HTC Hero earphone jack problem and howto solve

Moin
Last week I had some problems with my HTC Hero Android phone. The mobile is awesome no question about that, but there is one funny “feature” which I don’t need at all and what caused me some trouble. The Hero (maybe other mobiles too) has the nice feature to switch from build-in loudspeakers to external earphones (via the jack on top) via software switch and not like other devices via hardware switch. This causes a problem when the process is not responding when you plug in the earphone. First impression is “hardware error” and you want to send back your phone to the repair center. But wait. This is a software bug (although the T-Mobile stores are not aware of that). Thanks to the Androidforum ere are two solutions for that.

1. The easy but not always working way
   1. Turn off the phone by holding down the Hangup button for some time.
   2. Plug in your earphones
   3. Turn on the phone (if you see the earphone symbol everything is fine now)
2. The not so easy but always working way
   1. Download the APKatcher App from the Market (market://search?q=pname:nEx.software.Apps.APKatcher) 
   2. Enable 3rd party apps on your mobile in order to accept apps from other locations then the market
   3. Get the toggleheadset application from google code.
   4. Send the app to your phone via email
   5. Install the app
   6. Add the toggleheadset widget to your phone desktop

After that you can toggle between your earphones and the internal loudspeaker.

Posted in Gadget, Mobile | 3 Comments »