Database Info

[REF] All in One guide for NOOBS! With Vidoes Now!

I don't take any credit I Googled everything. I do take credit of modifying some stuff in word. The idea came from here. I may have took some of his work. SO credit him and Pirateghost for the information about Android.
Little in-depth information about Android. Must Read. Thank You Pirateghost.
Pirateghost said:
Android itself is OPEN. you can go and build your very own version of 4.0 ICS right now from source code. there are very few phones you can STABLY and RELIABLY run it on though.
The NEXUS line of phones exists for a reason. they are untouched by carriers (verizon teabagged the Galaxy Nexus a little), and do not have some stupid overlay on them. they are developer devices in that it is the first phone to get android updates straight from google (no manufacturer interference required).
every other phone is tainted with a manufacturer's UI. Touchwiz on Samsung phones (galaxy nexus is a samsung but they provided the hardware not the software), Sense on HTC, 'non-blur' on Motorola, whatever Sony calls theirs...lol, LG, etc
on top of that tainted Android interface is a carrier branding or lockdown (doesnt apply to the entire world, but im only referring to US here)
so google releases new version of Android
manufacturers build phone, and customize android to fit their model (this is where android almost stops being OPEN)
carriers get a hold of the manufacturers build of android and tweak and modify it themselves (more than likely they just tell the manufacturers what they want), as you know they love to include bloat and lock it down from the user
you receive your android phone after it has gone through all those steps....long process huh? we dont get updates to newer versions as quickly because of that long process...and they would rather us buy new phones instead of improving perfectly good hardware.
Android is open in the sense that manufacturers can use it however they wish, within reason. it is not necessarily meant to be 'open' to the average end user, and manufacturers dont want you messing with the phone they built. its the reason XDA is what it is today, albeit with roots deep in WinMo hacking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ADB → Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile command line tool that lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device..
Android →Unveiled on 5 November 2007, Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel developed by Google.
ASOP → Android Open Source Project
Apps2SD → Move applications from the internal NAND memory on the device to a removable SD Card.
BLN → BackLight Notification
Bloatware → Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of apps include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users. Like all the crap that comes from At&t
Brick → When used in reference to consumer electronics, "brick" describes a device that cannot function in any capacity (such as a device with damaged firmware). This usage derives from the fact that some electronic devices (and their detachable power supplies) are vaguely brick-shaped, and so those which do not function are useful only as actual bricks. The term can also be used as a verb. For example, "I bricked my phone when I tried to modify its firmware."[
Hard Brick → When your phone does not turn on at all. When you can’t get in to CWR/CWM Or Stock recovery. You are basically screwed.
Soft Brick → When your phone bootloops. When you can get into CWR/CWM. When You can use jigtag to get into download mode.
Busybox → BusyBox provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, FreeBSD and others, such as proprietary kernels, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with interfaces provided by the Linux kernel. It was specifically created for embedded operating systems with very limited resources. Platforms counterparts, but they are pretty close and useful nonetheless.
CWR OR CWM ClockworkMod Recovery →A custom recovery for Android phones and tablets that allows you to perform several advanced recovery, restoration, installation and maintenance operations on your Android device that aren’t possible with the stock recovery.
DEODEX → Apk files have respective odexes that devs use to supposedly save space. Deodexing means you convert it back to a .dex file and put it back inside the apk. This allows you to easily replace file (not having to worry about odexes), but the main point was to deodex services.jar so that you can change all text to different colors (such as the clock color to white) and to deodex services.jar, you need to deodex everything.
Flashing → The process of applying a firmware image (or ROM) to a device. It generally entails a very specific order of steps. Failing to complete any one of these steps properly may result in bricking the device.
Firmware → is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices. Programs stored in the ROM, EPROM, or flash memory that usually control various internal electronic devices (Hard Drives, Keyboards, Displays, etc). Firmware is typically 'fixed' software that is not updated in consumer devices, however it is often updated (or 'flashed') by advanced users to fix bugs or add features to the device. Flashing firmware designed for one device onto a different device, or not following a specific procedure while flashing will often render the device unusable.
Kernel → is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources (the communication between hardware and software components
Radio → The cellular radio on the device which needs control software called firmware to control it.
ROM → Read Only Memory. In the context of an Android device, ROM is the internal flash memory where the core operating system resides. It can also refer to a specific version firmware that can be applied to a device through a process usually referred to as flashing. An improperly flashed ROM can often brick the device, rendering it unusable.
Superuser→ A program, which gives unlimited access privileges to perform any or all operations on the operating system.
ODIN → Odin is the Samsung software used to update Samsung phones. It does not work with any other devices other than official Samsung phones.
OTA or FOTA → (F)OTA stands for (Firmware) Over The Air and is the process by which required updates and enhancements to your phone's basic operating system can be sent to you through the cellular network. The Galaxy S II software update will be sent via FOTA and is available through Samsung Kies mini.0
ODEX → In Android file system, applications come in packages with the extension .apk. These application packages, or APKs contain certain .odex files whose supposed function is to save space. These ‘odex’ files are actually collections of parts of an application that are optimized before booting. Doing so speeds up the boot process, as it preloads part of an application. On the other hand, it also makes hacking those applications difficult because a part of the coding has already been extracted to another location before execution.
SDK → Software Development Kit.
Logcat → A debugging tool built into Android devices that displays system logs as they occur. See Logcat.
NANDroid → A set of tools that will enable anyone who has root on their Android device to make FULL system backups, in case something goes wrong or you want to try out that new experimental ROM/theme. NANDroid will backup (and restore) /system, /data, /cache, and /boot partitions.
Recovery Mode → A special environment that you can boot into for troubleshooting and upgrading purposes.
Kang → The process of creating a code based of someone else's code or reapplying code that someone else created into your own code (e.g. git cherry-pick)
Rooting → is a process that allows users of mobile phones and other devices running the Android operating system to attain privileged control (known as "root access") within Android's Linux subsystem with the goal of overcoming limitations that carriers and manufacturers put on some devices.

This is how to flash Ice Cream Sandwich!
How to Root Your Skyrocket????
>You will need Samsung drivers download here OR Here!
>>IF running 2.3.5 than click here Or Here for root.
>>>On your Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket go to Enable “Unknown Sources” in Settings >> Applications. This is located in the menu by going to Menu, Settings, the Applications.
>>>>Enable USB debugging by going to Menu, Settings, Applications, Development and checking USB debugging.
>>>>>Once you’ve downloaded and installed the above, plug your Skyrocket into your computer USB port. If you have a USB in the back plug it up in the back. Some ports work better than others that is key.
>>>>>>Make sure you’ve extracted the Skyrocket-Easy-Root.
>>>>>>>On a Windows computer, especially Windows 7 you will need to right click on the root.bat file in the extracted folder and run as Administrator. For some it might work without doing it, but I highly advise running as administrator. Now, I got confused because my phone keep failing after all yellow screen and all the text…KEEP TRYING. If it fails and you don’t see the Super User app on your phone then try another port. I tried and tried on my desktop but for some reason I ran it on my laptop and it worked perfectly. Remember to run as Administrator by right clicking the root.bat file.
If you have a Mac or Linux computers, install “Linux-Mac.sh”
>>IF running 2.3.6 than click here for root. Follow instruction on the thread!!!!!!!
<;> You have Done it NOOB!! Congratulation On Your first step!!!!
How to Flash CWM Recovery????
After Rooting your phone.
# Go to market and Download Rom manager.
## Go To Rom manager.
### Press Flash ClockworkMod Recovery.
#### And Chose T-mobile Galaxy s2.

