Android "ROMS"

[JonB]

Hi.

My HTC Desire is out of warranty within the month, so now I'm not particularly bothered about tinkering with it. Just want to know what the benefits are to flashing my phone.

Does it improve performance? Mine is unbranded with HTC sense stock software on it.

Does it mean i'll be able to have the latest Android software? HTC are dragging their heels and i'm still stuck on 2.2

How difficult is it to do?

Does it cost me a penny?

Most importantly, does it free up internal memory? I am sick to the back teeth of apps getting bigger and bigger, yet the developers not making them possible to be moved to the SD card, so have to delete apps that I don't really want to delete all the time!!!

Links and any info much appreciated.

Jon.
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[schooleydoo]

[JonB]

Thanks, very helpful.

Will I lose my apps, contact details and everything else if I do root my phone?
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[Tarmacsurfer]

[JonB]

Can I still download apps from the android marketplacelike normal?
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[Tarmacsurfer]

Yes.

Leedroid is one of the more stable ROMS, and one of the easiest to flash. Just root, install clockwork mod and flash.

Once you're more comfortable with ADB and so forth and decide if you want to S-Off the phone you can do things like play with partitions and data++, the one I'm currently running is a DesireHD rom that sees internal memory as over 1GB by using a segment of the SD card. Alternatively there's Cyanogenmod (no Sense) and MIUI, a totally different front end.
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[MattHirst]

Tarmacsurfer - i've been away from the android scene for a bit but you may know, is the new MIUI out yet? I heard they were going to release a new version that was built from the ground up and totally different to the previous one

As for internal memeory, as Tarmacsurfer stated, you can start looking at S-Off (turning off the security in the bootloader) which allows you to run custom partitions in the NAND. Alternatively you can create another partition on your SD card and run a script that fools the phone into thinking that it's the internal memory, only downside is, the phone does run slightly slower when loading apps etc (may not be that noticeable though)
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[Tarmacsurfer]

I've not paid much attention to MIUI, tried it in various iterations and find it rather too Apple and twee. I know there was a baseband 2.3.3 released recently, that's about it.

I favour the DHD roms myself, get the internal setup right and the updated Sense really does fly. Currently using a tweaked version of InsertCoin Data++, using a class 6 card and it's actually marginally quicker than a genuine stock DHD in use. Less stuttering even at standard frequencies (had some kernel panics with SetCPU and the bastardised SNQ/Coutts kernel I use).

@Jon - A class 6 or higher SD card helps for read/write speeds when running apps from the SD card (called the A2SD script, I favour DarkTremor's version although Fire rat's is also well regarded by many), Leedroid has it built in, just format the card correctly in recovery after installing ClockworkMod, it'll tell you how in the walkthroughs. You'll also see Data2SD mentioned as well, that's not as stable yet and can lead to some UI lag if it's not tweaked just so, I don't entirely recommend it yet.

When you're using Leedroid it will basically look and feel like the phone you're used to but with much more app space and faster running in some other ways. It's by far the best new user ROM as it takes next to no effort to install. Once you've got your head around that then there are loads of other choices - as you've probably gathered. It would be easy to sit here and write a couple of thousand words on the subject but everything is already dotted around the web. Have fun making the phone how you like it
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I'm immortal. Well, so far.