder
• You should now see your sound or music file listed in the menu for selection in the relevant sound settings menu (to access the ringtone/notification settings, press the hard Menu key from one of your home screens, then press Settings then Sounds and Display)

Copy and Paste- To copy text (this doesn’t work in all apps, but should work in those that deal with text such as web browsers and messaging), press on the touch screen for a few seconds until a menu appears, one of the options is Copy Text.  Select Copy Text and then drag your finger on the screen from one side to the other and highlight the word or words you want to copy to the clipboard.  Press on the touch screen for a few seconds again to bring up the menu to allow you to paste the text.

Show list of recently opened apps – (confirmed for HTC Hero but should apply to most Android devices) I only found out about this one this morning by accident.  To see a list of the apps recently opened on your phone and quick launch them- press and hold the home key and a menu should appear which lists the recently opened apps.

Tips for extending battery life -  (on HTC Hero, but the principles will apply for all phones) Out of the box, the HTC Hero is a power hungry beast, but a few tweaks here and there can increase your battery life quite dramatically.  I don’t have too much of an issue with battery life myself as I’m rarely far away from a USB cable, but these are good to bear in mind for those times where you forget your charger on a weekend away.

1. Disable Always On Mobile Data Connection – There’s just no need for the thing to be permanently connected to the internet, so turn this one off by tapping Menu from one of your homescreens, then choosing Wireless Controls, then Mobile Network Settings and de-selecting Enable always-on mobile
2. Use a task killer application.  The very first thing any new Android smartphone user should do is make sure they can manage running applications somehow. In the case of the HTC Hero, a third party app is the best method as the built-in method of killing apps is fiddly to say the least.  I reviewed Advanced Task Killer a little while back, but there are other apps out there such as Taskiller that do the same job.  This is a double-edged sword in that killing unneeded apps improves performance and frees up resources, but if those apps were checking in with a server on the internet periodically, it’ll also reduce your data connection time too, both of which will help conserve battery power.
3. Turn off wireless location – Your phone can use the wireless data connection to roughly work out your location.  This is unnecessary as the phone can use GPS for location based services.  To turn it off, press Menu, then go to Settings, then Location and untick “Use wireless networks”.  I keep Enable GPS satellites unchecked too and just use a GPS toggle widget on one of my home screens to turn GPS on/off.  I’ve since heard that this check can be left on as the GPS services will apparently only turn on when needed, but I’ve had no problems doing it my way, so I keep GPS off until I need to use Google Maps or the like.
4. Turn off wi-fi and bluetooth when not needed – This I guess is fairly obvious, but I know that it’s a bit of a chore to remember to turn off wi-fi when you’re finished with it.  There are apps out there, such as the Y5 Battery Saver or the superb Locale (which was of one the Google Android Developer Challenge Grand Prize winners) that will do the job automatically for you.

Input special characters – To input special characters, such as characters with accents (eg: è, ã or ü)  whilst typing, keep the base character pressed until a menu appears (eg, to get è keep e pressed), select the special character you require from the menu.

Installing non-market apps (from a .apk file) - To install a non-market app, you can use the Android SDK and adb to do it, but that’s more than a little fiddly and complicated for most users.  A far simpler way is to download an app from the market that does it for you.  Apps Installer is an app that does this very job, but some of the file explorer/manager software out there does the job too (eg- I use Astro as my file manager and it has app installation functionality too).  It’s probably more efficient to use a combined app.  To install the apk file from Astro (I’d imagine other file management apps will follow a very similar method)- all you need to do is copy the file to your SD card, then browse to it on Astro and select it, then choose Install.

Wake up the phone’s screen whilst on a call -  A question I keep hearing being asked is; how can I wake up my phone whilst I’m on a call so I can use the dial pad?  I think a few of the hard buttons such as Home work, but I end up missing the button and ending the call all too often.  I find the simplest method is just to click the trackball, you can’t mistake it for another key whilst you’re distracted.

Search for updates for installed apps -  One feature of the Apps Market application that a lot of people don’t seem to know about is you can use it to search for and install updates for your installed apps.  If you open the Apps Market and go to downloads, you’ll see a section called My downloads.  Open it and you’ll see a list of the apps installed on your machine.  Any which have an update available will appear at the top of the list where you can tap on them and then tap on Update and the update will be downloaded and installed.

USB cable- You don’t have to use the supplied, and slightly unusually shaped USB cable to connect your phone to a PC for charging or data transfer – a standard mini-b USB cable will do.

Entering Safe mode – To enter Safe Mode on an Android device (this has been tested and confirmed to work on the HTC Magic and HTC Hero) – Power down the phone, then, whilst pressing the hard menu button and keeping it pressed, power the phone back up.  When the phone has fully loaded, it should show the words “Safe Mode” in the bottom left hand side of the screen.

Find out the IP address assigned to an Android device – To find out the IP address assigned to an Android device, do the following-

From any homescreen, tap the menu button.  Then choose Settings, Wireless Controls and then Wi-Fi settings.  From there, tap on the wireless network you are currently connected to and you’ll see a list of useful information such as the connection speed, wireless channel in use and, of course, the IP address.

Error

Failed
to create the account.  Please try again later.

Great.  Well, it definitely authenticated fine, so what’s the
problem?  A little further digging and I discovered that this was down
to a security setting I use on my Exchange server which forces mobile
ActiveSync users to specify a PIN number on their phone to add an
additional layer of security.  It seems the HTC Hero can’t deal with
sending back your encrypted password.  So, if you use SSL with your
web-facing Exchange server, you won’t be able to connect without either
turning off the mobile phone users password policy requirement, or, I
assume, using a certified web certificate.  Neither turning off SSL or
turning off the password policy is a particularly good idea, and I
daresay if you ask your IT department to do it they’ll laugh you out of
their office (I know I would), so the best option would be to ask your
IT admins to arrange for a web certificate.  In the interests of
covering all the options for this guide though, I’ll detail the method
of excluding specific users from the password policy-

• Open Exchange System Manager
• Expand Global Settings and then right click on Mobile
  Services and choose Properties
• Click the Device Security button
• The “Enforce password on device” tick box is the culprit
  here, but it’s better to turn it off for one specific user rather than
  the whole domain, so push the Exceptions button
• Push Add and select the user you want added to the exception
  list
• Push OK three times to get back to Exchange System Manager
  and you’re done

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, the following guide details the
method for setting up Exchange ActiveSync on Android.  It’s based on my
HTC Hero phone, but it should be a similar process for other Android
smartphones.

• Tap the Mail icon then tap “Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync“
• Enter your email address in the top field and your Active Directory
  password in the second field
• Tap “Manual Setup“
• Enter the full Exchange server gateway URL (or IP address) in to the
  “Server address” field (eg: mail.yourdomain.com)
• Enter your Active Directory domain, you’ll probably need to use the
  full domain name (eg: yourdomain.local).  Your domain admin will be able
  to provide you with these details
• Enter your Active Directory username and password in the relevant
  boxes
• If your domain uses SSL (again, your domain admins will be able to
  tell you), make sure you tick the “This server requires an encrypted
  SSL connection“
• Click Next and the phone will say “Verifying account
  information…“
• If the connection succeeds, you’ll be asked to specify what you
  would like to synchronize from Mail, Contacts and Calendar.  If it
  doesn’t succeed, you’ll probably have entered in some information
  incorrectly, go back and re-enter everything.  If it still doesn’t work,
  contact your IT department
• Hit Finish Setup and the phone should begin to sync your mail

Hopefully, the Exchange SSL issue will be fixed in future updates,
but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that.

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