Video about how to get ready to start flashing!
How to Flash a ROM????
Basic Steps
! Choose the ROM that you want and download its .zip file
!! Transfer the zip file to your phone’s sd card. Do not put it into any folder.
!!! Turn off your phone and reboot into recovery, usually by holding the down button and power button at the same time.
!!!! Do a Nandroid backup
!!!!! Wipe the phone 3 times by clearing cache/factory restore 3 times and wiping dalvik cache and system format
!!!!!! Flash the zip file that you put on your sd card
!!!!!!! Reboot phone
You can find all ROMS here.
How to backup your current ROM????
Easy Way!
-Open ROM Manager.
--Tap Backup Current ROM.
---Leave the filename as the date or change it to whatever you want.
Hard Way!
Get into CWR!
Scroll down to backup and restore!
Press backup.
How to Restore Your backup????
If You used ROM manager than!
Go to manage and restore backups!
And press the one you like to restore!
If you have Nandroid than!
Go to CWR!
Scroll down to backup and restore!
Press restore!

How to flash Kernel????
_Download the Kernel You want to flash and put it in sd card.
__Boot in to CWM!
___Wipe cache!
____Press install from Sd card!
_____Select the kernel that you dloaded!
______Flash it!
_______Reboot!
________Check in CPU SPY to see if you successfully flashed Kernel.
You can find all the Kernel here!!!

These will set you back to Stock and Unroot Your phone.​
Welcome Finally You have made it here. Well now I know that you are little worried bout your phone but Let me tell you that there is noting to worry about.
Make sure you are relaxed because if you are tensioned than you will most likely screw things up. Do me a favor and watch this video. Relax get beer or Watch Funny videos on Youtube.
“Never ever unplug your phone when you are Flashing”
Drivers You will need!
! Odin 1.85
!! USB Drivers
!!! Skyrocket Stock Recovery.tar file ATT Or Rogers
Extract the contents of odin-185.zip and the 7zip archive.
Run Odin3+v1.85.exe, and prepare Odin:
Check "auto-reboot", and uncheck all other options.
Install Usb Drivers and Unzip the Recovery file and put it to safe place.
Main Process.
Try to get in Download Mode.
) Connect USB to computer but not your Phone.
))Take out and put back in the battery.
)))Then, hold Vol + and Vol - , now plug in USB and you will at the following screen that’s in picture.
))))Press Volume Up button now.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Finally You have made it to Download mode.
If in case this does not work for you than and you are still luck enough to go into CWM than do factory reset and flash any stock rom. And do all this steps again.
Ok so after getting into Download Mode.
-Go ahead and Go to Odin (Check "auto-reboot", and uncheck all other options).
--In Odin check PDA and find the recovery.tar file that you downloaded.
Now Press Start (Check "auto-reboot", and uncheck all other options.)
When you are done Your screen will look like one below.
It should now reboot to recovery and delete cache and data. Then, it will boot.

I like this alot! Ill definantly save this page
Sent from my NookColor using xda premium

Will Ask MOD to see what he thinks about sticky.
Android311 said:
I like this alot! Ill definantly save this page
Sent from my NookColor using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

appdroid said:
How to backup your current ROM????
Easy Way!
-Open ROM Manager.
--Tap Backup Current ROM.
---Leave the filename as the date or change it to whatever you want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cannot have spaces in the file name though.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

I wish this kind of guide was around when I was a noob back in the captivate days I had to read for weeks before I learned how/decided to root. Great job!!!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

This is what happens when i wake up in middle of the night and don't have anything to do. I have problem with sleep once I wake up in middle of sleep its almost imposible for me to go back to sleep. Last night I was little sick so woke up and had idea about doing this long time ago but last night was the time dedicated to this work. On top of all this I had 8 hour of work. I just got of and about to pass out. Any way thought I would share my little story. This is only a little help from me to this great community. Thanks all and Enjoy11!!

Very well done. Did you pm jay harper and ask him to sticky this yet?
---------- Post added at 08:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:44 PM ----------
I just pm'd mr harper and asked him to sticky it. I hope he does very informative, and well typed.

Looks good
Stuck like Chuck......
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium

Thank you. MR. Boss man SIR

silver03wrx said:
Thank you. MR. Boss man SIR
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Watch it
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium

silver03wrx said:
Very well done. Did you pm jay harper and ask him to sticky this yet?
---------- Post added at 08:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:44 PM ----------
I just pm'd mr harper and asked him to sticky it. I hope he does very informative, and well typed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank You. Seen Many thread about this stuff so thought I would write one for noobs. haha
jayharper08 said:
Looks good
Stuck like Chuck......
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank You Mr. BOSS MAN!!!!!!!!!

appdroid said:
Thank You Mr. BOSS MAN!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Eeeeeeaaaaaaasssssssyyyyyy
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium

Not a N00B by any means (I have a N00B Guide too ). Anyways, I don't even own this phone, but will be rooting and tinkering with my friends Skyrocket tomorrow. In preparation I had a couple of questions, as most all other brand phones seem to be so different from my Motorola Atrix. Thanks in advance for your help.
- Ok root seems pretty straight forward, no issues here.
1) After I've rooted the phone, do I install CWM via ROM Manager? If yes, I'm assuming I choose Samsung AT&T GS2, or should I choose the T-Mobile version (don't know why I would since he's on AT&T)?
2) Have seen posts that ROM Manager both works and it doesn't... which is it? Should I only use it flash CWM, and boot into CWM (as a shortcut)? What's this about installing CWM via a kernel which has it baked in; how can I install a kernel without first booting into CWM?
3) So is the bootloader on this thing locked or unlocked? If it's locked, is there an unlock process yet; i.e. fastboot?
Thanks again for the help... like I said, not my phone, just helping a friend... info. ought to come in handy though when I move to a Samsung phone in the future; waiting on the SGS III.

1) After I've rooted the phone, do I install CWM via ROM Manager? If yes, I'm assuming I choose Samsung AT&T GS2, or should I choose the T-Mobile version (don't know why I would since he's on AT&T)?
Chose T-mobile Galaxy S2
2) Have seen posts that ROM Manager both works and it doesn't... which is it? Should I only use it flash CWM, and boot into CWM (as a shortcut)? What's this about installing CWM via a kernel which has it baked in; how can I install a kernel without first booting into CWM?
Well i don't know about kernel that has baked in it. All Kernels on Skyrocket are .zip files and can flash in CWM. And you can flash it through Rom manager.
3) So is the bootloader on this thing locked or unlocked? If it's locked, is there an unlock process yet; i.e. fastboot?
Sammy always has bootloader unlocked so its unlocked.
Swiftks said:
Not a N00B by any means (I have a N00B Guide too ). Anyways, I don't even own this phone, but will be rooting and tinkering with my friends Skyrocket tomorrow. In preparation I had a couple of questions, as most all other brand phones seem to be so different from my Motorola Atrix. Thanks in advance for your help.
- Ok root seems pretty straight forward, no issues here.
Thanks again for the help... like I said, not my phone, just helping a friend... info. ought to come in handy though when I move to a Samsung phone in the future; waiting on the SGS III.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

appdroid said:
1) After I've rooted the phone, do I install CWM via ROM Manager? If yes, I'm assuming I choose Samsung AT&T GS2, or should I choose the T-Mobile version (don't know why I would since he's on AT&T)?
Chose T-mobile Galaxy S2
2) Have seen posts that ROM Manager both works and it doesn't... which is it? Should I only use it flash CWM, and boot into CWM (as a shortcut)? What's this about installing CWM via a kernel which has it baked in; how can I install a kernel without first booting into CWM?
Well i don't know about kernel that has baked in it. All Kernels on Skyrocket are .zip files and can flash in CWM. And you can flash it through Rom manager.
3) So is the bootloader on this thing locked or unlocked? If it's locked, is there an unlock process yet; i.e. fastboot?
Sammy always has bootloader unlocked so its unlocked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the quick reply... simple enough... just wanted to make sure.

