New licensing service for Android Market apps

Posted on July 28, 2010 by ET/Osky

Yesterday Google announced a new licensing service on the Android Developers Blog.

To put it simple Google is listening to developers complaining about there applications being too easily copied and spread (finding paid apps on the major piracy networks are quite common). This is a very good thing, it’s the developers that keeps driving Android forward and of course they should be paid for their efforts when they ask for it. The new service will certainly not be unbreakable (it never is) but as long as it’s easier to pay that’s what the majority of users will do.

The problem is that it won’t be easier. Google still hasn’t enabled paid apps for a majority of the world (done country by country). For me in Sweden that means that there isn’t any easy way to pay for my apps (possible yes, easy no and the question is if the “workarounds” are much more legit than downloading the apps). Today I don’t use any paid apps since I can’t get hold of them and paying the developer at the same time.

This is simple marketing:

Android will gain popularity with more quality apps on the market
More apps will be developed if the developers gets paid
More developers will get paid when more users has access to paid apps
repeat loop until happy

Conclusion, nice one Google but remember that the original problem that lead to the common use of downloaded paid apps is still there. A problem “you” created. As long as the disease remains it won’t help that you’re treating the symptoms. Give us paid apps, not in a year, ASAP. Not until then will the problem be truly solved.

Also reported by: Swedroid

Google removing apps in our Androids

Posted on July 1, 2010 by ET/Osky

On 23 June something happened. Google decided that 2 Android apps should be removed. If it would’ve been only a

It's mine I tell you, filthy hobbits

removal from the Android Market it wouldn’t be news or weird but they didn’t stop there (actually the author had removed them from the market already). Google used what they call “Remote Application Removal Feature”, in short that means that everyone who had one of the apps installed got a notifications saying something like “This app has security issues and has been uninstalled”. Not ok Google. My phone is mine and you should not force me to remove things from it.

I understand the will to do it though. When installing an app from the Android Market it states what it has access to (in big red letters with exclamation marks) and you have to approve it before installing. Good so but knowing that most users will likely approve almost anything there is a need for additional security. As I see it there are three alternatives:

The Apple way. Let all apps go through a review process. I don’t like this, it takes time, requires resources and opens the possibility for censorship (you’ll find no iTunes competition in AppStore, no nudity and some other things Jobs decided shouldn’t be allowed). Apple also have a feature to remotely uninstall apps but to my knowledge they haven’t used it yet.

The Google way. As stated above, all apps are directly published and will only be reviewed if users complain. Then it can be removed from the Market and obviously from devices that installed it.

My way (Google are you listening carefully now?). All apps are directly published and only reviewed if users complain. It can then be removed from the market. If Google finds it necessary to take direct actions because the app is malicious in any way this is what happen: Instead of removing the app it will be stopped from running until the users act on a notification explaining in simple terms what the problem is. The user can then choose to lift the quarantine and keep on running the app or remove it. Simple “I understand the risks” or “Save me” buttons. The only thing that remains unsolved is if the app in question adds risks for other users. That is a hypothetical question since Android today doesn’t really have a way to harm each other if I understand correctly (I’m still not a developer so my insights in the deeper parts of Android is somewhat limited).

Problem solved. Google, Don’t be Evil right?

Read the Android Developers blog post mentioning the removal:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/exercising-our-remote-application.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/hsDu+(Android+Developers+Blog)

Finaly! FroYo OTA update

Posted on June 29, 2010 by ET/Osky

This is one good morning! I awoke, noticed my Nexus trackball was glowing and decided to check it out.

“System update available”

Now I’m finally running FroYo. Interesting is that I haven’t heard about anyone else going from EPE54B (“AT&T version”) to FroYo but right now I got FRF85B. I’ll post back when I’ve been using it a bit but I snatched some screenshots until then.

