****** If you brick your phone it’s not my fault and I can’t help you!!!
…just needs to be said. ******

Special thanks to all the people who’s sites I used to get this put together!

All I have to say is, “WOW! Android 2.2 (Froyo) with Flash 10.1 on the HTC Droid Incredible is now truly INCREDIBLE!” I could go on, but I’ll just let you get started and you’ll find out all the cool stuff about it soon enough!

Final setup consists of the following:

• Sky Raider 2.5.2 with Flash 10.1 and HTC’s Sense UI
• Titanium Backup with BusyBox

So August 18th came and went and I, just like thousands of others, was disappointed that there was no Android 2.2 (Froyo) love for the HTC Droid Incredible! I was holding out since I didn’t really want to root my phone if an official update was available (I had never rooted an Android phone before…but that wasn’t going to stop me ).  However, since HTC had recently released the source code for Froyo for the HTC EVO 4G and the Droid Incredible I figured that by now someone should have something cooked up from it for the Incredible. So, I started digging and I found everything I needed to get a pretty bug free version of Froyo with Flash 10.1 up and running on my Droid Incredible. Here’s a brief overview of what I needed to do in order to get it all setup (with links to where I got my info):

• Update the radio baseband (info here and here)
• Root my phone using unrevoked3 (info here)
• Unlock NAND using unrevoked forever (info here and here)
• Install backup software (Titanium Backup (please donate) and BusyBox)
• Backup everything up
• Wipe everything
• Install Sky Raider 2.5.2 with Flash 10.1 and HTC’s Sense UI (info here)
• Restore apps/settings and extra stuff

Even though I did do some research before starting this, I did run into a couple quirks that took me a little extra time to figure out. Or, maybe I was just a little too anxious to get this done so I could enjoy it. Anyway, I’ve tried to put together instructions that are pretty easy to follow and all in one place. Hopefully you can get your phone rooted and running Andorid 2.2 (Froyo), with Flash 10.1 in no time. I would recommend reading through everything first though, just to make sure you understand what’s going on. After I put this together I ran through it, using my phone, a couple times and it worked without any problems. Hopefully it goes well for you too! Enjoy!

How To Root Your HTC Droid Incredible
and Install Froyo (Android 2.2) and Flash 10.1

I ended up rooting and installing the new ROM, but had some minor problems along the way, mostly because I had never done it before. I learned a lot and after I had it up and running I ended up downgrading the phone back to the stock ROM and radio baseband so that I could run through it again and hopefully get it done the right way without any problems. I got it right the second time and the instructions are below. However, if you have already rooted and haven’t updated the radio baseband, I suggest you downgrade (see instructions below) and then run through these instructions from the top (backup everything first, of course ). Starting from the stock ROM will help ensure that everything is OK.

Just as an FYI, in my “trial runs” of this process the data that was on my phone wasn’t modified or wiped until I got to the installation of the Sky Raider ROM and wiped it myself. Hopefully you have the same experience and don’t lose any data until after Titanium Backup is installed and you have backed everything up. OK, let’s get started:

Update Radio Baseband

These steps assume you have not rooted, or if you have rooted you downgraded back to the stock ROM (see below for instructions on how to downgrade). You need to make sure you’ve got the stock ROM to update the radio baseband, since I’ve read that if you try to apply the patch more than once you can brick your phone. If you’ve already rooted and have the correct radio baseband version then skip to the Use unrevoked3 to Root Your Phone section.

1. Download the file dinc_ota.zip, rename it to update.zip and place it in the root of your SD card (Your SD card must be formatted FAT32/4096 bytes or the phone might not see the file).
2. Reboot into HBOOT: Power down the phone and then press and hold power and volume down buttons.
3. Once the HBOOT menu appears (it takes a few seconds once it shows up before you can do anything), press the volume down button once to select Recovery and then press the power button to select Recovery.
4. You’ll get a screen with a red triangle and an exclamation mark. That’s OK. Go to the next step.
5. Press the power button and the Volume Up button to bring up the recovery menu (it might take a few tries).
6. Use the volume rocker to highlight “Apply sdcard:update.zip” and then press the power button to run it.
7. Once it finishes (it takes several minutes), at the bottom of your screen you should see “Reboot via menu to complete installation.” A few seconds after the message appears you should get a menu at the top. “Reboot system now” should be highlighted so press the power button to reboot.
8. It will take several minutes for it to reboot and apply the updates. You’ll see some green arrows while it’s updating. Once the Droid eye appears, just be patient, it will eventually finish.
9. After it finishes booting, go to Settings > About phone > Software information > Baseband version and verify that it’s 2.05.00.06.11.
10. Not it’s time to root your phone.

I want to say that I had a problem updating the radio the first time I tried from my factory stock phone. If you get a certificate error, then I suggest that you skip the radio update for now, root your phone, unlock NAND, backup everything, downgrade and then start it all again. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but it has worked for me.

Also, from what I’ve seen on posts you can’t run the OTA update on a rooted phone. I tried it and got the following error:

E:ignoring attempt to do multiple firmware updates

Not sure if this is bad or not, but I’d rather play it safe and get everything done without any errors. So, again, if you are rooted and haven’t updated the baseband radio you’ll need to back everything up and downgrade to the stock ROM and then update the radio.

NOTE: There’s a newer version of the Baseband Radio (2.15.00.07.28) that you can use. You can find it here. I actually ran through this whole process and installed Sky Raider 2.5.2 and then found this and updated the radio. However, you should be able to use this file in place of the one mentioned above. This one is a little easier since you just have to put it on the root of your SD card, boot into HBOOT, press the Volume Up key to apply the update, wait for it to finish and then press the Volume Up key to reboot. Worked like a charm for me.

Use unrevoked3 to Root Your Phone

This assumes that you are doing this from a PC running Windows. In my case I’m running Windows 7 so the driver installation instructions might be a little different if you’re running XP or Vista.