This is the n00b thread... so I have a n00b question. What does SOD stand for?

[ROM] Custom Stock Samsung Conquer 4G FC17 Rooted With Tweaks

Since people continue to only download part 1, even though I've explained fully that you MUST download BOTH parts before extracting, I have now added this at the beginning of the post, so hopefully people will actually follow the directions properly. DOWNLOAD BOTH PARTS BEFORE EXTRACTING, IT WILL NOT EXTRACT PROPERLY ONLY DOWNLOADING ONE PART!!!
This is a custom stock ROM for the Samsung Conquer 4G that has many advantages over a completely stock image. It was developed by me, Brien Johnson of XHPCreations aka brienj.
The link to the files for the ROM are at the very end of this post, but I recommend you read the FULL post while downloading the files.
- Your phone will be rooted.
- The complete FC17 update that shouldn't nag you to update to FE16. (may help to delete the FE16 update in the cache if you already had it pushed to your phone)
- Clockword Mod Recovery for making easy backups and restores.
- Completely Deodexed and ZipAligned for better performance or being able to hack further.
- All bloatware removed, i.e. SprintID
- Stock Launcher replaced by ADWLauncher. (the stock Launcher could not be deodexed, but ADWLauncher is much better and more robust)
- Debuggable.
- Custom power menu that includes, reboot, reboot into recovery, and reboot into download. (Currently the reboot into download does not work, will try to get it to work if possible in the future)
- Custom battery icons that show the actual percentage of battery power left.
- ICS Fonts for better appearance of text in phone's menus.
- Memory and network tweaks for best performance and battery savings.
- Support for running scripts on boot in init.d folder. I've included one script to help sdcard performance, feel free to add any more that you want.
- Support for standard bootanimation.zip files.
Along with these tweaks I will give instructions on improving the network performance further and changing the boot sound, as well as give links to useful programs and hacks that can be added on this phone.
I suggest only using this ROM if you have not successfully applied the FE16 OTA Update to your phone. If you have a stock FE16 phone, it MAY still work however. I can not guarantee this ROM will work for you, and I am not liable for any damage to your phone if you try to install this ...
Here are the instructions to install the custom stock ROM on a Samsung Conquer 4G with the FC17 update. It is installed in two parts, the first is if you do not already have Clockwork Mod Recovery installed, in which case follow the Odin instructions. If you have installed the CWMR already from my instructions here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1610534 then go ahead and follow the CWMR instructions.
Odin installation instructions (Use if you do not have CWMR already installed):
To enter Download Mode on the phone, make sure the phone is turned off and plugged into the wall charging. You should also make sure the phone has a good charge on it. Then turn the phone on by pressing the volume down and camera button and holding them while pressing the power button for a few seconds.
Unzip all the files on your computer and follow these steps.
1) Enter download mode on the phone and plug it into your computer.
2) Open up the Odin program in Windows, run as administrator if on a version of Windows that has such a feature, such as Windows 7. Sorry, there is no Odin for Linux based systems that I know about.
3) Press the OPS button and select the SPH-D600_FC17_CWM_XHP1.ops file.
4) Press the PDA button and select the SPH-D600_FC17_CWM_XHP1.tar.md5 file.
5) Press the Start button, the images should install and the phone reboot.
Congrats, your phone now has my Custom FC17 ROM with a CWM Recovery.
CWMR installation instructions (Use if you have CWMR installed):
Unzip all the files on your computer and follow these steps.
1) Copy the clockworkmod folder and merge it with the folder already on your SD Card. If you do not already have that folder on the SD Card, you may not have CWMR already installed, or you've never made a backup before with it.
2) Boot into CWMR by holding the volume down button and the power button while pugged into the wall charger, or by using the adb command "reboot recovery".
3) Select the menu item "backup and restore".
4) Select the menu item "restore".
5) Select the restore named "SPH-D600_FC17_CWM_XHP1".
6) Select the menu item "reboot now".
Congrats, your phone now has my Custom FC17 ROM with a CWM Recovery.
Now that the phone has the custom ROM, here are some things you can add or do to further improve performance on the phone if you wish.
First of all I recommend installing AdFree, Terminal Emulator, Titanium Backup, and if you wish ScriptManager, which can all be found on the Google Play Store. I can help you find them if needed.
For better 3G follow these steps (enter commands into Terminal Emulator or use the adb shell):
Type this command: getprop ril.MSL
It should show your MSL. Write it down.
Open the dialer and dial ##3282##
Enter your MSL
Click on "Others"
Click on "Multimedia"
Change the settings as follows:
RTSP Proxy Address: 0.0.0.0
RTSP Proxy Port: 0
HTTPPD Proxy Address: 0.0.0.0
HTTPPD Proxy Port: 0
The stock settings are:
RTSP Proxy Address: rtsp.vog.sprintpcs.com
RTSP Proxy Port: 554
HTTPPD Proxy Address: pd.vog.sprintpcs.com
HTTPPD Proxy Port: 8085
Here is how to change the boot sound:
First of all get the "poweron.snd" file from the /system/etc/ folder. It is a raw sound file which can be opened in any audio editor, such as Cool Edit Pro.
Here are the settings to select when opening it up in Cool Edit Pro for example:
Sampling Rate: 441000
Channels: Stereo
Resolution: 16-bit
Data Formatted As: 16-bit Intel PCM
Offset Input Data By: 0
Now you can listen to the boot sound in the audio editor. You can change it to your liking and save it in the same format. Remember to keep it a RAW audio file with the settings above. Replace the "poweron.snd" file with your edited audio file, retaining the same filename.
To replace the boot animation, you can find the "bootanimation.zip" file in the /system/media/ folder. Replace it with a bootanimation file of your liking. I've included a custom bootanimation that was modified to match the custom boot logo I made. I made all of it from a popular bootanimation of which I can not remember where I found it. I am not taking any credit for the original bootanimation, I just modified it to say Samsung Conquer 4G at the top and to speed up and spin faster at the end. If anyone remembers the original creator, I will add a link to it.
A great cpu tuning program that works on the phone (although won't save settings on boot for some reason), is this - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1584508. From the screenshots below you can see that the phone will last almost 3 days without this program, although the other screenshot was using the program setting of PowerSave and after 20 1/2 hours it was still at 70%, but I also didn't use the phone, I just had it locked. However, when running in PowerSave mode, the phone will be very sluggish, so is only to use if you are just waiting for phone calls or just texting.
These are all the tweaks I have for now. I hope you enjoy the ROM.
I hate to bring this up, but if you like this ROM, please consider making a donation. I don't do this just for donations, I enjoy helping everyone out, but I was in a near fatal accident over two years ago and can no longer work. If you find yourself enjoying this ROM, please click on the Donate button under my name, I would really appreciate it. I can try to improve the ROM over time, but please remember that this ROM is strictly made for performance and battery life and to give you more control over your phone. I don't plan on doing any theming, and most people do ICS themes and such. Personally I hate the look of the ICS themes and the only thing I've taken from ICS, is the fonts, which I do like and look much better than the original. If you want some fancy theme, or mods like Beats Audio, I'd suggest looking for another ROM. If you want performance and longer battery life, I think you'll enjoy mine.
Take care and thank you for trying my ROM.
You must download BOTH of these files before you can extract them. After downloading them, put them both in the same folder, and open the part1.rar file up, and you can then extract the files properly. If you only download one of the two files, the files will be corrupted or not work:
Here is the link to the first file of the ROM - SPH-D600_FC17_CWM_XHP1.part1.rar
Here is the link to the second file of the ROM - SPH-D600_FC17_CWM_XHP1.part2.rar
I apologize for having to split it into two files, but I have a maximum of 200MB I can upload, as I don't have a premium account at MediaFire.

