My Droid - Installing a new microSD card

An upgrade of sorts

So, I got up this morning and thought; I have a 16GB microSD card in my defunct Windows Mobile 6.5 HTC Touch Diamond 2 phone which I took out of service at the end of September 2011.

My Droid which is an HTC Sensation came with an 8GB microSD card, not that I have used half that storage yet, but the idea that I could double the space was appealing enough.

First, I did a search for the easiest way to transfer all the data and applications from the current microSD card to the bigger microSD card and everything that came up in my search was some convoluted and complicated method of copying the data, I needed to think of a better way.

Preparations

So first, I got the card out of my Windows mobile phone and remembered I had a microSD adapter I had acquired years ago in one of my cupboards. Inserting the microSD card in the adapter I inserted it into the slot on my netbook and copied all the data to a folder on my netbook.

Then I formatted the microSD card to FAT-32 file system and it was ready for usage. As I was doing this, it occurred to me that I could mount the SD card in my Droid as a drive through the USB connection to my netbook.

I mounted the microSD card storage on my Droid, unsure of the best way to copy the data and retain all the security and format of data with the applications on the SD card I decided to use the Robocopy command.

The first copy

Robocopy which comes with the most recent copies of Microsoft Windows is a robust file copy utility that is quite versatile for copy and backup routines.

I used the mirror option which should be used with caution because it wipes the target drive or target folder before copying data. I needed to be sure I noted the source and target drives.

Using Robocopy < Source Drive > < Target Drive >  /MIR

Once the files were copied, I replaced the microSD card and restarted my Droid; two errors were displayed, one to do with MSN Messenger and the Economist Apps both of which I had to forcibly close. I could not find them anywhere on my phone so I started up the file manager and found the .android_secure folder was unreadable however with the Astro file manager app I could read the folder.

Using the Android Assistant app, I checked to see if there were any apps on my SD card using the Tools | App 2 SD widget and that revealed there were no apps on my microSD card when I was expecting at least 15 or so apps.

It became evident that the .android_secure folder contained all the apps that I had moved to the SD card and there were no clear solutions to resolve this somewhat annoying quirk much as I did not want to accept the fact that changing microSD cards needed some rocket science tool.

The better copy

So putting my original microSD card in the adapter I loaded it on my netbook then mounted the SD card on my Droid, once again making a good note of the source drive which was now on the adapter I selected all the folders and copied them to the target drive which was now on my Droid overwriting everything. This being a standard Windows copy and paste procedure.

After the copy was completed, I restarted my Droid and all my apps were restored, especially those on the microSD card with no errors.

Now, I have over 10GB of space free on my Droid, looks like there is much more I can put on my Droid, my complete classical music collect and even the complete audio bible that adds up to just over 1 GB.

My Droid - HTC Sensation

A history of smartphones

I have been a smartphone buff for years and though my first smartphone conked out on me in Paris in 2004, it was the SPV 200 HTC Phone offered by Orange that I had to settle with a SonyEricsson T610 for the remainder of my contract.

My first full function smartphone was the HTC P3600, I used it for almost 30 months, long beyond the term of the contract but just in time to get the new HTC Touch Diamond 2 (codename HTC Topaz), it was still functioning well into 29 months of usage when I thought I should go for the best new thing in town.

It was never going to be an iPhone but a choice between Windows Mobiles that had served me well or the excitement of an Android phone, commonly known as Droids. I soon realised that the phones no more have styluses, which has been a requirement for my smartphone in that I still liked the handwriting recognition script of Graffiti which debuted on the Palm Pilots and HandSpring Organisers of over a decade ago.

My Droid – HTC Sensation

It came down to a choice between Samsung and HTC, the Samsung looking like I would need sack for a pocket with a holster belt, I decided on the HTC Sensation [HTC] (codename HTC Pyramid).

For the first time T-Mobile my current provider that had metamorphosed or assimilated DutchTone that I first had a contract with in 2003, then Orange and now T-Mobile could provide me with a phone in English rather than my having to order it from online stores.

My HTC Sensation [Wikipedia] is about 20% bigger than my old phone, it does not fit in any of my previous phone cases and there is no case at present that has the easy belt holster of that size as at yet. I noticed the USB port was non-standard but HTC has now separated the audio jack from the USB connection, any standard headphone jack can be connected doubly as an antenna for the FM radio application.

