Fanboy Confessions Part 2

In this post I would like to elaborate on some of the great things I have found in Android and some capabilities that were new to me.

First of all pictures and video can automatically upload to Picasa and be made available to post on Google+ at any time. You not only get a cloud based backup, but instant sharing right from your device

Google Music (still in Beta) is awesome. After you get your library uploaded you can stream your inter collection from anywhere, as well as download songs to your device to keep a local copy. I was surprised to find that this also recognized my entire Audio Book Library

Fanboy Confessional, Part 1

About a year before getting my first iPhone I had just started making the switch to Apple.  The first Intel Macs were about to come out, and I was constantly playing with my hackintosh partition on my PC.  I saw many things that I liked, especially with the syncing of the .mac accounts and later Mobile Me.  I was a Windows Mobile user and I had paid for an Exchange Server for a personal domain based email so I could have all my info synced.  I moved to a BlackBerry curve when they integrated a camera with the Curve models.  I was very happy with that Curve and had started to use other services to keep things synced like Remember The Milk for my Tasks.  When the iPhone 3G came out we had a chance to opt out of our Verizon contract and jump on the iPhone bandwagon.  It was great to have my calendar, my tasks, my email, and my address book always the same wherever I happen to be.  Apps were high quality, cheap, and flowing like rain in those days.  It was a bright new world and I really enjoyed using my device for fun, for work, for music, and for videos.

Rooting the Inspire 4G

After much consideration and research I decided to go ahead and root my Inspire and install a custom rom. I found a relatively easy method on XDA Developers that required a SD card and a script that gets run from the command line.  This cool little utility is called the Advanced Ace Hack Kit.  Once I got over the fast boot option hurdle It took only two attempts to get through the process, about a half hour total. I have spent more time running all command line roots on other machines so I was surprised at how quickly it went.

I went with the Android_Revolution HD ROM, it has the Sense 3.0 interface and a ton of tweaks for battery life and CPU management. So far I'm very impressed with it, I love the lock screen and the animations and the battery life has been great. The bloatware is gone and I have things almost exactly the way I want them.

I highly recommend doing this if you own an Inspire, it's not as daunting as it would appear at first glance, you just have to follow the directions and you'll get through it just fine.