Hacking my HTC Desire

It was bound to happen. The memory was running low and it seemed that my 1^st Generation Desire was consuming it's battery at an alarming rate. I was lucky to make it through a full 24 hours on a single charge.

The Sun Elite Plan 1.5 is partly to blame. After all, with a trio of unlimited services, there was no reason not to stay connected to the internet even when I was away from my office / home wifi network. Then I would think age is a factor too since my Desire is pushing a year already. Time to upgrade maybe (wink wink).

However, its back to school time so there is no money for upgrade yet. The costless alternative is to hack it and see if some of the newer custom ROMs are better for power management.

So my saga began with rooting my phone, doing an S-off, messing around with the H Boot and flashing an endless stream of radios and ROMs.

My guide through all this was mainly the XDA site and rather than repeat what I went through, it would be easier to just post the links to the excellent resources I ran into.

So here are the resources. In my next post, I'll give some feedback about my adventures in ROM land.

 

Here is the link to the noob proof guide, with video to boot, from XDA:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1016084

 

Did someone say rooting? These guys made rooting a painless experience:

http://unrevoked.com/#desire

 

You'll have to do something called S-OFF to your Desire. This group fearlessly went ahead into the unknown so that your Desire can be set free:

http://alpharev.nl/

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=794314&page=247

 

Everything Desire is purported to be in this compilation. Very useful:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=809328

 

A more technical guide to Desire upgrades can be found here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=696189

 

My current ROM can be seen here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=957344

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

 

Their Wiki is here:

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=HTC_Desire_%28GSM%29:_Full_Update_Guide

 

A pair of excellent tools that saved me from a lot of work:

S2E which is app2sd for the CM7

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=917377

Fastboot Commander – made reflashing Hboot an easy process

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=823315

 

You'll be needing the new radios so here is where you can get more info about them:

http://www.mofirouz.com/wordpress/2011/03/htc-desire-radios/

 

That's it for now.

Remember, you can easily brick your phone doing any of the stuff above.

READ AND UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL BEFORE PROCEEDING.

I am not responsible if you end up bricking your precious Desire, so proceed with caution.