Hey,
I got the Desire in India a month ago; great phone. One thing about manually upgrading/rooting/installing custom ROM's you should know is that it could void your warrantly. Either way, I would recommend you read up on it a lot before attempting it. Check out XDA Developers forum on HTC desire, especially this thread:
[TUT]Complete upgrading guide(root, unroot, flashing ROM & updates) - xda-developers. Also, I will give some steps I followed to root/upgrade my phone but there are no guarantees; proceed at your own risk.
I think your phone will be a SLCD screen with 0.83 HBOOT bootloader. First confirm these.
1. SLCD/AMOLED: Check your phone package description; if it says AMOLED screen, it's AMOLED; if not, it is SLCD. This is important as there are slightly different unlocking/rooting procedures.
2. HBOOT: Turn off your phone and turn it back on while holding down the power button. This takes you into the bootloader screen (white screen with green, orange and blue text). Check the line two where it says HBOOT 0.xx.. Mine says 0.83.001
If these are confirmed, you can follow the next steps; otherwise, let me know and I will see if I can guide you to right guides.
Now, if assuming the above is all correct, you can follow this thread to root the phone. You need to root it to install all custom ROM's and upgrade the phone and customize all aspects. The risk is that you might lose warranty and if you are not careful, might brick your phone. Please read and reread all instructions till you are sure you got it before proceeding.
0.83 SLCD rooting guide:
[ROOT] Method for HBOOT 0.83 (SLCD phones) - xda-developers
If it ever seems like the phone is stuck, wait a while before restarting it. If it is stuck in a screen longer than 15-20 minutes, you can pull the battery to restart, and then try the steps again; don't worry, your main ROM/OS will still be working fine.
When done, you will be left in the recovery mode. Now, using the optical pad, navigate to "Wipe Cache" and click the pad to do this; also do a Nandroid backup. Then "Wipe/factory reset". This will erase your settings for the system apps and other apps you have installed might get removed. But not doing this can cause problems with entering recovery mode again, which is needed to install other ROM's/upgrading. You can add your settings again once you put the correct ROM on the phone.
Installing ROM:
You need to download the appropriate ROM & Radio file; not the RUU file but zip files from the corresponding threads. Check out XDA forums again:
Desire Android Development - xda-developers
Lots of good ROMS there; I personally like Pays and Pinky's ROMs; both very stable and fast. Modaco is also a good one. Whichever you pick, download the zip and the radio file from the main post and save them to the root folder on your SD Card (important! Don't save in a subfolder).
Then reboot your phone into recovery, by following: power off -> volume down + power on -> volume down to select recover -> power button to accept it)
Once in recovery, do a factory reset/wipe again. Then select "Install from SD card", then "Choose the file to install" then pick the ROM file and select yes. It will take a while to do the installation (3-5 mins).
Once done, go back to install from SD card again and now select the Radio file and install it.
When all done, select "reboot now". It will do a few more steps of the installation within recovery and then restart the phone.
When restarting for the first time, any ROM will take a while to boot up. This is normal. Wait at least 20 minutes before power cycling the phone (by pulling the battery). If you can't get the phone to restart, don't panic. Go back into recovery and try another ROM. Hopefully, you will find one that works!
That is a long post, but I wanted to make sure you read a lot before you start playing with your phone. Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Mages
PS: I am not sure if this forum rules allows posting links from external forum; not intending to spam but only to help. if this is not ok, mods please delete the links in my post, and the OP can PM me if he needs any help
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