One would give up and accept this futility but I had 2 reasons to keep trying to figure out why:

• my co-worker's battery would consistently hold twice as much charge as mine – by the time I was at 50%, he was at 75%
• a wide range of responses on Internet forums and blog posts suggested some people experienced excellent battery life, while others, like me, did not have as much luck

I thought I tried everything:

• I kept WiFi and Bluetooth off when I didn't need them (I even got an app that turned WiFi on and off on schedule – Timerriffic; unfortunately until Hero gets Android 2.0 we won't see automatic Bluetooth scheduling)
  
• I tried to use the Spare Parts app which provided insight into battery usage history. I did not, however, find out anything significant
  
• I tried to avoid using GPS altogether – at one point Spare Parts told me GPS usage by Google Maps, Camera, and Bump were 5-6 hours each, even though I turned the GPS off. I think it's a bug in Spare Parts itself or what Android was recording but it made me paranoid.
• I switched to using Handcent SMS due to the bug in default Message app (which was later fixed in the firmware upgrade).
• I got a task manager (Advanced Task Manager) to see what apps are running and make sure especially heinous is eating up my resources. It would also automatically kill long running apps and certain apps I know I don't use and which I can't uninstall, such as IM, Gmail (I use Mail), and Finance.
• On some days, I stopped using the phone altogether, just to see how long it would last. The result, however, was the same.

Nothing worked. Consistently, my phone would run down to 80% by the time I got to work and by about 3pm, it would be at 50%.

The Solution

Finally, a few days ago, when comparing my phone with my co-worker's, I noticed he didn't set up automatic email checking, opting in for the manual method instead. I, on the other hand, set up my email the day I got my Hero and never revisited the settings since. "How much power can downloading emails suck out?" I thought. Boy, was I wrong…

Turns out a LOT. I had 3 email accounts and they were checked at the following intervals:

• my gmail was being checked every 5 minutes – I wanted near real-time notification but could not even fathom the consequences at the time
• my beerpla.net account was hit every 15 minutes
• my Plaxo work Exchange email fired every 30 minutes

In order to change these intervals, load up each email account's inbox, click Menu, find Settings, go to Send & Receive and then Set Download Frequency.

After I set each email account to check every hour instead, my battery life improved dramatically. To be fair, I watched the battery use for the last 3 days without changing my usage habits and recorded the results.

Here they are:

• by the time I left for work in the morning, before the change I would oftentimes be between 85 and 90% battery. After the change, I was at 95-97%.
• by lunch time, my phone would usually run down to 50-60%. After the change, the battery had 75-80% juice.
• by 9-10pm, after I came back from work, I would usually need to put the phone on a charger because it was <15%. After the change, I was at least at 50%!

The Side Effect

Lately, I started to realize that having email notifications pop up this often was actually more distracting than useful. I was losing concentration and constant context switching made me less productive.

The fix for my battery problem was, incidentally, also the fix for my concentration problem.

Conclusion

Be very much aware of your email polling intervals or they will suck all the life out of your phone.

I would love to hear about your experiences with tweaking email settings and the effects those tweaks had on your battery life, as well as other dramatic Android battery saving tips. Feel free to share in the comments.

• How To Fix Palm Pre's "Error Sending Mail" Problem
• 2 Gmail Tricks I Bet You Didn't Know About
• Sprint And HTC Release The First HTC Hero Firmware Update 1.56: Fixes Major Bugs, Adds Small Tweaks
• The Not So Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: My List Of 20+ Problems With HTC Hero
• [Updated x3] Goodbye Outlook, I Don't Need You Anymore – Gmail Now Lets You Paste Images Directly From Clipboard

Today, however, we know a lot more. Firefox for Mobile, codenamed Fennec, is coming next month (see More Info below) and looks very promising.

Here is a recent video of the Firefox's mobile and design teams discussing and showing the features of Mobile Firefox:

Feature Highlights

For the busy folks, here are the highlights from the video:

• Mobile Firefox uses as much screen real estate as possible to show the page
• swipe screen left to see the open tab list
• swipe right to see navigation buttons
• awesome bar knows what you're looking for as you start typing, just like in your desktop Firefox
• sync using Mozilla Weave – seamless sync desktop and mobile, including history and open tabs
• location based browsing – allows sharing your location with websites automatically (obviously, with your approval only – excellent!)
• security and privacy are the #1 priority
• mobile add-ons – they're trying to create the same development platform that the desktop Firefox already uses. Yup, that means AdBlock is coming.
• HTML 5 support

And some more from Mozilla and GigaOM's interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly:

• support for Javascript, CSS, Flash, SVG, video, and audio
• based on Firefox 3.6 engine which is not even available for desktops yet
• Firefox for Mobile will initially support Windows Mobile and Maemo, followed by Android and Symbian
• surely, iPhone owners are out of luck as Apple will never allow a competing browser app on their market. Great – another reason to switch to Android
• Blackberry users are also out of luck as BB uses Java
• Android also uses Java and initially Mozilla ignored it. However, later the Android NDK came out, which allows building of applications in C/C++ and this fact changed everything
• the first public releases should be available in December 2009, according to this article.

