Now in order for it to work, you have to have a rooted phone.  This can be tricky, it took me about 5 times before mine took but unrevoked.com makes it fairly painless for most people.  Once you’ve been rooted, the app should start working for you.

Search for “overclockwidget” in the market and install it.  Once installed, add the overclockwidget widget to one of your home screens (click and hold in a blank area or press the “+” button, select “widget”).  You should now have an icon of a cpu with a number around 998 on the screen.  Click the icon.  Choose “advanced setting”.  I changed the following settings:

Min: 768000

Max: 998400

Diff Freq Screen off: Yes

Min: 245760

Max: 245000

Update interval: 60 (seconds)

Supress notification: Yes

Use your frequencies: Yes

Autostart on boot: Yes

Click “Save” to save your settings.  Basically I want the machine to run with as little processor power as possible while the screen is off.  Nothing is being rendered, just checking mail or messages and seeing if anyone is trying to call me.  245000 is as low as it will let me go so that’s as good as it gets.  I haven’t had any issues with it set this low.  While the screen is on, it runs between 768000 and 998400 to make sure it can keep up with whatever tasks I am running.  I had the setting at 512000 and 998400 but experienced delays in some apps.  Sure I lost a little in battery life by doing that, but it’s worth skipping the delay.  Mess with the settings yourself to see what combinations you come up with.

By using the above settings, I increased my battery life from ~8 hours to averaging 14 1/2 hours now.  No other changes have been made to the system.

Note:  The way I monitor my battery usage is with an app called “battery left widget”.  Add it to your phone in the same way as the OverclockWidget.  It will configure itself to give you an estimated time left on your phone.  It usually takes around 3 days to start reporting accurate readings.

I do notice that if I’m heavily into a game or I’m on the phone a lot, the battery life still drains fairly quickly but not as bad as before.  This is mainly to make sure that while the phone isn’t in use, it won’t be using up your battery just sitting there idle.

Note:  The way I monitor my battery usage is with an app called “battery left widget”.  Add it to your phone in the same way as the OverclockWidget.  It will configure itself to give you an estimated time left on your phone.

Accessing appbrain.com and choosing to install programs through my web browser is great but I still have to choose to sync up my phone with the server for it to know to download and install those apps.  If I choose 10 at a time I’ll notice that I can really only download about 2 at once before my system starts to just hang up.  I have to wait for each to finish before I can move to the next one to start.  This is where Fast Web Installer comes in.

This app allows me that if I click “install” on appbrain, the phone almost immediately starts to download and install the app without me doing anything.  You will still have to use the market to do your updates but recently I haven’t had the time to sit around and wait for all my apps that I chose to download to sync up.  Very handy indeed.  It also works well for those people who get confused by a bunch of steps.  Just click install and it’s on your phone.  Couldn’t be easier.

First, don’t play games if you don’t have a way to charge your phone.  There are apps out there that will tell you what uses the most of your battery since you last plugged it in and I can chew through more battery power in 5 minutes with a game than anything else on my phone for 3 hours.

Of course the second item will be to turn off any services you don’t use.  I love the ability to have 4G wherever I want and the speed is amazing.  I’ve seen anywhere between 3 and 5 Mbs INSIDE the office for download speed and even faster if I walk outside.  However, for most things I do, 3G is much faster on this phone than it ever was on my Palm.  Surfing the internet, checking emails and google maps are all surprisingly snappy.  I noticed yesterday a fellow employee at the office was running his 4G constantly and really didn’t use his phone.  I had been using mine on and off all morning updating apps, etc over 3G and wireless and where I was around 85% full on battery, he was at 50%…and this was at 10 A.M.

So that brings me to the point of this post.  While I haven’t found anything out there to turn on and off your GPS, Bluetooth and 4G effectively, Y5 – Battery Saver is a pretty smart little product to turn your WIFI on and off when you’re in range of an access point.  Now it won’t turn on just because there’s an access point in the area, what it does is when you access a wireless network, it saves the information about the cell tower ID in the area.  Leave the area and it turns your WIFI off, come back and it turns it on.  Now don’t think you’re going to walk over to your buddy’s house and suddenly your WIFI turns off…at least not unless he lives a good distance away.  I noticed that my WIFI turns off when I’m about a mile and a half from the house and is always on and ready when I’m pulling into the driveway.

Now while it works great, I did have an issue with it because of another app I use to keep my battery alive and my phone from feeling sluggish and that’s Advanced Task Killer.  I have it set where every time the phone goes to sleep to kill any apps not on the ignore list…I didn’t add Y5 to that list.  Other than that Y5 has been a neat little app that I feel has helped me keep my battery life at its fullest…automagically

If you don’t remember what Swype is, it was the world record setter for texting on a phone.  Just click the first letter and drag your finger around the screen to the other letters in your word and it finishes up for you.  It isn’t perfect but it’s still fun to use.

Just sign up at their site, they’ll email you a link and you go from there.  http://beta.swype.com/

Click and hold on the text field (where you would normally tap to bring up the keyboard) and you can choose to set your input to Swype.  Happy Swyping!

