ive read the android forums and have a basic knowledge of what rooting is, but id like to hear why people do it in simple terms.

is it the same as debranding, so people do it to get rid of orange sh*te etc? or a deeper wish to control every part of the phone, and is really only of any interest to techno geeks?

i only started looking cos i read i may be able to improve battery life, (my phone wouldnt last 12 hrs if i used it a lot during the day) but in general its cleverer than what i need it for, and i could enter into a world of pain if i started messing around with it for no noticeable gain.

thoughts appreciated 🙂

It serves two purposes:
1) to remove the Orange-branded (or other network as appropriate) gubbins, and allow you to put different versions of the firmware on (eg unbranded straight Google version etc)
2) following on from this to some extent, you can also sim-unlock the handset.

thanks

whats better about different versions of firmware? is it like different ‘themes’ on a pc, or deeper than that such as a different OS?

er….what does ‘sim-unlock the handset’ mean? 🙂

cheers

Just root it, install rom manager from the market and then install cyanogen mod 7. You won’t be sorry.

My Motorola is rooted but my brother is a geek here, so he does all the work.

Basically what I can tell you is that You can put a newer Android version on a rooted phone and put some custom versions from XDA develpers and the like. My Motorola currently runs on custom Android 2.2 and might be upgraded to 2.3 soon. It’s much faster compared to 2.1. I can use Milestone Overclock and Juice defender apps which speeds up my phone and improve battery life.

Pretty much everything else works as per stock rom. I can’t use the volume control when using radio and the additional quick access button for media does not work but there are patches that fix it so not a problem.

Desire is very popular so there is a lot of roms to put on it and a lot of support and tbh the one I have on my Motorola looks very professional so the custom roms are not clunky and work really well. The only risk here is that You can brick Your phone, but this is my second rooted handset and that never happened.

Just root it, install rom manager from the market and then install cyanogen mod 7. You won’t be sorry.

you make it sound so easy 🙂 reading the android forum on it baffles me!!!

The only risk here is that You can brick Your phone, but this is my second rooted handset and that never happened.

thats what im asking really, is it worth the risk of knackering my phone for a bit of speed or whatever, to a novice like me.

cheers

It is easy! Or at least installing new ROMs / OSs is after you’ve rooted it.
Getting root access may be more tricky depending on the phone. I don’t think it’s too difficult on a desire.

spose i just dont understand all the terminology, ROMs, RUUs etc, or even what they do or how they do it. thats the danger. i just like stuff to work well 🙂

Specifically with the Desire, rooting is common to get around the space limitations inherent on the handset (as you can then install a custom ROM which moves more stuff to the SD card).

My HD seems to run slower since it was upgraded to Android 2.3

I rooted my Desire mainly so I could more apps onto the SD card and so get rid of that annoying ‘low memory’ notification. Rooted mine using the Revoked method/programme which was really easy (XDA -Revoked.

Yes rooting does seem quite intimidating to start with but once you root using Revoked and install your first ROM, it’s quite easy. Just remember to follow the steps one by one.

For what it’s worth, ‘Gingervillain’ is a good Gingerbread ROM to start with, though saying that I’ve just switched to Cyanogenmod 7 as of last night (on which GV is based) and seems alright so far too.

it ‘used’ to be the case that apps couldn’t be saved onto the sd card, under android 2.1. you’ll be running 2.2, which allows apps that are written to take advantage of the install to sd, to do so.
i’m reasonably techy. i work in engineering with aspects of electronics, embedded control systems, PC real time control systems, macro languages, and the integration of all that stuff, and some process development/application stuff of what our customers actually want to do with all that junk.
frankly, the desire just does what it should IME, and i have no inclination to root it.
if you’re only getting 12 hours out of your battery either you’re absolutely caning it or you need to do the, ‘charge while on, charge while off’ thing to sort out the battery gauge. have a look around – someone posted the sequence up a while back here.

