(this is an old post that apparently was stuck in draft mode, releasing it now. A good bit has changed since then, but I will not edit it now.)
What has happened and what I have learned over the last 10 days.
Well, I have had several issues, fixed a couple of others, and ordered an extended battery.
Right, so for starters, DISABLING the “Enable Always on Mobile” setting in: ‘home –> menu –> settings –> Wireless & Networks –> Mobile Networks –> Enable Always on Mobile’ is the cause of all the “rebooting issues”, which I have determined were not actual reboots, due to the fact that the uptime counter does not get reset when it happens, it is simply a major system function restart, that requires reloading nearly everything. 2 points to androidforums.com for discovering this.
Next, I resolved my randomly starting apps issue by running Startup Auditor, which has 2 settings for each app, (both called disable, but for two different things)
1. “Startup Disabled” really means Disable automatic startup during boot.
2. “Keep Disabled” really means prevent app from ever running, even if you launch it.
Startup Auditor polls something in the system (chron tab?) for all apps that auto load on startup and then allows you to modify these two settings for each one. The help information does not tell you what the options really do, it is what I figured out from both what it says, and the effects of what it does. I had many apps acting weird, or crashing during use, without providing a Force Close “OK button”. ALL of those issues were caused by option #2 in this app. I have learned that disabling the following is a bad idea:
1. anything that says HTC in it is bad if you run Sense UI
2. “Google Partner Setup”
3. “IQRD”
4. “Android System”
5. anything bluetooth if you intend on using any bluetooth devices, causes pairing issues, connectivity issues, prevent some features from working (like A2DP!!)
6. “calendar” x2 – one is google, one is HTC and both interact with your clock, alarms, all social apps, email, messaging…
7. “clock” x2 – one is google, one is HTC unless you don’t want the clock to update properly, calender to work well, emails to sort properly, messages to sort properly, mostly small issues, but annoying if yo ucannot figure out why it is happening…
8. ‘DM’ anything
9. ‘DRM’ anything (affects media mostly, but also web and emails
10. anything that says ‘Download’ – affects all apps that try to download data.
11. anything that says ‘Upload’ – affects all apps that try to upload data.
12. “Messages” – this is not just email!!
13. “Media Storage” – unless not using an SD card! may also affect the internal storage
14. “Open Sense Plugin Manager” – another HTC system service
15. “Rosie Utility” – this is an HTC function and SENSE UI does not like not being able to use it! *edit – Rosie is part of some widgets, not necessarily HTC.
16. “Updater” – does not refer to sending files to another computer!! But is a service called by anything that needs to periodically make minute changes to it’s display (like the clock, or battery widgets)
Most of these are things I have tested and found out the hard way, others I am assuming, as they have related names (all the HTC services and apps are for Sense…)
Onwards!!
My Nuvelli Stereo Bluetooth headset does not seem to have full 33′ range even though it has the ERD designation, oh it will stay connected at 33′, but you will hear lots of static and the other person (if you are on a call) will not hear you so well either. the forward and backward controls do not work with the default music player (DL’s 2 more, haven’t tested them yet, Meridian and Zimly)
My Jabra Cruiser may also suffer from range, but since I am using it while I am driving, I have not tested that either. but it plays sound fairly well, a touch hard to understand from the built in speaker, I would not want to take a 2hr conference call on it without a radio to broadcast the output to. That said, the output via FM is pretty good, although the FM transmitter is strong, but has an excessively short range, moving it from one side of the car to the other makes a difference in the amount of static received (front end antenna).
On Monday this week, I performed a Hard Reset of my Evo (shut down, then turn it on while holding in the “volume down button” then follow the on screen instructions (in size 3 or 4 font!!) and navigate through the menus to find the reset option.
Immediately afterwards the phone was 100x more responsive and everything just “worked” I immediately installed 184 apps and it stopped being quite so responsive!! I know, but I’m working on it, I’ve installed 2 apps, but removed 6 since. Still widdling down the list, and I have purchased 7 or 8 apps at this point (staying under $6 per week), all ones I have been using on my wife’s Samsung Moment since February, or that I have tested the free version of on my Evo.
I have also, as mentioned above, ordered the Seidio 3500mAh battery for the HTC Evo from MobileCity Online, you can read about my experiences with this purchase by going to my post about it, on androidforums.com
I have stopped using Advanced Task Killer and Advanced Task Manager, in replace I have SystemPanel, which in combination with Startup Audit and Startup Cleaner 2.0 handle everything I could with ATK nad ATM, but also gives me more options. I am testing to see if I truely need SA AND SC2.0, but I think they compliment each other more than fight against each other.
