More of a note to myself than anything else. If choosing to encrypt your phone use caution.

I’ve got a Nexus S I don’t use very often, can’t give up the swipe UI on my N9 even though it’s showing it’s age, but it can run Jelly Bean and makes a good backup. So I try a few things on it every now and then and over the christmas holiday I decided to enable device encryption. On the plus side everything felt the same speed, battery life, UI response, access from the PC all good… but not when launching the camera.

Pictures are stored on the sdcard but it’s not removeable, the internal storage is partitioned so a SD Card device is present. I could connect via USB and move files but when lauching the camera I’d only get a ‘cannot access SDCard’ message. I wasn’t using the stock ROM so if that was a limitation I’m not sure. I knew when enabling the only way to get rid of it was to wipe the device, so I was prepared. What I didn’t expect was a simple wipe in Clockworkmod wouldn’t do the trick. It wiped the device but also noted ‘cannot access /sdcard’. My first thought was I bricked it but some searching suggested options. For me fixing would be use adb from the Android SDK, mount the sdcard device with ‘parted’ and reformat the partiton. Easy enough and the excellent references on sites like stackexchange make following along pretty easy. I might try it again but should remember be prepared to wipe, may need to use adb, and always make a backup.

Around this time last year I was happily using my G1 Dev Phone on AT&T, even though it was meant for T-Mobile, until the keyboard went bad. Not every key but a few, P, backspace and the back arrow. My replacement was the HTC Aria. An excellent phone, hackable, and served me well…. until the last week or two. Which was not expected. The touch sensor on the screen is messed up, keyboard recalibrating didn’t help and neither did switching ROM’s. No phone insurance and only a year into my contract getting a replacement from AT&T didn’t look that appealing. Time to go unlocked again!!

I enjoyed the physical keyboard of my G1 Dev Phone very much and was hoping to get something like that again. AT&T has a wide selection but not what I’m looking for, mainly because the hit on price if not committing to a longer contract. Going the unlocked route opens up options, but the latest and greatest will be even more pricey. I’d have to settle on something that’s 6 months or older. It didn’t take long to find the HTC Desire Z, it looked ideal. 3G or 4G data is not important but knowing was a version for AT&T’s GSM spectrum was a plus. Of course prices though were more than I wanted to pay so it was off the list.

Enter the Nexus One. I had almost forgotten about it until checking Newegg’s list of unlocked phones. No physical keyboard but that was more of a want than a need, a virtual alternative would be fine with the right package. I passed on it at the start of 2010 for a few reasons, the G1 was still working fine and the price was in laptop range. But that was a year and a half ago, a really long time in the world of mobile phones… crazy but true. With what Newegg was offering, and the need for a phone, it was a deal I couldn’t pass up.

It showed up a few days ago and came loaded with Android 2.2. A few hours after it was on I got a OTA notice for the 2.3.4 update to Gingerbread. The configuration options are less than what I’m use to with Cyanogenmod but that’s ok for now, I’ll root it later. My only hope is I can get more than a year out of this one.