Some useful linkage:

• Mozilla's own Mobile wiki page
• Mobile features
• Supported platforms (looks slightly out of date)
• GigaOM: On Mobile Phones, Firefox’s Big Bet Is Nokia & Android
• Firefox Headed to Android Phones

Conclusion

Firefox for Mobile is going to be a serious contender in the mobile web space – we know how serious these guys can get, don't we? After all, they've turned a barely known browser into a #2 in the last few years (soon to be #1, right?). Surely, they can do it again, this time in mobile.

I will be trying out Mobile Firefox (for Android) as soon as I get my hands on it, so expect a detailed review then. I have little doubt that it will replace my plain mobile browser.

What do you guys think?

• HTC Hero Coming To Sprint October 11th! $179.99, Powerful, And Sexy. Here Is Why You Need To Own It
• More On Android – A Mobile OS With A Clue
• Sun Definitely Developing A Phone This Year
• How To Fix Redrawing Problems In Your VNC
• Skype Extension For Firefox Is A Piece Of Crap – Leaks Memory, Hangs Firefox, Clubs Baby Seals

The Update

To update your Hero, go to Settings->About phone->System updates->Firmware update.

The update took about 10 minutes to install, weighed 3.7MB or so, and rebooted the phone twice – once to install and once to reboot after the installation, so make sure you don't need to make any important phone calls during that time.

After the update, I immediately noticed the broken application icons (issue #4 on my bug list) fixed. The phone seems is definitely quite a bit snappier, which I hope points in the direction of some fixes in the battery and lag department (issues #1 and #2).

Since there don't seem to be any official details out from HTC or Sprint at the moment (I found out about the update by doing a random Google search and arriving at a random Facebook post), I cannot see the final bug fix and feature list, but here's what I managed to gather so far from my own observations and online [1] [2]:

What's New

Fixes

• broken app icons are fixed. This issue was also known as the boot caching issue
• broken app names are somewhat fixed. Some of mine weren't but I reinstalled them and so far they display correctly
• the major battery draining 100% awake SMS and letting the phone go to sleep after boot bugs are fixed. I've gone ahead and uninstalled HandcentSMS to see if my visual voicemail notifications will come back (they seemed to have gone away after I switched to Handcent)
• not receiving SMS when low on space is fixed
• memory leak related to bluetooth is fixed
• dialer app using too much CPU bug is fixed
• daylight savings time calendar issue is fixed
• the stereo headphone issue is fixed

Improvements

• the phone is a lot snappier – the lag is pretty much gone in a lot of cases but it's still there in others, especially in the Phone app and the browser. For example, I killed the browser and started it again – it took 20 seconds before google.com was loaded, 10 of which I spent staring at an almost completely white screen
  I have a feeling it is due to fixing something with the cleaning up of the old uninstalled apps. My theory is that the Hero didn't uninstall the apps properly, perhaps leaving their cache behind, thus slowing down more and more as I tried out more and more apps
• Update: I just charged the battery and I think the battery charged a lot faster than before, which is a really good sign
• loading of app lists seems to be a lot faster. By that I mean any time the phone shows a list of installed applications, it seems to show up a lot faster than before (Add shortcut, Manage, etc)
• camera quality is improved

New Features

• app search – if you push the search button from anywhere inside the Market app, it now pops up the app search dialog rather than the regular google search
• there are 2 new icons during a phone call: mute and speaker. I took a photo of this, which you can see below
• the green Android dude looks more 3D-ish now – a minor but nice UI change

Problems

• a lot of users are reporting that some of their apps, including paid ones, have gone missing
• the haptic feedback (vibrate on press) in the Phone app is now permanently on, even though I turned it off in the keyboard settings. I am fairly sure it's either a bug or a new "feature" that we didn't want, as it doesn't respect phone-wide settings

Miscellaneous Notes

• the update did not fix the all-day event 1 day too early notification problem
• I did not find an update for the voicemail app that some people mentioned (mine is at v5.0.0.32)
• the "linked program is no longer installed on your phone" problem that I'm having with my Twidroid shortcut every time I update it is still there (it goes away after phone reboot)

Overall, I'm very happy that Sprint and HTC are coming through. I was really afraid they would wait for the next big thing (Android "Eclair" 2.0) instead of releasing the necessary bug fixes but, thankfully, that didn't happen.