Dude, your awesome.
So glad to see this!
bring on the flock of desperate Conquer users.
This is John Smith from Ting forums by the way.
Good job man. Gonna download asap.

DiehlC said:
Dude, your awesome.
So glad to see this!
bring on the flock of desperate Conquer users.
This is John Smith from Ting forums by the way.
Good job man. Gonna download asap.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool. I hope it works great for you.
You were able to install my other one, so you have CWMR already, right? If so, I recommend just updating that way as it's of course much easier.

Thanks for your hard work, looks great...

brienj said:
Cool. I hope it works great for you.
You were able to install my other one, so you have CWMR already, right? If so, I recommend just updating that way as it's of course much easier.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure do, so yup thats my plan.
What do you think about "Mobile Odin" Would it also work for flashing this? for information sake atleast.

DiehlC said:
Sure do, so yup thats my plan.
What do you think about "Mobile Odin" Would it also work for flashing this? for information sake atleast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It probably would. Perhaps it uses the flash_image binary to flash the images properly, but I don't know for sure. You'd have to make sure you give it the correct names of the mtd partitions though, or it would know the correct names for them, but that's if it uses the flash_image binary. You can always flash these yourself with the flash_image binary using the mtd table I listed. If you have CWMR though, I'd just do it that way.
It doesn't list our phone in the compatible phones, which leads me to believe it only knows the partition tables for the phones listed. Perhaps if you gave them our partition table, they could make it work though.

john9 said:
Thanks for your hard work, looks great...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome. Hard work is an understatement though. When I had my accident, my head was split wide open from being struck. As a result, I have serious brain damage, although I have retained most of the smarts I had before the accident, which helps. However, it takes me months to do something like this, whereas before it would have taken maybe a week or two at the most, heck, probably a couple of days to be honest. I can not concentrate, I have to do one thing at a time, and I always forget things, even something that happened a few minutes ago. This is why I can not even work, as I can not be in a competitive work environment. Heck, even posting a post will take me close to 5 or 10 minutes, from fixing all the transposed letters, double-printing of letters, grammar, etc. The first post of the thread took me about 3 hours to finish and completely type up. It may appear from my posts, that I am smart, which I don't want to brag, but I believe I am, but because of my TBI, it's not what it appears to be, as you only see the final result after all my editing. I used to hide my problem, but I am not ashamed to admit it any more.

Thanks man this is really fast. I did a test and left my phone locked and it started out at 64 than 2 hours later it was 61!! Really good battery life.
Sent from my SPH-D600 using xda premium

Came here from the Ting forums. I just had to remember my username I created way back when I still had an XV6800. Those were the days!
Anyway, I tried downloading part 2 a few times, and every time I extract the files, it tells me the md5 file is broken. Anyone else having this issue?

bradyarz said:
Came here from the Ting forums. I just had to remember my username I created way back when I still had an XV6800. Those were the days!
Anyway, I tried downloading part 2 a few times, and every time I extract the files, it tells me the md5 file is broken. Anyone else having this issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to have part 1 and part 2 in the same folder, then open part1. It is a two part rar file, so uses both files. By opening just the second file, it won't all be there. But both files contain the whole package, you just need to open part 1, as long as you have part 2 as well.
I had to split the rar file up because Mediafire only allows me to upload a maximum filesize of 200MB, since I don't have a premium account. I've updated this info right before the download links.
itzdarockz said:
Thanks man this is really fast. I did a test and left my phone locked and it started out at 64 than 2 hours later it was 61!! Really good battery life.
Sent from my SPH-D600 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's great to hear it works ok for you and yes, the battery life, even without the cpu tuner program is FAR better than original. At least it has been for me. I can run an intensive program with WiFi and the phone would still last close to 10 - 12 hours. That was the whole goal of my ROM, was for longer battery life, since it sucks when stock, and I think I succeeded at it.

brienj said:
You have to have part 1 and part 2 in the same folder, then open part1. It is a two part rar file, so uses both files. By opening just the second file, it won't all be there. But both files contain the whole package, you just need to open part 1, as long as you have part 2 as well.
I had to split the rar file up because Mediafire only allows me to upload a maximum filesize of 200MB, since I don't have a premium account. I've updated this info right before the download links.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, thanks. I was just a little worried because part 1 extracted fine, and part 2 always gave me an error, giving me the part 2 md5 as a 0 byte file.
I've never rooted through android before, so I want to make sure I've got everything squared away before I begin.

brienj said:
You have to have part 1 and part 2 in the same folder, then open part1. It is a two part rar file, so uses both files. By opening just the second file, it won't all be there. But both files contain the whole package, you just need to open part 1, as long as you have part 2 as well.
I had to split the rar file up because Mediafire only allows me to upload a maximum filesize of 200MB, since I don't have a premium account. I've updated this info right before the download links.
Well that's great to hear it works ok for you and yes, the battery life, even without the cpu tuner program is FAR better than original. At least it has been for me. I can run an intensive program with WiFi and the phone would still last close to 10 - 12 hours. That was the whole goal of my ROM, was for longer battery life, since it sucks when stock, and I think I succeeded at it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to hear you are no longer ashamed, plus theres no reason to be. Especially since you can whip up great stuff like this. among other things youve done.
I havent flashed it yet, as I am backing up a lot of stuff, and trying to backup all the linux stuff I installed via opkg package manager using "BotBrew", which is getting a bit complicated. Plus I have to make a nand too beforehand.
So I should be able to get to it soon. Im excited.
But by the way, now that you have the Partitioning table layout mapped out, I wonder what we could do to further expand our internal memory/storage? I wonder if we could double partition our SD cards like some others do on other devices? They basically just format their SD with FAT32 in the first (which will be the extended internal), and the next being Ext4 for SD card storage. Seems like we should be able to do the same like anyone else, especially since you got that nice bit of info through your troubles, on the partitioning.
What do you think on this position?
Take care Brien.

