Again, this is done with the valuable guide by theunlockr.com. Read this
How To: Load a Custom ROM on the Nexus One before continuing below.

First and most important of all, the Recovery Image. Follow II. Flash a Custom Recovery Image from theunlockr.com.

If you have not Root the phone with the previous guide, make sure the fastboot devices command is able to detect your phone.

Done!

Now instead of pressing the trackball while powering up the phone (to go into bootloader), you need to press the Volume Down while powering up your Nexus One to boot into Recovery image.

Select RECOVERY (the second in the menu) and the first thing to do is do a backup!

Select Nand Backup and press trackball to confirm.

Prepare for the new ROM.
You should have downloaded the ROM of your selection by now. I chose the MoDaCo Sense UI Nexus One ROM just because I needed the HTC Sense.
You can download the other ROMs but bear in mind that the following is for MoDaCo Sense UI Nexus One ROM although there shouldn’t be too much of difference (if any).

What we need to do is to copy the ROM downloaded as zip file to the phone’s sdcard then using the Recovery image to flash it into the phone.

The photo above is the completed steps.
1) On the recovery screen, select Toggle USB-MS to enable you to copy the zip file to the sdcard.
2) Disable the USB-MS
3) Then do a wipe, selecting data/factory reset
4) Flash zip from sdcard and select the downloaded zip which you have copied to it

Just wait for the process to complete and then reboot the phone.

You should see the following HTC Quietly Brilliant screen.

Note that if you have the Dalvik Debug Monitor, I would advise you to use it and check what is going on behind the process, as my first attempt to reboot the phone was unsuccessful, due to myself not doing a wipe on the phone first.

If you have reached here and succcessfully rebooted your phone, then congrats! It’s done.

Following are some of the screens of my Nexus One running MoDaCo’s HTC Desire ROM.

I noticed that the Wifi connection settings allowed selection of index key in this version as opposed to when I had my HTC Hero Experience.

The following home screen now looks so familar to me.

And this was the one previously on HTC Hero.

And this is after I changed the Live Wallpaper and had the Nexus One screen locked.

It’s beautiful isn’t it?

Anyway, I decided to stay with the stock ROM for a while to familiarize myself to it, hoping I could get a better comparison of it with other ROMs in the future.

So after a two weeks of having the stock ROM, I decided it’s time to move on.

The first thing to load a custom ROM, like what I had done and shown for HTC Hero, Loading a custom ROM to Android phone, is to ‘ROOT’ the phone.

All the steps are done by following the guide from http://theunlockr.com.

This post does not mean to replace the guide from theunlockr so please use the following along with theunlockr’s guide.

1) Download Superboot, there’s a few version, so check your phone version from the About menu first and download the correct one. I downloaded ERE27 without himem enabled.

2) Unzip it to C:\superboot and run those commands according to guide. Well I had the USB driver for Nexus One installed prior to this, if you have not done so, maybe this post would help.

Above is the bootloader screen which you should see when powering up the phone while holding the trackball button.

With the phone connected to USB, running the command above and getting your phone serial displayed indicate a successful connection.

The screen below will prompt you that the rooting or unlocking the bootloader will void your warranty.
So at this point you should really consider if you want to do this, or I guess you should have decided before taking this path?!

Rooting is as easy as running just three commands and once the phone restart, you should see a difference on the load screen with an additional lock (that is unlocked) image.

This rooting on Nexus One was done on my Windows computer, for a guide on Linux where drivers are needed, check out this post by Bernie.

Now, what’s next after Rooting? Your phone data has been erased (photos and files are still intact, don’t worry).
You can either restart using your phone afresh with the stock/original ROM, or load a custom ROM into it.

Since you have rooted it, might as well load a custom ROM?

The only way to do it at the moment is using the Dalvik Debug Monitor that comes with the Android SDK.

To make a screen capture of your Nexus One screen, follow the steps below (applicable for Windows system only).

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Update your Android SDK or AVD Manager if you have not done so.
Check that the USB Driver package is of revision 3 or later.

