Be Excellent To Each Other

If you root it, I think you'll have to put something else on there. That should disable the OTA updates, because if you install one of those you'll lose your root access. Once you've rooted, you can put whatever you like on your phone.
It shouldn't wipe your memory card, but neither should restoring factory settings and that wiped my card so you might want to make a backup anyway.

It's the best thing I did to my G1 and I'll root my next phone within seconds of getting it out of the box.

I like your style Joans!

I dare say I'll have more questions.. like... where do I get Android 2.2 from?

You only have to reroot after an update if you use the official HTC update.

Within hours of the HTC update being released, there was several roms available from XDA forums that people had modified to still have root access.

Why would one wish to root their Android phone, what are the benefits?

Certain functions require it (like setcpu for example), but mainly because it allows you to flash any rom to it. So you can install essentially the equivalent of custom firmware onto it.

Which often have extra features or better performance.

Also, if your phone is locked to a network, instead of having to wait for their branded (gimped) version of updates, you can just grab it as soon as the manufacturer makes it available (ie, there is no way to have a desire locked to Orange/T-mobile/3 now that has 2.2. on it.

Fucksticks.

I want a 2.2 rom but I don't know which one to go for. The phone forums are deliberately fucking useless at deciding.

I get confused by it all.

Well, I'm now rooted.

Having the same problem as above though.

Is there a plain vanilla rooted desire 2.2 I can haz?

CyanogenMod 6 is very nice, although it's not finished and it's usability may depend on which phone you've got (and what you actually want to do). A lot of the roms on XDA seem to be based off it anyway.

Cool. OK. So, for example, I have a HTC Magic (Vodafone); to fully root/pimp it, what should I do? What custom ROM should I use? It currently runs 1.6, so could I get 2.2 on it? I'm a total noob, tell me what would be optimal pimpage!

Oops, I seem to have upgraded to a Galaxy S. Off to pick it up soon.

Well bugger me if I haven't just gone and installed Pinky-Desire 0.3 giving me rooted sense-ui froyo goodness.

It's... pretty much exactly the same, innit?

*sigh*

2.2 has flash, and the iplayer through the web browser is great. ChromeToPhone support is good too (sending a link from your browser to your phone). Wifi hotspot will be useful for when I get a netbook. It's nothing hugely essential compared to 2.1.


Not sure to be honest, the process is different for different handsets. I'd delve head first into the XDA forums for your phone (here, specifically and android dev section), although a brief look seems like the magic hasn't been officially updated to anything beyond 1.6, but there are Froyo releases available for it made by someone else.

I really like this phone

Well that was easy.

http://theunlockr.com/2009/08/27/how-to ... one-click/

(I ignored all the shit at the beginning about downgrading to an earlier Orange rom)

then...

http://theunlockr.com/2009/08/27/how-to ... -htc-hero/

which I followed after grabbing a rom from...

http://www.villainrom.co.uk/wiki/index. ... _Main_Page

there's a nice bit about what rom to get. I went with Froydvillain as it's 2.2 based. Is missing a couple of bits but upgrading is easy once you do the stuff in the first link.

I appear to have a blue stuck pixel on my Desire.

Grumble grumble.

Well I've been dabbling with this new rom instead of, you know, doing any work today.

Is good. Very fast and it's nice to not have Orange logos popping up during boot up. Booting is still a tad slow though, I was hoping rooting the phone would sort that out.

Froyd doesn't have Sense UI on it but I'm not missing that anyway. Everything is certainly faster (still need to use Advanced Task Killer though to keep things moving quicker).

Market is now a lot better and Browser seems quicker than before. The bookmarks and people widgets are nowhere to be found though.

2.2's interface is better than 1.5's. Especially when it comes to adding things to the home pages.

BTW I tried Modaco's custom rom (which seems to be the most popular one) and couldn't tell it apart from 1.5, Froyd feels excitingly different so I'm glad I picked it.

That's what you get for dicking about with the software.

Whoa-oh whoa![/paramore]

Pretty sure the software wouldn't have done anything to the screen.

Well, I lost patience with t-mobile and have taken matters into my own hands.

My old contract will be left to die. I'm porting my old number out to another network and back to t-mobile. Pain in the arse, but it's better than trying to bend the will of the soulless robots on the phone.

Interesting factoid - When I rang customer services last week, I spoke to a hopelessly polite Indian woman, but when I rang cancellations this morning, I got a very laid-back Welsh chap.