DiehlC said:
Good to hear you are no longer ashamed, plus theres no reason to be. Especially since you can whip up great stuff like this. among other things youve done.
I havent flashed it yet, as I am backing up a lot of stuff, and trying to backup all the linux stuff I installed via opkg package manager using "BotBrew", which is getting a bit complicated. Plus I have to make a nand too beforehand.
So I should be able to get to it soon. Im excited.
But by the way, now that you have the Partitioning table layout mapped out, I wonder what we could do to further expand our internal memory/storage? I wonder if we could double partition our SD cards like some others do on other devices? They basically just format their SD with FAT32 in the first (which will be the extended internal), and the next being Ext4 for SD card storage. Seems like we should be able to do the same like anyone else, especially since you got that nice bit of info through your troubles, on the partitioning.
What do you think on this position?
Take care Brien.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am "new" to doing all of this type of work. I used to strictly do game hacking/modding, not stuff to cheat, but to make the games better and more fun. Late last year I started getting into the Android systems and seeing what I could do. I'm sure if I looked into this stuff I could figure something out eventually, but not sure how long it would really take me. This seems like something that is similar between all phones, so maybe you should see what can be done already. If it's a phone specific thing, then one of us will have to do the dirty work. I just don't know.

i got an md5 mismatch error when trying to do the restore

New2ThaDroid said:
i got an md5 mismatch error when trying to do the restore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had that happen before. Here is the solution, but I'd try recopying it to your sdcard another time to make sure it was copied correctly - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=714114
Also, are you sure you downloaded BOTH of the rar files as I said in the OP, and it did not give you any errors when extracting the files?
Also, try renaming the name of the folder to only include alphanumeric symbols.

I got an error when extracting the files too. I extracted both the files to the same folder so I don't know what the problem is and I extracted the first part first and the the second. I don't know what it is

I got it to work and the Rom on my phone. Looks good! Good job. I would like to add some themes if anyone has some or knows how I could do it myself.
Sent from my SPH-D600 using xda premium

how long
brien how long does it take the your rom to install itself using odin approximately? i ask because it took me over 40 minutes to install it and its at time of this still going

I'm going to do some themeing using UOT Kitchen
Sent from my SPH-D600 using xda premium

New2ThaDroid said:
I'm going to do some themeing using UOT Kitchen
Sent from my SPH-D600 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, if that's what you want. Like I said in my original post, this ROM was made to be practical, not to be fancy. It does have the ICS fonts in it, which look a bit nicer though.

[Rooting & ROM Flashing VZW GS3] Noob Questions

I apologize in advance for asking the following noob questions. I have been an iPhone user for 3 years and wanted to take advantage of the GS3, which I am loving even without it being rooted. I am fairly tech-savy and believe I'll have no problem rooting my phone. There are just a few things I want to thoroughly understand. I've been sold on the fact that I want to root my phone to gain control of it, remove the bloatware, and extend it's battery life, etc. If there is a thread or posting or website somewhere that explains what I need to know very well, please direct me!!
I was looking for some major tips on the best way to achieve my goal of rooting and flashing to a new ROM...If someone could, PLEASE answer EVERY question. I'd like to fully understand how to get to my goal of rooting and flashing to a desired ROM without bricking it. If this gets desires attention, it could be a great sticky posts for other newbies!
1. First and foremost...What is a kernal? I see things about CM9/CM10 kernals. Is it something like a ROM? How is it related/different?
2. What is the CMW, what is a Touch Wiz?
3. What is the overall best way for a newbie to root their phone and install a desired ROM? Odin or???
4. As I understand thus far, there is rooting, then there is ROM flashing, and then there is something to do with unlocking the bootloader... I'd like to fully understand all of these.
Here's my goal and what I'm seeking help on... I think I want to use the Synergy ROM. What is the first step I must do? Do I somehow root my phone and then use Odin to flash to the Synergy ROM? Or is the first step simply opening Odin, connecting phone, and flashing to Synergy ROM? Do I not even use Odin to flash to Synergy? I'm confused here based on the install info in Synergys FAQ - do I use Odin at all??? Do I need to back anything up? Do I need to download or use some app to block Verizon OTA updates permanently??
In the Q&A of the Synergy ROM thread, it states:
You should have an unlocked bootloader if you wish to take full advantage of this ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Must I unlock the bootloader seperately via this thread here, or do ROMs or other kernals (or whatever) have the unlocked bootloader built-in?? Do I install the bootloader before I root or after I root? What's the best way to unlock the bootloader(mmmeff's EZ-Unlock App, Terminal Emulator, or Adam Outler's Casual for Rooting/Cwm/Unlocking Bootloader)? Also, how do I keep the bootloader from being updated OTA, to keep from having problems????
I think that answers most/all of my questions. I'd hugely appreciate a response and answers to clarify all this, or links to some post or site I'm missing that explain all this to me. My goal to to root my phone, likely install a ROM, and do all this without bricking it, and hopefully without voiding any warranties (though not a big deal).
Thanks a bunch in advance!!

All the answers you seek can be found in droidstyle's guide. It's a sticky in the development section.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

