In Android Market if you purchased an app and it did not live up to your expectations , you can uninstall it within a few hours and get your money back.

All application’s you have purchased in your account (no matter on which phone) is shown in a separate list so it’s easy to reinstall later on if a newer version might be better.

In Apples AppStore you cannot get a refund for purchases. And there are a lot of crappy apps out there. A refund policy would dramatically lower the threshold for buying and testing new apps. Not I won’t buy anything without a good rating and some good reviews. Even so I’ve bought some crappy apps that don’t work for me and I have thus uninstalled them. But how am I supposed to remember them and reinstall them later on? I can’t find any list of bought apps anywhere that lets me reinstall on demand.

I like iOS as a UI much better and it’s more “modern” than Android, but why the crippled shop Apple?

Among them there are some jewles that I’d like to recommend.

Locale
With Locale, you create situations specifying conditions under which your phone’s settings should change. You can have situations griggered by you physical location (cell tower, wifi network or gps), battery level, calendar events, contacts calling or just plain time of day.

Locate situations

Creating a situation

Things I use it for:
- Automatically turn on WiFi when I’m at home
- Automatically turn off ring tone and turn on vibration when I’m at work
- Automatically turn off WiFi when battery level comes below 30%

Great application that delivers exactly what it’s promising.

Url: http://www.twofortyfouram.com/

ES File Explorer
Sooner or later you need a file manager that you can use to copy files or navigate your SD card. There are many good candidates to choose from, but this one habe an extra feature that makes the deal for me: built-in support for browsing windows network shares.

ES File Explorer by EStrongs Inc.

Key features:
- Manage/(un)install applications
- Manage files on phone, LAN and FTP
- Search and open files

Files on phone

Files on network share

Url: https://slideme.org/application/es-file-explorer

Disk Usage

Now where did all that space do? This is a great small utility that graphically shows you where all the real estate on your sd-card went. You can even tap a folder to zoom in and explore even further.

Disk usage

Url: http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-google-android-diskusage-jxE.aspx

Spotify

You have probably already heard about Spotify. This great application lets you listen to all of Spotifys large music calalogue on your Android phone. Requires a premium subscription.

Key features:
- Listen to any of Spotifys tracks on your mobile
- Create play lists (syncs with Desktop Client)
- Offline mode (store your favourite play lists on the SD card for easy playback
when you are not connected to WiFi)

Spotify

Url: http://www.spotify.com/en/mobile/android/

Bubble

A virtual bubble level. Now this is a cool small app. It detects your phones orientation and shows a bubble level on the appropriate side of the screen. If you put your phone flat it displays a two dimentional bubble.

Great for those “does that picture line up” moments

Linear bubble

2D bubble

Url: http://www.ktk.bz/2009/02/bubble.html

Barcode scanner

This application uses the camera to scan a bar code. When the code is recognized you can click a button to do a product search online. If it’s a movie or a book or a well known product you will most probably find a match. You can check out reviews, compare prices and even purchase the item online if you prefer.

Key features:
- Scan barcodes on CDs, books, and other products, then look up prices and reviews.
- You can also scan QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, calendar events, and more.

Scanned bar code

Online book search

Url: Android market, search for Barcode scanner

All the files you need to perform this is located in this zip file (10 MB): Tools for rooting HTC Hero.

Download and uncompress to a folder on your PC.

Prerequisits:
- Install ADB drives if neccecary (usb_drivers folder)
- Verify installation by connecting phone to PC (USB)
- Enter tools folder
- Type adb-windows shell
- You should get shell access from the phone (i.e. a $ prompt)
- Type exit to quit shell

1. Copy recovery.img to SD card

2. Flash new recovery image
- Install flashrec-1.1.2-20090909.apk
- Copy to SD card and start with a packet installer
- Run application
- First make backup of current recovery image (click backup button)
- Change path in textbox to /sdcard/recovery.img
- Click "flash recovery image" button to flash new recovery image
- If you get "Flash complete" message, reboot phone.

3. Backup current ROM
- Shutdown phone
- Power up phone by holding Home button while clicking Power. Keep
  holding down Home for a few seconds.
- Use the NANDROID BACKUP menu option to backup current rom

4. Root phone (optional)
- Boot recovery image as above (Home + Power)
- While phone is in recovery mode open cmd.exe on PC and enter tools\ folder
- Type the following commands:
    adb-windows shell
    mkdir systmp
    mount -o rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /systmp
    cat /systmp/bin/sh > /systmp/bin/su
    chmod 4755 /systmp/bin/su
    reboot

- Enjoy rooted phone

You can test if you have succeded by starting adb-windows shell again
when the phone has booted. At the $ prompt, type su followed by enter.
The prompt should now change to # indicating you are root.

5. Install Market Enabler (optional)
- You can now install MarketEnabler_3.0.4.apk to gain access to full Android Market

DISCLAIMER: I take absolutely no responsibility if you somehow manage to turn your Hero into a unusable paper weight. Messing with root access and changing phone images is somewhat risky and you can totally mess up your phone.