What else did you notice with the new upgrade that I missed? Is anything broken?

• The Not So Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: My List Of 20+ Problems With HTC Hero
• HTC Hero Coming To Sprint October 11th! $179.99, Powerful, And Sexy. Here Is Why You Need To Own It
• How I Doubled My Android Phone's (HTC Hero) Battery Life or Just How Much Email Polling Affects Your Battery
• How To Fix Redrawing Problems In Your VNC
• My New Android Phone Wants Me To Do WHAT?

HTC, first of all, what. the. fuck. The idea of a more attractive UI was great, by all means, but did it really have to come at the expense of lagging down the whole phone? And by that I mean LAGGING. I would much rather have no added pwetty fluff than to literally be amazed when using my Garmin GPS because its UI is so responsive (until I got the Hero, this thought would have never crossed my mind).

Why is it that I have to miss phone calls because the Hero only gives me one or two rings before they go to voicemail? And half the time, right as I pull down the message on the screen that tells me that's what I have to do to answer the call, it doesn't pick up. Instead, I'm staring at a missed call.

Before I go on, I'd like to clarify that I'm still enjoying the Hero, mostly for making me feel a lot more connected on the go. However, the experience could have been a lot more enjoyable had HTC done a better job on the polish of the Hero core.

Some of these issues might be caused by Android, some might be caused by the fact that even though Android 2.0 has been available for a few weeks and 1.6 for a few months, the Hero is still running 1.5 – all thanks to the Sense UI.

But let me organize my thoughts in a nice numbered list. Everyone likes those, right? Be prepared – when a device affects me so much, I've got a lot to say.

My List Of Problems

1. Lag

This phone lags. At least the Sprint version of it, running Sense UI. And by lags, I mean most of the time it's worse than the Pre. Yeah, I went there. If you love lag, you will adore the Hero.

I'm not going to argue about rooting it or not using Sense. No. This is what HTC is making thousands of consumers use – and most of them won't ever consider touching the underlying OS. If you have an underpowered processor, HTC, don't you think the best thing you could have done is to try to compensate for it by making things faster instead of bloating it with garbage? Sprint, you didn't help either with your force-fed Nascar and NFL Mobile Live that we can't remove.

The browser lag is just beyond bearable. 16 seconds on average to load my plain Google.com homepage (not even iGoogle – just google.com). That's 10 seconds of staring at a blank screen, 4 more of staring at "getting sign-in details" and 4 more of loading the webpage. This is compared to 4 seconds on the Motorola Droid, side by side.

The keyboard lags. Often. Both typing and flipping.

Flash (the Adobe one) is cool but its performance on the Hero is pretty much unusable most of the time.

The lag is everywhere but this one takes the cake – the lag operating the dialer and the phone in general. Because each button press is unpredictable and can take between 0.5 and 5 seconds, there is no way to tell if the screen just didn't register the click or if it's just lagging behind. Thanks to this, I've dialed wrong numbers, hung up, and performed wrong functions multiple times.

My favorite is that it takes about 2-3 seconds for the last dialed number to show up in the recent numbers list after I finish the call, which means it then pushes all of the recent numbers down by one. So if I click a number I want to dial during that period of time, after the lag settles I will find that I actually just pressed a number above the one I wanted.

This list goes on.

2. Bad Battery Life

I thought the 1500mAh battery would give me plenty of juice. How foolish of me.

Between such battery draining bugs as letting your phone go to sleep when first turning it on, simply sending an SMS message, and using the Hero for email a few times a day, I'm left with 0-15% battery life by 10pm (even after applying known fixes).

In the morning, between the time I wake up and the time I get in the car, my battery would sometimes run down to 85%. Sometimes, however, it would still be at 98%, without doing anything differently. Does that make sense to you?

3. Long Bootup Time

There's nothing better than staring at the bootup screen for good 3-4 minutes before the phone becomes usable. If you think the Pre load time is bad, check out the Hero for some added fun.

Fine – it loads a pretty complex Linux based OS, I get it. But damn – it sure takes its time doing so.

Well, at least it doesn't say "Droid" in a robotic voice.

4. Application Chaos

Some applications' names change to their Java versions (such as com.p1.chompsms). Without me touching or updating them – it just happens over time. Some examples include Unit Converter (FCs upon start), Astro File Manager, Estos, ChompSMS, and Voice Caller ID.