Introduction to Rooting:
This is meant as a very basic disccussion for people completely new to rooting and Android. As a result, it will omit many details and simplify others. If there is a blatant mistake, please let me know and I'll correct it, but if there's something that's just not QUITE right, chances are it's simplified on purpose. Also, it's not meant to be a rooting guide (as there are excellent ones out there already) so much as an explanation of concepts most of us take for granted, but noobies don't.
DISCLAIMER: I, nor anyone else referenced (or not) in this thread, am not responsible for what you do with your phone. Rooting and otherwise altering your phone has the potential to brick your device, void your warranty, and many other horrible horrible things. Perform these actions at your own risk.
What is root/rooting?
In Unix-style operating systems, "root" is the name of the user who has all permissions and is therefore able to run/modify/change/delete just about anything. If you're familiar with Windows, this account is called Administrator. The default account (that's you!) on an Android phone does NOT have these privileges. Rooting is the process of obtaining them (i.e. obtaining root access). Once you root, you can "flash" new software onto your phone without restriction. This is great because you now have control over what programs are on your phone, what your UI looks like, how your phone handles resources, what kernels you run, and more!
Once your phone is rooted, you don't always wield all of that power. You control your access to all these new abilities with a program called SuperUser (available on the market and baked into ROMS). This program can grant these special rights to any other program that requests them. So let's say a program wants to write data to a place it's not allowed. It will ask SuperUser to up its privileges and then BAM! it can write where it wants to. You yourself can gain SuperUser privileges in a shell by typing su. Then YOU can read, write, and execute to your hearts desire.
Before you root:
Before rooting, there are some basic things you should know. A lot of people rush into it without bothering to learn everything they should. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't.
Phone partitions: Your phone has a number of partitions. The important ones to know at first are:
1. System - this partition is essentially what you think of when you think of the operating system, the Android UI, and preinstalled
apps. When people talk about flashing ROMs (e.g. CyanogenMod, Synergy, etc), they are talking about flashing a new system
partition.
2. Boot - this is the kernel and ramdisk. The kernel is responsible for managing the interactions between the phones software (including the ROM) and the
hardware. Altering the kernel can increase/decrease performance, battery life, and more because it manages applications and system resources. When
you flash a new kernel, it flashes to the boot partition. You may not notice a big difference like you do when changing ROMS, but behind the scenes, your
phone's performance can be drastically altered. A *LOOSE* analogy is that the ROM is like the body and interior of your car (including exterior color, AC,
stereo, heated seats, TV in headrests, etc.) and the kernel is like the engine. You may not see it, but you'll know it's there if it's awesome or it sucks.
3. Aboot - this was largely unimportant for newbies until the bootloader lock/unlock situation. The short story is that aboot contains functions which
authenticate the boot partition (that's the kernel, remember?). It checks to see if your boot partition is Verizon legal and if not, it aborts the boot process
and politely tells you to contact Verizon. This authentication is what is referred to as a "locked" bootloader. It prevents you from completely booting the
phone with a custom kernel. The bootloader is "unlocked" by replacing the stock aboot partition with one that does NOT check up on the boot partition.
This is important because it allows us to run whatever kernel we want.
4. Data - this contains user installed apps, settings, contacts, bookmarks, etc, etc, etc. You can wipe this partition (as opposed to the above partitions) and
still boot into the operating system. You will have just lost all your setting and apps. This is called a factory/data reset.
5. Cache - this is stuff that you frequently use so it's kept available for better performance. You can wipe it without much consequence.
6. Recovery - this partition contains a separate operating system that allows you to recover from a corrupted/absent/otherwise jacked up operating system. It
has other functions as well. The big ones are to backup your device and restore said backups, to wipe certain partitions, and to flash things to your
phone (i.e. install new ROMs, recoveries, or other programs). The stock recovery is limited so you will definitely want a custom recovery, created by the
fine devs in the community, on your device.
What is a ROM and what is a kernel? I touched on this above. A ROM is what goes on the system partition. It contains what you think of as the Android OS including the UI and preinstalled apps. It controls how programs interact with you, the user. A kernel controls how those programs interact with the phones hardware. You need both a ROM and a kernel to have a functional phone.
How do I get started rooting and flashing?
There is an excellent guide stickied in the development thread here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1762709. However, many of us
forget what it's like to be a COMPLETE newbie and to someone who has no idea about anything, even fantastic guides like that can be a little intimidating.
You can follow the steps, but may not understand what you're doing. The steps to take to start out with are:
1. Make sure you understand what I've written above. Make sure you are comfortable with the possibility of bricking your phone.
2. Root your device. As I said above, this is simply gaining root/Admin/whatever you want to call it access on your phone. In and of itself, it does NOT alter
the ROM or kernel or much of anything else. However, there are many different ways to obtain root and some of them DO alter these things. The easiest
and safest way to root (IMO) is to use Noxious Ninjas excellent tool. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1792342. If you like it, I
encourage you to donate or at least "Thanks" him. It works by taking advantage of debugfs permissions to get su (remember this from above??) onto
your phone with permissions set so you can run it. It therefore doesn't change ROMs or anything else. You won't lose data, apps, or anything else. It just
sneaks su right onto your current setup.
3. Install a custom recovery. This will allow you to do all the fun stuff I talked about above. I recommend installing EZ-recovery from the market and flashing
CWM 6.0.1.0.
1. Install EZ-recovery
2. Under the "Recovery" heading, click the Recovery radio button and select CWM 6.0.1.0 next to it.
3. Click flash
4. Backup everything as if your life depended on it. This means backing up your IMEI as shown here
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/32397-tutorial-imeibackup-nv-with-qpst-us-variants/ and making a nandroid. A nandroid is an image of your phone
including your ROM, your data, and your kernel(depending on what phone you have). You can restore a nandroid backup and you'll be right back where
you were before flashing or changing things around. The steps to making a nandroid are:
1. Turn off your phone.
2. Hold down volume up, home, and power until recovery appears.
3. Use the volume rocker to go to "backup and restore" and hit the power button
4. Select backup and then select the external (default) or internal (labeled "internal") SD card
You can restore a nandroid in a similar fashion (although you should wipe data/cache first - see below).
5. Unlock the bootloader. You must do this seperately from flashing ROMs and kernels. Refer to this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1839791 and give appropriate thanks! A warning...if you mess up your aboot partition, there's really nothing (that I know of) you can do to revive your phone besides send it to someone with JTAG or back to Verizon.
You're now ready to start flashing ROMs.
As a precursor, there are ROMS that are based on TouchWiz modified Android from Verizon/Samsung and there are ROMS based on AOSP (e.g. CyanogenMod). TW roms need a TW kernel and AOSP roms need an AOSP kernel. Until you get comfortable with everything, I would stick with TW. Also, some roms come with kernels and will flash the kernel to your boot partition as well as the ROM to your system partition. Some ROMs don't come with kernels. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS read the OP of a rom you want to flash to find out kernel information as well as how to install the rom and anything else you may need to know. The general steps to flashing a ROM are (remember to read the OP for specifics):
1. Backup apps, data, call log, contacts, messages, etc. My program of choice for much of this is Titanium Backup available on the market. Buy it as you'll
use it a billion times.
2. Download the ROM you want and check the MD5
3. Place the ROM on the root of your SD card. Do NOT unzip it.
4. Reboot into recovery and make a nandroid backup
5. Wipe data/factory reset and wipe cache. Wipe it more than once if paranoid.
6. Go to "install zip from sdcard" and select the ROM you want
7. If you want/need to flash a kernel, install that zip from the sdcard too with the same command
8. Reboot and restore all that you backed up
Remember:
- ALWAYS backup before doing anything
- verify MD5
- wipe data and cache (unless told not to by the ROM dev)
- NEVER accept an OTA (having a custom recovery should block OTAs anyway)
PS. The techniques, tools, roms, etc in this post are not mine and arte the products of hours of hard work by multiple devs. Please thank them accordingly.