1. To get started, go to unrevoked’s website, click on the picture of the HTC Droid Incredible, click on unrevoked3 and then click the link to Download for Windows. Save the files wherever you want.
2. After you have downloaded reflash_package.exe, find it and double-click it. If prompted, click Yes to allow UAC to run the program.
3. Select the destination where you want the files extracted (it doesn’t really matter where you put them, but you might want to create a folder named unrevoked3 and extract them to it).
4. Once the files have been extracted, navigate to the folder that contains them.
5. Download the unrEVOked modified USB driver and expand it somewhere you will remember.
6. Turn on USB Debugging  by going to Settings >Applications > Development and then check “USB debugging” (click OK to allow USB debugging when prompted).
7. Turn off your phone and then boot into the HBOOT menu by holding power and volume down.
8. Once you get to the HBOOT menu, connect the phone to your Windows PC with a USB cable and wait for the phone to say “HBOOT USB PLUG” on the screen (instead of just HBOOT).
9. Open the device manager and you should see “Android 1.0″ under “Other Devices”:
10. Right click on “Android 1.0″ and click “Update Driver Software”. You should then be at the following screen:

    

11. Click “Browse my computer for driver software”.
12. Click on “Browse” and select the Android USB driver folder on your computer where you extracted the drivers from step #5 above.
13. Once you have selected the folder, click Next.
14. You should see a progress bar and you might get a warning that it can’t verify the publisher. Click “Install this driver software anyway” and it should finish the install. Once completed you should see a screen like this:
15. Click “Close” and make sure “Android Bootloader Interface” is listed under “Android Phone” in the Device Manager:
16. Now go to where you extracted the files for unrevoked3 (from step #1 above) and double-click on relfash.exe.
17. unrevoked3 will launch and you should see a screen like this:
18. On the phone, make sure “FASTBOOT” is selected and then press the power button.
19. On the “FASTBOOT” screen, press the Volume Down button to select “REBOOT” and then press the power button. There’s no need to press Power and Volume Down, just sit back and wait now as unrevoked3 does it’s thing. You can watch the status messages change on the unrevoked3 screen. It will reboot more than once so don’t worry.
20. Once it is finished, the unrevoked3 screen will say “Done!” and your phone should now be displaying the new ClockworkMod Recovery menu.
21. Close the unrevoked3 window.
22. You could now use the built in nandroid backup app in the ClockworkMod Recovery to back everything up, but I prefer using Titanium Backup so I’ll go over how to get that installed in the next section.
23. Make sure “reboot system now” is highlighted on your phone and then press the optical joystick to reboot (pressing the power button will only put it to sleep).
24. Congratulations, you have just rooted your HTC Droid Incredible!
25. Now it’s on to getting backup software installed and working.

Hot to Install Titanium Backup and Backup Everything

IMPORTANT! These steps will unlock NAND (set Android phone’s security level to S-OFF). As with rooting, doing this will void your warranty. However, since this was initially released, a tool to change from S-OFF to S-ON has now been released, so you can switch back. PLEASE READ THE INFO on unrevoked’s website before you continue!

1. PLEASE READ THE INFO on unrevoked’s website before you continue!
2. Download the most recent “unrevoked-forever.zip” file to a temp location to your computer and then copy it to the root of your SD card.
3. Now that you have rooted, there’s no need to rename files to update.zip since you can browse and install files from your SD card now.
4. After you have copied “unrevoked-forever.zip” to your SD card, reboot your phone to the HBOOT menu (with the phone powered off, press and hold the volume down button and the power button at the same time).
5. Once at the HBOOT menu, press Volume Down to select “RECOVERY” and then press the power button.
6. Wait for the CLockworkMod Recovery menu to appear and then use the volume keys or the optical joystick to select “install zip from sdcard”. Once you have selected “install zip from sdcard” press the optical joystick, not the power button.
7. Select “choose zip from sdcard” and press the optical joystick.
8. Browse to “unrevoked-forever.zip” and select it (you can go up from the top to get to the bottom…it’s a little faster) and then press the optical joystick.
9. Select “Yes – Install unrevoked-forever.zip” and then press the optical joystick.
10. unrevoked forever will then be installed. Once it completes it will say “Install from sdcard complete.” You should also see “Update successful.” a couple lines up from the bottom.
11. Press the power button to get back to the main menu (the power button works kind of like a back button in the ClockworkMod Recovery.
12. Select “reboot system now” and press the optical joystick. Your phone will now reboot.
13. IMPORTANT: Unplug the USB cable, or make sure that your SD card is mounted on the phone (not your PC) before you continue.
14. Now we’ll install Titanium Backup. By default it will install to and use your SD card for backups. If you don’t have a very big SD card then I would recommend that you get a larger one.
15. Once the phone has rebooted, go to the Android Market and search for and install “Titanium Backup” (by Joël Bourquard). Note: I would recommend that you donate $5.99, it’s well worth it in my opinion since it speeds it up considerably and adds some other useful features.
16. Once Titanium Backup has been installed, open it up.
17. You will be prompted to allow superuser access, so just click “Allow”.
18. You’ll then get an Error that says “Sorry, I could not acquire root privileges…” (and some other stuff), just select OK.
19. Click on the button that says “Problems ?”.
20. Read the info about “Auto-upgrade for BusyBox” if you want and then select “Yes, do it”.
21. BusyBox will be downloaded and installed and Titanium Backup will exit (so it can be restarted).
22. Open up Titanium Backup agian (this time the error about root access should be gone). You are then warned that you need to change some settings in order for restores to work correctly. Go to your phone’s Settings > Applications and check “Unknown sources”, read the message and select “OK”. You can leave this unchecked if you want for now, but just remember that you’ll need to check it whenever you use Titanium Backup. “USB Debugging” also needs to be enabled for Titanium Backup to work correctly, if it isn’t it will warn you and then you can go and turn it on (Settings > Applications > Development and check “USB Debugging” and then select “OK” to allow it.
23. To back everything up, first make sure that you’ve got plenty of room on your SD card, and in Titanium Backup select “Backup/Restore”, press the Menu key and then select “Batch”.
24. Find the line that says “Backup all user apps + system data” and press the button that says “RUN” next to it.
25. Everything is selected by default and it will kill active apps. You can make whatever changes/selections you want here, but I’d just recommend the defaults for this initial backup. So, just press “Run the batch operation” and the backup will start. Now, if you haven’t purchased the donate version this will take a long time. So go ahead and spend a little money and make your life easier.
26. Once the backup completes it will bring you back to the list of all the apps and you can see the status of everything that has been backed up (press Menu > Legend to get info on what the icons next to each app mean).
27. Exit out of Titanium Backup. The HTC Sense UI will restart since it was killed to backup stuff. This is OK.
28. Now that everything has been backed up you’re ready to wipe everything and get some Froyo goodness on your phone!

