The HTC Desire HD Tips/Tricks/Apps thread

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kingrob

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Please use this thread to post any cool apps/tricks/tips for the HTC Desire HD.

[video=youtube;EIEoA6wc99Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIEoA6wc99Y[/video]


How to charge your battery correctly and get the best life out of it

When you unbox your brand new Desire HD, you'll have to remove the battery from the battery compartment to remove a thin plastic strip that's covering it.

Remove it, put the battery & cover back, then switch the phone on (most people, including myself, struggled their asses off to get the battery cover on again, just be patient, otherwise you might break the cover). It should just have enough juice to copy your contacts from your old phone & customize it a bit before it dies. Let it run completely flat (till it switches itself off) and then charge it. You'll see an orange LED light when the phone is charging and it turns green when its done.

Use the phone till it runs completely flat again, then charge it again. Repeat this for the first four charges, after that you can just charge it randomly and let it run completely flat once a month.

Also don't forget to switch stuff off that you don't need, like constant syncing, wifi, etc.

Battery Tips and Tricks

Some of HTC Desire HD users are not impressed with their HD’s battery life. They have very poor battery life that draining in less than a day! How to solve this problem? Here we show some useful tips and tricks to increase your HTC Desire HD‘s battery life.

1. Screen will always be your biggest drain. It uses more than 60% of your battery power. Turn display brightness down as low as you can (I set mine at about 15%), and setting the screen timeout to 15-30 seconds. You can also try black / dark wallpaper that uses less energy.

2. Do a software update – menu, settings, about phone, system software updates.

3. Install something like quick settings and place link on your main home screen, so that you can access quickly to turn say wi-fi and gps on/off.

4. Ensure any sync’ing the phone does, say email / facebook / maps, etc. is as required and not as often as the phone can. Mine checks my email every 30 minutes and I don’t use GPS unless I need maps.

5. Ensure USB debugging is turned on – this is mainly to reduce lag, but may well help with battery life. Go to menu > settings > applications > development, set usb debugging on.

6. Ensure your phone has a short screen timeout – menu> settings> power saver> screen timeout + settings.

7. Avoid Live Wallpapers. Animated wallpaper will keep the processor working all the time and it will drain your battery.

8. Turn off Wireless Network Positioning / GPS. Using GPS surely will drain your battery; use it only when you need it badly instead you use Assisted GPS.

9. Always Keep Bluetooth off When Not in Use. Bluetooth is obviously draining your battery if you keep it on all the time.

10. Streaming Apps Will Kill Your Battery. Audio or video streaming application (Youtube, Skype) will decrease you battery life fast.

8. Turn off Wi-Fi. If you don’t use it you better turn it off because it will suck up quite a lot of battery life.

9. If You’re Inside a lot, Having Wi-Fi Always On May be Preferable. Since 3G radio use more ammount of energy, so if you are always on hotspot area you can use your Wi-Fi instead of your 3G network.

10. If Your Phone Often Struggles to Find a 3G Connection, Disable 3G Keep searching on 3G connection will drain your battery.

11. Use Widgets Wisely. Terminate widgets that are unnecessary will save your battery life.

12. Turn Off Always-On Mobile Data. Disable always-on mobile data as it will decrease the battery use.

*Tips courtesy of Mobile Phone Blog. Full link here : http://sefanboy.com/2010/11/28/htc-desire-hd-tips-and-tricks-save-and-improve-battery-life/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Brilliant!

If you'll want pouches / screen covers, go to Ebay.com! way cheaper than local stock! I'm importing some for this awesum phone!
 
Hi shade,

Any picks and links for the screen covers.


Sent from my Desire HD using MyBroadband Android App
 
Some recent apps I installed:

Barcode Scanner
CamScanner
Compass
Dictionary.com
Epocrates
First Aid
JEFIT
Laser Level
Lifove Bible
Smart Measure
Sound Meter
Trillian
 
I've always used Exim SPUC screen protectors - I've already ordered one for my HD. I've had the same protector on my Tytn II for 3 years now - and you can't see it. It also doesn't scratch. I also have two on my Canon 50D and one on my girlfriends Nikon camera - for R70 shipped you can't go wrong. Just make sure its the SPUC.
 
AppBrain is an awesome app - use it to discover the best android apps via search, rankings and categories. Manage your apps easily.
We can also share list of installed apps each of us have installed by adding each other as friends ... then we don't need to keep updating this thread with new apps we installed .... we can just checkout the people you are following on appBrain ... :)
 
Can you install apps downloaded from internet sites? i.e. the device isn't locked like iPhone?
 
Recently installed the following:

Apps:
3G Watchdog
ACV (Droid Comic Viewer)
Astro file manager
Barcode Scanner
ColorNote
GPS Status
GPS Test
Google Sky Map
JEFIT
Jorte
Periodic Table
Touch Calendar
handyCalc
handyConverter

Games:
Angry Birds
Armored Strike
CopyCat Lite
Droplets
Flood-It!
Graviturn
Iconic Memory
Memorize Pattern
Moron test
Picma Squared
Retro Defense
Shredder Chess
Theseus Lite


Jorte and Touch Calendar are much better than the stock calendar app. Still undecided which one to use, leaning towards Jorte currently.
 
Hmm... my phone used 25MB of data at 6am... :wtf: Any idea on how to control this?
 
xrapidx said:
Hmm... my phone used 25MB of data at 6am... :wtf: Any idea on how to control this?
Click to expand...

The most obvious would be to go through all your apps and syncing etc. There are a few programs that can control your data connection at certain times like tasker or locale. You can also use APNdroid , a quick widget to turn data on or off for when you don't need it.

There is another program called...ermm..something about goodnight ....can't remember but that does the same as well...plenty ways to control it. I've gone the first option and fine tuned the phone to send and receive only data i know about and have not had any issues since.
 
If you are experiencing problems with www.htcsense.com , don't sweat about it. It's not your phone.

HTC's official response on the matter is that they're still optimizing & developing the web site, so there will be "glitches" from time to time.

*Shads has discovered a workaround for members that are having trouble with their phone's current location showing as west from the Nigerian Coast. Simply delete your HTC Sense account + on your phone and then create it again.
 
kingrob said:
If you are experiencing problems with www.htcsense.com , don't sweat about it. It's not your phone.

HTC's official response on the matter is that they're still optimizing & developing the web site, so there will be "glitches" from time to time.

*Shads has discovered a workaround for members that are having trouble with their phone's current location showing as west from the Nigerian Coast. Simply delete your HTC Sense account + on your phone and then create it again.
Click to expand...

Problem is that the workaround does not always work, tried it twice now and phone is still sitting somewhere south of the Ivory Coast going to give it a go again. Hopefully third time lucky.
 
What are you guys using to play video files....? Especially mkv files...?
 
BoomerPipe said:
Problem is that the workaround does not always work, tried it twice now and phone is still sitting somewhere south of the Ivory Coast going to give it a go again. Hopefully third time lucky.
Click to expand...

If it shows up off Ivory Coast it actually means the site is working as it's meant to. When setting up the account your region is determined, probably via IP address, and that is the default position for Africa I'd assume. When not working the map will be greyed out with a message to turn on the phone locator on your handset even though it is switched on.

Click on Update just above the map, step outside with the phone to get a GPS fix & Robert's your mother's brother.
 
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