Some applications' icons are randomly changed and mutilated (for example, Remember The Milk and Flixster).

Some applications stop working and start force closing (for example, Flixster, WP To Go, Unit Converter).

Some applications say "shortcut is no longer available" when clicked from the home screen or the All Programs list (for example, Twidroid). This seems to sometimes go away after a restart but surely comes back upon the next program update.

Not sure who to blame for all these but it seems like non-Hero owners don't seem to be experiencing such issues.

And the solution? "Without rooting, the only workaround for the issue is to uninstall the app and reinstall it. Still, after rebooting, you may have the same issues. Again, a reinstall is the only fix," suggests a post on AndroidForums.

Someone on the XDA-Developers forums provides more details – this is, apparently, due to a mismanaged boot cache.

5. Voicemail/SMS Problems

Problem – "after Internal Memory reaches a certain low level of free space (one user heard around around 40MB free from HTC Support), you may stop receiving SMS messages and voicemail. No amount of clearing space will allow messages to resume" – description credit AndroidForums.

Solution? "The best method of prevention currently is to ensure adequate memory is available on the device to prevent the flag from being set" – SprintUsers forum.

On a related note, the following bug has also been reported: "Over time, Internal Memory free space dwindles and no amount of clearing apps frees the space. This will also cause the above issue of SMS & Voicemail messages not being received once a critical amount of free space is reached".

I stopped getting my voicemail notifications a long time ago. Texts are still getting through somehow but they should definitely be afraid of stepping on these landmines any day now.

There are 3 ways to get your voicemail – are you kidding me? You can use the visual voicemail app (mine doesn't work anymore), you can dial your phone number (which is the same as pressing on the envelope or holding the 1 key), or you can dial some 408-970-0000 number (which seems to be for voice SMS but yet handles my voicemail). Did you just hack voice SMS to do visual voicemail, HTC and Sprint? This is a job not so well done.

6. The Keyboard

Let me say this – the keyboard on the Hero kind of sucks. It is very inaccurate, even after calibration, and doesn't guess letters nearly as well as the iPhone does.

To be fair, the Hero shines at the spelling correction. I can type 5 letters wrong in a single word, and the Hero will still suggest the right correction most of the time. My complaint here is that it doesn't detect missed spaces at all, so 2 words run on each other would not be recognized and corrected.

Now, the keyboard flip – it is uncomfortably laggy (see point #1 again). 2-5 seconds per flip is not good enough.

7. Calendar Notifications Are Broken

Sometimes I'm alerted about a calendar event a day early.

Sometimes an hour early (that's what happened after the daylight savings time shift).

Some users reported that their Hero shifted to daylight savings a week early.

How in the world does this even get through QA, HTC?

No remind me on time option? A 5 minute reminder is as close as I can get. Bleh.

8. GPS Randomly Thinks I'm All Over California

At times, my Google Maps app can no longer lock onto the GPS signal and starts jumping all over the state. Last time it first told me I was in Sacramento (one of the turn directions next to it had a misspelling "Socramento", wtf?), then Santa Rosa, then as I kept driving and pressing My Location, it switched to a random street about a mile away, then dumped me in the ocean.

During this time, the GPS icon kept blinking and didn't stay solid. Also, once it picked up a location, it didn't continue to update it as it should do.

Only a phone restart solves the problem but not for long.

Sometimes, the Sprint GPS can no longer get a lock on my location at all and any route calculations get stuck.

Sometimes, the blinking GPS icon stays on all the time, thus, I'm assuming, draining the crap out of my battery.

9. Usability: No Easy Way To Switch Between Running Apps

Alright, here's where the Pre has everyone beat – the card switching is superior to any app management I've seen. Here I was thinking Android would have a decent way of switching between apps – at least as good as Palm's.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that switching between running apps is completely impractical on Android. You simply can't do it. Ever use Alt-TAB in Windows? Feel like you feel powerless without it? That's how I feel on the Hero.

The closest things I figured out so far are:

• hold the Home button, which brings up a list of 6 most recently used apps. Not only is this longer than I am comfortable with, but it also fails to actually accomplish what I want – and that is switch between running apps
• get a task manager app, such as Advanced Task Manager. This works but this is even slower than the previous method and requires even more clicks
• go back to the home screen/app list and run the program I want again. Chances are, this would summon the sleeping program from the background. Not the best approach either.

Of course, this is not HTC's fault – Android really let me down here (take note from Palm on this one).

10. The 5MP Camera – It Sucks

The Hero has a notoriously bad camera, which doesn't even have a flash (a big drawback). It does a pretty bad job at autofocusing. Both the camera, the camcorder, and the albums take uncomfortably long to load (see point #1 again).

