I have just got rid off dirty HTC Sense UI and changed every default stock applications like launcher(homescreen), email, sms, dialer, gallery, music player, lockscreen, to custom apps. The default HTC Sense UI was not that attractive with the curved phone dock a the bottom and absolute no customization to any stock apps. I hate the tiny fonts that show up on the HD Phone and you cannot increase fonts at system level or Apps level. HTC Forget that. The default android fonts looked so small in dialer, contacts, email and everywhere. There is no option provided by HTC to increase font sizes anywhere in their apps. I had no option, but to get rid of all HTC Shit. So here are the list of apps i have brought and replaced default stock HTC apps.

After using Jailbroken iPhone where you can customize all stock apps, I found Android also offer similar function with more user control then iPhone. On Android phones you can complete change all the stock apps and have your own choice of applicaitons. I am going to highlight issues with base/stock Android apps on my HTC Desire HD and what i have replaced it with.

The customization drive for me started with the incapabilities of HTC Desire HD to change lock screen wallpaper. I had previous HTC Wildfire and it allowed to choose lock screen wallpaper. But i was shocked and disappointed to find out this HTC Desire HD dosent have this, even with its running Froyo 2.2. I searched Android Marketplace for lock screen apps and found WidgetLocker Lockscreen App.

WidgetLocker Lockscreen ($1.99)

This app can help you customized more unlock buttons and customize wall paper. Also, it can activate on calls so that by mistake your chick dosent touch the End button. The app said, you can show if you instal ADWNotifier which intern needs ADWLauncher EX . I was introduced to whole new customization sets of app.

ADWLauncher EX (€2.30).

The application that manages your homescreen and list of all apps on your phone is called Launcher. This  ADWLauncher does the same effectively. It offers you to have a iPhonesh homescreen with bottom 4 icon dock, screen transitions and animations like Nexus, etc. You can define rows and column grid for number of icons to be displayed on homescreen. You can have customized backgroun and dock layout. I am loving this and I have replaced the default HTC Sense UI.

There is another competitor Launcher app called as LauncherPro. I have not tried it. But i read its very easy and popular too.

ADWNotifier (free). Only works with ADWLauncher

This is very good app to notifiy you with badge number like iPhone. If can alert you about number of missed calls, no of sms, no of email, etc. But it need ADWLauncher installed.

K-9 Mail (free)

The default email client on HTC Desire HD was horrible. The super tiny fonts, not customizations and bad integrations. After trying many email clients finally i gave a try to this free client. I thought free apps are not good. But i was wrong. This is one of the best email client i have seen developed by 3rd party. I was using ProfiMail for symbian but the UI was horrible. This app is just B&W and cool. It offer customization on color, font sizes, preview lines, alerts, etc. I have yahoo, gmail and personal imap email configured.

Go SMS (free)

This is the ultimate SMS app. The default HTC sms was horrible. This Go SMS offer lot of customization and cool themes. It can show pop up sms on arrivals. You can send batch sms, group ringtones, contact sync. You should try this.

Dial One (Free)

Dial One is the best dialer which is fast and easy. Its very simple and customizable.It offers - Speed dial, Call log grouped by contact, Send contact, Customizable, Swipe between screens, Tone dial, Export calls, Simultaneous search on calls and contacts on two languages

I also tried  RocketDial Pro (Smart Dialer) . It has a unique Hand writing recognition search.  But remember there is no support for keypad. So dont expect to type and search contacts. The developer is very friendly and responds to all your questions.

Gallery Pro (¥180)

The stock HTC Desire HD image gallery app is just a big shame on HTC. Its so horrible and just plain thumbnails. This Gallery Pro app will make you happy. I had Samsung Galaxy S and this app is pre bundled on it.

Contact Group Manager ($9.99)

The base HTC Contacts(People) app is another horrible thing. This expensive Contact Manager is a worth try. I wish they had a dialer built in.

