Everyone loves Lego right? No matter your age there is something about building things from those little blocks that fills just about everyone with joy.

For the adventurous Lego child in you there is Lego Technic. But as well as making really cool stuff from them you can now also make perhaps what is the coolest phone holder ever.

So many options to choose from, what colour and style do you want. This is the perfect excuse for you to go out and buy some of this stuff. And if the wife says anything just tell her it is for the kids. Don’t let on the real reason you are buying it. We all know she rolls her eyes enough when it comes to you and your phone.

(via YouTube)

If you have been following my posts of late you will know I have picked up one of these cute little phones. Since then I rooted it and threw on CM7. And I am happy with it. While I do not use it as much as my Desire HD I do from time to time pop my head into the XDA thread for this little phone and tonight what do I find but ICS/CM9 is being ported into it.

While it is still very much in an early Alpha this really does go to prove that there are some very talented devs out there taking care of people using phones that manufacturers and carriers could not care less about anymore now their latest and ‘greatest’ phones are released.

If you have managed to pick up one of this little phones check out the progress of CM9 on the XDA thread. Or if you are still thinking about one hit the links above and have a read up. The idea of having ICS running on this little phone blows me away personally and I cannot wait to see what happens. Expect a follow up report once I feel that the ROM is able to be thrown onto the phone and used.

(via XDA)

Every time I have got a new phone, or flashed a Rom one of the first apps I put on is HeyWire by MediaFriends Inc. Simply it is an app that allows you to send texts, Tweets and Facebook Chat using only a data connection and at no charge.

The way it works  is simple. Once you install it gives you a US mobile phone number that you then give out to whom ever you wish. They text the number and it arrives inside the app. You can reply, send picture messages all for free, as long as you have an active data connection mobile data or wi-fi.

This is what the Market entry says:

HEYWIRE SOCIAL MESSAGING HUB!
Free Texting (Real SMS), Twitter & Facebook Chat

Free Texting (Real SMS) & Picture Messaging in the USA and to 45 Countries from a real U.S. phone number, Worldwide Smartphone Messenger, Twitter, Facebook Chat + More…

Text, Tweet & Chat like Crazy – One Simple App!

HEYWIRE SOCIAL MESSAGING HUB!

FREE TEXTING (REAL SMS) & PICTURE MESSAGING
★ Send Text and Pics to all mobile phones in USA, Canada & Mainland China
and most any mobile phone in Mexico, South/Central America & Caribbean
★ Real U.S. Phone Number included
★ Use it to reach friends with ANY SMS-capable phones
★ Friends don’t need the HeyWire App to reply
★ Perfect travel companion to avoid costly texting
★ Voice-to-Text Message Creation if your Android device supports it
★ Fastest & most reliable Picture & Text Messaging

Some of the other features include Group Messaging and SmartSMS Auto Response. Plus it is cross platform supporting Android and iPhone/iPad.

It also claims to support a vast amount of countries:

Send real text and picture messages to friends on any phone in these countries:
United States, Canada, Mainland China, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, St. Lucia, Sint Maarten, Northern Mariana Islands, Monserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Grenada, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, United States Virgin Islands (USVI), British Virgin Islands (BVI), Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Barbados, The Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Uruguay, Suriname, Paraguay, Ecuador, Guyana, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Venezuela, Colombia

So the big question is does it work as it is supposed to? The short answer is most of the time. I live in the UK, which if you look again at the above list you will notice that it is not listed and my girlfriend lives in the United States. When I first started using this it should be noted that she did not have a ‘smartphone’. All she was using was a regular ‘feature phone’. Going through the initial set-up was not totally smooth and did take a while for my activation text to come back to me. However once it arrived I started texting and all was well. She received my texts usually instantly, but sometimes it took 5 or 10 mins till it arrived. The same timing issues would crop up when she replied to me, however since she was texting a US mobile number it was if she was sending a txt to a co-worker or whoever that lived there. No extra charges were added onto either of our bills. For the first 2 months I kept checking my bill everyday expecting some charge but there never was one. It has been exactly what it promised – Free texting. You have a choice of 4 different themes to use or you can pay extra to ‘unlock’ more. The same goes for notification sound. There is a number of sounds that you can choose or you can ‘unlock’ more by buying them.