About Phone displaying my new Android version FRF85B: FroYo Homescreen

Nexus One News & Weather app/widget

Posted on June 17, 2010 by ET/Osky

So I’ve been using my N1 for quite a while now and one of the pre-installed apps I just love is the News & Weather

The available Weather & News Widgets

app/widget. It’s not that it unique in what it does, I just find myself using it more and more. The functions are straight forward:

Widget presenting either current weather and headlines from Google news or just one of the two
Selecting the weather gives you some additional info and forecast for the coming 7 days
Selecting a headline gives you a tabbed list with categories with headlines

Nothing is perfect so when the product manager showed up on the Help Forum asking for feedback for a new iteration…I jumped right in. Good can always get better right? Trying to think outside, inside, around and over a defined box is always a fun challenge so here goes…

For the weather app/widget:

Option to set background colour, and transparency from 100%-0%
Option to set both Home location and Current location
Added view in the app to show hourly forecast for the day/24h/48h instead of day by day forecast
Night icons :)
When opening the app a small animation would be cute, raindrops splashing, clouds moving etc. (possible with an option to disable, relevant for low tier devices)
Different sizes available for the widget

For the News app/widget

Option to set locale (right now I depend on the “More locale” app to be able to get Swedish news, not everyone will figure this out). Now and then I also might be interested in reading us, uk or whatever news.
Option to set background colout and transparency from 0-100%
Ability to star news in the list, which should keep them on the top, and not fall of the list (hate trying to find that article I started reading only to find out that it’s not listed any more)
Articles I have already opened should not be displayed in the widget, unless I starred it (see above), option to dis/enable this feature
Different sizes available for the widget

News app displaying the current Sport headlines

I’m especially proud of remembering two things I have been thinking about. First the locale issue. So far you can only set your Settings->Locale (to simplify it, your location) to the countries where the Nexus have been launched. That means no-no for Sweden. The news app/widget read this info to determine which news to present to me and in what language. Now that’s a limitation I don’t like. Using the app “More Locale” from the market you can work around this but most users won’t figure that out. I would also like to be able to read other news than the localized now and then so an option in the settings would be the easiest way to go. More Locale also gives me metric units in Google Maps so if this is bugging you that’s a way to fix it. Just search for More Locale in the Market and then select your country. If it’s not available just choose “Menu”->”Add Custom” and fill it in like in the picture below.

Second great idea, staring articles. Fits right into “all” other Google services from Search to GMail and would be like a perfect bookmark for me until I finished reading/telling my friends about it or such. Together with the idea about read articles not showing up in the widget feed it’s a killer feature :)

What ideas do you have, what would make it better for you? Take your chance to contribute to Android :)

Just fill in the fields with your country code and enjoy local news

Original thread in the support forum can be found here.

DoubleTwist on Android

Posted on June 9, 2010 by ET/Osky

The stock media player in Android is somewhat notorious and because of that the market is flooded with alternatives. Now another player steps in, DoubleTwist. After using it a couple of days I decided to make a little summary…

Default view

Frist impression: This app looks good! Clean interface with smooth graphics which is a whole lot better than the stock one.

Neat play view

When it comes to features it’s not much to say, it will play your music, videos and podcast and has the standard sorting of Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists. Note for all of you that has been dying to get an equalizer…keep on waiting. DoubleTwist doesn’t really bring anything new to the table and lacks some features that can be found in other players (last.fm, internet radio and so on). The two things that I miss the most though is a Widget (if I didn’t use widgets I could’ve gotten an iPhone) and decent edit/create playlist functionality. If I’m to summarize it in one sentence it would be that it does what I expect of a standard media player, but it does so looking good.

A quick update gave us the option to disable the headset controls which is good, if you’re using different audio apps for different purposes the lack of such option could make DoubleTwist start playing over your Google Listen podcast for example. Other than that the only option is “Enable automatic massstorage”. Not a lot of flexibility but on the other hand I can’t think of other options that I feel is a must have.

This is a early version of the player and that will sometimes show…many users have reported issues with it not reading the music on the device properly. Missing parts of tags, not finding all files in an album etcetera. I haven’t had any such problems, it even handles Swedish letters properly which the stock player doesn’t always do. Overall this is a neat start but future development is what will decide if this is a new Android favorite or just another player among many. I’m looking forward to see how it goes, especially when it competes with the updated stock player.

Part two, the Desktop version and the wish to give you an “Apple Experience” but with Android

DoubleTwist comes in a desktop version as well, for both Windows and Mac (Linux is not supported…so far). This player has great synchronizing abilities with loads of devices. The aim is obviously to free you from iTunes and WMP. You can sync music, pictures, movies, podcasts and even search the Android Market from inside of your media player. This is all good ideas! Unfortunately the player has a looong way to go before being an option to iTunes or even any other media player. A part from the sync abilities it’s not that good. Serious problems reading ID3 tags properly (almost half of my library was missing parts or all information and believe me, I keep those tags in pedantic order), no ability to view or edit file information, no ability to collect album art and an interface that is actually less appealing than it’s Android counterpart. Did I mention I had to install it as an admin in Win7, and run it as one each time? Otherwise it won’t sync with my Nexus1. No, my computer will continue running songbird. I can’t sync pictures, movies and podcasts (though I guess podcasts is coming up sooner rather than later). On the other hand synchronizing music is also hard when the library doesn’t perform good enough to even show all your songs.