More info on how to use Titanium backup can be found on the LegenDroid Community, including documentation.

Install Sky Raider ROM with Flash 10.1

I chose the Sky Raider ROM, because at this time it was the only Froyo (Android 2.2) ROM that I found that seemed to have everything working now. You don’t have to use this one, but it’s working great for me! I suggest you read all about it first before you use it, there’s some good info about what it has and doesn’t have as well as some optional stuff you can install. There’s also a FAQ.

1. WARNING!!! This process will wipe all your data from your phone! Make sure everything has been backed up before you continue!
2. Download the latest Sky Raider ROM (version 2.5.2 when I wrote this) from XDA Developers. There’s one with Sense UI and one without. Copy the file to the root of your SD card.
3. Boot your phone to the HBOOT menu (with the phone powered off, press and hold the volume down button and the power button at the same time).
4. Once at the HBOOT menu, press Volume Down to select “RECOVERY” and then press the power button.
5. Wait for the CLockworkMod Recovery menu to appear and then use the volume keys or the optical joystick to select “wipe cache partition” and then press the optical joystick.
6. Select “Yes – Wipe Cache” and press the optical joystick.
7. Once the cache has been wiped, select ”wipe data/factory reset” and press the optical joystick.
8. Select “Yes — delete all user data” and then press the optical joystick.
9. Once the data wipe has completed, select “install zip from sdcard” and press the optical joystick.
10. Select “choose zip from sdcard” and press the optical joystick.
11. Browse to the “SKYRaider2.5.2Sense.zip” file you downloaded (or whatever it’s named) and select it (you can go up from the top to get to the bottom…it’s a little faster) and then press the optical joystick.
12. Select “Yes – Install SkyRaider2.5.2Sense.zip” (or whatever it’s named) and then press the optical joystick.
13. Once the update is installed it will say “Install from sdcard complete.” on the screen
14. You’ll notice there’s no option to reboot from the menu it shows, so press the power button to get to the main menu and select “reboot system now”.
15. Sit back and wait for Froyo to boot/install.
16. Once you have booted and run through the initial configuration, it’s time to install Flash 10.1.
17. First we need to allow the installation of apps from unknown sources. So, go to Settings > Applications and then check the box next to “Unknown sources” and tap “OK”. Go back to the home screen.
18. Now, open up the apps menu and then open ASTRO and accept the license agreement.
19. You should be in the root of your SD card, so scroll down to the “skyraider” directory and then press it.
20. You should see a file named “install_huluflash_player”. Tap the file and then tap “Open App Manager”.
21. Press Install. Pres Install again. Press Done when it finishes installing.
22. To check to see what version of Flash you now have, you can open up the browser and go to http://www.whatismyflash.com/ and it will tell you. The build with Sky Raider 2.5.2 is version 10.1.72.
23. Don’t forget to call “*228″ and then press 1 to reprogram you phone!

There’s a newer, supposedly official, version of Flash 10.1 (Version 10.1.92.8) available now. More info about it from Droid Life. You could also try to download it directly from here.

Other Goodies for Sky Raider and Froyo

I also added the optical joystick wake script (load from recovery menu and browse to .zip file) and Wireless Teather (.apk file you can install from your phone). Don’t forget the Chrome to Phone app either (found in the Market).

How to Restore Apps Using Titanium Backup

Once I got into it, I really didn’t use Titanium Backup to restore much. I had a lot of junk on my phone anyway so this was a good chance to start fresh and only install what I actually use. This isn’t a comprehensive section about Titanium Backup, mostly because I haven’t used it much. But, I’ll share what I did.

To restore a single app, open up Titanium Backup and press “Backup/Restore” press Menu > Filter and choose options or enter full or partial app names to find what you’re looking for. Once you find the app, just tap it and then tap restore. You’ll then have the option to restore the “App only” or the “App+Data”. I really only used this for apps that I wanted to restore that had data/config info that I didn’t want to lose or re-input. If there really wasn’t any data associated with the app I just downloaded it from the Android Market. You can also press Menu > Batch if you want to restore a bunch of missing apps all at once. I’m a little hesitant to do it this way though since I think there’s stuff that could get restored (if you’re not careful which option you run) that would mess up or not be compatible with the new ROM. Anyway, if you want to restore all the missing apps, you can just tap “Restore all missing apps + system data” from the Batch screen.

One other thing that’s kind of cool is that Titanium Backup recognizes the Labels you setup in Apps Organizer so you can use those Labels to filter apps in Titanium Backup.

That’s about all I have for now. It’s a pretty cool app and I’m not even getting close to using it’s full potential. More info on how to use Titanium backup can be found on the LegenDroid Community, including documentation.

How to Remove Root and Downgrade to the Stock ROM

1. This will wipe the data from your phone so backup everything first!
2. Download PB31IMG.zip. You might want to go here and pull it from the post in case my link fails. It should be about 139 MB. Once you have downloaded the file, place it in the root of your SD card (should be formatted FAT32/4096 bytes).
3. Reboot into HBOOT: Power down the phone and then press and hold power and volume down.
4. It should automatically see and load the file. Once it’s done, press the Volume Up button to start the update.
5. It will take a little while for the update to get applied and you’ll see a little progress bar appear multiple times in the top right corner.
6. Once it finishes the update it will ask you to reboot the device.
7. Press the Volume Up button to reboot the phone.
8. After it finishes booting (be patient, it will eventually finish) you will then have to run through the initial setup (you can skip it all since you’ll have to do it later anyway).
9. On you finish the initial setup you can go in and check that everything looks ok and that the radio baseband has been taken back to version 1.00.03.04.06 (Settings > About phone > Software information > Baseband version).
10. There you have it, you’re now back to the stock Verizon ROM and you can start from the top to get Froyo installed.

• PHP errors on page because it was using PHP4, not PHP5
• Colors were different
• Links for pages across the top (Home, Resume, etc.) were missing
• Thumbnails were not displaying in the actual posts
• No picture in the header

Some of these were pretty obvious, but I’ll go through each one so I can save myself time the next time I need to do this.

