My Day With Custom Roms, Rant, Rave, Review, Whatever...

[fr4nk1yn]

This is long so you might just wanna skip...

I've been looking for a reason to root my Evo.
With my Pre it was necessary and I put it into developer mode as soon as patches started being released.
With the Evo I didn't feel any NEED to, just looking for a reason. The Evo does everything I need it too. So I went into this with a closed mind really. With the sudden abundance of "stable" bug-free ROMs promising better performance and battery life plus having the Sprint bloat remove I chose Fresh .3 rooted and flashed.

Rooting was an issue in itself and I almost gave up mid point, adb stopped connecting to the phone then told me I didn't have permission.
Using the adb-less method I was able to get full root.
Fresh 0.3 went on easily. Once booted I noticed no extra "zippyness" to the phone. Most of the Sprint stuff was gone and I was happy. Somewhat happy.
I stopped using Sense after a few days and the HTC apps that was still there like flickr and peep annoyed me when I tried to "share" something and had to scroll through useless items.

The phone, yes I wiped, or maybe ADW specifically started "crashing".
It seemed as if Sense had tried to make a come back. Sometimes when the home button was clicked the Sense homescreen would open, pressing home again would then open ADW.
When the keyboard was open the screen would sometimes resize then snap back to normal when the keyboard was closed.
The kicker was when I was showing off the phone, guy at work uses vibrate only and he needed to see if was strong enough for him to buy one, I used the power button to put it in vibrate mode and it lost the connections. Wi-Fi and 3G. A different icon took the place of Wi-Fi and 3G. Another crash at lunch sealed it and I decided to use ROM manager to flash... Lets see what available... OK, Damage Control.
Maybe ROM manager should come with a quick start. I would'nt have read it anyway cause I was at work trying to get my phone working, Not the place to even be flashing ROMS but my "OCD" kicked in.

The afternoon was filled with flashing. After flashing Damage Control I restored the backup of Fresh ,
Then I didn't do a wipe. At this point I did notice that Damage Control was faster than the stock ROM and Fresh. I wiped after some playing.
Unfortunately DC didn't have Navigation or Google Maps (?!). Instant reflash.
I decided to just call it and restore back to Fresh for the time.

At home I decided to try EVO-NonSense. This is more like it. But... The resized, snapping back to fullsize screen still shows on occasion.
The lockscreen is transparent. This not only makes the lockscreen cluttered it shows email, sms, whatever I was on when it locks ;ack; So now I'm looking for a fix.

I've been typing this post off and on while playing with the phone for about two hours. There's a lot more to it.
When it's all said and done I'll probably flash the stock ROM. It does everything I need even if it has some bloat.

 

[2CupsWithString]

That sounds like my yesterday.

As it stands after pretty much 24 hours of bouncing around I'm stock w/the OTA update and rooted.

 

[C01E]

I figure being I use the camera alot, I'm waiting for a froyo build that has it working before I root. Or if we're lucky perhaps htc will get a build out quickly for us to install (/sarcasm)

 

[2CupsWithString]

I have to say, given that it's not even been out for a month yet, the amount of development that's gone in to these custom builds is amazing. I wonder what it'll be like come fall.

 

[biggamer3]

I have Bugless Beast, seems snappier but not really much of a difference for me from stock Rom.

Guys, when the 2.2 eventually hits i cant ever get it OTA since i rooted right?

 

[trooper54]

I have Bugless Beast, seems snappier but not really much of a difference for me from stock Rom.

Guys, when the 2.2 eventually hits i cant ever get it OTA since i rooted right?

you can wait until the ota is released as an update to a custom rom. or you can run the RUU

 

[2CupsWithString]

I have Bugless Beast, seems snappier but not really much of a difference for me from stock Rom.

Guys, when the 2.2 eventually hits i cant ever get it OTA since i rooted right?