DoubleTwist library when I search for "abra"

Exactly the same search and library but in Songbird instead

No that’s is not the final FroYo you’re running

Posted on May 26, 2010 by ET/Osky

And now it’s comfirmed.

The FroYo (Android 2.2) update for Nexus One that’s been running wild online is not a final version. There are no worries for all of you that have already done the manual update, you’ll get the OTA when it’s released. Quote below from “passion-ate” in the official Google Help Forum, also confirmed by “Ry-Guy” by his best answer selection, both are Google Employees working with the mobile team. Link at the bottom:

“Hi all,

Thanks for the responses!

Just wanted to give a heads up that the build floating around is not the official Froyo release. You will get an automatic notification when we OTA the build, no need to manually download it. You will still get the automatic notification if the official release is a newer version than the one you have, so don’t sweat…but I’d highly recommend waiting for our official release :)

We are striving hard to OTA the build to you ASAP, thanks for your patience!

Gaurav”

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=488da0ef21660d13&hl=en

Good news for everyone worrying bout some odd behaviours from the new build and new features not working exactly like expected!

Songbird almost ready to hatch

Posted on May 19, 2010 by ET/Osky

Kanyebird

A year or two back I read a short review on yet another media player, Songbird. As a hardcore Winamp user (since I got my first computer back in 1998) I wondered why I should use anything else but it had some interesting features. Open source being one, Free another but most of all: it had iPod support. I have never owned an iPod myself but my girlfriend did so…I gave it a spin. It turned out that the iPod support was somewhat experimental and I missed other functions as well. Like all players other than Winamp it lacked what in Winamp is called playlist. It could of course handle playlists but I’m used to having one that are always present, like a queue almost.

Since it didn’t really support iPods I was soon back to Winamp. It looked better, felt better/faster/more stable and it had my dear playlist so I didn’t really see a reason to change. Fast forward…

As I wrote earlier I recently got a Mac Mini. It’s great in so many ways but despite my more and more desperate attempts I still can’t find anything good with iTunes (not true, it looks quite nice). No playlist, no sync with my Android, surprisingly slow and only a “locked” watchfolders (yes it sounds totally ridiculous but it’s true, it will only watch a pre-defined folder). On top of that I couldn’t find a smooth way to duplicate/synchronize my library with my laptop, not even the new “Home share” feature can handle it properly. The alternative is to use Windows Offline files on my laptop. That actually synchronize the files, the library information (like covers) however stays…and back to the problem with no watchfolders. Now I had to manually add every new file twice! I even went so far as to let iTunes totally destroy my rigorously kept folder structure (sob) in my tries to get everything in place. Which of course didn’t help me at all except it created some duplicates and turned it into some kind of…chaos.

Birdie with guitar

Eventually I gave up, back to winamp on my laptop but…no Mac support? Huh!? Lost again. Then out of no particular reason I stumbled on Songbird again. First thing to notice: Cross-platform! (Unfortunately they have just dropped further Linux support). Download-Install. Nice new look, faster, cover download and skinable (called feathers of course) sweet features indeed. Do I have to mention that the bird graphics are some of the cutest ever seen in a desktop software? Songbird can also use addons and it turns out that I’m not the only one loving the Winamp playlist. The “Now Playing” addon is very, very close to being the same thing. Works for me! There are of course many great addons, both for mediaviews and functional like finding duplicates in your library. Now I just have to download it on the Mac Mini and see what can be done about the iTunes destroyed library. The device support has also improved since my last tryout and syncing with my Android devices works like a charm, haven’t really tried out the iPod support though.

My only negative remark is that it sometimes feel a bit slow but it’s definitely bearable. Bugs are taken care of but they do exist. I truly recommend you give it a try yourself! www.getsongbird.com

"Splashbird"

How to: Flash Galaxo ROM

Posted on April 14, 2010 by ET/Osky

Boring?

