HTC Desire series

[JD]

HTC Desire Help
Android Market Help

If you have any problems with your device settings then please check out our support documents, below

HTC Desire Email Settings
HTC Desire Internet Settings
HTC Desire MMS Settings
HTC Desire WAP Settings

Please feel free to post below with any hints and tips you have found useful.

[momentai]

== Save battery! ==
= The usual
>> Set brightness to low or auto
>> turn off wifi/bluetooth until you need it
= Use darker backgrounds (less power needed to display colours)
= Don't use live wallpaper (unless you want to show off =] )
= Ramp up the syncing times. Otherwise known as the "Do you really need your weather to update every hour?"
= Set your network coverage to use GSM, slower, but covers a wider land area

If you use the phone all the time and don't want to save your battery, invest in another battery or a (unofficial) extended battery smile.gif

== Shortcuts ==
Holding the power will give you a variety of options including setting your phone to silent, vibrate or aeroplane (as well as the conventional turning off)

== Rightones ==
While listening to a piece of music, press "menu" and you can assign it as a ringtone for the phone or a contact
Get Ringdroid from the app market and you can make a ringtone from any sound file from your phone.

== Useful Apps ==
Get 3gWatchdog to watch your data connections to your wap/3g network
Ringdroid (mentioned above)
Advanced Task Killer to close any unwanted yet open apps
Menu Start up - close what applications can open automatically

== Useful info ==
PRESS MENU FOR MORE OPTIONS (I forget this a lot, but it's very helpful!)
Pressing the Home key will let you jump out of the applicaiton, but if you hold onto the home key for a short while, the task manager will open up allowing you to select a previous application.
The applications will stay open until the phone (automatically) or you (via an app "advanced task killer", "Taskkiller", "Close Button", etc) decide to close it
In the internet browser, press menu and click on windows. This shows you the windows currently open and you can add or close them.


Thats it for now, there's a lot more that I'll put down when I learn more about the phone smile.gif Have fun

[Wessex]

Phone gets into a loop? Error message displayed that keeps returning even though it is suppose to be forcing close an app? Then menu option to Factory Reset is not attaqinable.

Switch off the phone either by pressing the power button or remove the battery if phone has frozen.
simultaneously, hold down the up and down volume buttons and then press the power button. Wait until screen with tiny writing appears before releasing the volume controls.

Scroll down to CLEAR STORAGE. Press on power button to select. Go through the "New Phone" screens. Make sure the phone is backed up regularly because installed apps and contacts will be lost.

[stevoknevo]

Voice to SMS how to here http://nimbu.amorvi.com/2010/04/add-full-voice-to-text-to-htc-desire/ 

[Nickedynick]

Ok, this is a general Android feature but I still feel it warrants sharing:
If you're having problems setting up email accounts, try going to GMail and setting that up to fetch your email. Do this by going to Gmail.com on a PC, signing in, selecting 'Settings' (top right of the screen), 'Accounts and Import' and 'Check mail using POP3'. Then you can add the account in the normal way.

By doing this, you're setting Google's servers to check your other email accounts, which saves you data usage and battery life. I did this a while ago for my uni email address, and set up a filter and label so that all emails from that account are labelled as "Cardiff".

Obviously this means you don't have separate inboxes for each account, but it is fairly trivial to set up shortcuts to GMail labels on your phone, and it is a nice workaround to uncooperative routers/networks.

Hope this helps someone

[pistolpete1]

Ok, this is a general Android feature but I still feel it warrants sharing:
If you're having problems setting up email accounts, try going to GMail and setting that up to fetch your email. Do this by going to Gmail.com on a PC, signing in, selecting 'Settings' (top right of the screen), 'Accounts and Import' and 'Check mail using POP3'. Then you can add the account in the normal way.

By doing this, you're setting Google's servers to check your other email accounts, which saves you data usage and battery life. I did this a while ago for my uni email address, and set up a filter and label so that all emails from that account are labelled as "Cardiff".

Obviously this means you don't have separate inboxes for each account, but it is fairly trivial to set up shortcuts to GMail labels on your phone, and it is a nice workaround to uncooperative routers/networks.

Hope this helps someone

Hi Nick.....

Sounds like an interesting way round have more than one email account. How much data usage and battery will this actually save though?

The phone still has to retreive from googlemail account, although I guess it will only have to 'look' into one account, rather than one after the other....but will have save much data usage?

As for battery usage, I've sent my email accounts to update every 2 or 3 hours, rather than 15 mins, which will help the battery more, I assume?

Had my phone running since Thursday morning, and still under 20Mb usage in total. By the time I switch on in the morning, it will be 4 days and only 20Mb, which will mean I'll use about 155Mb this month!!!(Not a heavy user....can you tell?)

[Nickedynick]

The battery and data saving are more of a small beneficial side effect, and I've got no qualification of it. However, it means you're not checking 2 (or more) accounts all the time, so it will mean you're using fewer background processes.

You're right though, setting apps to update less frequently will have a similar effect.

[riccharnley]

Does anyone know how to link SIM contacts to your facebook and email contacts??? It wont let me link them and it's quite annoying having the contact in 3 times!

[PMS421]

Does anyone know how to link SIM contacts to your facebook and email contacts??? It wont let me link them and it's quite annoying having the contact in 3 times!