Another interesting perk once you create your HeyWire account is if you sync it to their servers you can install it on an other device and log in with your HeyWire number and password and txt away using the same number. I have it installed on 4 different phones over the last year all using the same HeyWire phone number. Plus when I finally took the step of rooting my Desire HD and flashed a custom Rom on it knew I had previously had HeyWire installed and gave me the option to just sign in with my password. In fact I have flashed many Roms and every time all I have to do is input my password once I install and I am good to carry on using it.

So what is the catch? Is there any? I mean free txting around the world  it cannot be that smooth.

The thing is it is not that smooth. As I mentioned above sometimes messages can take 10 minutes to arrive. And sometimes it can take a few hours. Their servers have gone down in the past resulting in no service for a day. When that happens you never know about it. However for me I can live with that. The loss of service has only happened 2 or 3 times over the last year and it a small price to pay. The delay to send and receive messages happens more than I would like but again I really feel like I cannot complain that much about it. I am being provided with their service which works as they say it will 95% of the time. When international texting costs so much normally the ability to have it for free is such a wonderful thing.

The only other little issues I have are there is no way no import your own notification sound or use the sounds from your phone, you have to use their sounds. Every time you send a text by default a signature is attached but turning that off is as simple as going into the settings and replacing it with a blank one. Plus for whatever reason you only get 140 characters to send a message, multiple messages sent as one is not supported.

Even with all these little problems I feel the pro’s out-weigh the cons. If you need to text internationally then I suggest you take a serious look at this. I cannot go into how well the picture messages, Facebook Chat, Twitter or SmartSMS services work, personally I have never used them and have no need to use them. I feel they are a bloated extra on an otherwise fine program.

If this sound like just what you are looking for then hit up the download link and give it a try.

HeyWire – Market Link

A few days ago I posted about the Samsung Galaxy Europa, that I happened to pick up cheap. I got it from a friend who hated it, wanted rid of it and asked me if I was interested in taking it off his hands.

I did a quick 5 minute search on Xda, saw that it could be rooted and an idea was formed. Take it off his hands, root it and mess about with the phone and then report my findings to you all. I should point out that while I was searching I did notice that the phone can be bought brand new for £39.95 with a £15 credit top-up. 

So what exactly do you get for your money, let’s break it down before we get started.

• Android 2.1/2.2 (Mine was 2.2 but a lot of the online breakdowns list it as 2.1)

• 2.8″ Captive touchscreen

• 170mb internal memory

• 1gb memory card in the box

• Full access to the Android Market

I would like to be able to tell you what is like as a phone straight out of the box, but I am afraid I can’t. I can only tell you about what it was like to root and to live with once I got CM7 onto it. I did not spend that much time with it. It came with a bit of bloatware plus a couple of game. Tetris and The Sims, both from EA, which while I would never play either of those I think think it was a pleasant addition even if it did eat up very valuable internal memory.

What I can also talk about is the default keyboard. It was awful. A 2.8″ screen is too small, plus the defult keyboard was Swype. I have never liked Swype, I have always found it too difficult to use. I know you are going to say it take a bit of time to get used to but no thank you. I will stick to my SwiftKey.

The first run through is just like any other Android phone, it is simple and easy to follow, once I was signed in with a Google Account I threw it to a side and started looking online for details to root it.  Xda is always your first post of call. And sure enough burried in the Legacy & Low Activity Devices is the Samsung Galaxy 5 I5500.