The Android Market

I started charging up the phone in the library as I worked on how to move all my data from my old phone to the new, I decided to leave the SMS Text Messages but get all my contacts, this was easily done by syncing my old phone with Microsoft ActiveSync and then populating my new phone with HTC Sync which was not a doddle to setup; it was cumbersome and clunky having a poor error reporting facility to indicate why there were problems and though I have had a few connections afterwards, it has been a Touch-and-Go system for synchronization.

Almost immediately, I was installing MyPhoneExplorer which seems to offer a better interface and more fully featured components for synchronisation and backup. There is a mobile phone client and a desktop client, the former is best downloaded from the Android Market and whilst the instructions suggest that the USB connection should be on Charge Only, I have noticed that it should really be on HTC Sync for a connection to be made.

One’s history with smartphones will have a tendency to inform about the best tools for a phone, utilities, interfaces, guides, protection and referencing come to mind.

Tools & Utilities

I found AVG had a free AntiVirus, then Android Assistant with 17 features, Android System Cleaner seemed like a sensible download too, the installation of software was so easy, clicking on the install option on a desktop will automatically communicate the download to the phone and complete the installation.

Graffiti for Android came next, though without a stylus, I had to use my finger, I soon found out I had to enable Hardware Keyboard under Graffiti settings to have the Graffiti interface show up.

There is no e-Sword Bible for the Android so I had to make do with MySword Bible, I downloaded Evernote to handle notes then found that HTC had a Notes widget, QR Droid for the fun of it to read QR Codes, Full Wifi to allow for IEEE 802.1x authentication for wireless access points and TweetDeck for Android.

Over time, I found that the HTC Sense user interface was slow and sometimes unresponsive and so I ended up going to SPB Software to get a new home screen SPB Shell 3D which allows for a better arrangement of my applications, utilities and tools; that is the only software I have purchased for my Droid.

I most cases, I have taken time to read the customer reviews of all the applications I have installed to I do not run into the problems they have encountered.

Online at all times

The contacts function of my phone is quite versatile, as it has intelligently combined my standard contacts with email, Facebook, Twitter & WhatsApp contacts that I have a comprehensive address book even more so considering a good deal of my Facebook friends whose phone numbers I never had are now part of my Address Book.

My Droid is always online and it pays to have an unlimited data access inclusive in my phone subscription but I do have to switch on roaming for data when abroad and T-Mobile has changed the access and pricing structure to ensure one does not end up with humongous charges – I remember returning home from Spain in 2007 to a phone bill in excess of EUR 1,400 because Orange was charging EUR 15/MB, I think is it down to less than EUR 2/MB though there are deals that allow for a week of unlimited roaming access in Europe for just EUR 15-.

I have only had my Droid for just under 3 weeks, I am sure there will be more to write about in months, but I can say I have no regrets moving from Windows Mobile, I am not really missing my stylus and this touch thing can be good fun, the swipes, taps, double-taps, pinches and calliper movements all make for an interesting smartphone experience.

It is most likely I will excite Droid envy in iBrick users than they will in me.

Phone upgrades and iGadget digs

Trendy toys and business tools

The other day, my pastor’s son was showing off his phone and was all so excited about the features and things he could do with his phone. I did not really have an earful before I said; I used a phone not a toy.

He had an iPhone; now, I have nothing against Apple technologies, you need pioneers, mavericks and daring-do to change the marketplace – Apple does a good job with bringing innovative and sometimes technologically appealing products to the market, they create trends and force competitors who have been at the game longer to do better with their offerings.

If you get my drift, I do not want to be locked into proprietary products with monopolistic contractual agreements that make me stand out as trendy but almost foolish at the same time.

In prison and seeking solitary confinement

If my point has not be driven home about the concept of iPhones being trendy though conceptual toys whilst my HTC Touch Diamond 2 is a business tool, having a mobile phone contract is as hard enough as being in prison, then some smart people go to the governor, beg, queue up and the proudly show off that they have been able to obtain solitary confinement, yes, the iWhatever user is in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement is indeed, independent, individual, and maybe incredible but an innovative way of separating the maverick of disruption from the pool of assumed conformity which in itself represents a kind of freedom many a Granny Smith eater never enjoys.

