Mike Southby

Could this be one of the first actual screenshots of the latest version of Android?  If you believe what you see then it would seem that this screenshot shows us a working Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo) build on a Nexus One.  It comes at the end of a video which demonstrates the latest mobile version of Flash (Flash 10.1) being demonstrated by one of the Flash developers; the combination appears to work very well and would suggest perhaps that key Adobe employees and developers have been ‘given’ a copy of the latest incarnation of Android to test compatibility.

From the looks of the screenshot, Android 2.2 will bring us an updated Launcher, tutorial and global search box amongst other things.  There are no official details yet but I look forward to hearing more news and the official list of changes from Google when they become available; which presumably will be revealed at Google I/O which starts later this month on May 19th. With Flash 10.1 rumoured to be released in June, I’d hope that Android 2.2 would be available to coincide with this.  No doubt more details will be released soon.

Here’s the video demonstating Flash 10.1, for those wanting to ‘fast forward’ to the Android 2.2 screen, you’ll find it at the very end of the clip. Needless to say I will be keeping my eye on XDA over the coming months. I’m more than happy with Android 2.1 but will for sure, try one of the custom ROMs incorporating Froyo when they become available which shouldn’t be too long if history repeats itself.

I’m now on my third battery with my Lenovo T61p, my only criticism with what is otherwise an absolutely fantastic machine.  The first two batteries were both genuine, the most recent a much cheaper, generic sourced one.  The first battery that came with the system was a fairly typical 6 cell offering, nothing unusual there and it lasted for around 1 year; ironic really, it always seems with laptop batteries that they suddenly decide to loose their charge after the one year warranty has expired.  I wasn’t too upset about this actually, mainly because I had always regretted not getting the 9 cell with my machine so it was an ideal opportunity to upgrade and secondly, being mainly office based where my machine sat in a docking station all day being charged to 100% I wasn’t too surprised it had come to an untimely end.

Now normally, I like to run my systems very ‘Zen’, ditching all of the manufacturer bloatware that comes pre-installed these days, but I decided when I bought the 9 cell battery to install the Lenovo Power Manager software, by now in version 3.  For those who are not aware of what this does, it enhances the ability to control and monitor all aspects of the machines power usage; this is especially so of the battery and the way its charging cycles are handled.  One of the features that I was most interested in was the ability to dynamically change the charging thresholds of the battery and thus improving its longevity. In essence, this works by changing not only the threshold at which the system allows the battery to be charged, but also the level at which the charge stops; so for example the system may determine to stop charging the battery when it reached 96% charge.  The idea of course, is that this is better for the batteries health and it ‘should’ last longer.

All was well, I had this and other settings customised just how I like them when I was greeted with a warning to tell me that my lovely battery had a fault and could no longer be used; the fault was terminal.  Most annoying was that the battery was still holding more charge than a 6 cell, even though it had well over 100 charging cycles, the battery should have been good for some time yet!  Frustrated with the cost of genuine batteries from Lenovo, I started to look at other options and did some research on generic batteries.  Finally, I decided that for a cost of £35 including delivery for a brand new 9 cell battery, it was wroth taking a punt and duly placed an order.  Herein lies the problem.

Lenovo have cunningly engineered into the software a warning which keeps popping up to tell you that you are not using a genuine battery along with the usual warning about the effect this may have on your warranty and a rather scary disclaimer which in not so many words, tells you that you may spontaneously combust if you do not throw the battery in the bin straight away and buy one directly from them.  Ironically, when you click OK for what seems like the hundredth time and acknowledge the warnings to enter the software, the battery information shows amongst other things that the part number is ‘COMPATIBLE‘ and the manufacturer is ‘SANYO‘; but hang on a minute, don’t Sanyo make the genuine batteries for Lenovo anyhow?  It seems to me that Lenovo are just abusing the software to boost their after sales, something which I will not be tricked into and something which I think is unfair given the rubbish quality of a lot of their own batteries (namely the Sanyo ones it would seem, I wonder how long this one will last).  I’m sorry Mr Lenovo but your ruse will not be working on me.

So that left me with the problem, just how do you go about continuing to use the otherwise excellent Power Manager software but without being nagged every 5 minutes to buy a new battery and fooled into thinking that you are about to blow up?