Open All contacts
Select a contact
Top right is a little link/unlined symbol, click it
Select the contact to link

[momentai]

- Quick Reset -
If your phone gets into a pickle and you need to reset it, just press the middle(optical/scroll wheel), volume down and power button simultaneously (think you need to hold it in for a few seconds) and release. This will cause the phone to restart (and hopefully the crisis averted)

- Problem with internet reception -
If you have any problems with your internet connection on the desire (or nexus one), simply follow the instructions here http://devicehelp.vodafone.co.uk/filestore/devices/HTC/Desire/HTCDesire_WEB.pdf and set yourself up a "Internet" Access point. It should eliminate a few bugs the wap reception gets every now and then.

Theres a lot more as well, but I can't remember them atm because my head is swimming over this internet usage allowance debacle. Until next time.

[momentai]

==== APPLICATIONS NOT INSTALLING =====
You have space, but your new application is not installing?
You may not have enough space, so either
A) Back up a few larger applications to your SD card using a App backup tool from the marketplace (won't work if you're full already of course)
B) Uninstall a few applications
C) Wait till Froyo (Android build 2.2) comes out, update to that and then just choose to install onto the SD card (not technically a method yet...)

Then when you connect to the internet, it'll install your application


==== Nothing Syncing/Phones broke/ etc etc ====
Go into your settings and accounts page.
Remove your facebook and twitter accounting bindings
Re-add them
Should fix the problem.


=== Save data on browsing the internet ===
I hope the mods don't mind me putting something on here, but download opera browser. It compresses the webpages before sending them to you, so you use a heck of a lot less data. The interface is pretty snazzy too.

[Fenris]

If you are finding that you can't set up an IMAP or POP account where SSL and TLS encryption are in use with unrecognised certificates, the reason is because the email application in the Desire refuses to continue the setup process when the certificate is not to its liking.

A simple way to prevent this is to turn off your network connectivity so that the server cannot be reached during the setup process. The mail application will show a message allowing you to continue, so do so. Once everything is set up, then reenable the connectivity and when offered the opportunity to use the unrecognise certificate(s) then say yes.

From now on your email will work, although you will be unable to verify the server by its certificate.

It seems likely that Google will fix this in a future Android version, possibly in 2.2 which is expected to appear on the Desire in the next few months.

[Maroon]

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this but HTC have additional widgets you can download for free. For example they have a Coin Flip widget, Dice widget, tip calculator, today in history, etc.

To get these, all you have to do is long press an empty space on the home screen, press widget, get more HTC widgets, then press MENU and Update. It should update all the newest widgets. Then click the ones you want to add.

Enjoy!

Maroon

[zidane]

Voice to SMS how to here http://nimbu.amorvi....-to-htc-desire/

Has anyone got this working? I have installed both the voice app and keyboard and activated keyboard. I get the microphone icon when searching but it doesn't have a mic button on the keyboard.

[Maroon]

For those of you sick of the "Storage Running Low" I have just discovered an app to help!

Ghostify - Ads a ghost of those apps that you want on your phone but just cannot afford the space, with a link to either installing from SD or from Market.

Minor cost involved but there is a free version for 10 apps I think.

Check it out!

Maroon

[LukeHandle]

For those of you sick of the "Storage Running Low" I have just discovered an app to help!

Ghostify - Ads a ghost of those apps that you want on your phone but just cannot afford the space, with a link to either installing from SD or from Market.

Minor cost involved but there is a free version for 10 apps I think.

Check it out!

Maroon

Just got the Free version and your right, 10 'ghosts' are allowed. Lets say you have an application which you like and think is good, but use rarely. For example, Ringdroid. What the application does is save the application data and the application installer onto the SD card. Then when you need it, you open up Ghosify and restore the ghost. Simple.

Only uses SD Card write/read permission.

[dlorde]

Has anyone got this working? I have installed both the voice app and keyboard and activated keyboard. I get the microphone icon when searching but it doesn't have a mic button on the keyboard.

Works for me. When you install the voice-to-text app, you get the mic icon on search, and when you install the hi-res keyboard and set it as the default with voice input, you get the hi-res keyboard with the mic on it when the keyobard is displayed.

You need to follow all the steps in the guide.

[KMilligan]

Advanced Task Killer - free - kills all apps running in the background and saves battery.

[dlorde]

Re: Editing previous searches...

Oh joy! I've found how to do it - very simple really, you use the optical trackball. Brushing down across the trackball when the previous searches are displayed selects each one in turn and displays it in the search box.

I've been neglecting the optical trackball, but it does also make editing easier...

[k.p.]

The following trick for increasing battery life has been posted in a number of different forums and many (although not all) people are reporting that it really does work for a variety of HTC phones. It supposedly comes directly from an email from an employee of HTC. The full email is here.

To also help with Battery Life you can do these steps exactly: 1) Turn your device ON and Charge the device for 8 hours or more 2) Unplug the device and Turn the phone OFF and charge for 1 hour 3) Unplug the device Turn ON wait 2 minutes and Turn OFF and charge for another hour Your battery life should almost double, we have tested this on our devices and other agents have seen a major difference as well.

I have tried it on a Desire that I have had for a few months, and it seems to have the projected outcome--almost doubling (approximately) battery life. It doesn't require rooting, accessing a hidden diagnostic screen, or anything else risky or warranty-invalidating.