With the alliteration of I’s all over the place that cannot that will not gather with the We’s that make society in the quest for being different, in any country, if a network fails, my phone can roam, if your iPhone network breaks you have a very expensive iBrick, it is like having your glorious Bugatti breakdown on the motorway – who is showing off now?

I think I have made my point about why there is the well worn saying of the Mac being the best thing to wear to keep you dry in the rain. No funny comments will be entertained, if you have a counter-rant, put it in your blog and backtrack to mine.

Upgrades and charades

So, I decided after church on Sunday to upgrade the ROM of my HTC Touch Diamond 2 (codename HTC Topaz) phone from Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 to Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5. Thankfully, I had a phone HTC was willing to upgrade, my old HTC P3600 (codename HTC Trinity) did not get a ROM upgrade from Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 to Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0.

I suspect there were quite a few features in that phone that put a reliable upgrade beyond the engineering department of HTC, I am not bitter; the phone served me well for almost 30 months.

What I cannot understand about the provider agreements and contracts in the Netherlands is I cannot get anyone to give me a phone with English as the core language, but I can get an online mobile phone shop in the Netherlands to get me an English phone, negotiate the contract with my provider and still have it cheaper than if I walked into my provider’s shop on the high street.

That is how I got both my HTC Trinity and my HTC Topaz phones in UK English. When getting a phone like this I have always invested in getting decent programs for security, maintenance and backup.

Tools and utilities

For security, I use Carty Studio’s Ultimate Theft Alarm; it binds my SIM to my phone and if another SIM is inserted and not registered, it sends SMS messages of the SIM identity and of all calls made to a designated phone. Since my landline can receive SMS messages, I do not need another phone to make a trace of my mobile.

I also use a number of tools from the SPB Software House as SPB Pocket Plus and SPB Backup. The SPB Backup program is quite good, especially when you need to do restores. SK Tools is a good mobile phone maintenance utility that includes the ability to tweak components of the phone and edit the registry.

So, I first backed up my phone to the mini-SD Card in my phone which has a 16 GB capacity and then downloaded the ROM upgrade. I could not use the European version of English because my serial number was not accepted.

I switched to the UK HTC site and after keying in my serial number which was present on the phone packaging rather than having to dismantle my phone and look under the battery, I got the 170 MB file which was 10 times faster to download from Asia than Europe.

Where is my graffiti?

I hooked up my phone to my Microsoft Windows Vista system which was running the Windows Mobile Device Center application and started off the ROM Upgrade Utility. In about 30 minutes the upgrade was done and the phone ready to run on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5. (WM65)

The first thing I noticed was that the Block Recogniser stylus input option had disappeared, I have been doing Graffiti since the Palm Pilot/HandSpring days and some faceless apparatchik had decided to take it out of WM65.

After surfing the net and finding out that all sorts of tweaks were necessary to get that feature back, I almost repented of my folly, I was also not keen on having to reinstall a good 20 bits of software and utilities I had with WM61.

So, I upgraded my version of SPB Backup and started the restore, it noticed the ROM had been upgraded and offered the ROM Upgrade Mode option with a checkbox to Overwrite Existing Files.

I unchecked the box and restored, the phone came back up but with bit missing, some programs were restored and others crippled, so I returned to the Restore process and chose to Overwrite Existing Files.

On a resetting the phone, I had all my applications from WM61 restored and Block Recognition available as the default text input system without the need to change it each time I reset the phone as I did with WM65.

Online storage of phone data

I am still getting round the new features in WM65, but I can say getting SPB Backup was more than a good investment, it was a wise one.

Since mobile phones now contain more personal and social information than diaries and address books of old, backing up the data is critical, so not only do I synchronise the phone with 2 systems at home, it is now synchronised over the air to http://MyPhone.microsoft.com where with my Windows Live account I can store my address book and data, view that information anywhere without my phone and restore it to a compatible phone if need be.

Obviously, one needs to find a balance between the paranoia of someone accessing your data online and the self-importance of thinking everyone is really interested in seeing your data. I think in some ways Microsoft services are nominally secure enough and really phones are not for critical data like bank accounts, credit card numbers or such pertinent personal information.

In the worst case, you can decide what you want backed up and what should remain on your phone, however, the online storage of phone data is not only useful it is necessary for the times.