Other apps that I have brought and Like are -

I have just got rid off dirty HTC Sense UI and changed every default stock applications like launcher(homescreen), email, sms, dialer, gallery, music player, lockscreen, to custom apps. The default HTC Sense UI was not that attractive with the curved phone dock a the bottom and absolute no customiza …http://blog.sameerchavan.com/best-android-apps-and-customizations

Having fed up with unusable and non innovative Nokia N8, I decided to get rid off it and buy an Android. Nokia N8 has most outdated OS(Symbian), Nokia thought making big buttons on Symbian will make them Touch Screen OS Leader. But finally they accepted their incapabilities and collaborated with Microsoft to build Windows 7 OS phone. 

While searching for an immediate replacement for Nokia N8 with minim cost, i came across HTC Wildfire. I brought that at the price of Rs13500/-. 

HTC Wildfire

Pros -

• Affordable Android phone with 5mp Camera and Flash.
• Good speakers quality. 
• Option to set picture as ‘Lock Screen Wallpaper’ or Home Screen Wallpaper (missing in Desire HD).
• Track ball for precise cursor movement and text selection. 
• Light weight and good battery.
• 600 Mhz process was enough.

Cons -

• Very low screen resolution resulting of text pixelation. 240 x 320 pixels, 3.2 inches.
• Many times in the chat applications the send buttons were hidden behind the keypad due to small screens
• The video recording is very bad and tiny size. CIF@15fps video recording (352 x 288 pixels) . This is below average standards of any regular phone. 

 

HTC Sense UI

Lot has been talked about the Sense UI. These are Android modifications done by handset manufacturers to maintain their uniqueness. The things that are currently lacking in android are the integrations of social feeds with contacts. Also any contextual information of email, sms, call log is not shown against the stock contact apps. The HTC Sense UI makes this possible with its Friends Feed widget, home screen navigations and skins. There are couple of HTC widgets like clock and weather. 

Well, there is a HTCsense.com account you can create and they say you can sync contacts and photos etc. You can even track your phone from their site. I tried with no luck. Their site is quite buggy and after writing to their support they accepted that htcsense.com is not working. What a shame on HTC. 

 

HTC Desire HD

Finally i sold HTC Wildfire and brought HTC Desire HD at a price of Rs27,000/- . 

Pros- 

• Very large screen of 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches
• Internal memory of 1.5 GB; 768 MB RAM is good for multitasking 
• microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included
  
• 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
  
• 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash, Video recording at  720p
  
• The apps were very responsive. The email scrolling was smooth. I had Samsung Galaxy S. IT was a pice of shit with all bugs and it use to hang. But HTC was very good. 

Cons -

• Pathetic speaker quality and volume. I mean, you cannot hear any ringtone or any music. The sound of speaker is like cheap 3rd rate company product. I was shocked to see this. I had to set a polyphonic old tring-tring ringtone. 
• The screen is not quite visible in daylight. 
• Being large screen, the battery drains in a day. May be 10hrs max. 
• Because of high resolution screen, the system fonts look tiny and unreadable. The default apps like email, sms, dialer have no option to increase fonts. This is a biggest disadvantage which made me to install 3rd party apps for every stock client. I am writing a separate post on Android Apps. 

Having limitations with HTC Sense UI, I have totally changed all stock apps to new Android Market apps. Now on my HTC Desire HD, there is nothing about HTC Sense UI left. Read my next post. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having fed up with unusable and non innovative Nokia N8, I decided to get rid off it and buy an Android. Nokia N8 has most outdated OS(Symbian), Nokia thought making big buttons on Symbian will make them Touch Screen OS Leader. But finally they accepted their incapabilities and collaborated with Mic …http://blog.sameerchavan.com/htc-desire-hd-and-wildfire-hands-on