Bleelas said:
Introduction to Rooting:
This is meant as a very basic disccussion for people completely new to rooting and Android. As a result, it will omit many details and simplify others. If there is a blatant mistake, please let me know and I'll correct it, but if there's something that's just not QUITE right, chances are it's simplified on purpose. Also, it's not meant to be a rooting guide (as there are excellent ones out there already) so much as an explanation of concepts most of us take for granted, but noobies don't.
DISCLAIMER: I, nor anyone else referenced (or not) in this thread, am not responsible for what you do with your phone. Rooting and otherwise altering your phone has the potential to brick your device, void your warranty, and many other horrible horrible things. Perform these actions at your own risk.
What is root/rooting?
In Unix-style operating systems, "root" is the name of the user who has all permissions and is therefore able to run/modify/change/delete just about anything. If you're familiar with Windows, this account is called Administrator. The default account (that's you!) on an Android phone does NOT have these privileges. Rooting is the process of obtaining them (i.e. obtaining root access). Once you root, you can "flash" new software onto your phone without restriction. This is great because you now have control over what programs are on your phone, what your UI looks like, how your phone handles resources, what kernels you run, and more!
Once your phone is rooted, you don't always wield all of that power. You control your access to all these new abilities with a program called SuperUser (available on the market and baked into ROMS). This program can grant these special rights to any other program that requests them. So let's say a program wants to write data to a place it's not allowed. It will ask SuperUser to up its privileges and then BAM! it can write where it wants to. You yourself can gain SuperUser privileges in a shell by typing su. Then YOU can read, write, and execute to your hearts desire.
Before you root:
Before rooting, there are some basic things you should know. A lot of people rush into it without bothering to learn everything they should. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't.
Phone partitions: Your phone has a number of partitions. The important ones to know at first are:
1. System - this partition is essentially what you think of when you think of the operating system, the Android UI, and preinstalled
apps. When people talk about flashing ROMs (e.g. CyanogenMod, Synergy, etc), they are talking about flashing a new system
partition.
2. Boot - this is the kernel and ramdisk. The kernel is responsible for managing the interactions between the phones software (including the ROM) and the
hardware. Altering the kernel can increase/decrease performance, battery life, and more because it manages applications and system resources. When
you flash a new kernel, it flashes to the boot partition. You may not notice a big difference like you do when changing ROMS, but behind the scenes, your
phone's performance can be drastically altered. A *LOOSE* analogy is that the ROM is like the body and interior of your car (including exterior color, AC,
stereo, heated seats, TV in headrests, etc.) and the kernel is like the engine. You may not see it, but you'll know it's there if it's awesome or it sucks.
3. Aboot - this was largely unimportant for newbies until the bootloader lock/unlock situation. The short story is that aboot contains functions which
authenticate the boot partition (that's the kernel, remember?). It checks to see if your boot partition is Verizon legal and if not, it aborts the boot process
and politely tells you to contact Verizon. This authentication is what is referred to as a "locked" bootloader. It prevents you from completely booting the
phone with a custom kernel. The bootloader is "unlocked" by replacing the stock aboot partition with one that does NOT check up on the boot partition.
This is important because it allows us to run whatever kernel we want.
4. Data - this contains user installed apps, settings, contacts, bookmarks, etc, etc, etc. You can wipe this partition (as opposed to the above partitions) and
still boot into the operating system. You will have just lost all your setting and apps. This is called a factory/data reset.
5. Cache - this is stuff that you frequently use so it's kept available for better performance. You can wipe it without much consequence.
6. Recovery - this partition contains a separate operating system that allows you to recover from a corrupted/absent/otherwise jacked up operating system. It
has other functions as well. The big ones are to backup your device and restore said backups, to wipe certain partitions, and to flash things to your
phone (i.e. install new ROMs, recoveries, or other programs). The stock recovery is limited so you will definitely want a custom recovery, created by the
fine devs in the community, on your device.
What is a ROM and what is a kernel? I touched on this above. A ROM is what goes on the system partition. It contains what you think of as the Android OS including the UI and preinstalled apps. It controls how programs interact with you, the user. A kernel controls how those programs interact with the phones hardware. You need both a ROM and a kernel to have a functional phone.
How do I get started rooting and flashing?
There is an excellent guide stickied in the development thread here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1762709. However, many of us
forget what it's like to be a COMPLETE newbie and to someone who has no idea about anything, even fantastic guides like that can be a little intimidating.
You can follow the steps, but may not understand what you're doing. The steps to take to start out with are:
1. Make sure you understand what I've written above. Make sure you are comfortable with the possibility of bricking your phone.
2. Root your device. As I said above, this is simply gaining root/Admin/whatever you want to call it access on your phone. In and of itself, it does NOT alter
the ROM or kernel or much of anything else. However, there are many different ways to obtain root and some of them DO alter these things. The easiest
and safest way to root (IMO) is to use Noxious Ninjas excellent tool. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1792342. If you like it, I
encourage you to donate or at least "Thanks" him. It works by taking advantage of debugfs permissions to get su (remember this from above??) onto
your phone with permissions set so you can run it. It therefore doesn't change ROMs or anything else. You won't lose data, apps, or anything else. It just
sneaks su right onto your current setup.
3. Install a custom recovery. This will allow you to do all the fun stuff I talked about above. I recommend installing EZ-recovery from the market and flashing
CWM 6.0.1.0.
1. Install EZ-recovery
2. Under the "Recovery" heading, click the Recovery radio button and select CWM 6.0.1.0 next to it.
3. Click flash
4. Backup everything as if your life depended on it. This means backing up your IMEI as shown here
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/32397-tutorial-imeibackup-nv-with-qpst-us-variants/ and making a nandroid. A nandroid is an image of your phone
including your ROM, your data, and your kernel(depending on what phone you have). You can restore a nandroid backup and you'll be right back where
you were before flashing or changing things around. The steps to making a nandroid are:
1. Turn off your phone.
2. Hold down volume up, home, and power until recovery appears.
3. Use the volume rocker to go to "backup and restore" and hit the power button
4. Select backup and then select the external (default) or internal (labeled "internal") SD card
You can restore a nandroid in a similar fashion (although you should wipe data/cache first - see below).
5. Unlock the bootloader. You must do this seperately from flashing ROMs and kernels. Refer to this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1839791 and give appropriate thanks! A warning...if you mess up your aboot partition, there's really nothing (that I know of) you can do to revive your phone besides send it to someone with JTAG or back to Verizon.
You're now ready to start flashing ROMs.
As a precursor, there are ROMS that are based on TouchWiz modified Android from Verizon/Samsung and there are ROMS based on AOSP (e.g. CyanogenMod). TW roms need a TW kernel and AOSP roms need an AOSP kernel. Until you get comfortable with everything, I would stick with TW. Also, some roms come with kernels and will flash the kernel to your boot partition as well as the ROM to your system partition. Some ROMs don't come with kernels. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS read the OP of a rom you want to flash to find out kernel information as well as how to install the rom and anything else you may need to know. The general steps to flashing a ROM are (remember to read the OP for specifics):
1. Backup apps, data, call log, contacts, messages, etc. My program of choice for much of this is Titanium Backup available on the market. Buy it as you'll
use it a billion times.
2. Download the ROM you want and check the MD5
3. Place the ROM on the root of your SD card. Do NOT unzip it.
4. Reboot into recovery and make a nandroid backup
5. Wipe data/factory reset and wipe cache. Wipe it more than once if paranoid.
6. Go to "install zip from sdcard" and select the ROM you want
7. If you want/need to flash a kernel, install that zip from the sdcard too with the same command
8. Reboot and restore all that you backed up
Remember:
- ALWAYS backup before doing anything
- verify MD5
- wipe data and cache (unless told not to by the ROM dev)
- NEVER accept an OTA (having a custom recovery should block OTAs anyway)
PS. The techniques, tools, roms, etc in this post are not mine and arte the products of hours of hard work by multiple devs. Please thank them accordingly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
THANK YOU!!!!! Very helpful! I had no idea I needed EZ-Recovery to flash CWM as the primary recovery tool - that saved me big time as I was about to unlock the bootloader later today.
After posting this last night, and awaiting responses, I was browsing and trying to take in as much as I could. I finally realized that each section in the linked guide is a different way to either root or install a ROM. After I figured this out, and read about Odin being best for newbies, I decided to take the risk and wing it, even though I wasn't 110% sure.
So, now I'm rooted and have ROM manager/CWM installed, TiBu, and ES File Explorer installed. Now I'm just trying to figure out what I can/cannot remove as far as bloatware. A few items I'm sure I'd like to keep (working), so I don't want to mess with anything that might be used in another app/widget....Which brings me to my next question...
What's the best way to remove bloatware? I found an excel spreadsheet online that shows what's safe/unsafe to remove but I'm confused as to what I should do to get rid of items I NEVER want, and how to turn off items I MAY want in the future. If I freeze these items, do they stay frozen upon reboot, and until I unfreeze, or otherwise? What's the difference between a .APK package and a single process, etc?
Thanks in advance! I feel like I entered Android Elementary last night and already graduated to Android Junior High!
P.S. The captchas on this site to post ARE THE WORST CAPTAS IVE SEEN IN MY ENTIRE FRIGGIN LIFE, MY GOD!!!! I must refresh it 20x til something is RELATIVELY clear. Seriously????

ike034 said:
1...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me too..... But the post are suppose to me helpful and or contribute in some way....
But at least we can thank all over the place......