Plug in your Nexus One to your computer via the USB cable. The driver installation dialog should pop up.

Select install from a specific location.

Search for the location of the USB driver in your Android SDK installation folder.

Follow through the installation and wait for it to finish.

Android Composite ADB interface should appear in your Device Manager.

Now run the Dalvik Debug Monitor or the ddms.bat program under tools directory in your Android SDK folder.

If everything goes well, you should see a device listed in the monitor application.

NOTE : If it’s empty, you might want to restart the DDM or restart your computer.

If it’s connected successfully, all you need to capture screen is select the device listed, go to the Device menu and then select Screen Capture (Ctrls-S shortcut).

As the resolution of Nexus One is 800 x 480 pixels, it’s quite huge and the height actually overwhelmed my computer screen.

It’s that easy!
Actually not, cos I hoped it can be done with only the phone.

The screen is much larger than the Nexus One, said to be sporting a 4.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen display.
1 GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm,
1GB of ROM
Running Android 2.1 with the HTC Sense!

These Android phones just keep coming from HTC and they get better and better.

In no particular order, here goes:

Screen size and brightness

The first thing that comes to sight is the larger screen size. Boasting a 3.7″ widescreen WVGA (800×400), it is the biggest screen at the moment to come to a Android phone.
The brightness and clarity of the AMOLED screen also makes reading on the Nexus One extremely comfortable. You just doesn’t feel there will be any strain to the eye after a prolong reading.

Speed

Live Wallpaper

Noticeable running behind the homescreen is the new features that is Live Wallpaper. It’s nothing very fantastic in my opinion, but the interactivity of the screen with users’ touch brings around fun and reduces the dullness of the phone. You can code a new live wallpaper to respond to the phone’s sensors like accelerometer, touch screen and even audio.
Among the few default live wallpapers are audio visualizers the display according to the sound of audio being played.

Slimness

I used to put my phone into the pocket, but with HTC Hero it somewhat requires me to remove it from my pocket when I sit or drive. Nexus One allows me to revert to what I did before, it can just stay put in my pocket even when I drive or squat.
Depth of 11.5mm makes it just a bit thicker than a pen.

SDK – 2.1
Any newer SDK that comes in Android provides new feature and the 2.1 (that was from 2.0 platform) is one that had been look forward to by many.
Interfaces of bundles apps have been improved and Gmail app can now support multiple accounts.

Voice support or Text-to-speech

Camera

The camera is only 5 megapixels and the same as my HTC Hero.
However, the same cannot be said of its quality. I’m actually now able to be taking decently vivid photos and recording videos that doesn’t blur until you cannot recognize what you’re recording when I deliberately
shake the phone.
This is so much different as I just couldn’t stand a camera as HTC Hero’s that doesn’t qualified to be called a camera in the first place.

Scratch-proof screen

If you have not watched the making of Nexus One videos, the phone had been through very terrible stress tests and have withstand it.

Compression test and bend test is just pure awful.
Good for the consumers though, that they do not even need screen protector and additional phone cover at all due to the tests performed.

Battery

A fully charged Nexus One can last slightly longer. Although it doesn’t come with a spare, in countries that can purchase the Nexus One, you are also able purchase the spare battery.
I was hoping that the battery can last a day with typical usage of file download, mobile internet, music streaming and such. Although it wasn’t as good as expected, it’s still good considering the processor is higher and it should drain the battery quicker.

Running Applications

This is one feature that I have been waiting for a long time. Under the Settings menu -> Applications -> now appears Running Applications option, that displays the multiple running tasks and the percentage of power usage.
Prior to this you will need to download an app that list the running processes but doesn’t actually show the programs in understandable names.
This task manager is something I welcomed the most to keep my battery draining slow.

So here’s my top 10 Nexus One favourites.
What’s yours?

The Google Android team advocates flew over to share insights and inner workings of the Android platform with developers.

Read about the event on Code Android Malaysia blog.

