HTC Desire GSM Bravo root, ROM and S-off

[smilodon]

There's been much chat on the forums about rooting the HTC Desire and installing custom ROM's etc. with a few requests for information on how it's done. There are many sites that discuss and explain the process but it's still a bit of a minefield with information spread all over the web. So while I wouldn't even begin to try to write yet another guide I did think it might be useful to discuss how I sorted my phone out and illustrate how simple the process has now become.

First the Desire is a really great phone. Even though in the Smart phone world it's something of an old fart, it's still available and can be picked up on a very cheap contract or for a few hundred quid you can buy it outright. It can hold it's own against most modern smart phones including the new iPhone 4, HTC Incredible etc etc.


So why root the phone? The first reason is to keep it bang up to date. The latest version of Android is Gingerbread 2.3. However before an HTC Desire can get an official update HTC have to take the new Android and adapt it to carry their fancy Sense skin. Once they have done that the individual mobile phone operator has to take the new HTC version and do their thing to it. Finally it gets pushed to your phone. This can take..... well in fact it might never happen as mobile phone operators are terrible at keeping their phones up to date. So on a contract phone you have to assume that you'll never see an update and be surprised if and when you ever do.

Reason number two, the Desire does have one glaring problem that could be a deal breaker, memory. While we can shove in a Micro SD card for music, photo's etc. the internal memory is pretty pathetic if you want to install a few games and some of the cool apps that Android now support. The Desire looks pretty poor when compared to the iPhone with it's 16 or 32 gigabyte of internal memory. The official method to resolve this is to move applications onto the SD card. However this is only available in the latest versions of Android, only works if the application developer builds it into their application and doesn't actually move the whole application across. So while it helps it's no solution.

Finally there are applications that are incredibly useful but that only work on rooted phones, or loose functionality on non rooted phones. One example is an app called SetCPU. Install this app and you can force the CPU to run slowly when the screen is off, saving some battery life. There are plenty more examples of useful apps that only work on rooted phones.

The downsides are that you're into the guts of the phones operating system and can in theory kill your phone dead if you mess the rooting process up. Also a little more care is needed when installing apps as rooted phones give access to some core system resources. A malicious app could exploit that fact. So slapping on random 'Porno Tube' apps might not be wise.

So we can root the phone and solve all these problems at a stroke. We have the latest and greatest versions of Android either with or without the HTC Sense skin. We can get oodles of space and add some cool new applications. But mainly we get 'SPACE!'

So how do we do it? We need to do three things. Flash a recovery, S-off the phone and install a custom ROM. Like most techie people the custom ROM community love their funky names that mean nothing to anyone else. So, and this is a bad analogy, we need to install a new bios (flash the recovery) repartition the hard drive (S-Off) and install a new operating system (flash a custom ROM).

The recovery flashing can be done by downloading and running Unrevoked3. It's pretty straight forward to do but there area couple of caveats. First this is the bit where if you mess up you will find yourself with no mobile phone at all. You're rewriting crucial system files so take care. Second Unrevoked also offer a method to S-off the phone called Unrevoked Forever . However at the time of this post that feature only works on the US CDMA versions of the Desire and will not work on the UK GSM version so don't use Revoked for that. Simply use Unrevoked3 to root the phone.

Once rooted nothing much has changed on the surface. We still have HTC Sense and all it's apps. In theory you could leave it at that. But the point of rooting the phone is to install ROM's. The next logical step though is to repartition the phone (S-off). However S-off seems to work best when the phone has a stock Android ROM i.e. not HTC Sense. So it might be sensible to go to step three, pick and install a new ROM and then come back to step two and S-off the phone. I had a stock Android ROM (AOSP) when I did the S-off, so cannot vouch for how successful it will be if HTC Sense is still on the phone.

We perform the S-off procedure by using the Alpahrev tool. This is a very simple process and fully automated. One thing I found was that if I used a USB hub to connect my phone to my PC the process failed. When I plugged the phone directly into a USB port on the PC it worked fine. Also remember that this is another time that if you mess it up will brick your phone. It's completely hands off and automatic but a power failure or the USB cable getting kicked out at a crucial moment will cause terminal problems.

Once the process is complete it's time to pick a ROM if you haven't done so before. That's really up to you but there are three main types to consider. First is the HTC Sense ROMs. These use the HTC Sense skin and the most well known of them is Modaco. Then there are the full stock Android ROMs with the best known being CyanogenMod. These ROMs are stock but have lots of tweaks and extra features added. Finally there are the lean mean super fast ROMS. My skinny ROM of choice is OxygenRom. There are however many different ROMs and frankly you'll be spoilt for choice. ROMs get installed by using a hidden app called Clockwork Recovery. It gets installed when you root the phone so there is nothing to add. You access it by switching on the phone with the 'vol down' button pressed. It's like going F2 into the bios on a PC. However an easier way is to download and install ROM Manager from the Android market (free and paid versions). The method is the same however with ROM Manager you can start the process from within the app and it completes automatically. ROM Manager also lets you do easy back ups of your ROMs which is important as it's simple to go back to an older version if the new one is borked (think system restore on Windows). You can backup from within the Clockwork recovery but again it's easier to use the app.

The final step, which is optional is to pick a patched hboot (partition table) from Alpharevs site. Different ROMS need different amounts of space to live in. For example the standard HTC Sense ROM needs 180 Meg to sit in while CyanogenMod only requires 130 Meg and OxygenRom a tiny 90 Meg. Depending on how much space your ROM of choice requires you can install it and then pick an appropriate sized hboot. The smaller the ROM you pick the more space you have. With Cyanogen you'll get 302 Meg for apps , with OxygenRom you'll have 337 Meg. Details are on the Apharev web site. Just remember to pick the .zip file rather than the .img file as it's much easier to use the zips.


Finally you'll have to accept that you will be factory resetting your phone and reinstalling all your existing apps. The contents of the SD card won't be touched but even so I swapped out my main SD card for a spare just to be certain I didn't loose anything .

Hope this helps a bit and gives an overview of how the process works.

[sulky_uk]

good guide mate, i did all this about 8 months ago, but i didnt like the fact that to update the phone i had to re load another rom, so i downgraded back to stock vodafone 2.2. But if i can do it anyone can, but you brako your phone it's your faulto. See i can speak Italian already.

stickied as this is a mighty handy post for a few of us




Posted on my desire using im bored in italy app