The situation –  

Most of the time we see Nokia prototypes for James Bond movies then something real in the market. Nokia, at least in India, is very popular in marketing and branding through design presentations, Research presentations at all conferences and developer meets.  But in reality,  Nokia has lost ground in mobile innovations to Apple and Google Android because of their laid back approach to touch screen phones. They never imagined touch screen phones to be so popular. Do you know, hardly anyone buys Nokia phones in Japan and Korea, as they dont have interesting design and latest technology. Nokia phones sell only in Europe,  Afghanistan (haa..), India (1.2bn population) and China (1.4bn population).  Yes, that covers more then 50% of world population. Hence Nokia is No.1 company. Nokia is not famous for innovations.  Nokia only makes good entry level phones for taxi drivers. Nokia still dont have a proper Touch Screen OS like iPhone or Android. They have abandoned Symbian and made it open source. They tried LiMo and then switched to MeeGo with Intel.  I have tried MeeGo on my Netbook and found it very unusable and lacking basic features. I switched back to JoliCloud and Ubunto. I think Nokia is not clear about their future strategy.  Technologically Nokia was even the last to introduce Capacitive screens. Nokia dont have gestural interfaces standards like iPhone/Apple. Nokia only relied on their old ‘Options” menu buttons design and put the whole world of actions under that button. The same design is carried forward to symbian OS for touch screens.  Well, we all know that Symbian is old and outdated. Its on the verge of dying. But nokia is keeping it alive on vitamins.  I saw a presentation where someone from Nokia showed how Nokia has maximum number of Research Centres in every country then any other company. Nokia spend the highest in Research and the Researchers have created piles of  documents only. The hugh research has not lead Nokia to the innovation path.  Nokia has no Gestural interfaces or multitouch interactions like iphone in the market, though they claim they have many patents. They came very late in touchsceens and some of the Nokia UI looks like iphone copy, Eg- pinch to zoom, elastic scroll,   

Even after not being an innovative company people love Nokia for good battery life, sturdy design, same UI for every phone (less learning if you switch to another Nokia), good signal reception quality, simple usability(not innovative), robost hardware designs. Even after knowing all these issues, I feel Nokia has maintained its trusted brand quality in India.

Hands-on Experience Nokia N8

After using iPhone 3GS for a year, I had brought Samsung Galaxy S. But looking at horrible lag in Android Galaxy phone where even the “Call Accept” button was not showing up, I switched to my old favorite Nokia / Symbian phones. This time I brought Nokia N8 which is a 12Mp camera phone with Xenon flash & HDMI out. It has 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen, 16M colors and ARM 11 680 MHz processor, 3D Graphics HW accelerator. Wow impressive specs. The performance was better then Samsung Galaxy.

Nokia N8 Design problems

Wrong Screen aspect Ratio

• Biggest disappointment is its screen ratio. Though the screen is 3.5 inch, the width is very small. (360 pix). This makes the phone not usable for reading any documents or emails. Everything gets truncated.
• Second disappointment is the lack of QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode. At least Nokia designers should understand and copy from Apple, that people dont like rotating their phones for Typing every time.  iPhone with same 3.5 inch screen provides more width to screen and good keyboard in portrait mode. Also emails and docs are more readable in iPhone then N8. Shame on Nokia !

Text input / Keypad is horribly DUMB and a Shame for Nokia.

• The keypad and keyboard designed for N8 is a big dumb job with no smartness build. Here also, Nokia designers have not learned from Apple. The implemented keypad is a replica of hardware keypad. Such a Shame for Nokia.
• The keyboard should be smart enough to understand which keys to show depending on the input filed. Eg. if user is typing email, then the [@] key should be directly visible in first layout.  If the user is in the browser bar, then the [.com] key should be directly visible. All these innovations happen in Apple iPhone.  The Auto capitalization of words while tying in a name field is missing. There is no auto correction in Nokia like iPhone.
• There is absolutely no thinking gone into designing the keypad. The space bar is not centered, the number are not different color, after typing a special character, the keypad should return to text ABC mode. Nothing is done.
• Every text entry is a new screen navigating away from the context. Its another shameful designer job. There is only the OK button after typing text. Eg. if you tried to edit the existing text and made a mistake, there is no way to comeback to original screen without comitting your mistake.

Browser

There is no improvements in the age old nokia web browser. They did tried some improvements in the keypad based phones with browser map. But we dont see any new things or easyness in N8 browser. Texting and navigation is a pain.

