Almost straight after my last Android post regarding my disappointment in HTC’s delay in their release of the promised Android 2.x release for the Hero (or Dream/G1, Magic/Sapphire, etc).  Thanks to a leaked build for the HTC Eris, dropped by a sketchy HTC staff member (or perhaps a creative community-driven beta testing process), a torrent of new custom Hero ROM’s were released.  Like always, each is slightly different with software/apps included or removed, and installed special optimisations, bug fixes and kernel hacks.

Since the 2nd of March:

• VillianROM v3.x by @nprussell
  • Creator of the fantastic clean Vanillian Vanilla build (new version soon)
  • Many versions released with many optimisations, bug fixes and handy included apps
• BeHero 1.2.x by @benocharm (1.3 on the way based on HTC Legend build – see below)
• HeroDroid v0.4 by @MaXo
• Defiance 2.1 by TheAshMan
• Neo ROM v1.34 by alias_neo
• Raidroid 1.0 by @raiderx303
• Clean Eris4Hero by @LoxDev

Anyone who’s been around the Hero/Android scene would probably have seen many of these names, and choice always keeps things interesting, but as you can see from the brief descriptions above, apart from different bootscreen/design/installed apps the optimisations in each are almost the same.

Unfortunately the issue is, I believe, while we don’t have access to the complete driver set or an updated (Android 2.x friendly) kernel, true creativity and customisation of each individual ROM isn’t particularly easy, at least from this posters point of view.

Flash forward to tonight (9th March) and a new dump has been leaked, this time for the HTC Legend (newer phone with almost exactly the same hardware specification as the Hero, except for that sweet AMOLED screen), which appears to have even more of the new Eclair features missing from the previous build, as well as more bug fixes I’d imagine!

All the praise aside, nothings perfect, and my little Hero was no exception. In fact it suffers from the same ailment as many devices fall victim too, where hardware vendors release their products with poor/inefficient software. So without going into too much detail on the ROM, as I’ve done that before, I’ve come up with what my idea of the perfect setup is for a fast, secure, ultra useful phone that does everything for you.

The ROM

In my previous article about the Android ROM’s, I blogged about some of the ROM’s available for the Hero platform, the most mature and reliable definitely being MoDaCo’s custom ROM (now at version 3.2).  After trialling Android 2.0/2.1 ROM’s I didn’t want to go back to a cupcake build (Android 1.5) so I’ve settled on Kagudroid 1.0-beta, made by Lox of LoxDev fame, a ROM which aims to be as clean as possible built from the AOSP sources.  It’s Sense-less in that it doesn’t have any of the HTC SenseUI software on there so there’s RAM and general speed improvements and runs smoothly and fast.

Kagudroid 0.1beta (running on AOSP 2.0)

The Perfect-ly Obvious

They deserve a mention as they’re used almost more than anything else on the phone, but any of the google suite is an absolute must if your a google account holder.  GMail, Maps, Places Directory and Tasks are what I use most often, but Google Goggles (image searching) is pretty nifty.

The Perfect Set of Utilities

Due to wiping the phone so many times, I’ve got a a set of applications (as well as their DB’s, so I don’t have to set them up every time), which I load before booting the new ROM.  I consider them essential and it’s just not the same without them.

Locale – Event Driven Profiles

(http://www.twofortyfouram.com/)

Locale’s that profiles menu on your old Nokia 5110, revitalised in way that profile selection is made almost completely automatic, driven by an event system that can act on almost anything thing the phone does, like GPS location, WIFI availability, time, date, battery health, availability of networks/services, etc etc and hundreds of combinations of each.