Turns out that the solution is actually painfully simple.  After doing some research on Google I first started but doing some registry edits and denying certain services the authority to run, this should according to the research I came across work; not by fooling the software into thinking it was a genuine battery but by stopping it from being able to display the warning messages from being displayed.  Sadly though, it didn’t work even after trying numerous different hacks.

It was then that I had a thought, they often say that it’s the most obvious solution that works.  The Power Manager software itself comes essentially in two parts, firstly the system software and secondly, the extra toolbar which runs in the system tray that shows you a graphical representation of the charge you have left and, importantly, is where the warning messages are displayed so prevalently.  So I wondered, if I simply right clicked and removed the Power Manager toolbar, would that allow the software to still run and do all of the behind the scenes stuff to keep my battery in good condition without the warning messages being displayed.  It turns out that it does.  By disabling the toolbar, you are still able to access all of the Power Manager features by right clicking the default Windows power icon in the system tray instead (or via the Control Panel), meaning that you are able to configure power options and battery options just as before.   Of course you do loose the Lenovo power icon in the system tray but I was never a huge fan of that anyway and it did nothing that the Windows power icon doesn’t.  The end result is that I am now using a non-genuine battery quite happily with Lenovo Power Manager but without all of the annoying warnings and attempts to sell you a new battery.

I hope someone finds this useful. Enjoy.

Google Earth works great on the Desire, but owing to the problems with the Desire still not fully working with the Market, it’s not available to download as yet.  This problem seemingly is owing to Google not yet updating their databases with the authentication fingerprint for the Desire; talk to HTC and they’ll direct you to Google, talk to Google and you guessed it, they’ll simply not respond.  Not very helpful to be honest and very frustrating to say the least, you’d imagine between the two companies they’d be eager to ensure full functionability to showcase the full potential of what is essentially the flagship Android device here in the UK.  I could understand Google’s slow progress (read: reluctance) if the Desire were directly competing with the Nexus One but of course it isn’t really, they are selling in different markets.

There is of course a way to overcome this, all you’ll need to do is manually install the .apk file onto your Desire, the easiest way to do this is to install it using the HTC Sync software.

The .apk file can be found here (if you are having difficulty I have also put the file into a .ZIP archive here).

Enjoy.

Much kudos must go to Paul over at MoDaCo for becoming the first person to give us root for the Desire.  It’s still early days in terms of ROM development but at least now it gives us the opportunity to start truly customising our devices without the bounds imposed by HTC.  I remember with great fondness the fun I had flashing custom ROMs on my G1 and HD2 (although of course for WM devices it was a different process altogether), at times I would flash everyday just to say I had the latest and greatest; but of course you will soon find the best ROM that suits your particular needs and stick with it.  I wonder how long it will be before we get a proper Cyanogen release for the Desire.  Now there’s something to look forward to.

Before I start with the rooting process itself, there are a few things you should know.

Compatibility

By following the instructions below you will be able to root your HTC Desire, but important, this only applies if you have a bootloader version of 0.75 or below and a ROM version of 1.15.xxx.x or below,  to check this, turn off your Desire and then turn it back on with the back key held.   You need to look at the second line which should be in green text; you’ll see HBOOT followed by a number.  Provided this is 0.75 or below these instructions should work for you.

Root Protection

Previous to the latest incarnations of Android, rooting was easy.  There were several options you could take and many ways of getting the low level access to your device that you wanted.  As with a lot of things though, the manufacturers have become wise to this and engineered ways of making this harder and harder to achieve.  The Desire certainly is not a straightforward phone to root for a number of reasons including:

• A ‘perfected bootloader’ that doesn’t allow flashing or booting of any images (not even the signed HTC ones)
• An RUU flash process that does not allow downgrading of the bootloader to earlier versions
• A kernel that as yet does not have any publically known exploits, made worse by HTC not releasing publically the source code, yet
• A new protection method previously seen on the HTC Taboo that protects key partitions from having write access.  Even with SU access, it is not possible to write to the boot, recovery or system partitions

The reality is that the options currently available for rooting the Desire are very limited.  Assuming that a kernel exploit had been found, it would still leave the key partitions unwritable, essentially rendering the SU access useless.  And so, the root process became a process of methodically probing every possible point of exposure, looking for a way in.  This has now been found; the downside being that it is not as simple as rooting a device that is actually designed to be accessible at the lowest level such as the Nexus One (even though the hardware is very similar)

The Root:  What is will and won’t do

The root process currently will:

• Flash your Desire with a new, generic 1.15.405.4 based ROM that has SU access

The root process will not:

• Enable you to flash your Desire with a custom image that can be launched by just holding down the volume down key when powering on as in other Android devices
• Enable you to have write access to the /system partition in normal use

It goes without saying that both of these limitations are being worked on and no doubt will be overcome in due course.  I’ll publish an update once this has happened or you can follow the thread directly over at MoDaCo or XDA.