This app works similar to the standard market that’s provided on the phone but gives you access to basically everything out there.  Originally when searching for “Skype”, “Skype” was never once listed as a result and I had to use fring to do my Skype-ing on my phone.  Fring works great since you can call and do video chatting and such but conversations come across in single message windows so if you’re in a conference with 20 people, you have 20 messages with no way of telling who-said-what-when.  That’s off topic so…when using AppBrain to do the search, first on the list is “Skype(beta)”.  And it works great!  The only downfall of it is no video calling (I’m hoping they’ll fix this soon).

I also noticed that my qik app doesn’t work.  I got it to run the first day I got my phone but I don’t think it was working correctly.  Now every time I run it I get a “force.close” on it.  But guess what?  I did a search for qik and found another version.  It’s a different icon color from the other but it works.  I think I’ll stick with fring for video though…I don’t like running qik and having some random person viewing my feed typing “hey dude say something” across my phone’s screen.  Creepy.

A nice feature is you can post a copy of what what apps you have on your site and it keeps you updated.  Just set up an account at http://www.appbrain.com and choose “manage my apps” from the menu on your phone.  You’ll have to login and from there you can sync your installed apps.  Under the “my apps” link on the website you can view the list of what you have installed or choose to post links or embed the list on your own website.  Below is a copy of what I currently have installed. I hope to update these in future posts.

werdisturbed’s Apps on the phone

Phone: PC36100
102 total, 102 free (100%), 0 paid (0%), 138MB total size, $0 total price

• Fireworks Live Wallpaper
• Camera 360 Free
• Toss It
• WallMe Lite – Live Wallpaper
• Shake2PlayNext
• Bump
• Memory Trainer
• HOMERUN BATTLE 3D FREE
• Slimeball Speedway (Lite)
• GalaxIR
• Bistro Cook
• Pocket Empires Online
• Dial Zero v1.04
• What the Doodle!? (LITE)
• Qik Video
• Space Physics Lite
• Gmote 2.0
• Bezier – Live Wallpaper
• Finger Bowling
• Music Junk
• Smart Shortcuts
• Antennas
• Silhouette Live Wallpaper
• Aquarium Live Wallpaper
• AppBrain App Market
• WordPress
• App to QR
• Massive Awesome
• Carrr Matey
• Space Man
• ShareMyApps
• Find My Way
• fring – free video calls, IM
• Star Wars Light Saber
• SayMyName Dessert
• TuneWiki Social Media Player
• Nesoid Lite (NES emulator)
• SuperGNES Lite (SNES Emulator)
• Slacker Radio
• Softrace
• Network Discovery
• Lookout Mobile Security FREE
• Dolphin Browser HD
• ZENONIA® Free
• Car Finder AR DEMO
• OI File Manager
• Super KO Boxing 2
• Digital Wall Free Wallpaper
• Throw a Panda (FULL free!)
• Farm Frenzy Lite
• Shoot U! (LITE)
• Jewels
• Bluetooth File Transfer
• TiKL – Touch To Talk (PTT)
• ShopSavvy – Barcode Scanner
• Pandora Radio
• MySpace Mobile
• AppRemover
• Speedtest.net Speed Test
• Edwin
• Stop-Motion – Lite
• Classic Simon
• Mileage
• Tower Raiders FREE
• Winds of Steel Demo
• Blow Up (LITE)
• Key Ring Reward Cards
• Documents To Go 2.0 Main App
• TripIt – Travel Organizer
• MixZing Media Player
• Google Earth
• CallTrack
• Handcent Font Pack3
• Handcent Font Pack2
• Handcent Font Pack4
• Handcent Font Pack1
• Handcent SMS
• cloudList – grocery /todo list
• Robo Defense FREE
• doubleTwist Player
• PhoneFlicks-Netflix Android
• iheartradio
• PicSay – Photo Editor
• ConnectBot
• Advanced Task Killer
• Wikitude World Browser
• TravelCamerAR
• Layar Reality Browser
• Text-To-Speech Extended
• Translator ConveyThis
• Google Maps
• FxCamera
• Fandango Movies
• Google Goggles
• Ringdroid
• Compass
• Google Sky Map
• Shazam
• Google Voice
• Meebo IM
• Zillow Real Estate
• Facebook for Android

View this app list on AppBrain

Edwin

Gotta be my first pick for just being awesome.  It’s a little quirky at times but a total wow factor when you show it to someone.  Basically you’re greeted by a giant microphone and when you press it, it waits for you to say something.  You can ask it anything…from something simple like “where am I” or ” what’s the weather” to the difficult and amazing “translate ‘where did you put my dog, it was here just a minute ago, give it back or i will punch you in the face’ in French”.  Yes it will translate that into French…or Spanish or about 40 other languages.

