1
HTC Desire S Owner’s Guide – V1.02 | wnp_79
HTC Desire S Owners Guide
Since buying my first Android
phone (the excellent HTC Desire)
back in April 2010 I have been on
a mission to turn as many of my
friends towards these fantastic
phones as possible. Although I
am not a developer and couldn’t
write a line of code to save my
life, I am still considered the
“Geek” of the group and people
have listened. In that time I have
been dishing out help and advice
to all my friends when they followed my advice and went Android. It got to the
stage where I was just forwarding previously sent e-mails and referring people
to XDA thread links after searching my ‘Sent Items’ folder for the relevant
advice. So I decided to save time sifting through my sent items each time
someone bought a phone on my say-so, and I created this. I have compiled all
the e-mails into this noob-friendly guide specifically for people
new
to HTC
and Android. Please bear in mind this is not a guide aimed at long-time
Android users, developers, or custom ROM flashers, as you will have figured
all of this out by now anyway. It has evolved and grown over many months so
may repeat itself in certain areas, and I have now tweaked it for the Desire S.
DO NOT INSTALL OR USE TASK KILLERS!!!!!!
Android does
not
work like Microsoft’s Windows or Nokia’s Symbian. Apps that are
not running in the foreground are
not
using any processing power, and should
Android need the RAM, it will automatically close any background apps not being
used to free up the memory it needs to work. This will all happen automatically and
you’ll not even notice it. Android 2.3 (aka Gingerbread) comes with its own way of
force-closing any rouge apps should you need to. 3rd party Task Killers stick their
nose into all this, have to run in the foreground all the time, and as a result slow the
phone up, drain the battery, and
always
cause more problems than they solve. Don’t
worry if your free RAM is reported as being low. Free RAM is wasted RAM. One
exception to this is when you have what’s called a Memory Leak. It simply means
that RAM is not being freed up properly when an app is closed. It happens over time
when your phone has been on for a couple of weeks without a restart. I recommend
restarting the phone if it starts to get sluggish. A vast majority of the time this solves
any lag issues.
Make sure an app has plenty of prior downloads and read the reviews before
installing it, and
always
do so via the Google marketplace (unless I send it you). That
way you are protected by Google from dodgy apps. Google even have the ability to
hit a “panic button” and remotely uninstall suspect apps from everyone’s phones
should a dodgy one make it past the checks and onto the marketplace. Apps from