#andorid #htc #hero #GSM
Well, today was an eventful day for me! Not much happened but I can say that I'm the proud owner of an Andorid 2.1 Device. I just felt the great urge this morning and I knew that I have stacks of data to use before the end of the month so the thought came to me almost naturally.
It was a while ago that I first thought of rooting my phone but then try to go through some of the guides for the ROM flashing process and it seemed far to tedious. Eventually the urge to change something on my phone became greater than the dangers of breaking something.
I did not know where to start at first, but I know I came across the xda-developers site some time ago when I had to load Android onto the support phone at work. During my quest in finding something about Android 2.1 ROM's, by good chance I found VillainROM. Now it had me excited for a great deal of time as I read the installation guides for the ROM and Radio respectively.
Needless to say, after a while and 2 downloads (I downloaded the 10.1 ROM only to see there is a 10.3 ROM) I started the process of flashing the new ROM onto my Hero. There was a couple of times that my heart skipped a beat as some operations took a while longer than what I have expected. Also I complained to friends on IRC that the progress bar seemed way too deceiving. It started off progressing quick, but then close to the end it seemed to be going slower and slower. Anyway, that part is history.
I (not so) quickly restored SMS's and my media such as music and pictures and then decided to try out the radio upgrade too. I did not want to do this initially because of the warning that I can brick my phone... It turns out that nothing bad happened and the last bit of struggle was to just get my MMS settings set up (for which Vodacom has no settings, by the way).
What I am pleased to announce is that bluetooth is working at last! So now I don't have to tell people "Oh check my cool phone!!" and later when they ask me to bluetooth something "uh... sorry, my phone's bluetooth is not functional.". In exchange for the working bluetooth, I got a non-functional trackball-LED. Although that is something that really won't bother me.
Generally, Andorid 2.1 is awesome compared to 1.5. It does feel a bit slicker and the added functionality is a plus. Oh, and the camera now rocks! It still doesn't change the fact that the camera has no flash... a feature that I have to live without.
So ya, I can report a good day in mobile fiddling! It was adventurous and the end result pleasing.