I have also stopped charging my phone at night, it has been discovered that the Evo does trickle charge until full, but then instead of maintaining the trickle while plugged in, it stops charging completely unti lothe battery charge level drops down to approx 90% (the Android OS does not determine battery charge by percentage, it just reports it to us in that manner), then it starts to trickle charge back up to full and repeats. This appears to be an 8 minute cycle. (please read section 5 and section 7 for information on these batteries) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Advantages_and_disadvantages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Charging_procedure
This “float charge” can dramatically reduce the batteries maximum life span. Using the BatteryTime Lite app and setting it to give notification allows me to pull down the notification bar and see the current voltage and temp of the battery, so I can pay more attention to it so as to maintain performance and prevent accelerated deterioration. Even though I am getting an extended battery (not sure if the BatteryTime lite app will compensate for it), I still want to keep my stock Li-Ion in good shape, and have good battery habits for my new monster!
I have also been having a new issue (started before the Hard Reset, but continued on after it) where my home button only refreshes whatever screen I am looking at, and does not return me to my home screens, causing me to have to hit the back button 8-40 times to return to the home screen, which in turn ruins any chance of leaving an app running in the background at a particular position. Happens about 90%-95% of the time. This has not changed since it started. I would also like to kill the touch based hardware search button, I have never used it intentionally, but hit it accidentally at least 10 times per day now. Very extremely annoying, almost enough for me to want to get a different phone!!
The biggest issue facing me now is keeping up with all the app updates!
Ok, I went to the Radio Shack I purchased my phone from, they have had one return, for a very idiotic reason, the user reported that zero incoming calls ever rang through to the phone… I told the manager that I’d put $500 down that he accidentally setup Google Voice on his Evo, but never logged into the web and configured it, nor did he have a gmail account, nor did they set one up with the phone when he bought it. So, he has all of his incoming calls “blocked” by Google Voice and is not getting the voicemail notifications, because he did not setup his phone to receive gmail messages. HA! too funny… Also, none of the employees in the store have even heard of ANY of the issues that has been going on around the web with the HTC Evo (see links at the end of this post). I spent about 30 minutes at the store “educating” the employees about the problems plaguing the HTC Evo.
Afterwards I went to a nearby Sprint repair center, they have not had a single Evo returned, nor have they even heard of ANY of the issues that are being reported on the web. The sales person I talked to was fairly knowledgeable, although he admitted to only having seen 3 HTC Evo’s prior to mine, I was able to cover all of the issues within 15 minutes (they closed while I was doing this) and show him the light leak and the “moving glass” issue from my phone.
I’ve been using my Jabra Cruiser Car Speaker phone (BlueTooth and FM transmitter) with my Evo for 2.5 days now, and I must say it has been working very well. I love it, I had 1 issue where the Jabra connected, but only connected for phone audio, not music playback, but I just had to turn off the Jabra and turn it back on. Now, when I was driving home from Radio Shack and Sprint, I was listening to Pandora through my Evo and the Jabra, played out through my car Stereo Speakers. It sounded, well… good although I have a 200 Ford Mustang with the 6 speaker CD player audio package, and the passenger front speaker has a major tear in it and I believe at least one of the rear speakers has a small rip in the speaker fiber (not the original owner and I received the vehicle in that condition…) So I do not know if that is a good review of the sound quality.
Then I got home and had a lovely reboot issue, I turned off my BlueTooth Speakerphone, and the Evo locked up on my desktop/home screen with a message “BlueTooth Device Disconnected” in a pretty little grey bubble. it sat on that screen for 3 minutes, then the phone rebooted. But wait!!! it gets better… the phone got stuck on the 4G logo (after the video ended) and sat there for 10 more minutes, without dimming the screen, or shutting it off, then it rebooted again!!! I popped out the kickstand and sat the phone on the kitchen table and started to eat my dinner… You won’t believe me, but it rebooted while I was eating AND stuck on the 4G logo screen again! then after 2-4 minutes it rebooted itself (off the 4G logo screen) and made it back to my desktop/home screens. has not rebooted since and I did use my new headset to both listen to Pandora and to take 2 phone calls (about 80 minutes total).
Today I also received my Nuvelli stereo BlueTooth headset/headphones, they are a lot smaller than I originally thought ( a little smaller than a half dollar coin), sound pretty good for music and fairly good for voice, but not perfect; however my one severely audiophilic friend (one of the two people I have talked to so far, while using the headset) said it sound like I am underwater and have severe echo. I then talked to my wife, who is very picky, and she said that I “sound like shit” and should return the headset. I tried to sync it with my PC (Ubuntu 10.04) and the BlueTooth device manager said that my BlueTooth device does not support “input” (note, it also said this about my HTC Evo).