PHP errors on page because it was using PHP4, not PHP5

This was resolved with a simple .htaccess file that I needed to configure on the server the site is hosted on. By default it uses PHP4 but a lot of stuff is using PHP5 now. The fix was easy, I just needed to create a .htaccess file in the site’s root directory and add the following line to it:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

Colors were different

The site background color and the background color for the tables was different. Since I didn’t bother to check or document what they were before I updated the theme I didn’t remember what they were. So, I just forged ahead, kicking myself for not heeding that little thought that said I should take some screenshots and check settings before I did the upgrade. I didn’t think the upgrade would really change much. Oh well, I learned. First off, I needed to change the backgroud color in the “Custom Background” section under the “Arras Theme”. I just clicked the “Background Color” box and fiddled with the color chooser until I found something I liked. Next I wanted to change the background of the tables and after some fiddling I figured out that the color was f7f6f0 and the setting was located in “wp-content/themes/arras-theme/css/styles/default.css”. The line that I changed was:

#main                                   { padding: 10px 10px 0; background: #f7f6f0; border: 1px solid #d3d1c7; }
I changed the background to #FFFFFF and then I then noticed that I needed to change it for the footer too and that was done by modifing the following line of the above mentioned file:

#footer                         { margin: 20px auto 0; width: 980px; background: #ECEBE6; padding-bottom: 10px; border: 1px solid #CCC; }

I changed the background to #FFFFFF and then I was good to go. I’m not sure I like the white but at least I know where to go to change it now.

Links for pages across the top (Home, Resume, etc.) were missing

This one was a little strange, but I figured it out. I went to “Appearence > Menus” anc created a new menu named “Nav Bar” and then dragged the links for the Pages that I wanted displayed for the Pages section on the left to the new Nav Bar I had created on the right. After doing that they appeared.

Thumbnails were not displaying in the actual posts

To display the thumbnail image on each post, but not on each page, I found a nice little post from IT by MITCH. It’s a two step process. First you need to edit some of the config files for the Arras Theme and then you need to add a custom field on the post/page you don’t want the thumbnail to be displayed.

For the first part, the code, do the following (for me, the file is located in “wp-content/themes/arras-theme”:

Once I did the above, all I had to do was create a custom field on the page I didn’t want to have the thumbnail displayed. Once it’s created you can then just select it form the drop-down menu under Custom Fields for any of the other Pages or Posts you don’t want the thumbnail displayed on. To create it, go to a Page (or a Post) and under “Custom Fields” click “Enter new” and under Name put “dontdisplaythumbinpost” and under value put “1″. Once that was done I could select it on the Pages I wanted and set it to “1″ so the thumbnails wouldn’t show.

No picture in the header

To add a picture (background) to the header, I found a post on the WordPress forums (that I think I used when I first set the theme up ) that explains how to set a custom background for the header. Basically, you have to modify the default.css file (the same one that I modified to change the colors) found in “wp-content/themes/arras-theme/css/styles/default.css”. Here’s what you need to do:

Find the following line:

#header { background: #000033; border-bottom: 5px solid #383332; padding: 0 0 15px 0;}

Then add the following within the header’s {} brackets

background-image:url(‘the url to your picture in http:// format’);

background-repeat:no-repeat;

background-position:center top;

It should all be on one line.

Other Stuff

I then noticed that it was recommended to add the WP-PageNavi plugin so I added it, activeted it and didn’t change any settings. And there you have it. This is what I did to hack the Arras Theme to get it like I wanted.

“At it’s core, FUEL is a modular based, CodeIgniter development platform for creating web applications. You can create your models, views and controllers like normal and only use the CMS part when and if you need it. It’s a hybrid of a framework and a CMS.”

Check out my brother’s blog post about FUEL CMS to get a better idea about what he’s doing and why. Currently it’s in private development but you can visit the FUEL CMS site and sign up for notifications (he’s “looking into opening it up for developers to play with and contribute to”). Go to the CodeIgniter website for more info about it.

His website is the Daylight Studio and he’s located in Portland, OR.

To fix the problem with the plugins, DISABLE ALL PLUGINS and then ONLY ENABLE the PLUGIN you are UPGRADING. This has worked for me every time…knock on wood.

Now, for the upgrade of the site. I thought it was cool that WordPress finally built in an autoupgrade feature, but I haven’t been able to get that to work most of the time. What has worked for me is this:

• Download and install the “WordPress Automatic Upgrade” plugin (search for it from the Plugins page or you can visit the plugin site). Disable all other plugins if you have problems installing this one.
• Disable all other plugins except the “WordPress Automatic Upgrade” plugin.
• Once installed and activated, you should then see a ribbon at the top of the admin pages that says something like “Click Here to Automatically Upgrade WordPress to latest Version x.x.x”. Click on the link it provides and follow the instructions.
• Note: I’m not sure if this is necessary, but I’ve also set the theme to the default WP theme before upgrading. If you have problems you might want to try this too.

I’ve used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin since before WordPress built that functionality into the product and I’ve never had any problems with it, as long as I’ve followed the steps I mention above. I also like that it backups up your files and the database as part of the process (just don’t forget to download them…just in case).

Anyway, this is mostly just a note for me since I’m sure I’ll run into this again sometime and won’t remember what I did to fix it. However, it just might help someone else and that’s fine by me.

I’ve got my first Android phone and, long story short: I’m loving it.

Why make the switch to Android now? Read on…

I’ve owned WinMo phones forever because I wasn’t willing to switch to another carrier and Verizon hasn’t had a compelling phone to offer until now. Yes, the Moto Droid was a contender but I think it’s ugly and after demoing it in the store a couple times I just didn’t like it. I was waiting for the Nexus One, but the Incredible came out first, has a better camera and a better screen (no multi-touch issues like the N1). So, April 29th arrived and I called the Verizon store where I live and asked that they reserve one for me. I didn’t care that I still had about 6 months until my “New every two”. Shelling out a little extra to get rid of my Samsung Omnia i910 was well worth it. That phone was driving me nuts!

OK, so on to the Incredible. I really liked the responsiveness of the touch screen. Swiping through the home screens and using the “Leap” view made me a little giddy. Getting email setup was easy. Customizing the home screens was also easy and there are plenty of widgets to keep anyone busy. It’s nice that there are several customized Scenes that you can choose from. And, once you get a layout setup that you like you can save it. With so much to customize, I still haven’t figured out what I like best.