Time to change that Samsung Galaxy a bit? Time for the Galaxo how to. Just remember that unlocking your bootloader will void your warranty. The risks are very slim but they do exist and neither I or anyone else will take any responsibility for any problem that could occur. However you will always loose all your data on the phone! Any external SD card will be left untouched.

That was the disclaimer on to more fun stuff! This guide will flash (install) Galaxo by Drakaz on your phone. We will use Galaxo 1.6.2 which is built on the XEJC6 firmware. It’s not as hard as it look, I just wrote a quite extensive guide divided in many steps. My goal is that you should be able to achieve this without any pre-knowledge at all. more straight forward instructions are always published with the ROM. Note that this guide focus on how to do this on a Windows computer, it’s possible on Mac and Linux but since I don’t have any experience on that I’ll let you look for that answer somewhere else.

Phase 0: Preparations

0.1 First of all you need to follow this guide to install the correct firmware and get all the files needed.

0.2 Back-up anything you want to save from your phone and make sure your battery is charged to minimum 60%. Enable USB Debugging in Settings->Applications->Development

0.3 Make sure you have the files needed, ie. Recovery 4.6.2, Galaxo 1.6.2 and the XEJC6 firmware as linked in the Odin guide. You should still have the SDK installed and ADB up and running. Just like last time I will assume you installed the SDK in C:\Android so if you didn’t just change the paths accordingly.

Phase 1: Install the Recovery

1.1 Extract the Recovery 4.6.2 zip. You should now have 2 files, recovery.img and RECTOOLS.tar.gz

1.2 Copy the extracted “recovery.img” to “C:\android\tools\”

1.3 Change the name on “Galaxo_V1.6.2.zip” to “update.zip”

1.4 Extract the firmware zip and rename “I7500XEJC6-PDA-CL209906.tar” to “SAMSUNG.tar” (in caps!)

1.5 Connect your phone and mount your SD card, now copy “SAMSUNG.tar”, “update.zip” and “RECTOOLS.tar.gz” to the root of the card. This can be done with the ADB Push command if you prefer it but in my opinion that doesn’t exactly make it simpler

1.6 If you followed the above steps correctly you should now have “recovery.img” (from the Recovery 4.6.2 zip file) in C:\android\tools and in the root of your SD card “SAMSUNG.tar” (renamed from the firmware zip), “update.zip” (renamed Galaxo 1.6.2 zip) and “RECTOOLS.tar.gz” (from the Recovery zip)

1.7 Shut down your phone and connect it to your computer via USB

1.8 Press “windows-button + R” and type in cmd, Enter

1.9 In your cmd window type “cd c:\android\tools” and press enter

1.10 Type “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img” (without the “”) and press enter. The response should be “Waiting for device” like shown in this picture

Waiting for device...

1.11 Start your phone in fastboot mode by pressing “Call + Power/End call”

1.12 Your phone should show you a terminal-like black screen with white text that say FASTBOOT in the top. The cmd window on your computer should find your device and after a short while say “OKAY” as will your phone. If it stays on waiting for device try typing in the “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img” again but this time don’t hit enter until you’ve started your phone in fastboot. You will have something like 10-15 seconds before the phone restarts so be quick on that Enter key. If you get the same result again, go back to the Odin guide and make sure that you have ADB live and kicking.

1.13 Your phone reboots and the cmd window will go back to showing c:\android\tools and accept input. Just shut your phone down again.

Phase 2: Flash Galaxo ROM

2.1 Boot your phone in recovery mode by pressing “Volume down + Call + Power/End call”. It should now look similar to this picture (older version, picture borrowed from Drakaz)

Custom Recovery screen

2.2 Just in case you Galaxo update doesn’t work as planned or you decide to switch back, make a Nandroid back-up. Do this by selecting “Nandroid backup” with your navigation pad and pressing “OK”. This will take a while and when done return to the previous screen. Make sure it says “backup complete!” in the bottom of the screen. Now you can always return to this “clean state”.

2.3 Before we update it with Galaxo we perform a wipe, select the entry “Wipe data/factory reset” press “OK” and then confirm. get a cup of coffee while you wait and then we’ll sprint through the last part.

