Unfortunately, Canadians carrying Android phones don’t have access to paid apps on the Android Market as it is currently open for only the US and UK. This was a huge problem for me since I’m absolutely terrible with directions – I needed a GPS-software on my HTC Hero!

The current “best” GPS-app is the Copilot by ALK Technologies, and sadly I couldn’t pay and download their application. Searching on the Android Market didn’t work. Direct URL via barcode scanning didn’t work. Nothing did! Or more correctly put: there was no simple way of doing it.

In order to access paid applications with a non-US/UK Android you have to do the following:

1. Root your phone

2. Install Connectbot (only if you have an HTC Hero)

3. Install MarketEnabler

Sounds simple right? Not really. Be prepared to set aside an hour or so (it took me nearly 3 hours with lots of Googling. Hopefully this will help you shave off some time).

Are you in your comfy clothes yet? Let’s begin!

1. Root your phone

This will take up most of your time. It will take up even more time if your phone has Firmware 2.73.x.x or above, since you’ll have to downgrade your phone first. There’s currently no way to root your phone from more updated firmware.

Since the steps are a bit complicated and long, I won’t paraphrase or try to simplify/clarify the instructions that I’ve found. Instead, I’ll just link to them.

1. You’ll need to set up ADB/USB Drivers for Android  Devices so your computer can properly communicate with your phone.

2. Downgrade Your HTC Hero So It Can Be Rooted or if you have another Android-enabled device that is newer.

3. Root your HTC Hero or if you have a G1 or Mytouch.

4. Pick and install a custom (rooted) ROM for your device. For my HTC Hero, I used MoDaCo’s Custom Hero ROM. To get this to work with other devices, you’ll have to find custom (rooted) ROM’s specific to your device. Custom ROM’s also provide better stability and speed so you get the double benefit! This step is mandatory in order to root your Android.

2. Install Connectbot (only if you have an HTC Hero)

Phew. Now, the easy stuff. Remember to skip this step if you don’t have an HTC Hero, since there’s a bug in MarketEnabler which prevents it to work with HTC Hero.

1. Download Connectbot here.

2. Open Connectbot and hit ‘Local‘ when prompted for connection location.

3. Enter ‘su‘ to get Super User permissions and type ‘rm -rf /data/data/com.android.vending/cache/*‘.

4. Reboot, and move on to the last step!

3. Install MarketEnabler

Download MarketEnabler and select T-mobile to emulate your location to the US. Open up ‘Market’ and enjoy!

- Peter Kao

Just an update on my operating system problem, I had installed Ubuntu over Vista since I was fed up with it self-destructing (who knows when it will do it again).

Ubuntu is currently the most popular Linux distribution out there and I had always loved it. After spending countless hours (2 days straight FYI) configuring and setting up the system to get it to feel and work exactly the way I want, the system was waiting for a priority upgrade. So, this is when I was reminded why I had quit Ubuntu before. When I upgraded my system, everything went kaput. I had to re-install EVERYTHING, but since I prefer the operating system over Windows any day, I reinstalled it again. Got everything working again, then I decided to neglect the priority upgrade and upgraded my hardware drivers. Then, kaput! AGAIN. This time my sound card went dead. This was the last draw. Ironically, I installed Vista over Ubuntu and am re-doing my configurations on that.

Ubuntu is truly remarkable if you haven’t used it before. You can see an example here:

I really think that Ubuntu has a chance to go mainstream, but before that, it has to have better hardware support and a more stable upgrading process (one that doesn’t involve constant destruction to the system files), not to mention more support for 64-bit systems.

All in all,  I have wasted a lot of time on computers lately, mainly trying to get them to work the way they should. I am even starting to feel a bit annoyed with them…oh noes! My nerdy side is slowly diminishing! (the fact that I just said that proves to be on the contrary).

- Peter Kao