Below is my two cents on the HTC Incredible based on a few weeks of use. I won’t go over FriendStream or how the HTC Sense UI tries to integrate all of your contact info, because that’s discussed all over the Internet. I actually like it, others don’t. Although, there’s no way to turn it off on the HTC Droid Incredible.

Battery Life

For the first couple weeks I was using it a lot and have to admit that I was not impressed with the battery life at all. I think my next upgrade will be a higher capacity, slim battery. That should allow me to make it through the day without any problems. For those that don’t use the phone much for “other stuff” (but really, who wouldn’t…???), the battery will probably be more than sufficient.

The Display

Think of the Incredible as a vampire, sunlight pretty much kills the display (well, being able to view it). However, I think people might be over emphasizing this issue when they say that it’s not really useable in bright sunlight. The old phone I had didn’t do well in bright sunlight either. I think it’s a common problem on a lot of devices so singling out one type of display seems a little misleading. I could be wrong here, but I really don’t have that may devices to test with to prove otherwise.

I’m glad that the Incredible doesn’t suffer from the same problems that the Nexus One has with the multi-touch responsiveness and the navigation buttons at the bottom. However, it has been pointed out that there seems to be a problem with responsiveness when the device isn’t properly grounded. You can see info about this here. I had never had any issues (I don’t use a car dock though) so I ran the same tests and had similar results, but not as drastic.

Email

The Gmail app is pretty nice and I like that it gives you a similar experience to what you have using a browser on a PC, albeit somewhat limited. You can Star emails and bulk process: Archive, Apply Labels and Delete. The search feature not only checks what’s on your phone locally, but searches your email on Gmail’s servers. Unfortunately, with the Gmail app, you can’t copy text from an email nor can you edit original text if you forward an email. It makes me wonder if the employees at Google ever used this app. They must have been using Exchange since these problems would have been pretty evident had they used it. However, the copy/edit text issue looks like it might be addressed in Android 2.2, Froyo. In the meantime, you can work around this by setting up your Gmail account as a regular IMAP account, minus the labels, search, conversations, etc..

I was stoked to hear that you could run multiple Exchange accounts with Android but for whatever reasons you can only setup one Exchange account with the HTC Droid Incredible. Maybe this has something to do with the “enhanced” Exchange experience that Sense UI provides, but I really hate it when things get removed that should be there by default.

I did find that searching the company address book didn’t work if I typed in a name and then pressed the Enter key on the virtual keyboard. It drove me nuts for a few days but then I finally just pressed the little magnifying glass up in the search bar and VIOLA! It worked. Not sure how this was missed. It would have been nicer if results would display when you typed the characters rather than having to press a button to get the results.

Internet

I really like how fast the browser is on this phone. I even prefer it over the iPod Touch that I have (the newest version).

The pinch-to-zoom works great and even though Flash isn’t as complete as it will be with Froyo, I am able to view sites that I wasn’t able to on my iPod Touch (or any iPhone or iPad J). On the WinMo phones that I’ve owned, browsing the Internet was excruciating and very slow. It’s a marked difference on the Incredible and it’s actually enjoyable.

The Keyboard

I actually prefer the keyboard and the auto-suggestion/correction on the Incredible over the keyboard and auto-suggestion/correction on my iPod Touch. It seems to work better at correcting mistakes. The landscape mode is even better to type in but my complaint about the landscape view is that you only get the keyboard ant the text entry block, nothing else. So, you can’t see anything else when you are in landscape mode. It’s kind of a pain if you’re filing out web forms or typing in URLs.

The Optical Track Pad

I thought I would like the optical track pad on the Incredible, but I don’t. I think I would rather have a ball (I’ve never had one so I can’t say for sure). I don’t like it because I’ve tried to use it in some games and it’s pretty much useless. It’s no replacement for a D-pad. However, it works fine if you need to navigate through menus, or if you need to navigate a web page. Its best use is for editing text. Other than that there’s really not much of a use for it.

Onboard Storage

The onboard storage is nice, other than you can’t install apps there…yet. I had to look a little to figure out which directory it was, but finally found everything under the  “/emmc” directory.

Music and Movies

There’s no real easy way to get movies to the device. Also, it wasn’t really easy to figure out how to find and play a movie once I had some on the phone. I ended up installing mVideoPlayer and it works for what it’s supposed to do.

I did find a cool little app that you can run on your PC that allows you to setup your phone as a device in iTunes so you can sync music and playlists using iTunes. It’s called “iTunes Agent”.

As for the actual music player, I know HTC has made some changes to it and others seem to agree that it’s an improvement. I don’t have any complaints about it, it works just fine for me. In the main view there’s a “cover flowish” view of the songs that are playing, but it didn’t rotate to landscape mode. The HTC Music widgets are easy to use, with the larger one allowing you to shuffle or repeat directly from it. For the most part, it’s pretty intuitive and was easy to navigate through songs, artists, etc. Creating and modifying a playlist on the phone was pretty easy too.

Camera and Video

I haven’t used the camera a lot but the pictures that I have taken have turned out nice. The auto-focus seems to work pretty well and it’s rather quick when you do take a picture. Once you have taken pictures, it’s really easy to share them with anyone or post them on Facebook, Flickr or Picasa.

I haven’t really used the video much, but from what I’ve read it seems to do a decent job.

Must Have Apps

Here’s a list of apps that I have found to be useful in customizing, managing and just adding fun features to the HTC Droid Incredible:

• Apps Organizer
• Astro
• Barcode Scanner
• 3banana (notepad and syncs with Gmail account), ColorNote, AK Notepad
• Google Sky Map
• Google Earth
• Gesture Search and Gesture Bar
• Quick Settings
• WeatherBug
• Ringdroid

Where’s the Task Manager?

On a Windows phone, task managers/killers are a necessity. So, I kind of thought you’d need one on an Android device too. If you search the web you’ll find lots of arguments for and against them. Aside from the obvious advantage that you can kill off unused apps or have them automatically killed, people have noted that some can add battery drain, cause weird issues with applications and even slow the system down. However, if you actually take the time to read and understand how Android works, you realize that there’s really no reason to have a task manager (Android 2.0 and newer). Check out the Android Dev Guide and read the “Application Fundamentals” section, especially the “Component Lifecycles” part. You really should read it all though. And then there’s this from the Android Developers Blog.

I had a task killer installed for a while, until I “informed myself”. I have since removed it and find no need to run one. Sure, sometimes things get a little slow if I’m trying to do a lot, but then it picks up and works fine after Android does the housekeeping it needs. I actually think that the task manager I was running before caused more issues than it fixed.