The Locale Profile Screen

These are my standard set of profiles (in order of preference, as they’ll override each other):

• Bedtime - In the vicinity of ‘Home’ after 11pm on a week night, phone notifications are silent, GPS turned off and Alarms set on loud to make sure I wake up the following morning
• Home – In the vicinity of the house, WIFI and bluetooth on, and volume set to relatively low
• Low Battery – Triggered anytime the battery is below 20%, basically shuts down 3G/Wifi data, GPS and Screen time out to increase time until phone death
• Office - In the vicinity of the office, WIFI/Bluetooth on and phone almost on silent, screen timeout set on high and Screebl (see below) disabled
• Default – Phone on loud setting, GPS/WIFI on (for location services) but most other services off as they’re unused

See?  Infinitely useful, and I’m only just using the most basic of features.

Screebl

(http://www.keyeslabs.com/joomla/index.php/projects/screebl)

Screebl is a simple app with one purpose, it saves battery life by keeping the screen timeout as low as possible, but at the same time using the phones accelerometer to detect when the phone is being held and keep the screen on while using Google Maps, messaging, web browsing etc.  The new version (v2.0) includes Locale plugin support to change Screebl settings on Locale profile change.

Wavesecure – Security

(https://www.wavesecure.com/)

Wavesecure definitely deserves a mention, even though I’ve fortunately not had to use it’s most useful features.  It’s a security app, that runs constantly and checks into a remote server where if the phone is lost/stolen you can physically lock down the device to disable it, and if required wipe it clean to protect personal data.  It’ll also report phones location upon request and can backup files/SMS on a scheduled basis.

Advanced Task Manager

(http://arronla.com/)

Advanced Task Manager is perfect for keeping the phone running as quickly as possible at all times, by automatically closing all non essential apps and freeing up much needed RAM.

The Perfect Set of Apps

There’s a load of other apps I use as well on a constant basic, but may not be quite as essential as those listed above

Dolphin Browser

(http://www.dolphinbrower.com)

I’m yet to see the newest HTC and/or Android brower from Android 2.1, but Dolphin Browser is much better and fuller featured than the Cupcake browsers that I used, it’s got tabs (on the screen where you can see them), Google bookmark sync to help typing out those pesky web address’s and a simple to use gesture feature which make the touch screen experience even easier.

Twidroid (or Seesmic too for ping.fm support) – Twitter Clients

(http://www.twidroid.com)

What can I say, I’m a Twitter geek, and Twidroid is defintely the most full features twitter client i know of, it lacks the streamlined integration of Peep, the HTC client but’s very configurable and looks sharp

Newsrob – Google Reader Client

Simple idea, scheduled retrieval of RSS/Podcast and Blog updates from my Google Reader account

Truphone & SIPDroid – VOIP Clients

(http://www.truphone.com)

You may remember Truphone from my N95 articles from a while back and I still use it too for cheap world wide phone calls, and free voip -> voip or skype calls all from within the program.  I’ve been testing SIPDroid as well with my VOIP carrier sipgate.co.uk.  The only problem I’ve got now is choosing which number to give to people as my primary number, I’ve no doubt within a very short time period VOIP accounts like this will be the norm on all data plans.

XBMC Remote Android (android-xbmcremote)

(http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/)

I’d only recently started using XBMC remote on an old laptop and it has revolutionised the way I watch media on TV, but one thing that annoyed me was needing a wireless keyboard/mouse to interact with it (or even worse, getting up and going to the TV to change media), until I found XBMC remote, like a virtual remote that works via HTTP over WIFI.  It can access almost every function within XBMC including whats playing, media list, info, etc and will even do WOL (Wake on LAN) to start the computer up after its been switched off.  I’ll never have to get off the couch again!!!

Others

• Transdroid – For access to a transmission-daemon for torrent monitoring, I use it for a number of torrent clients now, very useful! (http://www.transdroid.org/)
• chompSMS – Not essential, but who wouldn’t want the IPhone’s message screen, an almost exact copy from what I can see (http://www.chompsms.com)
• Better Keyboard and/or Shapewriter/Swype – Keyboard replacements that definitely make typing faster on the device (in fact, I’m typing this blog post with it right now!… .Not, but you get the idea)
• SetCPU – for over/underclocking to increase performance or increase battery life (one of life’s true dilemmas)