Brand New Fascinate & Android User

[NovaSS369]

Hello All!

I am a new Fascinate/Android user as of 2 hours ago! I finally upgraded from two years of horror with my LG Dare and this will be my first smart phone. I am a pretty tech-savvy sophomore in college and will probably use this forum a lot! First off, I am curious what you all recommend I do first with this phone, I use Facebook/Twitter a lot so I added those apps, but am curious about widgets and how to use them etc...won't be doing any gaming except maybe Poker. So please come forth and give me suggestions on what I should do with this bad boy!

Thanks,

Cody

 

[Sta11i0n]

Welcome and congrats on your new phone!

To be honest, the possibilities with the Fascinate, and Android in general, are pretty limitless. Spend some time reading around the forums here. You will find many great tips and tricks along with all sorts of modifications you can do to any extreme. For me, one of the first things I took care of with my phone was rooting it. Which gave me the ability to remove all the extra VZ software that I never intended on using, and to replace god awful Bing with Google search. This step alone has drastically improved my experience and many others will agree. Rooting is very simple these days, and instead of me giving you a full tutorial right now, you can read up on your options in the ROMS/hacks section here. One thing I will definitely warn you about now though, stay away from task killer apps and voodoo kernels if you get farther into modifications. Both have been known to cause more harm than good. Other than that, go crazy. Explore the market for all the amazing apps that are available to us. It's a very sobering concept to realize you can do pretty much whatever you want to your device. Enjoy!

 

[NovaSS369]

Yes! I was looking to possibly root this and get rid of Bing (B**** I'm Not Google) and all this stupid VZW crap. I cannot get the NFS Shift installer to remove however and its frustrating me!

 

[Sta11i0n]

That, along with Tetris, are 2 of the many bloatware apps that VZ pushes on you. The only way to remove them is by rooting your phone and physically moving or renaming the corresponding files for them.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

Welcome!

My advice:
1. Root - many threads here on how to do it, but none easier than z4root from the market
2. Clockwork Mod Recovery - follow the sticky in the ROMs/Hacks forum; this will allow you to make a backup, and flash ROMs, kernals, etc
3. Remove bloat - download an app like Root Explorer, which allows you access those otherwise unreachable apps to rename, move, or completely remove
4. ROMs and kernals - do some research on the ones that are available to decide what suites you best (I'm using JT's Super Clean ROM with the stock kernal, and get a solid two days out of the battery)
5. GPS fix - also in the ROMs/Hacks forum is a thread I posted on how to apply a fix from the newest update that hasn't been released yet, and it is producing great results!

Just some suggestions... Enjoy your awesome new phone!

 

[NovaSS369]

okay so I rooted this but I screwed up somewhere and i reset the phone to factory defaults thinking it would get rid of everything i did and it did not. the phone functions fine and everything but still has superuser on it. i went and changed the .apk.old files that i changed back to their original .apk except now there isn't the microsoft one under the data/app folder...i basically want to just start from scratch and start this from factory if anyone can help please?

 

[NovaSS369]

btw the links for those files to set it back to original are not working

 

[Sta11i0n]

You'll need to download 2 things:

1.) Odin
2.) Odin Restore file for /system

With your phone turned off, hold the volume down button on the side of it and plug it into your USB cable connected to your computer. This should bring up a large yellow triangle on the screen for download mode. From here, launch Odin. Using the PDA button in Odin, navigate to the restore file, then click Start. When it's done flashing the stock image the phone will reboot to the way it was out of the box.

Once you're back up and running the first thing I'd recommend you do is get CWM installed.
That can be downloaded HERE and installs the same way you flashed the stock image with Odin.
With that, at any time, you can boot into recovery mode (hold vol up + down + power) and choose "run update.zip" to get to CWM. From there you can wipe data, make backups, restore backups, install .zip packages, etc.

Instead of renaming files from your system/app folder, I just made a "junk" folder on my SD card that I move the .apk files I don't want into. This makes returning them, especially in a batch, as easy as copy/paste instead of hunting them all down and renaming them one at a time.

 

[NovaSS369]

awesome your the best man! i got odin part done, gonna do the CWM part now.

 

[NovaSS369]

im getting a bunch of force closes when i start it up?

 

[NovaSS369]

I need some serious help here, I went through all the steps and got to the update and this is what happens:

Finding Update package...
Opening Update package...
Verifying Update package...
E: faled to verify whole-file signature
E: signature verification failed
Installation Aborted

Is it not installed to the right spot on the memory card? I am already unrooted btw.

 

[Sta11i0n]

Do you have the update.zip file on your SD card? If not just download the one I've linked to below and copy it over. From there, when you get into CWM, you can wipe all data there and try reflashing the stock image with Odin again. That should get you cleared up.

update.zip

 

[NovaSS369]

Thanks man, I had it on the SD card and everything but it wouldn't work correcty. But.....Fixed issue, aka Best Buy replaced it fooo free

 

[Sta11i0n]

Good deal. Sometimes it's nice to just start fresh. Don't forget to make a backup this time!

 

[NovaSS369]

I'm not rooting it again, I will wait for 2.2 and the google availability to return, for now i set homepage to google and whatnot

 

[Sta11i0n]

There's a patience test for ya. I'm sure it won't be out for a few more months.

 

[NovaSS369]

im not a junkie yet being my first smartphone, ill start needing google soon enough im sure