31 Oct 09 Loading a custom ROM to Android phone

The Original Screen

As mentioned earlier in the HTC Hero experience post, one most important thing missing for South East Asian phones is the Android Market.

To workaround this, there are many geeks who had replace their ROM with a modified version that comes with the Android Market easily.

I have tried the same, using the steps made available from http://theunlockr.com.

What you need to do to have a custom ROM is actually ‘rooting’ the phone and then load the custom ROM.
It is something similar to iPhone’s term of ‘jailbreaking’.

Please proceed with caution if you intend to root and mod your Android phone, you’d probably risk breaking your phone’s warranty and worst, breaks the phone itself.
Do note also, without the Android market, which has tons of applications, you have to source for apps through other means, mostly third party Android app libraries or from the app author’s website.

If you’re still undecided, try spending some time doing some research at the following sites first:
XDA Developers HTC Dream forum
XDA Developers HTC Magic forum
XDA Developers HTC Hero forum

Some guide for you to follow before the rooting process, such as battery and allocating enough time here.

If you still need some reasons to do it, go here.

Well, I found that I had to take the risk and this is what I did to obtain the Android Market (and probably voids my Hero’s warranty too):
1) Backup my SD card content to PC
2) Root it :
http://theunlockr.com/2009/08/27/how-to-root-your-htc-hero-in-one-click/ (First trial failed, due to my HERO version is later than the image recovery, so I had to unroot it first – as specified in the page)
Unroot : http://theunlockr.com/2009/10/03/how-to-unroot-the-htc-hero/
3) Load the custom ROM : http://theunlockr.com/2009/08/27/how-to-load-a-custom-rom-on-your-htc-hero/

The whole process completes within 30 minutes or so.
The only thing that I need to set manually is the Mobile Network APN. You will need to set it if your mobile data connection does not work.

You should also probably be prepared to have all your data in the phone wiped off.
I was prepared for it to format everything, as I have already planned to root/flash it when I purchased the unit.
However, I do notice that files are still there after I did the rooting/loading the custom ROM.

Using USB with HTC Sync to backup

Remember to run the Nandroid backup before running the update

This is the custom ROM, woot!

The custom ROM I used is Modaco, another popular mod is Cyanogen.
After the process is complete and mobile data connection works, the Hero has finally become a real Hero, and the next few hours were used for shopping in the Android market, what else!
Apps in the market that I found to be cool will be coming in the next post, stay tuned.

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Tags: Android M, Android Market, custom ROM, Cyanogen, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, jailbreak, Modaco, root Android, rooting