Since I was completely unable to find any real information on this device online, I have happily created an absolutely horrible unboxing which you will find below, including a pdf file of the English section of the manual (If you are reading this and would really like the Spanish version, you might be able to bribe me to scan the pages written in Spanish too… maybe), that I made myself. You also will not find ANY of this information on the manufacturer’s website or even on Amazon.com.
-
- The back of the Nuvelli box
-
- The front of the Nuvelli box
-
- The left side of the Nuvelli box
-
- The right side of the Nuvelli box
-
- The top of the Nuvelli box
-
- The inside of the Nuvelli headset
-
- The Nuvelli headset sitting on a Compact Disc with a Quarter
-
- Nuvelli headset on CD, again… with Quarter
-
- internal packaging
-
- The USB charging adapter
-
- A closeup of the USB charging adapter
Let’s talk about the Evo 4G camera…
the camera takes acceptable pictures, as has been mentioned online, it will NOT replace even a decent point and shoot, nor any quality of dedicated video camera. I have not yet tested the 720p video but should be able to today, so I will update this post with tha tinfo before uploading it to my blog. Right, here is my list of good and bad and somewhere in between things with the camera on the HTC Evo 4G:
1. The pictures are crisp, clear, and sharp, most of the time.
2. The pictures are almost always in focus and the camera can focus anywhere on the screen with just a touch from the user, else it auto focuses on the center most often (I believe if you are taking a full frame or closer shot of a person, it will focus on the face, as I have seen it detect faces, sometimes… the auto-focus is fairly quick, IF you let it focus before you hit the camera button (to take the picture), I have noticed it can focus in less than 2 seconds always, and less than 1 second most of the time, if you let it; however if you hit the shutter release button before the camera can focus it appears to go through a pre-programed focal distant test that follows the same pattern every time and basically starts at infinity and works it’s way closer, testing every setting in between. This process might take 1.5-4 seconds depending on how far you are from the subject in the center of the screen. again if you touch to focus before shooting, it is very quick to come into focus. still on the matter of focusing, it appears that there is also a 3-4 second time out set on the focusing script, if it cannot focus in that amount of time, it just gives up. So, if your subject is moving closer to, or farther away from you, or even back and forth, it might not be able to focus on it and will take a blurry picture (if you tell the camera to shoot the picture without picking a focal point or allowing it to come into focus first). my recommendation in this situation (ie with kids running around) is to pick a spot on the ground, touch that part of the screen, forcing focus there, and take your shot. one more comment on this part and I’ll move on… fast moving objects that are close to you are going to be blurry. my dog was walking and his legs are blurry, not running, not reacting to something, just walking along. maybe it was just a bad shot, I’ll keep trying of course…
3. Apparently the lens maximum opening is a wee bit larger then the sensor, this normally happens in a fixed lens system when the quality of the lens is subpar and it suffers from image degredation on the outer edges of the glass, as such a manufacturer would make the sensor smaller so that most if not all of the degredation would not be seen in the final image.
4. There also appears to be an issue with white balance/auto-adjust levels. I have an extremely white dog, when taking pictures of him with my Evo, he has this aura of pure white that creates a halo around his body, this appears to only happen when he is outside and in near direct sunlight. I do not have this issue with my 4 year old kodak 8.0mp point and shoot.
5. the digital zoom appears to be only 1.8x or maybe a full 2.0x. Definitely not enough to make anyone even think of replacing their digital camera, not when there are those two new sweet ass models from Olympus that have 30x optical zoom and 2x-5x digital!!
6. I have not been able to discover any way to manipulate the shutter speed or aperture in the default camera app, I will look later and see if someone else has made a camera app for Android that might be capable of doing this. But, you cannot use manual mode, there is no “active” mode for moving subjects, not night shot mode (although it does pretty good in loow light on auto!), no landscape mode, no portrait mode, no modes at all to be frank! (please don’t call me frank, I really don’t like that name…)
7. no option for taking panorama shots.