Now before I go on I must point out that if you root your phone you do so at your own risk. I am not responsible for the bricking of your phone, for your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband leaving you. Nor am I responsible for the cat deciding to throw up grass on your phone, or anything that might happen as a result of you going down this path.  Do your homework, read up as to the pro’s and con’s of rooting your phone. The internet is a vast place, everything you need to know is out there. Go over to Xda and spend time reading up on rooting. Not just in the Galaxy 5 forum but in the general Android forums and even other phone forums. As me, if you are on Google+ add me and send me a message. Put a question in the comments someone will help you, we are friendly that way.

So first things first, you have to root it. All the guides were saying use Universal AndRoot or if that did not work z4root. Neither of these worked for me, and I tried for 2 days. They might end up working for you, but they never worked for me. I ended up using SuperOneClick. Once I was rooted then it was on to putting ClockworkMod and flashing CM7.

This is where I started having problems. The guide I used to follow led me down the wrong path. It suggested a newer beta version of CWM. When I did that I ended up stuck in a soft brick. It took me another day to find this guide which allowed me to put a stock rom onto it and start the process all over again. But it did take me about 4 or 5 attempts to figure out that it was the CWM beta that was causing the problem when I flashed CM7.

So you won’t have that problem I am not going to link you to that page, instead the post has been put onto Xda with the more stable version of CWM in the links. The guide also takes you through step by step on how to put CWM and CM7 on. It is a wonderful simple easy to follow step-by-step guide.

• STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE HERE

And at the end of it all should be well and you will be looking down at this sort of image:

And there you go. You wee £40 Android phone is rooted and running CM7. You can now sit back, relax and check it out.

I should point out that the above guide is updated in another place. There was no mention of any ’1.7.2 hotfix’ on the guide that I used. That might explain a few problems I was having like being unable to take screenshots half of the time. And half the time when I did take them they were corrupt. My plan is to reflash it from scratch at some point over the next week or two.

So now I have CM7 on the phone what is it like day to day. The short answer is that it is not that bad. Yes, the screen being so small annoys me but since this is not my main phone that is ok. What I also felt, and found out was, it was a good experience doing this. Rooting my DHD was simple compared to this. This took a lot more time. More reading and more being comfortable asking people around me on Xda and on Google+ for help. And they did help me. A few people in Google+ were very, very helpful to me and I cannot thank them enough. But if the worst had of happened I had not lost that much money. And neither will you if you try this and it fails. Let be honest would you rather screw up you lovely Desire HD or Samsung Galaxy X??? Or perhaps you just want something cheap that will work so the kids will stop stealing your phone and playing Angry Birds.

Am I going to use this phone a lot, truthfully no. I have my Desire HD and I love it very much. But for what this has taught me it is the best money I have ever spent on any phone. I have tried flashing other ROM from the MAD TEAM. However every rom I tried soft bricked the phone and I had to go back to scratch: re-flash a stock rom-root-install CWM-install CM7. But again it has been fun. Frustrating yes, there has been times I have wanted to throw the phone at the wall but I feel at the end of the day it has been worth it.

So if you do pick one of these up, let us know how you got along.

You have all been keeping an eye out for this I am sure and here it is. Modern Combat 3 from Gameloft is on the Android Market for 24 hours. How long ago it was put there I am not sure but get it now while you can. I am not a big gamer on my phone but this one game I will not be passing up for myself.

I should note that the Gameloft servers seem to be very slow in downloading the extra content. I imagine it has to do with so many people taking up the offer and it is putting extra strain on them. But in saying that I have been trying to download the extra data for well over an hour now and it is still not down. It was the same when I bought 9mm a few days ago in their New Year sale. Only then did it take over 3 hours to download. Now I do not mind downloading extra content but having to wait that long before I can play the game when I only have a 15 minute window to get a refund which expired hours earlier it not very comforting to me. And it is one of the reasons I am not a big gamer on my phone. I do not want to spend £4.99 on a game only to find out I do not like it, or worse yet that it will not run on my phone.  But that is something for another time to explore in more detail.

Click on the link below to take you to the Modern Combat 3 page and while you are there check out the rest of their sale, you might something else that will tempt you while it is so cheap.

Modern Combat 3 via Market

Gameloft 2012 offer