SayMyName Dessert

By default this reads SMS messages on your phone but I disabled that.  I have a cheap bluetooth earpiece that I keep on almost all the time so I hardly ever look at my phone.  I tried to assign different songs to different people but there are so many people I talk to on a daily basis that it’s too much to keep up with.  That’s where this comes in.  It reads the name of the caller thru the speaker to tell you that “Jack” is calling.  That’s all it says…”Jack” and that’s all I need it to do.  If you have several Johns in your contact list, you can tell it to read the whole name.  Very useful app.

Navigator

Not to be confused with the Sprint Navigation.  I originally thought it was the same thing but it’s A) free and B) not a pile of crap.  I have a Navigon GPS in my wife’s car and we haven’t used it since I found this app.  As you type it searches for locations nearby and searches thru your contact list.  The 2 big sellers for me is that it’s just a matter of hitting “Layers” in the menu to place all the information you need on the screen or having the ability to see the Google Street View of the destination or a turn by turn in GSV.  I have gotten so frustrated in the past with my other GPS due to not knowing really where my “destination on the left” really is…is it right here on the left or 100 feet ahead on the left?  Now it shows me exactly what I should see.

Google Sky Maps

This is a required thing.  Pulls up a map of the night time sky and where you point your phone is what you see along with all the details of what’s there.  Planets, stars, constellations, everything.  If you ever walk outside at night, you need this.

Google Goggles

Take a picture of something and it searches for whatever it is and finds related items.  Shoot a logo and usually the company’s home page is first on the list.  Shoot text and it will search for that text and even translate the text from one language to another.  Landmarks, art, books, DVDs, etc is all supported.  Animals, furniture and apparel are not…so if you don’t know what an elephant is, you’re out of luck.  Unless it’s in a work of art.

Bump

Fist bumping at its finest.  Pass contact info, photos and apps to other users of the service.  Start it up on both phones, choose what to send (if not your contact info) and bump fists (with the phones in your hands) and you’re done.  There is an iPhone Bump app as well.

Fring

Until they get Qik working on the EVO to stream video, this is what I’ve been using to communicate thru Skype and do video conferencing.  It’s quirky at times but it’s the best at what it does.  Another cool thing to show friends.

Lookout

A free service thru myLookout.com that allows you to run antivirus, back up your pictures/contacts/calls.  The best is a locate feature on their site that lets you either find the phone by GPS location or making it “scream” until the phone is turned off.  My wife’s phone needs this feature for when she can’t remember where she placed her phone.  She looses it about 3-5 times a day.

Advanced Task Killer

You’d be surprised at the crap that starts up on this phone by default and what one app will start up with it.  Edwin pulls up everything under the sun to make it function properly and of course doesn’t shut it down when it’s through.  ATK runs in the background and when run, brings up a list of running apps with check boxes next to them.  Just check the boxes you want and then “kill selected apps” and you’re done.  It’s smart enough to save your previous picks so you can just click to run and hit the kill switch and you’re out.  By default it kills itself but I turned that off so I can just pull it down from the status bar quickly and kill off whatever I don’t need.

Well that’s it for now.  I have a lot more cool apps here I’m testing but figure that’s enough for now.  Check back for more.

There’s only been one or 2 instances where I thought “well the Palm did that better” but it’s more of what I’m used to than what other people might think.

As everyone has complained about, yes it does chew thru the battery but each user’s experience will vary.  Even if I plug mine in to charge every time I’m at my desk, I’m usually at 15% by 4pm while someone else up here doesn’t charge theirs and is running around 50% at the same time.

I’m a tweak monster right now so I’m constantly pushing the thing to see what all it will do.  Downloading and installing every app if it looks interesting and deciding to keep or uninstall as I go.

As I said, I’ve switch from the Pre and if you have one and are wondering if you should switch, I have to wonder why the hell you wouldn’t?

I found a great place http://htcevoapps.com/ that’s been updating nearly daily with cool little apps to tweak your EVO…or Android phone in general.  It’s a good place to start in order for you to get a good idea of what the phone and OS have to offer.

After playing around some more, programs like Word and Excel loaded in about a second while other programs that normally took 15 or more seconds were loading in 3 to 5 seconds.

Moving files from the old drive to the new one even feels faster.  Moving from a mechanical drive to a mechanical drive sometimes seems to take forever, especially if the drive is on the full side.  With this SSD drive, it doesn’t matter how full it is, it always runs at the same speed and the write speed is faster than the mechanical drive’s speed.  So the move is so much faster.

That had to be one of the most effective upgrades I’ve seen in a long time because really, the main bottleneck on almost all machines has been the disk drive.  Now with these things out there, you’re looking at the speed of old ramdrives being used as your desktop hard drive.

I picked mine up at newegg.com for about $140.  I suggest you get one as well for your machine to use as your boot disk and keep your old drive to store large files you don’t access very often (movies, pictures, etc).

Now let me go back to one other thing…it’s comfortable!  Being so small and light is of course a major plus but it’s only one part of it.  The fact that is has the angled lens lets your hand sit comfortably without the annoying strain on your wrist.  Those 3 factors – small, light and the comfortable position of the wrist – made filming during labor and the hours after tolerable.  No doubt I wouldn’t be able to do it with any other camera without a tripod.