I’m tempted to root and install a custom ROM, but I’m also baffled by it…I need to do more background reading as I’m baffled due to not understanding it all…I was proper techy up until about 6 years ago and it all appears to have gone now!

The battery charge thing is this –

To also help with Battery Life you can do these steps exactly:

1) Turn your device ON and Charge the device for 8 hours or more
2) Unplug the device and Turn the phone OFF and charge for 1 hour
3) Unplug the device Turn ON wait 2 minutes and Turn OFF and charge for another hour Your battery life should almost double.

Mine didn’t double but it did stretch to a day and a half. I’ve done some changes to only connect to GSM networks (but still get HDSPA (???) connection speeds, so as it is only searching for GSM networks my battery life should last longer – will do another battery charge to see if that makes a difference again.

I do spend a lot of time surfing the web and GPS’ing – which are both heavy battery usages.

dick, i read on the forums that htc are saying this can actually knacker your battery now. think its i one of the stickies at top of a forum.

but….FWIW i did it months ago and it was a tad better for a while, but nowt spectacular.

theres a few of us all got desires at work and they all seem to be about the same battery life, need charging early evening again if we do a fair bit of surfing through the day. certainly dont cane it tho, and have syncs and gps turned off to save battery. which is a bit annoying really cos then youre not taking advantage of what the phone can do :-/

Ah, thanks. I didn’t realise it had changed.

I also don’t do the synching thing…I get almost a day and a half out it but it isn’t as good as I think it should be.

Actually since doing the gsm thing I’m getting about 2 days which is much better.

right, believe it or not, ive rooted it. if a spanner like me can do it anyone can! 🙂

but first impressions are a feeling of underwhelmedness. ive installed cyanogenmod 7 as advised and dont know my way round it, ive lost all my contacts, it wont connect to my gmail accounts to sync them and im not sure ive done the right thing :-/

looks like a day on the android forums trying to sort it. i hope ill grow to like it 🙂

My advice, if now a little too late would be if you don’t really know what you’re doing, then don’t bother.

My Desire HD works fine and is better than any phone I’ve had previously, so have no ‘desire’ to change it.

I bricked an £800 Samsung TV updating firmware and had to pay £250 for a new PCB.

The Desire HD isn’t the same as the Desire. There’s a genuine issue which can be fixed.

Whilst there’s usually some risk to any firmware changes, it’s inordinately difficult to brick an Android handset irrecoverably.

well, ive got my contacts sorted now, but i must admit i think its gonna take some effort for me to grow to like this. id mebbes try a different ROM but dont know enough about any to know what to try. the one ive got is sposed to be good, but im just not feeling the love 🙂

Just restore the back up of your original one then if you don’t like it 🙂
You did take a backup, right?

If you’re not sure of what you are doing with rom and all that stuff then it might be worth sticking with a sense rom, as it has all the fancy stuff on top an will be how you know a android phone works
First thing to do if you are going to be playing around with roms is to get some backup software personally I find MyBackup root to be a good app, this will help if everything goes pete tong again.

the thing with cyanogenmod 7 and some of the other roms is they are just plain android and don’t really have anything else added onto them, I run an oxygen rom but then i have to add Launcher pro on top so that I can get it to do what I want it.

Have a look at this thread for different roms
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=809328

Having spent some time in the land of Oz, I couldn’t help but have a school-boy snigger at the thread title 😆

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-of/root

yep, i took a back up, and ive done that now. only because i downloaded a battery percentage zip that messed things up tho.

yeah, thats what surprised me about the cyanogenmod jobbie. just seemed real basic. so do sense ones look and work better?

any links to any? i must admit, im a bit baffled by sense. dont really know what it is.

backup software. do i need it? i thought you just used that hboot backup facility to back things up. is it better to use an app on the sd card then?

cheers

The software I mentioned with that you can back up and restore individual items so you can save all you text messages and contacts and things like that if like you said you weren’t able to sync with google, I believe the backup facility you are talking about just does one backup of everything? I used to have a habit of changing roms all the time so it made things a bit easier when wiping and restoring my phone.

