custom rom your htc hero…

By Sylverstone, on October 15th, 2010

ahh..
so, my sprint htc hero and i have seen many miles together, but as i use it for more and more things, it was getting kinda sluggish…
.. and somadina’s was so bad she had sprint send a replacement, and it’s just as bad.

droid does indeed.

so i did some digging, and found my answers…

fresh.

custom roms are everywhere for this phone, and it seems the primary customer complaint about the phone is that it’s slow, and sluggish, and there’s a bunch of sprint applications that auto start and run in the background that most people will never use…

shame on sprint for making it so you have to hack root to uninstall any of it….

enter flipz and his posse of 31337 haxors, and the fresh rom.

when i saw the list of what was removed…

amazon mp3
gsd
htc footprints and widget
htc mobile guide (aka learn more)
htc navigation panel
htc ringtone trimmer
htc stocks and widget
google im
quick office
sdsa (sprint self service)
sprint nascar
sprint navigation
sprint nfl
teeter

i smiled, because i wanted all of that gone.

then i looked at the list of stuff they added in…

had me hooked at “wifi tether”

so here we go…

make a backup
(instructions are [here])

root your phone.
(instructions are [here] (android 1.5) and [here] (android 2.x))

grab the fresh rom (i’m running 2.4.0) from [here] and copy it to your sdcard.

open your command prompt window, go to c:\droidsdk\tools

type adb shell and hit [enter]
type reboot recovery and hit [enter]

select wipe data/factory reset.
select wipe cache partition.
select install zip from sdcard.
select fresh rom from sdcard.

once it’s done, select “go back” to get to the main menu, and reboot system now.

you should reboot into fresh.

be patient, it may take a while.
if you get stuck in a reboot loop, you forgot the “wipe” step.

when the phone comes back up, set your google up right away, so it can sync your contacts while you’re messing with the rest of it.

by the way, flipz removed sprint nav.
before you reinstall it, you should check out google maps / navigation.
i found it to be much much faster and way more accurate.

enjoy :)
-stone.

October 15th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Sprint HTC Hero | 3 comments

root your sprint htc hero (android 2.x)…

By Sylverstone, on October 15th, 2010

note: these are the instructions for rooting android 2.x. android 1.5 rooting instructions are [here]

so they forced a patch that plugged the root hole in android 2.1, so if you want to flash a custom rom,
you have to jump through a few more hoops…

start by grabbing the pre patch rom [here]

if you don’t have it yet, grab htc sync from [here] and install it

plug your phone into your pc via usb cable.

run the pre patch rom executable.

follow the on screen instructions until you reboot.

when the phone comes back up, it’s going to ask you about an update. tell it *no*, or you’re back where you started.

the rest of this operation will require the android SDK (software development kit).
you can download it [here]

extract the files to c:\droidsdk

save yourself some pain and after you extract the files, make sure your tree looks like:

c:\droidsdk\tools (and all the other folders) because it doesn’t unpack that way sometimes.

on your phone, click menu > settings > applications > development and make sure usb debugging is turned on.

plug your phone into your computer via usb. make sure that the connection type in the notification pull down is “charge only”.

it should install the drivers automagically.

once you have the SDK installed, open a command prompt (click start, click run, type cmd, hit [enter])

type cd \droidsdk\tools\ and hit [enter]
type adb devices and hit [enter]

it should reply with the serial number of your phone.

if it doesn’t, reinstall the drivers.

once you get the proper response from your command prompt, grab the root kit [here] and unzip it to c:\droidsdk\tools\

in your command prompt window:
adb push unrevoked /sdcard and hit [enter]
adb push recovery.img /sdcard and hit [enter]
adb push boot-patched.zip /sdcard and hit [enter]

now we root it:

type adb shell and hit [enter]

it should reply with $

type sh /sdcard/unrevoked and hit [enter]

it should give you a screen full of ascii text and a # prompt.

go to your apps menu on your phone, you should see a “superuser” application.
run it, you should see a blank screen.

on your computer, in the command prompt window, type su and hit [enter]
a prompt will appear on your hero asking you to give /system/bin/sh superuser access. tell it yes.

your command prompt should say:

$ su
su
#

now type flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img and hit [enter]

your command prompt should say:

# flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img
#

type reboot recovery and hit [enter]

your phone will now reboot into the recovery image you just flashed to it.

