In which the grand saga comes to a conclusion. I hope.

After my last phone post, I called HTC support.  The hold time was very short, and the tech on the other end of the line was polite, reasonable, and friendly. Kudos to their call center, wherever it’s located. I explained my situation to him, and also explained that I had a friend with the same phone and the same update, but was not experiencing the problem. The tech said that he had the same phone that I did, but it didn’t sound like he used it as much as I did. I let him know that my friend likely doesn’t use hers as much as I do, either. So, he admitted that it might be something that he had not yet stumbled upon, but that he couldn’t verify because it hadn’t happened to him.  I expected this sort of response. I asked if there was a way to remove HTC Sense, and drop back to the default Android launcher.  He said that there was not.  I asked if there was a way to upgrade to HTC Sense 4.0, and he said that there was not, unless I wanted to upgrade to one of their new HTC One phones.  I said that I did not. I liked my phone quite a bit, except for this crashy-crashy stuff that kept happening. (That’s a technical term.) He suggested that rooting the phone was an option.

I was not expecting that response.

I wasn’t ready to void my warranty just yet, and I let him know. He apologized for not having another option (like I said, polite), and I thanked him for his time. T-Mobile was my next stop. The carrier modifies the phone as well, even if it is just to add a few non-removable apps.  So, the next time that I was at the mall‘s T-Mobile kiosk to pay the phone bill, I happened to be dealing with my favorite techy sales rep. Nikki reminded me that I wanted to ask about my phone, and so I popped the question. Er. Asked the question. And then I followed it up with a guess that it might be hardware related, since others weren’t experiencing the same issue that I was. He countered, saying that a hardware problem should be causing more issues than just making Sense crash. I agreed, and was worried that we’d once again come to an impass. I let him know that HTC had suggested the possibility of rooting the phone.

He was not expecting that response.

He asked me if I’d tried a custom launcher. I hadn’t, because I was under the impression that you had to root to replace the launcher. Not so in Ice Cream Sandwich. He asked if he could install an app called Apex Launcher, and spent a minute or so showing me how to customize it.

See, Sense still handles the lock screen, the incoming calls, things like that. Apex replaces Sense as the app that gets called when you press the home key, or when you back out of your apps. So Sense is still handling everything that it was doing right, and is no longer being asked to do the things that were crashing it. It’s still sucking down the memory as it runs in the background, but Apex doesn’t add to that load very much. On top of that, Apex has a snappy response, mimics Ice Cream Sandwich‘s look and feel well, and is far more stable than Sense was.

In the end, I’m just as happy with my selection in phone as I was when it was running Android 2.3, and am glad that I can leave it in its Otterbox instead of having to deal with hardware replacements. With that said, I’ve decided that my future purchases are likely to be the bare-bones Android models. They tend to get their updates first, and don’t have unnecessary add-ons that just get in the way of using the phone.

Do you ever run into problems like this with your phone? Is my experience typical or rare? Do you ever get a solution that lets you be satisfied with the way your pocket tech works, instead of eternally frustrated?

HTC and Android are now fighting over my phone, and I’m a pissed off consumer who’s stuck in the middle.

Originally, my phone shipped with Android 2.3, with (the very slick) HTC Sense running on top of it. Recently, HTC released an upgrade to Android 4.0, the much-touted Ice Cream Sandwich. (Never mind that 4.1 AKA Jellybean is about to be released.) It also released a built in update to its HTC Sense.

What’s the purpose of the new version of Sense? Is it to take advantage of the new user interface that Ice Cream Sandwich provides? Is it to add a shiny finish on top of the OS that’s brilliantly designed to take advantage of the hardware present in both smartphones and tablets? Ha!

No, you silly dreamer. It’s to make 4.0’s interface look JUST LIKE 2.3’s interface. It’s purpose is to undo nearly all of the awesome that comes along with 4.0 so that HTC’s end users don’t get confused by the changes to their phones.

HTC upgraded the operating system my phone, and then added extra software to un-upgrade it. On top of that, it doesn’t work. At least three times a day, when exiting an app, Sense reloads itself. I’m not sure if it’s crashing, if it’s becoming unresponsive and timing out, but the result is the same. Irritated end user.

Wouldn’t it make more Sense (see what I did there?) to actually design that shiny polish for Ice Cream Sandwich? Of course it would! It makes so much sense that they’ve already done it. Can I install this piece of awesome software on my phone, since I’d rather have the changes that come with the new OS?

No, you silly dreamer. That’s only available for new phones that ship with Android 4.0 pre-installed.

*sputter*

This is yet another reason why people root their phones. Listen to me, phone companies and service providers. Your shininess is appreciated, but if it doesn’t work, it’s not welcome. That phrase you use? “Value-added feature?” It’s not adding any value for me. It’s right up there with the provider’s mandatory pre-installed junk apps that do nothing but slow my phone down as they inevitably crash and burn, or pop up helpful notices that cannot be dismissed or acknowledged or what-the-hell ever. I shake my cane at them and tell them to keep that crap to themselves.

So now I’m faced with the rooter’s conundrum. Do I root my phone, void its warrantee, and have the device function like it should? Or do I leave it alone, preserve the warrantee, and deal with the dumb? I suppose there is the third option of contacting HTC and finding out what they can do for me. Maybe I’ll give that one a go.

Despite my best efforts, sometimes hardware just needs to be given up on.

If you’ll remember, my last phone geekery post focused on my search for a good Android tweak for my phone, the Motorola Cliq XT. Unfortunately, my search brought me right up to the limitations of the hardware. I found nothing out there that would fix the auto-mute when switching from the current call to an incoming call, so I was left chalking it up to being a hardware-related problem. At work, during an emergency, I am likely to get several calls at once to my mobile phone, so this was an inconvenience.

That left two problems: slow interface response and a random delay when answering calls before I could hear the person on the other end. I found that if one version fixed one problem, it did not fix the other. I picked slow response, as Nikki found my repeated “Hello, hello?” to be pretty irritating over time.

With two of the three problems unresolvable, and our tax return in our bank account, we decided to get me a new phone. I have to admit that I’d been doing quite a bit of looking, so I knew exactly what I wanted.

As an aside, cell phone forums are as negative and soul sucking as YouTube comments. Sheesh.

I purchased an HTC Sensation, and have been gleeful with its performance since. It fits my needs now, and will likely continue to do so for the next couple of years. If and when it comes time to abandon the stock software on the phone, I’ll be more armed to find a good mod thanks to my wrestling with the Cliq XT. And whatever performance it ends up giving me, I’ll post both the positive and the negative when I review the phone on T-Mobile and HTC’s forums.

I desperately want to mod my phone into a reliable and useful state. I’m 75% of the way there. Its original software made it more than useless – it was a menace.  More specifically, it was a menace to my wife’s sanity.  It’s hardware is sufficient for my needs, unless it’s the hardware that has caused all of the problems.

Nah.

If that were the case, moving from MotoBlur to CyanogenMod wouldn’t have fixed anything.  HAS to be the software.

I’m going to try SuperOSR for a bit, and see if that one fixes the last few bugs, or if it creates any more.

Your smart phone? It’s a computer. That’s all. If it hangs up on people, reboots on its own, calls people while its screen is locked in your pocket, it’s either the hardware or the software. Why would you toss perfectly good hardware without trying to find software that works?