2.4 Time for the actual Galaxo update! Select the entry “Apply sdcard:update.zip”, confirm and start to get exited

2.5 When the update is done you only have one step left, and that is to restore Google applications. Drakaz are not allowed to put these in the ROM so instead we pull them from the firmware (this is why we have the SAMSUNG.tar file). Select “Restore G.Apps” and confirm. When it’s done select “Reboot system now” and enjoy your new Samsung Galaxy, powered by Galaxo rom.

2.6 Phone doesn’t start, stays on the blue Samsung logo? Most likely Restore G.Apps failed. This can happen, select “Mount SD(s) on PC” and on your computer look for the recovery.log. Open it in notepad, at the bottom you will find why it didn’t work. Most of the times it’s one of these 2:

File not found – Did you forget to copy SAMSUNG.tar? Did you name it properly (remember CAPS)? Did you copy it to the root and not some folder?

Checksum failed – Did you remember to perform the wipe before applying the update.zip? Do you have the correct file (I7500XEJC6-PDA-CL209906.tar renamed as SAMSUNG.tar)?

When you feel that you have checked the above, delete the SAMSUNG.tar and copy it again (don’t overwrite! Shouldn’t make a difference but I’ve seen it). Unmount the SD and start over from 2.3 performing the wipe.

Optional Phase 3: Personalize your Galaxy

Some small steps I have taken to get the most out of my phone:

The Galaxy stock keyboard is in my opinion junk. To get a mod of the Desire keyboard have a look here: http://einartysen.se/change-to-htc-keyboard-on-your-non-htc-android-device/

I got tired of the vanilla Android look and got myself a theme, there are many more out there. Just Google on Galaxo themes, note that there are a couple of different ways to install them. This is the one I use http://www.frandroid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=8640 with instruction (Google Translate does the trick if you don’t speak french).

If anything is unclear, let me know in the comments and I’ll work trough that part again!

This guide could not have been written without Drakaz hard work for the community and everyone else dedicating time to trouble shoot and explain in forums like: www.frandroid.com www.phandroid.com www.hdblog.it and last but definitely not least www.swedroid.se and their Wiki.

How to: Update Firmware on Samsung Galaxy with Odin

Posted on April 8, 2010 by ET/Osky

Tired of your Galaxy? Getting tired of Samsungs unwillingness to update your phone? Then it might be time to consider rooting it. Before you look any closer you should remember that unlocking your bootloader will void your warranty. The risks are slim but they do exist and neither I or anyone else will take any responsibility for any problem that could occur. However you will always loose all your data on the phone! The external SD card will be left untouched.

That was the disclaimer on to more fun stuff! This guide will upgrade your phone firmware and baseband to I7500XEJC6 which is a leaked official (almost) firmware from Samsung. Tool for this is Odin Multi Downloader and this guide should work fine with later versions as well. It’s not as hard as it look, I just wrote a quite extensive guide divided in many steps. My goal is that you should be able to achieve this without any pre-knowledge at all. After that you can choose to continue and install Galaxo 1.6.2 ROM and Recovery 4.6.2 by Drakaz. The recovery image contains a set of tools that can be accessed by booting the phone in recovery mode whilst the ROM is a modification of the actual phone OS that you will boot every day. Read my next post for that here. This is not very hard and you should be good to go in about an hour if the drivers doesn’t give you a very hard time. Note that this guide focus on how to do this on a Windows computer, it’s possible on Mac and Linux but since I don’t have any experience on that I’ll let you look for that answer somewhere else.

Phase 0: Preparations

0.1 Time to get your phone ready, and get the necessary files.

Download Odin Multi Downloader, Firmware and if you like Galaxo Rom and Recovery.

If you already have ADB (Android DeBugging) up and running just skip the driver steps, otherwise keep reading.

0.2 Get the Android SDK from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ then unzip it wherever you like. This guide will assume that you unzipped it to c:\android\ to keep it simple.

0.3 Download this very small zipfile and extract the file android_winusb.inf to c:\android\usb_driver\i386 (or if you use a 64-bit windows c:\android\usb_driver\amd64)

0.4 Install Samsung PC studio from the CD that came with your phone (or get it here from Samsung)

0.5 Activate USB debugging on your phone, Settings->Applications->Development->Enable USB debugging

0.6 Connect your phone to your computer, Windows will start to install your drivers but will fail on one device

0.7 Open the Device Manager. Right click on the unknown device and select “Update driver” then “Browse my computer for driver software”

0.8 Choose to search the location c:\android\usb_driver\i386 (or \amd64). Choose to install the driver even though it isn’t signed.

