Help Sprint store "fixed" my phone, upgraded, and starting all over!

[jperiod]

I'm so lost! I was happily living in oblivion running 1.5 for a year and a half until the last PRL update had my phone stuck in roaming. Sprint "fixed" it for me by updating to 2.1 but I'm having issues and hope someone can help.

1. Where are my photos and all my old texts? Are they hidden somewhere that I need to enable? When I dropped off the phone, they made it sound like stuff would be on my gmail account (which I really don't use, just have it for the sake of having one). My contacts are loaded on the phone. I downloaded estrongs file manager and tried looking around, but I can't figure out where they are.

2. Keyboarding is terrible. I did the calibration thing, but it's still hitting other letters and such. What else can I do? Shouldn't it work as before, despite 2.1?

3. I had to download my free apps again, including Pandora. I had resisted any "updating" of my apps before because I didn't want them to mess with a good thing. Well, the new pandora sucks. Less skips, bigger ads, commercials, and it stops running after every other song. Any way I can download and older version of Pandora?

4. I don't have a new task killer yet and my battery life sucks, despite trying to let the hero manage itself. I know there are certain games that leave themselves running and don't have a "quit" feature on them. There are also a million startup apps pre-loaded with 2.1 that I don't use. Any of this slowing things down and eating my battery? What is the latest suggestion as far as task killers, battery life, speed, etc?

TIA!!

 

[LBPHeretic]

Moving thread to trouble shooting section. I will attempt to answer your questions.

Your pictures should be on your microSD card and they should be visible in the photo gallery app. Your text messages are most likely lost since updating to Android 2.1 wipes your handset completely except for the aforementioned microSD card. I would suggest installing a different keyboard, like SwiftKey Keyboard, if you are unsatisfied with the stock HTC one. The Android 2.1 update did introduce some lag into the keyboard, but that was fixed, for the most part, in subsequent updates, which you can look for under Settings, About Phone, and then System Update. You can probably find older versions of Pandora on the Internet. Just do a search for the .apk file and you will have to manually install it with a file explorer like EStrongs File Explorer. With Android 2.1 and up, you do not need a task killer, so I recommend not using one. Let Android manage the memory if you do want to remove apps, you will need to head on over to the root section to discuss that in detail.

 

[jperiod]

thanks for your help!

I looked in the gallery and there's only a couple of my old photos there, nothing else.

I also can no longer mount it on my laptop. I checked the default settings, and regardless of what I change it to, it doesn't do anything but charge and it doesn't "ask" me when I plug it in. Thoughts?