in the recovery menu on your phone, choose “flash zip from sdcard”

then select “boot-patched.zip”

and press the home button to apply the changes.

once Recovery says “install from sdcard complete”, you should probably make a nandroid backup…

in the recovery menu, select “backup/restore” and then select “nand backup”.

it saves the backup in /sdcard/nandroid/(your serial number)/

you need to disable the ota updates or you will lose root on the next update.

that is done in your command prompt.

type cd C:\droidsdk\tools and hit [enter]
type adb remount and hit [enter]
type adb shell and hit [enter]
type mv /system/etc/security/otacerts.zip /system/etc/security/otacerts.zip.bak and hit [enter]

this does not prevent the updates from downloading, but they will fail their signature checks and will not install.

welcome to root :)
-stone

October 15th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Sprint HTC Hero | 2 comments

root your sprint htc hero (android 1.5)…

By Sylverstone, on July 15th, 2010

note: these are the instructions for android 1.5. android 2.x rooting instructions are [here]

this operation will require the android SDK (software development kit).
you can download it [here]

extract the files to c:\droidsdk

save yourself some pain and after you extract the files, make sure your tree looks like:

c:\droidsdk\tools (and all the other folders) because it doesn’t unpack that way sometimes.

on your phone, click menu > settings > applications > development and make sure usb debugging is turned on.

plug your phone into your computer via usb.

it should install the drivers automagically.

once you have the SDK installed, open a command prompt (click start, click run, type cmd, hit [enter])

type cd\droidsdk\tools\ and hit [enter]
type adb devices

it should reply with the serial number of your phone.

if it doesn’t, reinstall the drivers.

if you are rooting to flash a custom rom you now want to go [here]

otherwise, download the as2root file [here] and save it to c:\droidsdk\tools\

in your command prompt window type the following lines, hitting [enter] after each one:

adb push asroot2 /data/local/
adb shell chmod 0755 /data/local/asroot2
adb shell
/data/local/asroot2 /system/bin/sh
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/bin
cat sh > su
chmod 4775 su

and you should now have root.
-stone

July 15th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Sprint HTC Hero | 2 comments

backup your sprint htc hero…

By Sylverstone, on July 14th, 2010

so when i was running android 1.5 on my sprint htc hero, my phone was being retarded, and saving all the contacts to the phone, as a “phone contact” and not actually backing them up to google contacts.

having had sprint lose all my contacts once (samsung instinct) I wasn’t about to play this game again…
(i got lucky then, i have a friend in their netops section that retrieved them from the server for me, but it still pissed me off)

anyway, so here we go…
plug your phone into your computer via usb cable, on your phone tell it “mount as disk drive”
on your computer, open windows explorer (or view contents in windows explorer if windows asked)

make a folder on your harddrive, call it !_hero_backup_! or something equally appropriate.

make sure you can see that folder in the left pane of windows explorer, and in the right window you want the contents of your sd card.

click on the right side, press “control a” (hold down the control key and press the a key) to highlight all, then click your left mouse button
on the highlighted area, holding the left mouse button down, drag it to the !_hero backup_! folder you made, and let go of the left button.

this should copy your entire sd card to the computers harddrive.

hold down the shift key when you do it if you want to *move* the files.

your pictures live in \DCIM\100MEDIA\ if you’re looking for just them.

once that’s finished, login to your gmail account and compare your contact list with your phone.
if they’re all there, great, you’re done :)

if they aren’t, it means your contact sync isn’t working.

if your phone is running android 1.5 (settings / about phone / software i think) chances are all the contacts in your phone are not “google” contacts.

contactsync from happydroid (it’s in the app market, and free) will fix this for the most part. download it and run it, then resync.

if, after you run the app, it still doesn’t do it, go take a hard look at the *first missing entry* as you compare your phone with google contacts.
it is most likely the culprit, and you’ll probably have to delete it from your phone to get the rest of them to go.

this worked for me.
-stone

July 14th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Sprint HTC Hero | One comment

disable double notifications when using handcent sms

By Sylverstone, on July 14th, 2010

Handcent sms kicks serious ass all over the stock messaging app on a droid, but for some reason you have to disable the stock app by hand.
Here’s how you do it and get rid of those annoying double notifications.

1. open the “messaging” application.
2. push the “menu” button.
3. touch “settings”.
4. uncheck everything related to notifications and auto retrieve.
5. exit the application.
-stone

July 14th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Sprint HTC Hero | Leave a comment