New to Root? Unrevoked + Cyanogen = success!

[BigRick10]

I'll wait till a more stable version comes out, one with Sense as well. I'm not a big fan of Sense and HDMI capability being missing, either.

Sense isnt missing from this ROM lol. CyanogenMod will never have sense sorry.

Edit: Igotsanevo4g beat me to it haha

 

[Lord Vader]

Indeed he did.

Anyway, to me it's not worth it then. I prefer to not lose sense.

 

[Erckul]

newbie from HPalm. if I do this, will I be able to get the fix for Sirius/XM?

thanks

 

[EvoDOut]

This post is for other root newbs who are curious like I was just a few days ago. I had trouble finding all of this information in one place, just thought I would share some of what I have learned. You probably all know this already, but rooting your phone could brick the thing. It is risky, and I am not advising anyone to do it.

Just a few days ago I decided to finally take the plunge into rooting my Evo. I have been wanting the free wireless tether since I got this phone 6 months ago, and the Sprint bloatware was irritating me real bad. So I chose Unrevoked as my rooting method for the simple fact of I didn't have the time or patience to root "the long way". I downloaded from their website, installed the necessary windows driver, and unrevoked did the rest.

For anyone considering rooting their Evo this way, it definitely sounded scary, and I was ready to accept the risks involved, but this whole process went off without a hitch. It only took about 10 minutes and I was able to install wireless tether from the market, and delete all the sprint crap-ware quickly using Root Explorer. If this is all you want to accomplish by rooting your Evo, then you could stop here. You are done. If you want to try out a custom rom, read on.

To help explain a couple of other things:

Nand Backup - I did this using ROM Manager (available in the market). This basically creates an image of the way your Evo is at it's current state. If things go wrong installing a ROM or if you want to switch back, this is your key. It is a must-do. Do this right after you root, before installing any custom rom etc.

Titanium Backup - Free app from the market that will backup all of your apps AND their user data/settings/etc. I used the free version and backed up all of the apps that I wanted to be able to quickly restore if I were to install a custom rom. Simply rooting your phone with unrevoked will NOT delete all of your apps/settings. This is more of a quick way to reinstall them all when you switch roms or if you have trouble and need to wipe your device.

Installing a custom rom - I chose to install Cyanogen Mod just to see what all the hype was about. I did this AFTER doing a nand backup, and backing up all of my apps with Titanium. You may also want to sync your contacts with GMail (if not done automatically) or export your contacts to a file to easily restore them later. Installing a custom rom will likely require a wipe, and you will lose ALL of your data stored on the phone (not SD card). I downloaded the ROM (which is a zip file) from the Cyanogen website, along with the Gapps zip file (this is all of the google apps that come on your phone, they are NOT included in the Cyanogen rom).

I read the instructions for installation, and it said that a device wipe is not always necessary, and as a rule of thumb, install without wiping first, so this is what I did. I went into ROM Manager (same app I did my nand backup with) and chose "Install ROM from SD Card". Super easy, this allowed me to choose the location of the ZIP file to install from, and then the phone rebooted into recovery to install the ROM. It also asked me before proceeding if I wanted to do a backup of my current rom (nand backup) which I declined as I had already done this. And it also asked me if I wanted to wipe all data/cache before installing, which I also declined.

Installation took a few minutes, then the Evo rebooted and I was presented with a really cool boot animation for Cyanogen Mod. Then this animation started over, again, and again, and again. This is when I realized I had a problem. The phone was stuck in a boot loop. My power button did nothing, and I was forced to pull the battery and enter recovery again (this is done by holding power button and volume down). Once I was in recovery (the one installed by unrevoked is called Clockwork) I was able to take control of the situation by doing a wipe of the device, restore a nand backup, etc. I chose to wipe the device, then reinstall the Cyanogen Mod ROM from the SD card. And it WORKED this time!

After messing around with the Cyanogen Mod for a couple of hours, I see why so many people like it. There is a whole new feel to my Evo, it really is like getting a new phone, and there are TONS of new options/settings that were not preset on the stock rom. A few examples are:

- A widget similar to power control/switchpro that has all the same options as switchpro, as well as a wireless tether button on the widget. You don't even need the wireless tether app, it is built into the rom, very cool.

- ADW Launcher. Not like your stock evo launcher here. I am still getting used to it, but I do like it so far.

- Core apps are all different, phone, camera, gallery, etc.

- Under the settings menu, there is a section titled CyanogenMod settings. In here there are tweaks for just about everything, input, UI, sound, etc. You can customize just about everything, like the text/background color on your notification bar for example. Very cool!

Now I am ready to create a nand backup of this rom and start the whole process over with something new, I feel like I need to try at least a few different roms, though I really like this CyanogenMod.

I understand why so many people enjoy doing this now, it is kind of like modding your Evo into a whole new phone with new features/options. I am sure that I will encounter some problems along the way, but I am quite confident having this whole community to come back to with help in finding solutions.

Good luck and happy rooting!

EDIT: Wanted to add that after the actual root process was completed with unrevoked, I did everything else from my evo, never had to connect to my computer again.

Can you only use ADW with this ROM? If so whats a good ROM thats compatible with launcher pro?

 

[BigRick10]

You can use any launcher. Adw is the default launcher. ADWex owns any launcher right now btw ;-)