The Market and Fun Games/Apps

The Market works, but it would be nice if there was something official online that could make it easier to find and purchase games. I’ve found that it’s easier to use websites (like AppBrain) to find fun apps. Currently, there’s no way to install an app to internal storage or the SD card. An “Update all” button would be really nice since it’s rather tedious and annoying if you have more than two or three apps to update. Thankfully, it looks like these issues will be addressed with the release of Froyo (Android 2.2). Things are just getting better and better for Android users!

After owning an iPod Touch and coming from a huge ecosystem of games, what the Android Market has to offer is a little disappointing. I’m not worried though. I’m really excited about all the changes and innovation that have surrounded Android lately and it’s my opinion that we’ll see a lot of neat stuff for Android in the next 6 to 12 months. In the meantime, here are some apps that I’ve had fun with:

• Armored Strike
• Word Drop
• Robo Devense Free
• Pobs
• What the Doodle?
• Missile intercept
• Falling Ball
• Engadget
• Dictionary.com
• Reddit is fun
• .PodKast.
• mVideoPlayer

Voice Call Quality

Not much to say here, I haven’t had any problems with it at all. I know that some people have complained that the status bars don’t always correctly indicate the actual signal strength, but I really don’t pay that much attention to those: I usually just pick up the phone, call, and it works. That’s why I like Verizon.

The volume level is fine and the external speaker works pretty well too.

Voice Recognition and Search

This is one feature that I didn’t think would be all that useful. I was wrong. It’s pretty cool and once I got used to it I found that it’s pretty useful. It’s not that great if there’s a lot of noise going on around you but it sure beats trying to type something out. It’s pretty good if it’s quite and there isn’t any noise to interfere. Also, it doesn’t auto-capitalize the first letter of a sentence. Using it to search for stuff is fun, quick and easy. Try it out and I think you’ll like it too. It’s good for some occasional laughs too, when the translation isn’t exact.

Navigation

I haven’t used the phone a lot for navigation, but the several times that I have, the integrated Google Maps navigation has worked really well. I noticed that for one route it actually showed the street view when I got to the destination and I thought that was a nice touch. Having the GPS on does affect battery life so I’d recommend leaving it plugged in if possible.

What’s Buggy

Here’s a little list of some things that I’ve noticed are a little buggy:

• Doesn’t always save the default action for the large People widget.
• Sometimes the browser will just close for an unknown reason and then I have to reopen it. When I reopen it, whatever I was doing has been lost and it just goes to the default home page. If I had any other windows open they have disappeared. This doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened. I blame Flash.
• The buttons on the bottom of the phone seem to light up and turn off for no apparent reason. For example, I’ve noticed that sometimes when I’m reading a website that they will just turn on and I haven’t touched the screen. Maybe there’s a reason, but I haven’t figured it out. It doesn’t affect anything, it’s just a little annoying.
• I had the Sense UI crash a couple times and restart when I was using a Task Manager to kill apps. I figured it was because I killed an app that I wasn’t supposed to, but I could never figure out which one. After having uninstalled the Task Manager, I have had the Sense UI restart on me once, but it didn’t lock anything up or have any adverse affects.

What’s Missing

360-degree rotation. After coming from a WinMo device and an iPod Touch that would rotate the screen no matter which way you turned it, the Incredible is a disappointment. For whatever reason, the display will only rotate to landscape mode if you tilt the phone to the left. I can see where this would make sense if it had a slide out keyboard because you would just get used to turning it that direction to use it. However, there’s no physical keyboard on this phone and limiting the rotation seems a little pointless.

Smaller agenda widget that shows more than just the next appointment. There’s one that takes up the whole screen, but I want a smaller one.

An app or option to display your upcoming appointments on the lock screen. I really haven’t found anything that can do this. I know a lot of people have complained about this so I’m not sure why nothing has been done.

Wake the device by pressing the optical joystick. I got used to being able to do this with my Omnia and with my iPod Touch. It would be nice to be able to do the same on the Incredible.

Helpful Tips

Pressing and holding the “Home” button will bring up a list of the last apps you’ve used so that you can quickly switch between them.

The “Search” button is context sensitive, that is to say that what it searches can depend on the app that you’re using. For example, when I first tried to find out how to search for people in the “People” app I was a little baffled that there was no search box up top and no option to search when I pressed the “Menu” button. I felt kind of dumb when I found out that all you had to do was press the “Search” button when in the “People” app to actually search.

Conclusion

I admit that I used to want an iPhone. But, I don’t see Apple doing anything exciting for the iPhone in the near future, and with the rapid acceleration of Android I’ve lost interest in the iPhone. Part of what has made the Incredible so much fun is that it’s new and there’s a lot happening with Android right now. There was a lot to learn when I got this phone, and I’m still learning new stuff. That’s what is so enjoyable about the Incredible. I also find myself picking it up all the time to check email, quickly browse the web, use the built-in GPS to navigate somewhere, play games, and on and on. I’ve never used my phone so much. This is a great smartphone, the best smartphone I’ve ever owned.  It’s not quite Incredible, as the name implies, but given what’s coming down the pipeline for Android 2.2, I’d say that the HTC Droid Incredible might just grow into its “Incredible” name.

Now, I just have to preface this by saying that I’m in no way a Noob when it comes to Linux. I started out with FreeBSD years ago and learned how to setup and manage websites, email, DNS, etc., for hosting websites. I then moved on to Red Hat and I’ve also worked with Debian. Keep in mind that this was mostly for server and not desktop use. I did dabble now and then with the “desktop versions” but I was never really all that impressed with them: they always seemed a little too difficult to get up and running for my tastes at the time. Please don’t get me wrong, I love having a command line and the control that Linux gives me over everything, that’s one reason why I’ve liked Linux for servers so much…and then there’s the hack factor

Anyway, on with my impressions of the different versions. I do have to say that this wasn’t any kind of a”lab” experiment and evaluation to see which one was better. I simply thought I’d give them all a try and this is what I ended up doing…

I tried Mandriva on my laptop (an IBM Lenovo R60e) and I couldn’t even get it to install (it would lock up) so I gave up on that. I wasn’t at home when I tried it so I’m not sure what would have happened at home on my PC. Yeah, I probably didn’t give it much of a chance, but on hardware that’s pretty “standard” I would expect it to at least install. Nix Mandriva as a replacement for Windows 7 in my book…at least on my systems.

