Soullighter’s

I finally decided to go with CyanogenMod as the day-to-day ROM that I will use for my Desire. I have played around with OpenDesire and a few other custom roms but CyanogenMod with its extensive guides and relative stability is my pick.

The Wiki entry for updating the Desire details the simple steps to be followed to install the ROM on your rooted phone. Do pay attention and follow the backup section of guide as it can save you the hassle of recovering any sms messages, wireless and mobile APNs and call history. I settled on CyanogenMod 6.1.1 rather than the 7.0RC as the latter seems to be missing the proxy settings for wireless connections.

Towards the screenies and highlights of the features that CyanogenMod has provided over the stock ROM.

  

 
The lock screen is just gorgeous with the option of muting your phone without actually having to unlock it first. It also shows the status if you’re charging the phone.

 

  

The status screen now shows quick settings to turn on/off wireless connections, bluetooth, brightness etc.

  

The Home screen looks elegant enough to match what HTC Sense has provided in the stock ROM.

  

View of the application list screen

  

Proxy settings FTW!

  

CyanogenMod has very customisable settings which allows you to tweak your Android phone as much as possible. I also noticed that the battery usage has been better too. Still working on the default camera as I felt its a bit a slow. Works fine in other camera applications though.

I have been hounding the Android forums for a bit before deciding I was confident and knowledgable enough to root my HTC Desire. As mentioned in the previous post, rooting an Android phone used to be quite tedious, but luckily there is one-click solutions to this now.

The method I used to root mine is through an application called Unrevoked. Using this method, I only had to download the application, plug in my phone to my computer through the USB connection and the application takes care of the process. As a general guide, using unrevoked involves the rooting process and installing a custom recovery image to allow backup and restore of the current vanilla settings so that if anything goes wrong, you can restore it to the original configuration. Unrevoked installs a recovery image called ClockworkMod Recovery.

Now to the process. I actually started to do the rooting using Windows 7. However, complications with the HMOD USB driver made me switch to Ubuntu to do it instead.

1. In Ubuntu, you would need to run unrevoked as the root user(Rooting as root -_-U).

2. Before that though, make sure to first turn on the USB Debugging mode in your phone by going to Settings>Development>USB Debugging.

3. Connect your phone to the computer using the USB cable. Make sure HTC Sync is not running.

4. unrevoked will then detect the phone being connected and proceed to root the phone and install ClockworkMod.

5. Your phone will reboot for a few times during the process. Unrevoked will inform you once the rooting has finished.

6. Verify ClockwordMod has been installed by selecting Recovery option in the HBOOT menu.On the Desire, the method to get to the HBOOT screen is to press the power button together with Volume down button. This may vary in other phone models.

7. Backup your current settings using ClockworkMod before you do anymore tinkering. NOTE: Make sure you have space on your SDCARD before doing this. Restart the phone through ClockWork after it finishes.

8. OPTIONAL STEP:IF YOUR PHONE GOT STUCK IN LOADING SCREEN AFTER BACKING UP THE SYSTEM, DO A RESTORE THROUGH CLOCKWORD MOD.

9. Verify that root settings has been unlocked by going to the App screen and seeing whether there is a new icon called Superuser Permissions.

10. Congratulations, your Android phone has now been rooted.

The next step(s) is to install custom apps or ROMs which can introduce tweaks and new features to your phone. Will write more on this in the next post.