Sense is just a UI put on top of android so htc can make the phone look and do what they want a bit like the samsung phones with their touchwiz interface,
It does look better than just plain adroid and has a lot of items that most people want all ready installed, but then you could get the same look by finding your own software in the market whether it works any better is difficult to say some say it slows the phone down as its quite a bloaty bit of software.

that link I posted earlier will take you to a thread that has alot of different roms in it, ones that ive tried and like have been leedroid and RCmix.

there are other sites out there that have roms on them but I tend to stick to xda developers for mine.

nice one mate, ive installed that backup and hopefully my contacts and pics etc are safe and sound on the sd card now.

i might well try that leedroid rom, just to see what the difference is, but at work for the next few days now so dont think ill do it til i can commit some time to it.

as far as the sd card goes, ive read that ap2sd+ is good to have, but will format my sd card. so…..id have to back THAT up to my pc wouldnt i? is it just a case of putting it in a card reader, right clicking it in my computer, then copy and paste the whole thing to pc?
dont really understand all that partitioning and fat32 stuff. bet thats a surprise eh? 🙂

thanks

Yes you will need to back up the sd card before you format it,you should be able to use the lead that came with your phone to attach it to the pc then you can just use it as an USB mass storage device and copy everything off the SD card that way.

A2sd+ is a good idea as it allows the phone to use a portion of the sd card as internal memory, the desire came with far too little memory and initially apps couldn’t be installed to the sd card.

To format the card is fairly straight forward either download an app called rom manager or reboot into the recovery and go through the format option there, both will let you create a ext partition.

If all goes well it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to do if that, just remember to wipe the phone after you have flashed a new rom.

I followed all that right to the last sentence mate 🙂
wipe the phone after I’ve flashed a Rom? I was under the impression I wiped the phone first then flashed a Rom, no?

thanks

A good reason now is that HTC have just announced that there will be no gingerbread update for the desire! Not sure why they left us hanging on for so long.

before or after doesn’t make too much difference just so long as you wipe it before using it.

ap2sd+ cannot find it on the app market, am i going mad?

if your looking to move your installed apps to your sd card, you can do that manually by going into you application setting and managed apps then move to sd card.

Hi,

Try the Reflex ROM on XDA developers. Works really well with the main stuff you really need like Sense etc. Pretty much a stock upgrade.

You should use the 2.1.2 version. The latest one is a bit buggy.

Regards

before or after doesn’t make too much difference just so long as you wipe it before using it.

er…am i being thick? if you wipe it after installing arent you wiping what youve just put on? i thought you wiped when you wanted rid, then you instal new rom as a zip from sd card.

ap2sd+ cannot find it on the app market, am i going mad?

think you might need to get it as a link from android or xda forums, for rooted phones, rather than the app market. if youre not rooted i dont think you can use it, youd have to use ap2sd (no + sign)

if your looking to move your installed apps to your sd card, you can do that manually by going into you application setting and managed apps then move to sd card.

yes but it doesnt move as much over as the ap2sd+ rooted app apparently.

Try the Reflex ROM on XDA developers. Works really well with the main stuff you really need like Sense etc. Pretty much a stock upgrade.

You should use the 2.1.2 version. The latest one is a bit buggy.
thanks, ill try that as well as leedroid. its this sort of advice im after, cos i really dont know what i want from a rom, and whats best. ideally i want something thatll give me better battery life, but now im rooted, im told i can get ‘set cpu’ app and use that on my phone even tho im back on stock rom.
i dont mind trying loads of roms really, as long as ive got all my data and apps on the sd card, and theyll still show with each new rom. im scared of installing a new rom and finding out ive lost all the data ive been inputting into apps. and if i instal ap2sd+ i need to format and partition sd card, but thats another matter for another day 🙂

cheers