I then tried OpenSUSE 11.1 on my computer at home (Core2 Duo E6600 and GeForce GTX 260 core 216) with an nForce 680 SLI chipset. I have two drives mirrored with the on board RAID and then one drive that’s not. I tried to install OpenSUSE on the single drive because I had Windows 7 on the mirrored drives. Well, that was a bit of a disaster. The install went fine and I really liked the OpenSUSE 11.1 installer. However, when I rebooted I got a GRUB error 21 and after trying to fix that error with the utilities on the install disk (it did recognize that there was a problem) I got a GRUB error 22 and my system would not boot to anything. To fix it I had to boot with the Windows 7 CD and run the following commands:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

Once I did that I was able to boot back into Windows. I had the thought, prior to installing OpenSUSE, that I should just disable the mirrored drives but figured it would be ok to leave them enabled. Well, I should have listened to that though. I also had Super Grub Disk ready to go in case the above didn’t work, but I didn’t need it. The problem appeared to have something to do with the RAID array not being recognized correctly during the install and/or boot process so it couldn’t find the correct disk to boot from. I suppose I could have tried Super Grub Disk to fix the problem but a major snafu like that kind of left a bad taste in my mouth so I moved on to the next “flavor”. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the OpenSUSE fans will probably cry “Foul”, but it is what it is. Oh, and just to add fuel to that argument, I did disable the array when I installed Ubuntu…;)

So, the final candidate was Ubuntu, version 9.04 (I had actually tried the beta version but there were some problems with sleep/hibernation so I went to the stable version). The install went fine and I have to admit that I didn’t have to download an image for it because I had one already from a previous weekend evaluation of Ubuntu. This time I was a little more motivated to try it out though. I will mention that one of the nice things with Ubuntu (unlike the OpenSUSE install disk) is that you can boot and run it from the disk, just like KNOPPIX (which I have used before…two words…”war driving” ). Anyway, the install went well and the installer is pretty decent. The first hurdle I had was to get my Broadcom B43 wireless card working. This was why I didn’t get far with Ubuntu previously, but I have to admit I didn’t really try very hard. Now, for all of those that are screaming that I’m being partial to Ubuntu and didn’t give Mandriva and OpenSUSE a fair chance, all I have to say is this, “I couldn’t even get them to boot up, so why bother?”

Anyway, I had to connect a network cable and then I was able to get that working. Then I had a little problem with the network manager and connecting to my wireless network so I ended up replacing the default network manager with Wicd and that worked like a charm. I then started to play around with the Avant Window Navigator since I thought it would be nice to have an Apple like dock (the kids are used to that on the Mac my wife has). I got that all setup and working and then I tried to enable my second monitor. That’s when it got a little tricky. I tried to manually update to Nvidia’s latest driver but that didn’t work and I kept getting errors saying that compositing wasn’t enabled. Then, after tinkering a little, whenever I would try to enable Visual Effects I would get a message that said, “Desktop effects could not be enabled”. Also, in xorg.conf I would get “Failed to load module glx (loader failed, 7)”. I my googling I stumbled across a very well written post in the Ubuntu forums that detailed how to install the NVIDIA 185.18 Drivers in Ubuntu. That saved my bacon and I got it up and running in no time.

After I got both monitors up and running I started playing around with customizing the login screens, and everything else. One of the cool little things is the compiz visual effects that you can setup. Yeah, it’s just eye candy but Windows 7 has nothing on this.

Last but not least, “What do I do for backups?” After doing some quick searching I’m still mulling that over. tar works just fine but there appear to be some other alternatives that might be more effective when it comes to maintaining backups and their size. I found a good post with comments that mentioned several options. Click here to check it out. Back In Time or Areca Backup seem to be the favorites and I think I’m leaning towards Areca since it can compress the files it backs up. I’ll probably tar up everything though just as an initial baseline backup. I found a good article about backups with a link on how to backup using tar. You can find that here.

Anyway, long story short: at this point I’m leaning towards running Ubuntu rather than Windows 7. The only reason that I would keep Windows around is for the games. Other than the games, Ubuntu can do everything that I need it to do and a lot more than Windows 7 can do. Just to clarify, I really don’t use Windows for much more than games, Internet, graphic/image manipulation and simple document processing (Word, Excel, etc.). Firefox runs great on either platform. I love GIMP, so that’s a no brainer on Linux. OpenOffice can do what I need it to do. Also, I can VPN in to work if I need to (I haven’t set  it up yet but I know it’s possible with VPNC). Granted, there’s a bit more of a learning curve to be able to get this setup over Windows, but Linux has come a long way and it looks like Ubuntu 9.10, once it’s finalized, will make it even easier to use.

Then there’s the “a lot more than Windows 7″ that I mentioned above. Those that aren’t familiar with Linux will probably throw up their hands and say I don’t know what I’m talking about and then go off on rants about who knows what. Those that are Linux fans will know what I’m talking about. I’ll just leave it at that.

Frankly, given what I’m looking for there’s really no compelling reason to shell out cash for a new OS when Ubuntu can do what I need (minus the games, which I must say I don’t spend as much time playing as I used to and I must admit that if I was younger and single I might opt for using Windows 7 more for the gaming factor but that’s not a good enough reason these days). It should also be a lot less “kid” prone when it comes to them accidentally installing stuff or messing things up. But, Windows 7 does serve to calm that itchy trigger finger with a little Fallout 3 from time to time. So, I think I’ll probably have a dual boot system just for that. It does help that I was able to get a free, Ultimate version of Windows 7 though.

However…I think I’ll finally ditch Windows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ

I watched the whole thing and the entire time I was waiting for a punch line or something funny. I didn’t think it was for real. Some quick research with Google seems to prove that this is a legit attempt by Microsoft to promote Windows 7. Who in their right mind is so excited about Windows 7 that they are going to throw a party with Windows 7 as the “honored guest”? This is a new low in their advertising campaign. I thought the “I’m a PC” thing was stretching it. Someone where I work has a baseball cap in their cubicle that says “I’m a PC” on it and every time I see it I want to tape a piece of paper over PC that says “DORK!”.