Prerequisites

To be able to follow these instructions you will need or have access to the following:

• Your Desire, obviously
• A computer running Windows, OSX or Linux
• A microUSB cable
• A microUSB card (to be made into a gold card which is necessary if your Desire is an operator supplied device such as Orange or T-Mobile; you’ll also need ADB (part of the tools folder of the SDK, available here) and HxD Hex Editor which is available here)
• The downloads listed below

Downloads

Before making a start on the rooting process, download the following file to your machine.

Caveat:  Rooting your desire could void your warranty, please be aware of this before going any further.  Also, read through all of the steps before you start to ensure that you fully understand what you need to do.  If unsure, stop.  I take no responsibility for any bricked devices as a result of following this guide.  Important also to note that the root process will wipe your device there is currently no option to backup your device ROM before you start; rooting the Desire is still in its early days and is not as simple or comprehensive as say rooting a G1; yet.

So, now that you are ready here are the steps needed to perform root on the desire:

Step 1 – creating a Gold Card (Only need if your Desire is operator supplied)

• Format the microSD card to FAT32 format
• Put the microSD card into your Desire and boot
• Ensure that you have unzipped the SDK, and then open a command prompt to in the location that you extracted it.  Change to the /tools directory
• Enter the following, then press Enter:
  adb shell cat /sys/class/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:*/cid
  You should get a very long number which looks something like 00544d5107943247037c7d22bd003453
• Visit this page and enter the number then visit this page and enter your reversed number and create your gold card image, which will be emailed to you
• Open the HxD hex editor (Important to note that if you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 then you must right click and run as administrator)
• Go to the Extra menu and select Open Disk.  Under physical disk, select Removable Disk (your microSD card), uncheck Open as Readonly and click OK.  Note you should select the physical disck and not the logical disk, this is important!
• Go to the Extra menu again and select Open Disk Image, open the gold card image that you should have now received by email
• Now you will have 2 tabs, one for your removable disk and the other for the gold card image.  Press OK when prompted for Sector Size (selecting 512(Hard disks/Floppy disks)) and click OK
• Click on the gold card image tab.  Go to the Edit menu and choose Select All, followed by the Edit menu again and then Copy
• Click on the Removable Disk tab.  Highlight offset (line) 00000000 to offset (line) 00000170, then click the Edit menu again and select Paste Write
• Click on the File menu and select Save accepting the warning that follows.
• You now have a gold card!

Step 2 – Rooting

• Unzip the file that you have downloaded above into directory, then open a command prompt/terminal window at that directory
• Turn off your Desire, and then turn it back on with the back button held down.  You’ll see FASTBOOT written on the screen in a red box.  Connect the Desire to your computer
• In the terminal window, enter the following (as appropriate to the computer you are using!) followed by Enter:
  step1-windows.bat
./step1-mac.sh
./step1-linux.sh
• When this step has completed, using the optical trackball, navigate to BOOTLOADER and then RECOVERY in the menu, using the volume buttons to move and the power button to select
• In the terminal window, enter the following (again, appropriate to the computer you are using) followed by Enter:
  step2-windows.bat
./step2-mac.sh
./step2-linux.sh
• Once this has completed, your Desire should be at the recovery screen.  Next select the Wipe option, then select the option to apply an update zip from sdcard.  Select rootedupdate.zip
• This will now root your Desire but will take a little while so an ideal time to make a cup of tea!
• When the flash has finished, reboot your Desire and you’ll have root

Enjoy!

Thanks to Paul for finding root, nilezon for his patched windows ADB binary, ChainsDD for his SU permissions update and Amon_RA for the recovery image which has been used in this guide.