8. it does support ISO settings of auto, or 100, 200, 400, 800, 1250
9. quality settings of high, fine, and normal
10. resolution settings of small 640×384, 1mp 1280×768, 3mp 2048×1216, 5mp 2592×1552, or 8mp 3264×1952
11. widescreen 5:3 or normal 4:3 image ratio (most useful for video)
12. 2 or 10 seconds self-timer
13. the option to turn on or off geo-tagging; however it is always off unless you turn GPS on FIRST, then go into the camera settings and turn the geo-tagging on, as the geo-tagging reverts to “off” anytime the GPS is shut down on your phone. so you must do this everytime, or leave GPS on always (not a good idea for your battery)
14. the effects are interesting, none, greyscale, sepia, negative, solarize, posterize, and aqua (just turns everything smurfy) they work in less than .5 seconds on the current display. I will try later when I do some video tests to see if they effect the videos also.
14. there are manual brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness settings, but you will rarely need them. for some really weird reason the brightness setting has it’s own menu tab, and the other three are all together.
15. there is a timeout of about 3 minutes where the camera will shut off and the phone will display a message telling yo uto touch the display to activate the camera, which is a nice feature, IF that actually saves you any battery life…
That is about it for the camera at this time, I will be posting images here every now and then, most likely I will be dropping lower rez versions on the blog, but will link to full rez images so you can click to see the whole thing for detail.
I have not yet been able to output HDMI video, nor have I been able to sync any BlueTooth devices to it yet; however I have a handsfree car speakerphone with FM transmitter in the mail on its way to me, and a stereo Bluetooth Headphones/Headset coming as well. So, I will have some more information on this soon. I will be ordering a new HDMI cable in another week and will post up how that goes then too, I actually ordered a cable before the phone launched, but apparently there is a special cable for the Evo, and the one I bought (a really nice HDMI 1.4 5 meter cable too) does not have the correct connector plug, so I will have to buy the special HTC Evo cable for $20 instead of the $4 cable I already bought…
Let’s talk about the Evo 4G camera…
While the camera does take some pretty acceptable pictures, as has been mentioned online, it will NOT replace even a $100 point and shoot, nor any quality of dedicated video camera. Here is my list of good and bad and somewhere in between things with the camera on the HTC Evo 4G:
1. The pictures are crisp, clear, and sharp, most of the time.
2. The pictures are almost always in focus and the camera can focus anywhere on the screen with just a touch from the user, else it auto focuses on the center most often (I believe if you are taking a full frame or closer shot of a person, it will focus on the face, as I have seen it detect faces, sometimes… the auto-focus is fairly quick, IF you let it focus before you hit the camera button (to take the picture), I have noticed it can focus in less than 2 seconds always, and less than 1 second most of the time, if you let it; however if you hit the shutter release button before the camera can focus it appears to go through a pre-programed focal distant test that follows the same pattern every time and basically starts at infinity and works it’s way closer, testing every setting in between. This process might take 1.5-4 seconds depending on how far you are from the subject in the center of the screen. again if you touch to focus before shooting, it is very quick to come into focus. still on the matter of focusing, it appears that there is also a 3-4 second time out set on the focusing script, if it cannot focus in that amount of time, it just gives up. So, if your subject is moving closer to, or farther away from you, or even back and forth, it might not be able to focus on it and will take a blurry picture (if you tell the camera to shoot the picture without picking a focal point or allowing it to come into focus first). my recommendation in this situation (ie with kids running around) is to pick a spot on the ground, touch that part of the screen, forcing focus there, and take your shot. one more comment on this part and I’ll move on… fast moving objects that are close to you are going to be blurry. my dog was walking and his legs are blurry, not running, not reacting to something, just walking along. maybe it was just a bad shot, I’ll keep trying of course…
2b. There is a setting in the camera for standard metering modes: center, average, and spot.
2c. Also white balance modes: auto, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Daylight, and Cloudy.
3. Apparently the lens maximum opening is a wee bit larger then the sensor, this normally happens in a fixed lens system when the quality of the lens is subpar and it suffers from image degredation on the outer edges of the glass, as such a manufacturer would make the sensor smaller so that most if not all of the degredation would not be seen in the final image.
4. There also appears to be an issue with white balance/auto-adjust levels. I have an extremely white dog, when taking pictures of him with my Evo, he has this aura of pure white that creates a halo around his body, this appears to only happen when he is outside and in near direct sunlight. I do not have this issue with my 4 year old Kodak 8.0mp point and shoot.
5. The digital zoom appears to be only 1.8x or maybe a full 2.0x. Definitely not enough to make anyone even think of replacing their digital camera, not when there is that new sweet ass model from Olympus with 30x optical zoom and 5x digital!!
