Android 2.3's VoIP UI Really Sucks

Having ordered a new telephone, I figured I would try out some things with my much-detested HTC Desire Android-based phone.

For starters, I tried "rooting" my phone, which apparently is to Android as "jailbreaking" is to iPhone (isn't Android supposed to be open?). This went well, and was a pre-requisite to my next adventure: upgrading to the Gingerbread.

The upgrade didn't go so well. I grabbed the Oxygen mod ROM, which promised to move my phone up to Android 2.3, as well as address the general bugginess and slowness that has plagued me since I got it. This came at the cost of the HTC Sense UI features that the handset maker tosses in, but I was never a fan of it.

After following the steps to upgrade, the phone was more or less bricked. It would hang at the crappy "oxygen" logo animation, and not boot any further. I found a way to get into developer mode (press volume down when turning it on), and did a factory reset, hoping the OS would be restored to the working 2.x version that it came with. Surprising, however, the factory reset left me with a perfectly-booting 2.3 Oxygen ROM.

After that scary moment, it became clear that Gingerbread is a real improvement over whatever version I had been running. The only serious issue I've got at this point is Google's insanely crazy-bad SIP integration.

In short, I can't make phone calls if I'm connected to WiFi. Period. Here's the way it breaks:

Step 1:

Initiate a call, either by clicking on a contact or event in history. Choose to complete the action using "Dialler".

Step 2:

The phone will spin for a moment, seeming to think really hard about something. After a bit, it will offer to complete the command using either CSipSimple, a free VoIP client, or "Dialler" as before, except now there's a little "SIP" in the icon.

Step 3:

If you choose the "SIP" Dialler, you'll get the following error.

*No Internet calling account*  
There are no Internet calling accounts on this phone.  Add one now?

You pretty much get the idea at this point that maybe the attempt to dial normally failed. Or you might think that the phone is somehow configured to always try and do SIP dialling when on WiFi. This is where you'd be wrong. The phone is set to use Internet Calling only when calling Internet Numbers.

The workaround that I finally used to be able to make calls at all was to tell the phone to ask me each time I make a call. Note: This is annoying.

I've only got a few days left with this hunk of trash phone, and I won't be missing it. When I'm actually expected to be working, I swap the SIM out with the Nokia 6300 feature phone that I've had for years. It just works.