Nexus One

How To: Install a Better Keyboard on your Nexus One

The Android software keyboard which ships with the Nexus One is very capable, but its international character support only covers the world’s more widely spoken languages and comes with fairly limited options for customisation. I’ve been on the lookout for a keyboard which supports Czech characters for a while now and tried out several solutions from the Android Market, none of which really impressed me enough to use as my default keyboard. I was pleasantly surprised however when I came across an XDA modified version of HTC’s Touch Input keyboard which turns out not only to support a much wider range of languages, but also allows greater degree of customisation than the stock Android keyboard which ships with the phone, something I didn’t realise I was missing out on until I tried it out.

After using Touch Input for a couple of weeks I’m impressed enough that even if I didn’t need Czech character support I’d still keep it as my default keyboard. Text prediction and word completion is very nicely implemented, and an extended settings menu offers an almost bewildering array of customisation options as well as a user dictionary and 3 different keyboard layouts. In addition to the Android keyboard’s language support, Touch Input also supports Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finish, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish and Turkish. 

To install Touch Input, download the zip file and follow these steps: (Or install using adb if you’re familiar with that method)

• Unzip the downloaded file and copy HTC_IME.apk to your SD card. 
• If you don’t have it already, install the apkInstaller app from the Android Market.
• Open up the apkInstaller, find the HTC_IME.apk which you copied over to your SD card and install it.
• Go to Settings > Language & keyboard and select ‘Touch Input’ to enable.
• Open your keyboard (the stock Android Keyboard will appear). Press the ?123 key and select Input Method and then Touch Input from the popup dialogue.
• Press the back key and then open the keyboard again and you should now see the HTC Touch Input keyboard.
• Enjoy.

How To: Install the HTC Sense Interface on a Nexus One

HTC recently launched their new Desire handset, which turns out to be almost identical to the Nexus One in terms of hardware features. Software-wise it differs from the Nexus One in that it runs HTC’s Sense interface which the company have put a lot of work into, in an effort to create a defining HTC user experience for their phones.

The Sense interface may not be to everyone’s taste, but thanks to Android being what it is Nexus One users can now try Sense out for themselves. Paul over at has released an alfa version of the HTC Desire ROM which also includes Flash 10.1 for Android as well as lots of HTC Sense widgets.

Here’s Sense running on a Nexus One. There’s a few bugs as expected from an alfa release so you wouldn’t want to use this as your main ROM, but you may want to give Sense a try to see what it’s like. If you’ve followed our guide to rooting your phone then you can simply install as follows:

• Download the latest and copy it to over to the SD card on the phone.
• Boot your phone into fastboot mode (power on whilst pressing the trackball)
• select BOOTLOADER –> RECOVERY. You will be rebooted into custom RA recovery mode and allow you to do a Nandroid backup via Backup/Restore.
• Once backed-up perform a factory wipe and then select ‘Flash zip from sdcard’ to flash your Nexus One with the latest alpha version of HTC Desire ROM.
• Reboot and enjoy.

How to: Rooting your Nexus One - a definitive guide to what’s involved

So what is rooting anyway? Rooting means gaining access to your phone as the root user. Just like on Linux or Unix the root user is the superuser, or administrator on Windows and has unrestricted access to the system files to install new software etc. Logging in as root is not in itself dangerous, but often comes with the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ warning because the root user has  permission to overwrite and delete system files.

Why should I care? Rooting a phone allows you to install modified versions of Android which can have new features and software configurations not available in the official branch. You might for example want to install Flash on the Nexus One before it becomes available via an official update, or enable full memory usage to speed up performance. With root user access you have full control over all your system files just as you would on a desktop computer. With root access, custom ROMs (read-only system software packages) can be flashed (witten via USB) onto your phone, meaning that you can run modified versions of Android.

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How To’s: manually install the latest Nexus One software update

Google have announced a software update for the Nexus One which they will be gradually pushing out to all handsets via an over-the-air update during the course of this week. Nexus One users will receive a message on their phone’s notification bar which will download and install the new software.

If you’re really impatient and don’t want to wait for the notification to appear, it is possible to jump the queue and manually install the update yourself. The official update is available as a zip file - thanks to Android Forums who discovered this link. It’s the same file that will be downloaded and installed by the automatic notification and update system.

• Download the , rename the file to update.zip (or just update if you’re running Windows) and copy it to the phone’s SD Card.
• Reboot into the bootloader (Turn the phone off. Hold down the trackball and press the power button to boot into a white screen with skating Android robots. Select bootloader from the on-screen prompt).
• Select Recovery. The phone will reboot, giving a picture of an Android robot and an exclamation mark inside a triangle.
• Hold down the power button and then press the volume-up button.
• Use the trackball to choose the ”Apply sdcard:update.zip” option and let the install run its course.

We’d only recommend this route for users who are comfortable using the bootloader on their phone by the way. If you’re not familiar with this level of access to the Nexus One internals we’d recommend waiting until you receive the update via the notification system from Google. And be sure to let us know what you think of the new features.

How To: Force the Nexus One to connect to T-Mobile via 3G only

We still haven’t heard any information from T-Mobile regarding a fix for the apparent issues the Nexus One is having maintaining a connection with their 3G network in the US.

In the meantime Android Central is suggesting a workaround which forces the phone to connect via 3G only in order to stop it from switching back to EDGE. The steps are simple but require that the phone be put into test mode, which sounds a bit worrying but is completely safe.