Hmmm, Live Wallpapers are a tad shit.

Am using Launcher Pro instead of Sense and it's a bit good. Especially now that I've dropped the number of home screens to 5. 7 was just making me fanny about with widgets that I didn't need.

I hear that Swype is even better than SlideIT. Might give that a go.

Swype is ace.

I know what you mean about homescreens. I use two and the rest are empty. Can you drop sense without changing roms then?

I'd assume that if you installed another launcher, you could set that as default instead of Sense.

Correct. Launcher Pro is nice. ADW seems similar. I'm not missing sense at all. For all the apps you get with 1.5 Sense, there's better things on the Market.

Oh, get MarketAccess. It simulates different sims, giving you access to market items that you might not ordinarily be able to get to.

Desire HD video:
http://www.eurodroid.com/2010/08/video- ... shown-off/

Edit: As in, video of the "Desire HD"

Swype>Shapewriter>SlideIT

Bah! Swype not compatible with HTC Hero screen resolution.

This is very lovely.
Very lovely indeed.

I have a HTC Desire. It's so pretty I might not ever use it.

Relatedly, I have a G1 for sale. It's locked to T-Mobile, and it has scuffs in the corners. The screen is good though, and the battery has just been replaced.

Yours for, er, £60, and I'll even throw in a charger and a 4GB microSD card.

Woo! More Desire-ists!

Sent from my HTC Desire.

FUCKING BASTARDS.

I have to wait 30 fucking days to port my number back to t-mobile. I am *this* close to marching down to the t-mobile shop and punching Wesley square in his stupid fucking orange face.

T-Mobile face, surely?

Is that the best Android handset to get? I've decided I hate Apple too much to get an iPhone4 and I'm out of contract on my 3G so it's new toy time.

I'm not really up to date on Android phones, I want one with a hi-res screen and a fast processor and a good camera that does video and Flash support on the web and simple drag and drop to/from a PC and.....

Just the best one really

I'd probably say yes. It's easily the best phone I've ever had.

I've not used a Desire, but the Samsung Galaxy S is very nice.

Edit - now with meaningless Benchmarks.

I got myself a shiny new HTC Desire.

Currently getting everything I need off my iPhone because ain't no way I'm restoring an iTunes backup to a Google Android phone - hence lots of pics and notes and suchlike to copy off there.

Thereafter I'll get the SIM out and get going on the Desire.

Goodbye Apple, goodbye Mr Jobs, you patronising control-freak twat!

What on earth is the X axis on that graph?

"Size of bar"

HELP! I'm completely confused! Take me back to the walled Apple garden!

Well it's all up and running now and it very cleverly appears to have pretty much configured everything all by itself and/or got everything it needs off my SIM.

The screen is lovely and it's far faster and slicker than the 3G was, web pages in particular render much faster, although there are a perplexing number of things to configure.

Any decent apps/games and stuff like that to start me off? Does it have Angry Birds?

Finally, it's fucking O2 branded, I was hoping it'd be unbranded being from Manx Telecom.

How far out of date is it?

Firmware revision = 2.1-update1
Software number 1.20.207.3

2.2 is the most recent version of Android. You'll need to root to flash to that if you want to get the most recent version of Android. O2 will be releasing there branded version probably some time this year.

Angry birds has been announced for android, not sure when.

Hyper Jump and Drop7 are the pretty great.

So is my firmware revision at 2.1 not too far behind, or is it the software version at 1.2 and I'm miles behind?

Your firmware is just behind 2.2, as Lewie said, you'll get that whenever O2 get round to making their special branded copy of 2.2 (or you could root).
Not sure about the software version.

As for the graphs above, it's a quadrant benchmark, but googling just seems to show lots of pages of benchmark results, but not actually anything about what it is.

The former.

#post7444078" class="postlink">This tells you what you're missing out on at the moment.

Also, it being branded means that O2's gunk is taking up space on your phone (and can't be deleted) and possibly slowing it down a bit (Oranges branding did).

Well this is fucking brilliant, I'm trying to add the APNs for 3G web and MMS to make sure they're the right details to match my contract type, so I deleted the existing APNs, and now when I go onto the APN screen it just gives some error message about a process failing and having to force a close and goes back a screen.

Oh and now it's saying it can't find a SIM card.

Now it appears to have recovered a bit and has gone back to all the wrong settings.

Pffft.

Oh and here we are again 'Sorry! The application Settings (process com.android.settings) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.'