It was one unforgettable trip, as Google gave every attendee a free Google Nexus One.
The free phone was a real surprise as it wasn’t mentioned in the agenda of the event.

There was extreme excitement and being in a group of around a hundred people unboxing the Nexus One together.

The experience of building and running Live Wallpaper example app immediately after that is so much fun.

To me, the event is a way for Google to market or publicize the Android platform and also indirectly to motivate developers to create more applications using the SDK.

I know I am more motivated to create some Android apps now, but having a idea that would attract many users of the app is more important.

What do you think? What kind of app do you think is important or useful in a mobile phone?

The app scans music covers, book covers and bar codes, then searches the internet for places where they can be found online and displayed as results.

I visited a “popular” bookstore recently and found that I could have some fun with the app scanning music covers and book covers.

Watch the video below for the Google Shopper for Android in Action on my HTC Hero.

Pardon me with the low quality video as it was recorded with another mobile phone.

The screen above is the history list of the products scanned.

Is Google just making it harder for brick-and-mortar type of business to survive? Particularly music and books businesses.

Music store and book store, you better get your repository online as well!

You know you’re in trouble when dozens of shoppers visit your shop shoving phones in front of your product covers and leaving your shop with nothing.

To download the Google Shopper for Android, scan the QR code below with your Bar Code scanner app:

It was also available from Android Market and it is quite easy to submit your application to the market.

All you need to do is go to the Android Market for publishers and go through the steps.

The one most important thing is to have your Credit Card available for the USD 25.00 Android Developer Registration Fee via Google Checkout.

Click on the pictures on enlarge.

You will also be requested to submit your personal information, in order to track the actual developer just in case your application presents issue to users. I assume apps that have security vulnerabilities, scams or phishing apps. There shouldn’t be any issues if you’re building a good-to-go app.

Once it’s done, the Publisher Home screens will list the apps you have submitted, with accompanying statistics like the number of downloads and active users.

Are you an Android developer? How do you promote your Android app on Android Market?

At the time of writing, the Android app released is now version v1.0.1.

What I did was immediately did a download, and made a first test post.
It was neat, though with some minor hiccups.

This post then, is to show the process of using Wordpress for Android v1.0.1 when I posted the first blog post from my HTC Hero.

It’s easy to download this app, just search ‘Wordpress’ from Android Market.

Usual stuff, agree to the end user license and submit your blog URL with credentials.

It will perform configuration or I suppose it’s actually saving data to your phone.

If you encounter the error of XML-RPC fault, it’s because you have not enabled it for your blog.
To enable it, go to your wordpress admin dashboard, Settings menu and go to Writing Settings. Make sure the XML-RPC checkbox is selected, and retry.

You can even add multiple wordpress accounts!

Posts and comments are then downloaded to your phone.

The long press on the screen will bring up a floating menu for options.

The screen below is a new post creation display. Functions are quite limited at the moment, but for a version 1 of the app, I think it’s very usable.

The Categories dropdown is empty though.

I had problem refreshing and data for Categories were never returned to the phone.

On your Post creation screen, the button at the bottom is a Save button. The button saves your posts as a draft to your Android device only. (It is not available on your blog’s server yet.)

When you do a long press on the posts listing screen, you can see the option to upload the draft post to your blog and also continue editing or removing it altogether.

When you’re all set and the blog post is ready to go, ensure that the Publish checkbox is selected and the post will then go LIVE on your blog.

Congratulations to the Wordpress team for creating Wordpress for Android.

It’s still possible to see the error screen which crashes the app, but I’m pretty confident they’ll get pass it.

Have you tried the app? Will you be using it often and what’s your opinion about Wordpress for Android app?

Categories doesn’t seem to work on the HTC Hero at the moment.

I’m trying to embed a photo below which is selected from the photo album. I hope future release will allow instant camera use. Would it be possible?

It might take a while to make a post with your mobile but when you’re used to it, it really does come useful when you need a quick post without a computer on hand.