Update: As of mid-2011: This is no longer relevent. The Authenticator issue has been fixed. Great job Blizzard.

So, I was screwing around with my Droid Incredible today. Unfortunately, my phone decided to reset itself. No biggie, I didn't lose anything major (all my phone numbers and such are synched, etc) or so I thought.

I use Blizzard's Authenticator from the market to put extra security on my World of Warcraft account. I had done the same with the iPhone in the past as well. Never had an issue with this thing. In fact, I did a full restore on the iPhone and had forgotten to deactivate my Authenticator on my account and re-installed the app and everything still worked.

Yeah, I learned today that the Authenticator on the Android devices doesn't work the same way. You get a new serial number whether you want it or not. There's no way to change it either. So, you have to contact Blizzard to deactivate your authenticator on your account or you won't be able to log on. At all.

Fair enough.

Here's Option A of what Blizzard wants to deactivate the authenticator:

• Original Serial Key of the Classic WoW game.
• Account Info
• Answer to your secret question

I've got 2 out of 3 of those. I have 2 WoW accounts and while I found one of the keys, I can't be sure it's the right account key. Plus I recently moved. Guess what probably got trashed during the move? :| After all, who keeps original serial keys for games from 1996? :P Especially when the disk / game is completely downloadable online.

Option B? Some form of ID scanned, emailed and the long run-around.

So, word of advice, don't screw up your phone or at least, be aware that the authenticator serial number is going to change so deactivate the old serial number before you root / screw around with your phone.

Update: As of mid-2011: This is no longer relevent. The Authenticator issue has been fixed. Great job Blizzard.

This will probably be my last post on my opinion post of the HTC / Verizion Incredible and Google Android. The iOS 4 update has been released. My wife still uses her 3GS and has updated her phone. I hate Apple for waiting for so long on some of the features that made it into the iOS 4 update. Nevermind that I wouldn't have enjoyed it on my 3G phone since Apple made the decision not to enable all the features. I still don't regret getting the Incredible. I enjoy the screen. I enjoy messing around with my phone. The issues I have with the phone aren't related to the hardware of the phone.

The android market is a mess. That's the only major complaint I have with this thing. While Apple's walled garden is closed and such, it's definitely organized and there's a common theme in the pricing of game apps (99 cents). Android market, the prices are all over the place and there's a gazillion apps that look like it was developed by someone for learning purposes and they decided to throw it up onto the market as a free download. There's only so many "todo" apps that we need on the market and all of them follow very strange UI interface / rules. As a parent, I'm finding it harder to find games that the kids will enjoy. I do miss handing over my phone to let them giggle / laugh over the new version of PocketGod. I'm finding that app developers are lazier on the Android OS. Case in point, compare the iPhone facebook application with the Android facebook application (which, is made by the same company btw) and you will see that a little more polish went into the iPhone development.

The other complaint I have is that there is a considerable lag time getting the Froyo update. I now understand why a lot of people opted to get Nexus One even tho I considered it flawed due to a weird screen issue. However, getting a non-google phone means you're stuck waiting for a carrier update whenever they feel like rolling it out. I've been avoiding rooting the phone myself.

So, the HTC / Verizon DROID Incredible does not come with Amazon MP3 and the Amazon application from the Android Market doesn't allow MP3 purchases. Not sure why the Incredible didn't automatically come with it, but I kept hearing rumors of other people being able to install it except the phone had to be rooted. Well, today I was able to install it without needing it rooted.

Well, I finally figured it out. Not sure how legal / illegal or whatever it is to install, so I won't link directly to anything. I don't have my USB cable handy with me at work, so... I used dropbox to install this.

1. Do a search on google for "amazon mp3 .apk"
2. I dropped the .apk file in my dropbox on the desktop.
3. Opened up my dropbox on the HTC incredible (yes, it's available for free in the market)
4. Downloaded the .apk to my phone and it prompted to install.
5. Amazon Mp3 is now available on the HTC Incredible.

Voila. Done. Why this app is not freely available in the Android Market makes no sense to me.