After having just purchased a new iPod Touch and loving how well the device functions I think I might just finally ditch Windows all together and move to Mac. I’ve always enjoyed watching the keynote addresses from Apple and their marketing is sooooo much better. Apple has their act together when it comes to pitching a product that actually works. My wife has a Mac so I think I’ll start using that.

I remember the Vista launch…or failure to launch. I kind of get the feeling that the Windows 7 launch won’t really make it off the launch platform either. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been using Windows 7 since the beta version and I’ve been pleased with it. Windows 7 is a lot better than Vista if you ask me. And when I say “a lot better” I don’t mean that it adds a bunch of new stuff, I mean that it actually seems to work. I think MS is trying too hard to pitch to a market that has lost faith in them. I also think that the marketing people have been locked up and away from society too long and have geeked out too much on MS that they fail to see how really lame these ads are. It’s kind of funny how such poor advertising alone can make me want to switch to Mac.

Good luck MS. You’re going to need it.

Currently I have a Samsung Omnia on Verizon’s network. It’s the fourth Windows Mobile phone I’ve owned and the best of the lot. I have WisBar Advance Desktop (WAD) installed (and a lot of other stuff ) to allow me to customize it so that it’s a little more usable. I really like WAD and I think it does a lot to make the phone more usable. However, even with WAD it’s still somewhat clunky and not very finger friendly. Then along comes Apple.

I don’t remember my first encounter with an iPhone, but my brother got one and I remember playing with it and thought it was pretty cool. I wasn’t sure about the on screen keyboard though. I then had to configure a bunch of them for work and got to play around with them more and really started to like them (especially compared with Blackberries, which are an enterprise nightmare if you ask me). Then along came the iPod Touch. I’ve spent some time on those as well and as I mentioned above I finally broke down and bought one. I’m not disappointed one bit. As a matter of fact, I’ve fallen even more in love with it. Apple just seems to have gotten it “right” (notice I didn’t say perfect …yet).

One thing that I like a lot more is the capacitive touch screen, as compared to the resistive touch screens on my Windows Mobile phones. Sure it take a little getting used to at first (it’s rather sensitive) but I think it’s much more responsive and works more often. I can type a lot faster on the keyboard of my iPod Touch than I can on my Omnia. I think this has to do with screen size (the Omnia has a really cramped on screen keyboard) and the difference in touch screen technology. Some things that I think are leaps and bounds better on the iPod Touch (and the iPhone) are:

• Email
• Web Browsing
• Picture Browsing
• Apps

Email looks like it should when you view it. No more text only emails that are hard to read with pictures as attachments. HTML emails render the way they should and it’s wonderful.

Web Browsing is sooooo much better. I thought Opera Mobile on the Omnia was a huge improvement over IE, but Safari on the iPod/iPhone is much, much better. Pages render quicker and more accurately. You can navigate around the page and zoom in and out much better. It’s a night and day difference.

Picture browsing is much faster and more responsive. It just works.

And then there are the Apps. Windows has stuff out there, but you really have to dig. The App store is hands down one of the most alluring things about the iPod/iPhone. There are thousands of Apps available that allow you to do pretty much whatever you want. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for and you’re up for it they have an awesome SDK so you can develop your own App. I admit that I haven’t used the SDK, but I would like to play around with it. I have downloaded the iPhone Application Programming series from iTunes U and will be listening to them on the train on my way to and from work. And that’s another cool thing about Apple, iTunes U. Sure, there’s a lot of that out there that you don’t need Apple for, but one of the things that I think Apple does a really good job of is bringing content to the user. They have centralized a lot in one place with the App store and iTunes so that it’s easy to get what you’re looking for. Windows Mobile has nothing that even comes close.

So, there you have it. I’m sold on why people love the iPhone and iPod Touch so much. It just works and works well. I’ve only had mine for four days and I’m sure there’s a lot more that I have yet to discover. Have I been converted into an Apple fan boy? Only time will tell. Oh, and just for the record, I’m no Windows fan boy either.

Anyway, the last month or so has been spent downloading and printing out white papers and docs on VMware and NetBackup as I have tried to familiarize myself with everything and how it works. I’ve also had fun setting up VMware’s vCenter Server and playing with clustering, HA and Fault Tolerance. I did run into a couple problems at first with the UEFI of the x3650 M2′s and ESX (see http://communities.vmware.com/thread/213931?start=0&tstart=0 and comments by MCJJJJ). But, after doing research I decided to go with ESXi because it appears that VMware is moving forward with that rather than ESX (see ESXi Chronicles). Nothing major to really hold us up though.

In my testing I’ve been impressed with the functionality and resilience of this product. One of my tests involved running the vCenter Server in a VM and powering off the host that it was running on. A couple minutes later it came back up on the other host in the cluster and chugged right along. Similar tests with VMs were just as successful. It’s nice to run tests and actually have them work as advertised. Also, having them clustered makes it really easy to update the hosts for whatever reason.

Fault Tolerance is another cool feature but at this point we really don’t have anything that merits the resource overhead associated with running it or that needs that kind of reliability.

Then there’s the backup solution. We weren’t really sure what to do there but since we already have NetBackup deployed, setting up a VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) proxy seemed like the best solution for now. More docs and reading for that one.

Finally I got everything setup and it appears to be working. I am having some problems with the backups though, but this mainly appears to be with snapshotting SQL servers. One is on Windows 2000 Server and the other is on Windows Server 2003. I’m looking into it now but I think it’s because it’s not quiescing the server correctly before it takes a snapshot. I know the best way would probably be to put an agent on the actual guest but that costs more money and since the data is actually getting backed up to disk on that server through SQL jobs I think we’re fairly safe for now…I hope. Like I said, I’m still looking into this. However, as far as backups of the other servers go, it’s working great. I love how much faster it is and that we have the ability to restore individual files from the snapshot if we need to.

Overall, I’m really satisfied with the product and what it does.  It hasn’t been a real pain to get setup either (unlike some of the Microsoft stuff I’ve worked with). It works, and that’s nice.

To creat one, head over to http://en.gravatar.com/ and sign up for an account. All you need is your email address and a picture. Once you sign up you can upload a picture, crop it after it’s uploaded and ta-da! you now have a Gravatar that appears anywhere you post something on the Internet that supports Gravatars (WordPress is one application that does). You can upload multiple pictues and change it whenever you want. It’s that easy!

So, what are you waiting for?