0.9 Time to see how it went, you should now have “ADB Interface->Samsung Galaxy Composite ADB Interface” in your Device Manager. To make it more exiting this isn’t always the case. I used to have it, but not any more. ADB still works though…to be sure Press “Win-button + R” and type in “cmd” then press “Enter”

0.10 In the terminal window that opens type (without the “”) “cd c:\android\tools” and press enter. Then use your very first ADB command by typing “adb devices”. Now you should get a reply that looks something like this:

: Device list example

0.11 If you did get I7500xxxxx, congratulations. ADB is up and running! If you didn’t we have something of a problem on our hands. Could be of several reasons but start with de-select debugging, connect to your computer and mount your SD card. Unplug and redo from step 0.XX. I also added some alternative drivers from Samsung here. Post in comments if you can’t get it to work! There are so many alternative drivers and ways to install them floating around that posting everything here would be impossible. With the first device I tried only the first driver was needed, with the second I installed the second zip as well to get it to work.

******Update******

Just found a new driver…once again. Amazing how hard it can be but several people says that this is it :) Here’s the link

******************

Phase 1: Update your Firmware with Odin Multi Downloader

1.1 Unzip both the Odin and Firmware zip files at any location

1.2 Right-click Odin.exe and choose “Run as administrator”, it’s absolutely necessary that you do it as an admin!

1.3 Start with pointing out the .ops file included in the Odin zip file. If you downloaded the I7500XEJC6 firmware above it should hold 4 different files ending with .tar. Other versions can hold only 1 and is then called a “one package” (note on that below). Point out your corresponding files to BOOT, PHONE and PDA (the CSC file included can be used, some people claimed different benefits from this I tried both without noticing any difference. However that is the localized file for the carrier. This leak is from Russia so before using it you should write down your APN settings and the menu positions to get to the change language options unless you speak Russian :) ) like showed in the picture below.

: Example of Odin set-up

(If you only got one .tar file just tick the box next to “One Package” and point that file out on the right, ignore the rest.)

1.4 Time to back-up anything you want to save from your phone, search the market for backup and you’ll find many options.

1.5 Shut down you phone and connect it to your computer via USB

1.6 Start your phone in “Download mode” by pressing and holding “Volume down + OK + Power” buttons

1.7 You phone should now say “Downloading…” and show a SD card like icon

1.8 In Odin, look at the white frame on the left, it should say “<1> Added!!!”, “<1> Detected!!!” just like the picture above

1.9 Time to hit that switch! Press Start in Odin and go have a cup of coffee while Odin does it Magic. When finished it will reboot, this could take a couple of minutes

1.10 If it got stuck on the Samsung logo, have no fear. A wipe should get you going. Shut down your phone (pull the battery if you have to) and boot in recovery mode by pressing and holding “Volume down + Answer + Hang up/Power” buttons. When you see the triangle with a ! all you have to do is press the “Menu” button. The phone will perform a Wipe and then restart. Still not working? Start over from step 1.XX – Download mode.

1.11 Perform a wipe as instructed in 1.10 and you’re all done! In Settings->About phone you should now see that Firmware version says something like Galaxy 1.6 and Baseband version says I7500XEJC6. The picture below shows that screen after Galaxo installation.

: “About phone” after update

Optional next step…Flash Recovery and Flash Galaxo Rom

Change to HTC keyboard on your non-HTC Android device

Posted on March 29, 2010 by ET/Osky

When I updated my Galaxy to Android 1.6 I lost my HTC keyboard. Luckily I’ve found the simplest solution so far, and yes it does support other languages than English. Right now my phone has HTC softkeyboard with Swedish letters but one of the best things is that it allows me to change that to English in a whim just like if it was the stock one!

So how is this done?

For starters, it’s all made possible by jonasl at xda-developers.com who extracted this from a HTC Desire ROM. I had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of this method I’m just sharing what I’ve learned. The files needed (and instructions, full feature list and more details) can be found in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5475701. I’m just gonna make it a bit clearer and not use the ADB method which in my opinion require a bit more technical knowledge.

************************************

Update 20100531, just like Albin stated in the comments this has gotten a lot easier now. Get the files at the link above, add to your sd-card and install with any app manager. Just make sure you enabled “Unknown sources” in Settings->Application. Done! Updated version works with the pre-FroYo release as well.