Mentions

iPhone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HTC Touch Diamond2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HTC - Products - HTC Touch Diamond2 – HTC Topaz - Overview

HTC - Products - HTC P3600 – HTC Trinity - Overview

HTC Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HTC Touch Diamond2 UK - PDAshop.nl: Online PDA shop where I got my deal for a UK phone in the Netherlands

Apple Inc. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows Mobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carty Studios - Ultimate Theft Alert v3.5!

SPB Software for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC, Smartphone, PDA), Symbian, iPhone

SKTools features

Graffiti (Palm OS) Block Recogniser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HTC Trinity - Connects, Works & Pleases

Mobile Phone does kitchen sink

Managing a new gadget is not that easy, only last month after failing to get Orange Netherlands to provide me with a smartphone in English for the past 18 months, I went out and got me one from one of those Internet outfits that do SIM-less mobile phones.

After reviewing everything I could find on the market, I decided on the HTC P3600 (codename HTC Trinity) smart phone in Bakelite black which gives you all kinds of connectivity including Wi-Fi and a flaky GPS functionality.

I had hardly switched it on and I was updating the ROM and many other things as I got accustomed to the keyboard and other interesting functions on the device.

Previously, I had used Bluetooth to transfer all the phone contacts on my SonyEricsson T610 phone to Microsoft Outlook; it was then a seamless transfer unto my new device.

Backup it up, do it now

When I consider how much data gets stored on mobile phones, it does not bear thinking of, the circumstance of losing all that data - in fact, I once had an Orange SPV 200 phone which allowed me to store all my phone data on an Orange server, unfortunately, out of a 2-year contract, I only got 6 months of service out of that phone.

It wasn't till about 3 weeks of usage that I found the Block Recogniser input method which uses the Graffiti script recognition that I mastered as a user of the HandSpring Visor Deluxe many years ago, but getting to write the G was a bit of trouble for quite a while.

By then, I had bought the Full Screen Keyboard from SPB Software House which seems to function for none of the applications I use; I am also shy of Pocket Word after typing in almost 2 pages of text only to find that some quirk in the device would not save my document. I now use the InkWriter/Note Taker application which I can open in Microsoft Office Word on my desktop and that is fine with me, lightweight functional and effective.

Mini-SD in playlist creation

Only yesterday, I had to acquire Storage Tools from SoftWinter because the 1GB mini-SD card suddenly disappeared half a gigabyte of music files and there was nothing I could do to retrieve my files; imagine, I lived with that for almost 2 weeks, it had become a seething nuisance I could no more entertain; after copying the data I could find to disk, I ran the Storage Tools analyser which started creating 16KB CHK files; well that was trouble I was not willing to entertain any further either.

A quick reboot saw me reformatting the mini-SD card and then putting back the data I had backed up elsewhere, just a quarter of my Classical Music library and we were ready to go.

I launched the Window Media Player 10 Mobile for Pocket PC application and could not find a way to create a Playlist, in fact, many forums had indicated you had to create an ASX file and then upload that to the device.

That was not going to work for me, I had randomly selected the files I wanted on my device, I needed to be able to create the Playlist on the device itself, before long I was installing the Playlist Manager freeware to handle my music files in situ - I created the Playlist but could not get the device to use it.

Whilst the device was playing back some music, I clicked on the Now Playing option, then on the Menu and found the option Save Playlist..., clicking on that, I was able to give the playlist a name and it automatically loaded all my files into the new Playlist and there I had it. One can create Playlists on a Windows Mobile 5.0 device, if you know how to do it.

Live Searching the wrong country

So, this morning as I ended up in the Microsoft home page in the USA, there was a picture of a fresh faced developer you might not be too familiar with along with an advertisement for Live Search for your Windows Mobile device, a facility that gives you information about services, directions, traffic and businesses and in your area; but when I checked, it only had information for the USA and the UK, nothing for the Netherlands.

It would appear Microsoft has a competitor to Google Earth called Microsoft Virtual Earth all on my mobile device, it would appear, for now and for the near future, I have a mobile phone that works, no need for an iPhone just as I have had no need for an iPod.

Meanwhile, as I explored the world at my stylus-tip, I scrolled down to Africa, I homed in on a location that brought back memories of childhood - to be continued in another blog.