11. Plastic Chrome Trim Cracking And Falling Apart

Out of nowhere a pretty large chunk (1/2 to 3/4 inch) of the plastic chrome trim broke off around the USB plug. I do not seem to be the only one.

I do not expect the case to last much longer either. The "teflon" does feel nice to the touch but it's still plastic.

12. The Phone Unlocks In My Pocket

Did you know the double press on the Menu button unlocks the phone? It's a great feature, isn't it (until it unlocks the phone in your pocket)?

And no, it's not possible to disable it.

13. Out Of Space? No More Apps For You

I ran out of the built-in [measly] space recently. Why? Because it's not possible on the Android (even as of 2.0) to install apps to the SD card, unless you root the phone. This is not an HTC issue and more of an Android limitation but it is definitely part of my Hero experience.

14. Dust Under The Glass?

Many users are reporting that dust is getting under the Hero's screen. Thankfully, I'm not one of those users. For now.

15. Can't Remove Words Added To The Dictionary

The keyboard suggest mechanism in the Hero is great – I can't argue about that. In fact, without it, the Hero would be doomed.

However, sometimes a mistyped word gets added to the internal dictionary and there is no way to get it out of there, without clearing the whole thing. Annoying.

16. No Way To Turn Screen Off During Call

The Hero doesn't have a proximity sensor, which results in a few problems:

• sometimes I press buttons with my face
• sometimes I want to turn off the screen to at least try to prevent my face from doing the above, except there is no way to do so. The reflex to press the Power button which usually turns the screen off results in an immediate end of the current call. I am embarrassed to say how many times I've done this. Oh, and to end the current call when the screen is on, a single press of the Power button is sufficient but two are needed when the screen is off – took me a while to get this right.

17. No Application Access To Bluetooth

I know this is purely an Android 1.5 issue as Android 2.0 has the new bluetooth API but we still can't utilize it because we're stuck at 1.5. Thus, I can't have bluetooth turned on and off on a schedule (via Timeriffic, for example) and, of course, the biggest issue – no bluetooth tethering.

18. High Latency Wireless Network

From what I can tell, there's a much higher latency (the time between a request is sent and a response is on its way) on the Hero than on the Droid. I'm willing to actually accept that it's probably 90% due to Sprint's 3G network vs Verizon's. I never imagined the difference was this vast, however. When I was playing with the Droid, it seemed like I had a device from the future in my hands.

WiFi performance is not great either – in fact, the Market application downloads often hang in the "starting…" mode until I turn WiFi off.

19. Trackball Almost Useless In Text Editing

I like having the trackball, in theory. However, when editing text, it is almost unusable, unless I want to move only a few characters over. If I want to go to the beginning of the line from the middle, it will take ages, as each swipe only moves one character at a time (there is no built-in acceleration).

I'm not alone in this conclusion.

20. Unneeded Junk Keeps Running

I don't need some of the apps that come stock but they insist on running every time I start the phone. Some insist on running all the time, even if I set up Taskiller or Advanced Task Manager to hunt them down. A few good examples are: Peep, IM, Footprints, Gmail (I use the Mail app for gmail), Messages, and Stocks.

Conclusion

The Hero changed the way I do things on the go. The email, calendar, all kinds of syncs, apps – they've all changed my life and I love the Hero for that. I will not be able to go back to a regular phone. I feel too… connected.

There are lots of bugs. Lots. Perhaps Android 2.0 will fix some of them and the rest will be fixed over time. However, I am not sure HTC will be ever able to fix the lag without revamping the Hero's hardware. Although, I also heard that the HTC Droid Eris, which runs the same hardware, is not nearly as laggy. I will have to check it out to confirm.

I apologize in advance for any omissions, inaccuracies, or grammatical errors but it is 3am now as I'm finishing this article. Also, if you find the language harsh – well, that's just me.

Are you happy with your Hero? Are you experiencing any of these problems? Share with me.

• Sprint And HTC Release The First HTC Hero Firmware Update 1.56: Fixes Major Bugs, Adds Small Tweaks
• How I Doubled My Android Phone's (HTC Hero) Battery Life or Just How Much Email Polling Affects Your Battery
• HTC Hero Coming To Sprint October 11th! $179.99, Powerful, And Sexy. Here Is Why You Need To Own It
• My New Android Phone Wants Me To Do WHAT?
• Meet Firefox For Mobile [Video + Feature Highlights + More Info]

I use Eclipse to do my Android development for a few reasons:

• it's the only IDE fully supported by the Android dev team
• it has a visual Layout/Resources builder that transforms XML files into corresponding visual representations
• it's free and open source
• I've been using Eclipse for many years and am very familiar with it

The Problem

However, one thing about Eclipse Android development has bothered me for a while – and that is XML formatting by the visual tools. See, if you open an XML file in Eclipse and use the Layout/Resources tab (which functions as either a visual UI builder or a visual frontend to resource management), Eclipse creates the XML representation of what you're building and dumps it into the file you're editing. The problem is, this XML is not formatted in any way – Eclipse just writes it in a single line, which looks absolutely horrible and is essentially unusable.

