Plx don't lynch the n00b for asking n00b questions...

[kabuk1]

So I've had a Hero for approximately 24 hours now, and I've been reading up on some essential Android stuff. So far I like it, but the slowness is driving me nuts. I've already rooted & installed a custom rom(Fresh), and as far as I can tell, my apps are running from the card. But its still slower than hell, and has already locked up bad enough to where I have to pull the battery several times now. Since I'm still an idiot when it comes to Android, I dunno what it could possibly be. My biggest suspicion right now though, is that I have a slow card. But then again, it was slow before I moved my apps to the card, so...

Also, I'm having some pretty severe heat & battery drain issues. I've turned off location & all the always-on data stuff, installed app-killers & did the messaging workaround, and I still drained a battery in a matter of hours last night. Also, the messaging app keeps starting up on its own for some reason.

I cannot for the life of me improve the camera quality either. I've tried everything- ISO settings, tapping the screen to focus, nothing works. They're all blurry & horrible.

Since it has a glass capacitive screen- do I really NEED a screen protector?

Last stupid question- how the heck do I install clocks & taskbars & stuff like that?

Like I said- I'm an idiot. But please bear with me cause I learn quickly I fear a wipe is in my future though, if I can;t resolve these issues.

[Carla]

Originally Posted by kabuk1

So I've had a Hero for approximately 24 hours now, and I've been reading up on some essential Android stuff. So far I like it, but the slowness is driving me nuts. I've already rooted & installed a custom rom(Fresh), and as far as I can tell, my apps are running from the card. But its still slower than hell, and has already locked up bad enough to where I have to pull the battery several times now. Since I'm still an idiot when it comes to Android, I dunno what it could possibly be. My biggest suspicion right now though, is that I have a slow card. But then again, it was slow before I moved my apps to the card, so...

Also, I'm having some pretty severe heat & battery drain issues. I've turned off location & all the always-on data stuff, installed app-killers & did the messaging workaround, and I still drained a battery in a matter of hours last night. Also, the messaging app keeps starting up on its own for some reason.

I cannot for the life of me improve the camera quality either. I've tried everything- ISO settings, tapping the screen to focus, nothing works. They're all blurry & horrible.

Since it has a glass capacitive screen- do I really NEED a screen protector?

Last stupid question- how the heck do I install clocks & taskbars & stuff like that?

Like I said- I'm an idiot. But please bear with me cause I learn quickly I fear a wipe is in my future though, if I can;t resolve these issues.

My phone runs very smooth on the ROM you are running (I am assuming your on Fresh2.0d like we talked about). What class is your SD Card just out of curiosity? Have you tried tweaking the AutoKiller settings to see if that helps at all? I would suggest re-flashing, and checking out how it runs for a bit without a bunch of stuff installed on it.

I don't have the heat or battery issues. I have fallen asleep talking to my sister once or twice, and we are talking the phone was connected to the call for 5 hours and it was maybe warm at best. I leave location on, and everything else for that matter. You can go into your phone and see what the up-time is. (Menu/Settings/About Phone/Battery) and look at awake time in comparison to get an idea if the phone is not going to sleep maybe. BTW, do you still have your TP2? If you have an extra battery you can use it in the hero.

Camera quality for me has never been good, I don't know why, I know County has a link in his Tips thread for improvements suggestions, but compared to my other phones there is no comparison honestly. The last thing I would recommend my Hero for is taking pictures.

I don't sue protectors on any of my phones, but I am also VERY careful and good with them so I don't really encounter times when I need one. Honestly I don't worry about it that much. I am sure you will get some very different opinions though

The taskbars and such, you can look in Godzson' thread that is stickied, I think if you are on a Fresh 2.0 (2.1) ROM, the stuff that will work is like the fourth or fifth post, just look for the one that says it works on certain versions of 2.1. I forget how ti is worded exactly. If you install that, you need to wipe and then install the same way you did the ROM, as a zip update. You don't need to re-name the file, just put it on the root of your SD Card. Make sure if you are re-flashing your ROM before this, reboot the phone after each update you apply, don't do them all at once, I have found myself dead in the water this way once or twice.

Don't fear the wipe, with the Google sync and everything is is easy to get back where you want to be IMO. Try everything out before you install all your apps, and see what is causing your issues.

BTW....In the Battery options under About Phone you can go to Battery Usage and get an idea what is doing what.


You're not an idiot at all, just learning something new

[kabuk1]

Yeah I think I'm gonna just wipe it & run it without all the apps. I figured out as I was swapping ESNs yesterday that the batteries are interchangeable, and I was happy about that cause I've already had to swap out batteries today. I BARELY use this thing, I've got all the tweaks & tricks in place, and it still drains like crazy. I'm about to try flashing a new radio & see if that helps.

Oh hell, I just looked & my card is a class 2. That might explain a lot of the lag. Would a class 4 be ok or should I go straight to 6?

[Carla]

I use a 6, but I am sure a 4 would be cool. I bet a lot of people use a 2 honestly, you might just need a wipe and re-flash to fix some issues Let me know how it works for you.

[thacounty]

Somethings wrong. I use a class 2 with Fresh 2.0d a2sd2 running and have little to NO lag. I was running the same setup on Fresh 1.1 and it was super fast too. I know a class 6 would be better, but it shouldn't matter much.

[Carla]

I agree. I am thinking a clean re-flash and wipe might make a difference. My phone runs great on 2.0d.

[thacounty]

WAIT... Are you running a swap partition too? If you are Carla is right, you need to boot into recovery, set up however much you want for Ext3, NOT Ext2 and put everything else on sd card, SET SWAP TO 0. Swap will make your phone slow down trust me. Also Ext2 has problems, so when you set it up go back and make sure you convert Ext2 to Ext3.

[kabuk1]

Well I definitely am going to get a new card. I just tried moving some apps & the cache to my card, and I couldn't get the phone to boot at all. I think I may have found the culprit for the battery drain- some of the apps I had installed had a "prevent phone from sleeping" requirement that I didn't notice the first time. Guess I won't be installing those again...

[Carla]

LOL! That will definitely kill the battery really fast. What apps were they? Maybe we can shoot you some recommendations for others that are similar. I have noticed a wipe and re-flash fixes a lot of problems, similar to when you were using WM how a Hard reset would fix a lot of things, or even a re-flash.

[kabuk1]

Ohhhhhhhhh... yeah my swap was set to 32! I'll have to reformat the card I guess. Its already fat32, do I need to wipe the whole thing or just the ext3 area?

The apps I think were at fault were the metal detector & the compass. Total fluff, but really cool nonetheless