I'm sure even days before the official update is out there will be copies of the rom on XDA, as well you can run the RUU as mentioned earlier, it's just an EXE that restores the phone to factory. You can get it here: [ROM]RUU_Supersonic_1.32.651.6 - xda-developers

 

[biggamer3]

I'm sure even days before the official update is out there will be copies of the rom on XDA, as well you can run the RUU as mentioned earlier, it's just an EXE that restores the phone to factory. You can get it here: [ROM]RUU_Supersonic_1.32.651.6 - xda-developers

thanks guys for the info

 

[sed51329]

I really with they had "Android Doctor" like the Pre had WebOS doctor. The Pre was basically brickless.

 

[clsiburt]

you can wait until the ota is released as an update to a custom rom. or you can run the RUU

Ok...so if I run the RUU, the phone is back to stock. But it is still rooted, right?

So, will a stock ROM on a rooted phone be able to recieve an OTA or will I have to download the RUU from the HTC website to get my stock update?

Is it possible to set my phone back to factory specs...including unrooting it?

 

[fr4nk1yn]

I was so frustrated trying to set up Evo-NonSense that I restored my Fresh backup.
This morning There was some hope to fixing it... but another day of frustration.
I restored Evo-NonSense and tried a bunch of different files to at least get a black background on the lockscreen with no success.

Finally I decided to flash the rooted stock ROM. More frustration there as programs don't have root access for some reason. I couldn't use Root Explorer.
I did finally figured out adb though and removed all the HTC apps that bugged me.

FriendStream, the NewsReader, PDFViwer, Stocks, built in Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, FMRadio, Footprints, HTC Mail, Navigation Panel, all the Sprint apps but TV and WifiRouter are gone.
Everything seems to be working contrary to some of the things I've read.

The menus are clean now and I'm happy

 

[2CupsWithString]

Ok...so if I run the RUU, the phone is back to stock. But it is still rooted, right?

So, will a stock ROM on a rooted phone be able to recieve an OTA or will I have to download the RUU from the HTC website to get my stock update?

Is it possible to set my phone back to factory specs...including unrooting it?

Nope, you won't have root access any longer. It will be completely stock, from recovery to ROM.

 

[clsiburt]

Nope, you won't have root access any longer. It will be completely stock, from recovery to ROM.

Kind of what I thought, but I saw something somewhere about not being able to unroot, and couldn't figure out why a stock rom wouldn't take care of the problem. Also having looked at rom manager, It pops up a warning "by rooting your phone you hasn't already voided your warranty." Again, I thought if you reload the stock rom, how would they even know?

 

[fr4nk1yn]

Just to revive this momentarily I wish I hadn't rooted, or at least flashed ROMS.
I spent 4days last week in 4G areas struggling to fix 4G. None of the "fixes" at XDA worked.


Phone had to go to Sprint today and finding instructions and files, that work, to unroot is pretty hard.

 

[jedisrus]

Just to revive this momentarily I wish I hadn't rooted, or at least flashed ROMS.
I spent 4days last week in 4G areas struggling to fix 4G. None of the "fixes" at XDA worked.


Phone had to go to Sprint today and finding instructions and files, that work, to unroot is pretty hard.

So flashing ruu as suggested didn't remove root and return you to stock?

 

[fr4nk1yn]

Yes, after I found the info it did. There was a lot more that said it needed to be downgraded or flashed with a PC36IMG.zip then flashed with an RUU...

I had also changed the splash screen and had to recreate the original as that wasn't available. Again had to track down a convertor to do the job.

It was frustration on top of an already frustrating moment. Add me running OpenSuse and having to boot back into Windows to run the utilities and RUU each try.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

There's a reason why ROM updates from manufacturers take a long time to be released. Software as complicated as a full ROM needs serious, in depth testing to be reasonably reliable. Testing well beyond the means of the typical hacker community. Even something as simple as removing "bloatware" can be problematic, if there's some code elsewhere that expects it to be there.

Flashing a hacked ROM is akin to being a beta tester. That's fine, if it's what you want to do. Just don't expect any of the hacked ROMs to be thoroughly tested, or as stable as the stock one.