For example, I had this beautifully formatted XML file with a sample Android menu. After using the Layout tab to add another item, I ended up with an single ugly unindented line for it.

The Solution

Here's how to solve this in an almost fully automated fashion, using formatting rules that I think result in the most readable file. There is no need for external tools – Eclipse provides everything needed.

• open up Window->Preferences->XML->XML Files->Editor
  
• check the "Split multiple attributes each on a new line" and adjust other options according to your liking (such as Indent using spaces and Indentation size)
• press OK to save the options
• all you have to do now is press Ctrl-Shift-F or select Source->Format

Let's see what this does to the XML I showed above:

It's a beauty, isn't it? Eclipse's Auto Format is one of its best features (yes, you can apply it to your Android Java code too as well as pretty much any other document format).

Bonus – XML Cleanup

As an added bonus, Eclipse also offers a Cleanup XML option, which can do the following:

• compress empty element tags
• insert required attributes
• insert missing tags
• quote attribute values
• format source (as above)
• convert line delimiters to Windows, UNIX, or Mac

You can access the Cleanup option via Source->Cleanup

Running Cleanup on my already pretty clean XML file turned the last <item> into this:

The first option compressed the <item></item> declaration to simply <item />. Neat, isn't it?

Final Words

+ Clean is good.

+ Uniform is good.

+ Use Ctrl-Shift-F and make it a habit.

+ Create a keyboard shortcut to the Cleanup function by going to Window->Preferences->General->Keys and use it instead of Ctrl-Shift-F (since it already formats as part of the Cleanup).

? I'd like to know if there is a way to apply auto formatting upon save, automatically. Do you?

• Some Useful vim Commands – My vim Cheatsheet
• Installing The Android Plugin For Eclipse
• How To Update Eclipse From Galileo (3.5) To Helios (3.6) In-Place Without Reinstalling
• WordPress Developers – How Do You Make A Living [Poll + Discussion]?
• Mastering The Linux Shell – Bash Shortcuts Explained (Now With Cheat Sheets)

I was really glad to see Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, and the whole StackOverflow team in person, as well as listen to great talks in the following topics:

9:00 – 9:50    Joel Spolsky Opening Keynote
9:50 – 10:45    Mark Harrison Python
11:00 – 11:55    Rory Blyth iPhone
11:55 – 12:25    Joel Spolsky Fogbugz
13:30 – 14:25    Scott Hanselman ASP.NET-MVC
14:25 – 14:45    Jeff Atwood Stack Overflow
14:45 – 15:40    Daniel Rocha Qt
16:10 – 17:05    James Yum Android
17:05 – 18:00    Yehuda Katz jQuery

My own favorite topics were in the following order of fun/usefulness level:

• iPhone (though I'm interested in Android development myself but it's always good to check out the competition) – it was fun and not boring. Quirky, jittery, OCD all come to mind.
• Joel's keynote (Hi, Joel, I'm @ArtemR ) – I welcome the discussion of simple vs feature rich, though Joel has talked about this on his blog multiple times.
• jQuery – nice intro into history of jQuery and competition with other frameworks. The technical level of specific examples was quite basic.
• Android – this is the topic I'm mostly interested in and unfortunately the main speaker got substituted by a guy who has obviously not presented in front of a large crowd before (sorry, I have to criticize – you'll do better and better each time! Just don't worry so much and know your stuff) and was pretty much a recent college grad from the looks of it. He did a pretty decent job at making the code run but a really poor job of marketing and explaining Android's weaknesses and strengths, as some people on twitter pointed out.
• StackOverflow review – quite brief but fun. Thanks Jeff!
• Python – very odd that it was even there – just a look at a few lines of code from the infamous Python google-like suggest algorithm.
• Qt – didn't really care for it but sat through it. Nokia, meh. Next!
• ASP.NET, Fogbugz – I skipped as I didn't care much for those

Overall, I feel like the information presented in all sessions was pretty basic but I guess that was the idea – a little bit of everything for everyone.

The absence of WiFi was pretty disappointing as I think it was advertised but I didn't care much for it. Kept everyone more concentrated anyway.