6. I have not been able to discover any way to manipulate the shutter speed or aperture in the default camera app, I will look later and see if someone else has made a camera app for Android (there is one I saw “advertised” on AppBrain, haven’t tried it yet) that might be capable of doing this. But, you cannot use manual mode, there is no “active” mode for moving subjects, no night shot mode (although it does pretty good in low light on auto! see the fountain shot on part 2!), no landscape mode, no portrait mode, no modes at all to be frank! (please don’t call me frank, I really don’t like that name…)
7. No option for taking panorama shots.
8. It does support ISO settings of auto, or 100, 200, 400, 800, 1250
9. Quality settings are fairly standard: high, fine, and normal.
10. Available resolution settings of small 640×384, 1mp 1280×768, 3mp 2048×1216, 5mp 2592×1552, or 8mp 3264×1952
11. Widescreen 5:3 or normal 4:3 image ratio (most useful for video but not available when shooting video)
12. 2 or 10 seconds self-timer
13. There is the option to turn on or off geo-tagging; however it is always off unless you turn GPS on FIRST, then go into the camera settings and turn the geo-tagging on, as the geo-tagging reverts to “off” anytime the GPS is shut down on your phone. so you must do this everytime, or leave GPS on always (not a good idea for your battery)
14. Special effects, which are interesting to play with: none, greyscale, sepia, negative, solarize, posterize, and aqua (just turns everything smurfy) they work in less than .5 seconds on the current display. I will try later when I do some video tests to see if they effect the videos also.
15. Additional settings are available, including: manual brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness settings, but you will rarely need them. for some really weird reason the brightness setting has it’s own menu tab, and the other three are all together on one.
16. The Evo does have a sleep timer of about 3 minutes where the camera will shut off and the phone will display a message telling yo uto touch the display to activate the camera, which is a nice feature, IF that actually saves you any battery life…
Some video settings include:
1. Switch camera front/rear.
2. The same white balance options of the camera.
3. The same brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness settings screens.
4. The same effect screens.
5. Resolutions: 720p (1280×720), WVGA (800×480), VGA (640×480), CIF (352×288), QVGA (320×240).
6. Encoding options: H.263 and MPEG4.
7. Defined recording length: 1MB, 2MB, 10 secs, 30 secs, 1 mins (yes mins), 3 mins, or unlimited.
8. Record with or without audio.
9. The same metering modes as the camera.
10. Review durations: no review, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, no limit (seconds is spelled out on this screen, but not on the recording length screen).
11. Flicker Adjustment: auto, 50 Hz, 60Hz.
12. Auto Focus: on/off
13. Face Detection: on/off
14. Shutter Sound: on/off
It seems as though they left the setting there from the camera and just made changes for the options that needed to be different.
That is about it for the camera at this time, I will be posting images here every now and then, most likely I will be dropping lower rez versions on the blog, but will link to full rez images so you can click to see the whole thing for detail.
I have not yet been able to output HDMI video, I did get to sync my Hands-Free Bluetooth car speakerphone with FM transmitter to it and I have been using that quite happily for 2 days now with only one issue, it appears that the BT speakerphone goes into sleep mode after 10 minutes if you don’t hit a button, as it did to me this morning while listening to music pushed out to my car speakers via the built-in FM transmitter, even though I did receive a 5 minute call in the middle of that 10 minutes. I also have a stereo Bluetooth Headphones/Headset coming in the mail that I will let you know about too.. So, I will have some more information on this soon. I will be ordering a new HDMI cable in another week and will post up how that goes then too, I actually ordered an HDMI cable before the phone launched, but apparently there is a special cable for the Evo, and the one I bought (a really nice HDMI 1.4 5 meter cable too) does not have the correct connector plug (and I cannot find any adapters…), so I will have to buy the special HTC Evo cable for $20 instead of the $4 cable I already bought…
10 seconds of the ending credits of a movie taken on my Evo in 720p – details: 3.97MB, 1280×720, 12 seconds, 9fps, 6.00000 Mbps, type:video/4gpp video MP4V-ES
a video out the front window of my vehicle while someone else was driving taken on my Evo in QVGA (the lowest quality setting) details: 0.97MB, 320×240, 9 seconds, 29fps, 800Kbps, type:video/3gpp video MP4V-ES
- New blog post... Diablo III closed Beta http://t.co/dKC2ChWm
- New blog post... resolving video problems with K-L-Ubuntu and XFX Radeon 6850 http://t.co/H6bXuMqi
- New blog post... Computer upgrades http://t.co/6PWVNy4m
- $7 for $15 Worth of Hand-Tossed Pizza, Calzones, and Drinks at Andolini's Pizza Charleston, SC http://t.co/QnKwPwB
- New blog post... is zdnet.com/news down http://t.co/DThuI4r
- New blog post... Netflix Down? http://bit.ly/q74Svu