 

12MP camera is mediocre. Full of red noise

• I think with a tiny CMOS sensor Nokia as extrapolate the megapixel to 12. This camera is actually just 5mp worth.
• If you take pictures indoors or in a shadow outdoors, the pictures are full of red noise. I found my previous Samsung Galaxy S camera way better and sharp then Nokia.
• Of Course, Samsung do make DSLR camera(i own NX10), But Nokia is not in the business of digital camera. So it has to borrow lenses and camera from others.

Attaching a 100% crop of a 9MP camera shot by N8, I took at my apartment.

 

Disappointed

• Backward in Multi toch and gesture interactions on screen.
• Nokia Wifi Bug is famous ” Invalid Server Name”. And you cannot connect to wifi networks  intermittently .
• No Camera lens cover
• No use of volume up and down buttons other just music player and camera.
• Battery life was just 6 hrs initially when i brought. But now it gives me 18hrs.
• No widget to disconnect wifi, gps, bluetooth, edge, call.  You need to dig inside many folders and find how to do this.

Appereciating facts -

• 12 Mp camera and my favorite XENON Flash with 720p@25fps HD video.
• Sexy design and wonderful colors. I have orange. Light and sleek. Seperate Camera button
• N8 with 680MHz processor is very responsive compared to Samsung Galaxy using 1GHz processor.
• Nokia Maps – this is freely available for entire India. Its very good voice guided navigation.
• Ovi music – there is an offer of unlimited music download from Ovi.com store. I download some 5 Gb of Indian and international albums.

Ovi Store by Nokia and only for Nokia.

What is Ovi

Well, after looking at the success of iPhone store Nokia immediately started hosting symbian apps on ovi.com . It offered similar features like Apple ecosystem. It provided email, apps, music, photos, and file sync(now discontinued).  Previously, Nokia never thought of creating a seamless ecosystem to sell developer apps or to allow Developers to sell their apps. The old way was to download some .sis file and then transfer to your phone, then install with all errors. This shows how Nokia was ignorant of creating a good ecosystem, untill Apple did it the RIGHT WAY.

Ovi store problems-

• Its only for Nokia phones. So the apps are limited.
• Most of the time, the Ovi store cannot connect, then if you tried to download any app, it fails, then give errors. The quality of Ovi store is very low. More then half of the apps have technical problems.
• Since Nokia phones come in all sizes and keypad/touch, neither of any ovi app is best suited for any Nokia phone. IPhone is the only phone from Apple,  with fixed screen size and only touch screen. So all 100,000 apps store apps are perfect and designed for single phone. Where as Nokia ovi store apps are a big mess.
• Ovi store shows around only 2300 apps if i do a blank search . Where as Apps store has more then 100,000.
• Most of the Ovi store apps are very badly designed and horrible User Experience. There are no Nokia apps standards like Apple human interface standards for iphone. Ovi apps looks carppie. with tiny text and buttons spread across the interface.  Ovi apps dont know if they are used for keypad or touchscreen.
• Another big problem in Ovi store is, out of many be 2300 apps only 30% apps are for your nokia handset model. As other ovi apps are not  compatible .
• Ovi Apps are most expensive then iphone or android apps. They are something in the range of Euro 10 to 25 . That is damn expensive to $0.99 iPhone apps.

 

The Symbian OS

The symbian OS is a age old OS which was designed for keypad entry and not touch screens. Since Nokia has no other OS, it has kept this Symbian OS alive on steroids till its 3rd Edition. There were rumors of 4th an 5th Editions. But no trace in real market. Its been 4 years that iPhone has revolutionalized the smartphone market, and Nokia is still thinking on what to do. They have made the symbian OS opensource and tied with Intel on MeeGo.

Nokia has no OS designed perfectly for gestural touch screen interfaces supporting multi touch.

The situation – Most of the time we see Nokia prototypes for James Bond movies then something real in the market. Nokia, at least in India, is very popular in marketing and branding through design presentations, Research presentations at all conferences and developer meets. But in reality, Noki …http://blog.sameerchavan.com/nokia-n8-ovi-and-symbian-5-hands-on-experienc