The free memory upgrades by Microsoft was an AWESOME move (though mine is already at 4GB and they didn't give out 4GB sticks)!

Lunch was decent – Boudin. Lots of drinks and snacks.

Well worth $99.

Twitter #devdays results.

Cross-posted to Meta-StackOverflow.

• Hidden Features Of Perl, PHP, Javascript, C, C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Python, And Others [Collection Of Incredibly Useful Lists]
• StackOverflow.com, SuperUser.com, ServerFault.com Fan? Here's A Greasemonkey Script To Keep Track Of All Your Accounts
• Monitor All Your Domains From One Location
• The Real Reasons To Use Twitter (Get Over Your Prejudice Already)
• Minority Report Becomes Reality

So, I just got me a new phone that I've wanted for a long time – HTC Hero running the Android OS.

It's a great phone, no doubt, but I think mine has homosexual inclinations.

Bad Android. Bad.

• HTC Hero Coming To Sprint October 11th! $179.99, Powerful, And Sexy. Here Is Why You Need To Own It
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• Sprint And HTC Release The First HTC Hero Firmware Update 1.56: Fixes Major Bugs, Adds Small Tweaks
• Meet Firefox For Mobile [Video + Feature Highlights + More Info]
• More On Android – A Mobile OS With A Clue

The plugin install page provides initial instructions and the location of the plugin to give Eclipse (https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/). This is very standard stuff and I've installed many plugins exactly the same way. However, here's when problems started.

Problem #1: Error while loading manipulator

Eclipse just shows a cryptic Install failed box. Here are the highlights:

• !MESSAGE Error while loading manipulator
• java.lang.IllegalStateException: !fwConfigLocation.equals(fwPersistentDataLocation)

It looks like for whatever reason, Eclipse's fwConfigLocation variable does not match fwPersistentDataLocation. I have no idea where those come from and searching for a solution (such as this crazy Japanese sourceforge and this Eclipse bug), restarting Eclipse, and beating my head against the wall took the majority of my the 2 hours I spent on this.

Here's the full log, which will help people with the same problem find it in search engines:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.touchpoint.eclipse 4 0 2009-10-15 13:21:11.224
!MESSAGE Error while loading manipulator.
!STACK 0
java.lang.IllegalStateException: !fwConfigLocation.equals(fwPersistentDataLocation)
	!fwConfigLocation=C:\eclipse\configuration
	,fwPersistentDataLocation=C:\eclipse\plugins\configuration
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.frameworkadmin.equinox.EquinoxManipulatorImpl.checkConsistencyOfFwConfigLocAndFwPersistentDataLoc(EquinoxManipulatorImpl.java:65)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.frameworkadmin.equinox.EquinoxManipulatorImpl.loadWithoutFwPersistentData(EquinoxManipulatorImpl.java:360)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.frameworkadmin.equinox.EquinoxManipulatorImpl.load(EquinoxManipulatorImpl.java:331)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.loadDelegate(LazyManipulator.java:50)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.getConfigData(LazyManipulator.java:108)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.UninstallBundleAction.uninstallBundle(UninstallBundleAction.java:74)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.UninstallBundleAction.execute(UninstallBundleAction.java:29)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.ParameterizedProvisioningAction.execute(ParameterizedProvisioningAction.java:35)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.mainPerform(Phase.java:129)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.perform(Phase.java:72)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.PhaseSet.perform(PhaseSet.java:44)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Engine.perform(Engine.java:54)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningUtil.performProvisioningPlan(ProvisioningUtil.java:389)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProfileModificationOperation.doExecute(ProfileModificationOperation.java:61)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningOperation.execute(ProvisioningOperation.java:37)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.ProvisioningOperationRunner$1.run(ProvisioningOperationRunner.java:94)
	at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:55)
 
!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 4 2009-10-15 13:21:11.240
!MESSAGE An error occurred while uninstalling
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 0 2009-10-15 13:21:11.240
!MESSAGE session context was:(profile=epp.package.php, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.phases.Uninstall, operand=[R]javax.activation 1.1.0.v200905021805 --> [R]javax.activation 1.1.0.v200906290531, action=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.UninstallBundleAction).
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 0 2009-10-15 13:21:11.240
!MESSAGE Error while loading manipulator.
!STACK 0
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error while loading manipulator.
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.loadDelegate(LazyManipulator.java:54)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.getConfigData(LazyManipulator.java:108)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.UninstallBundleAction.uninstallBundle(UninstallBundleAction.java:74)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.UninstallBundleAction.execute(UninstallBundleAction.java:29)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.ParameterizedProvisioningAction.execute(ParameterizedProvisioningAction.java:35)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.mainPerform(Phase.java:129)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.perform(Phase.java:72)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.PhaseSet.perform(PhaseSet.java:44)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Engine.perform(Engine.java:54)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningUtil.performProvisioningPlan(ProvisioningUtil.java:389)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProfileModificationOperation.doExecute(ProfileModificationOperation.java:61)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningOperation.execute(ProvisioningOperation.java:37)
	at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.ProvisioningOperationRunner$1.run(ProvisioningOperationRunner.java:94)
	at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:55)
!SESSION 2009-10-15 13:31:40.853 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=I20090611-1540
java.version=1.6.0_16
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments:  -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86

Finally, I found a solution that worked – modify eclipse.ini (the one that sits in elipse's install directory) and add the following:

1
2
3
4

-startup
file:/C:/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.200.v20090520.jar
--launcher.library
file:/C:/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.0.200.v20090519

Note that the exact locations may differ for you, so figure out what is installed on your machine and replace accordingly.

Also, it seems that the location of the file HAS to be on a new line – otherwise it is not recognized. What kind of shit is that, Eclipse? Some values in eclipse.ini are specified on the same line separated by space, some separated by '=', and some have to be on a new line? This fun trivia fact wasted about 45 minutes of my time.

And yes, startup has 1 dash and launcher.library has 2. /sigh

Edit: it looks like by default Eclipse does come with these options. I somehow managed to lose them, so this is probably my fault. The error couldn't be more cryptic though.

Problem #2: java.io.IOException: The file "C:\eclipse\features\com.android.ide.eclipse.adt_0.9.3.v200909031112-12945" does not exist

Great. Now what…

After examining the features directory, I indeed found that directory com.android.ide.eclipse.adt_0.9.3.v200909031112-12945 does not exist. What I did find though is com.android.ide.eclipse.adt_0.9.3.v200909031112-12945.jar, which is simply an archive. Why didn't you unpack this archive, Eclipse? Or Android plugin devs? Whoever is responsible for this – argh!

After quickly creating the directories and unpacking the .jar contents into them, Eclipse was finally able to install the Android plugin.

If installing a plugin is this friendly, I can only imagine what awaits me in Android app development. Am I the only one with these problems? You let me know.

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But where was I? I have been closely following Android news since its inception, then the introduction of the first phone – T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream), followed by G2 (aka T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, HTC Magic, Google ION), the introduction of the app store (Android Market), and noticing throughout all this time that Android was still not quite there, not appealing to the masses, and not picking up speed. But then…

The Hero

I believe the market perception of Android is about to change because of the newest Android phone – HTC Hero. Thanks to Phandroid (my favorite Android blog) for the announcement.

Why

Hero has a super sexy Sense user interface. Just check out this video of the European version of Hero running Sense (the US version looks slightly different):

Hero also has:

• Flash support (!) – the one from Adobe, not the one that helps taking photos. That means playing flash games, videos, etc, which iPhone does not support and is not planning to support in the near future.
• First Android phone to support multitouch. It also has a trackball.
• Lipophobic coating – special coating to repel fingerprint oils.
• A speedy 528Mhz Qualcomm processor.
• 5MP camera with autofocus – 5 megapixels is a step up over most of the competition, except maybe Nokia.
• GPS.
• Digital compass.
• MicroSD slot for expanding memory.
• WiFi 802.11b/g.
• Accelerometer.
• Audio supported formats: MP3, AAC(AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI and Windows Media® Audio 9.
• Video supported formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media® Video 9.
• And of course, it runs Android applications.

Check out this comparison between HTC Hero, MyTouch 3G, Apple iPhone 3GS, and BlackBerry Storm:

When

Hero is already released in Europe and is coming to the US to Sprint on October 11, 2009.

How Much

$179.99 after a mail-in rebate and a 2 year agreement with Sprint.

Speed/Lag Concerns

Initial reviews of the Hero reported occasional lag, especially with a lot of widgets activated on the home screens. However, it looks like the latest firmware updates may have fixed the lag issues. We will see very shortly.

The Chin

The US version of the Hero does NOT have the "chin" like the European version does. Compare the picture of the EU version (below) with the pictures of the US version (further down in the Media section).

Pictures Of The US Version

I'm extremely excited about the Hero. It is the strongest Android contender on the market. Can you feel the excitement? Go out and get yours on October 11th!

Relevant Links

• HTC product page
• HTC Hero on Wikipedia
• Phandroid HTC Hero Announcement
• Youtube videos for 'HTC Hero'

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