Weioo said:
THANK YOU!!!!! Very helpful! I had no idea I needed EZ-Recovery to flash CWM as the primary recovery tool - that saved me big time as I was about to unlock the bootloader later today.
After posting this last night, and awaiting responses, I was browsing and trying to take in as much as I could. I finally realized that each section in the linked guide is a different way to either root or install a ROM. After I figured this out, and read about Odin being best for newbies, I decided to take the risk and wing it, even though I wasn't 110% sure.
So, now I'm rooted and have ROM manager/CWM installed, TiBu, and ES File Explorer installed. Now I'm just trying to figure out what I can/cannot remove as far as bloatware. A few items I'm sure I'd like to keep (working), so I don't want to mess with anything that might be used in another app/widget....Which brings me to my next question...
What's the best way to remove bloatware? I found an excel spreadsheet online that shows what's safe/unsafe to remove but I'm confused as to what I should do to get rid of items I NEVER want, and how to turn off items I MAY want in the future. If I freeze these items, do they stay frozen upon reboot, and until I unfreeze, or otherwise? What's the difference between a .APK package and a single process, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear you're rooted and learning a lot! Now you're opening another HUGE can of worms, namely how Android organizes the application framework, what are services, processes, activities, tasks etc. You may have already found the information you're looking for, but a montrously dumbed down version is that the APK is a package containing the compiled program and all the extraneous files it needs to run while a process is an actively running application. In order to debloat, you can either freeze an application with another program like TiBu, or you can manually freeze it by changing the app extension, or you can delete the APK, or you can remove it from the rom you want BEFORE you even flash it. What you choose depends on your goals...why you want to debloat.

Weioo said:
THANK YOU!!!!! Very helpful! I had no idea I needed EZ-Recovery to flash CWM as the primary recovery tool - that saved me big time as I was about to unlock the bootloader later today.
After posting this last night, and awaiting responses, I was browsing and trying to take in as much as I could. I finally realized that each section in the linked guide is a different way to either root or install a ROM. After I figured this out, and read about Odin being best for newbies, I decided to take the risk and wing it, even though I wasn't 110% sure.
So, now I'm rooted and have ROM manager/CWM installed, TiBu, and ES File Explorer installed. Now I'm just trying to figure out what I can/cannot remove as far as bloatware. A few items I'm sure I'd like to keep (working), so I don't want to mess with anything that might be used in another app/widget....Which brings me to my next question...
What's the best way to remove bloatware? I found an excel spreadsheet online that shows what's safe/unsafe to remove but I'm confused as to what I should do to get rid of items I NEVER want, and how to turn off items I MAY want in the future. If I freeze these items, do they stay frozen upon reboot, and until I unfreeze, or otherwise? What's the difference between a .APK package and a single process, etc?
Thanks in advance! I feel like I entered Android Elementary last night and already graduated to Android Junior High!
P.S. The captchas on this site to post ARE THE WORST CAPTAS IVE SEEN IN MY ENTIRE FRIGGIN LIFE, MY GOD!!!! I must refresh it 20x til something is RELATIVELY clear. Seriously????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you decided on a ROM you want to use yet? Personally I think that takes a lot of the decisions about de-bloating out of the equation. Pick a ROM, flash it, and see what you got? I first did the de-bloated root method and didn't have the stock e-mail app! While it is easy to download an e-mail app from the play store I was still shocked that it was considered bloat by the builder of the particular de-bloated version I chose.
Currently I am on Synergy 1.7 r23 with Darkhorse theme. I also like the Color in HD theme but can't decided between the two.

Bleelas said:
Glad to hear you're rooted and learning a lot! Now you're opening another HUGE can of worms, namely how Android organizes the application framework, what are services, processes, activities, tasks etc. You may have already found the information you're looking for, but a montrously dumbed down version is that the APK is a package containing the compiled program and all the extraneous files it needs to run while a process is an actively running application. In order to debloat, you can either freeze an application with another program like TiBu, or you can manually freeze it by changing the app extension, or you can delete the APK, or you can remove it from the rom you want BEFORE you even flash it. What you choose depends on your goals...why you want to debloat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome, the explanation of what a .APK is helped a TON! Thank you!
dan_joegibbsfan said:
Have you decided on a ROM you want to use yet? Personally I think that takes a lot of the decisions about de-bloating out of the equation. Pick a ROM, flash it, and see what you got? I first did the de-bloated root method and didn't have the stock e-mail app! While it is easy to download an e-mail app from the play store I was still shocked that it was considered bloat by the builder of the particular de-bloated version I chose.
Currently I am on Synergy 1.7 r23 with Darkhorse theme. I also like the Color in HD theme but can't decided between the two.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know you've been helping me in my other thread. Thanks again for everything! I believe you know now, I am on Synergy r46, running quite stable so far but I haven't done much to the phone since flashing.

I've got a noob question... is there any way to back up your IMEI and install the samsung drivers from a Mac besides running Parallels or VMware? I rooted using Adam Outler's Casual and would like to start flashing ROM's but don't want to risk it without backing up my IMEI first.

See the note in this thread that backing up IMEI is obsolete. Nowadays you use the method linked from that thread, which does not involve making a backup first.

Weioo, I'd like to thank you for your intelligent questions, willingness to read, and attitude in this forum. It's good to see someone posting in the correct place, educating theirself, and not coming into the forum saying something like "plz help my phone wont boot and i didnt read enouf". So, respect. :good:
Anyway, to add something to this thread. What version of Clockwork Recovery are you using? If you're using version 6+, let me say a little how to manage your backups. The new CWR stores its backups in /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/, which will only be about 20mb in size - this is normal. The backup file is just sort of an index, and the other couple hundred megabytes meat of the backup is stored as a ton of tiny files in /sdcard/clockworkmod/blobs/. If you ever need to clean up space on your phone's storage, always delete the backup file and do not touch the blobs directory. When you make your next backup, CWR will clean up the space freed from deleting that backup file.
What's actually going on is that instead of making one big file as a copy of a phone's complete image (as CWR did in previous versions), it saves space by backing up each file individually. If you have two backups with the exact same file (having the same hash), CWR deduplicates that by only backing it up once. The blobs folder has each fine, with the hash as its filename, and the backup file includes which hashes (filenames) it needs to function. When very few things change in between backups, the new backup only has to add new blobs for the things that changed (and thus have a different hash). You don't delete the blobs directly because it's not obvious which ones are used and which aren't. When CWR cleans up space, it reads the backup files and deletes blobs that aren't associated with any existing backups.

rednukleus said:
See the note in this thread that backing up IMEI is obsolete. Nowadays you use the method linked from that thread, which does not involve making a backup first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay thanks, but if I do flash something and lose my IMEI, to do that process I'd need to be running Parallels or VMware on my Mac. Basically I'm trying to figure out if there is another way to do this using a mac or would I need to buy one of those programs if I lose my IMEI?

Great beginner post
lazarus2405 said:
Weioo, I'd like to thank you for your intelligent questions, willingness to read, and attitude in this forum. It's good to see someone posting in the correct place, educating theirself, and not coming into the forum saying something like "plz help my phone wont boot and i didnt read enouf". So, respect. :good:
Anyway, to add something to this thread. What version of Clockwork Recovery are you using? If you're using version 6+, let me say a little how to manage your backups. The new CWR stores its backups in /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/, which will only be about 20mb in size - this is normal. The backup file is just sort of an index, and the other couple hundred megabytes meat of the backup is stored as a ton of tiny files in /sdcard/clockworkmod/blobs/. If you ever need to clean up space on your phone's storage, always delete the backup file and do not touch the blobs directory. When you make your next backup, CWR will clean up the space freed from deleting that backup file.
What's actually going on is that instead of making one big file as a copy of a phone's complete image (as CWR did in previous versions), it saves space by backing up each file individually. If you have two backups with the exact same file (having the same hash), CWR deduplicates that by only backing it up once. The blobs folder has each fine, with the hash as its filename, and the backup file includes which hashes (filenames) it needs to function. When very few things change in between backups, the new backup only has to add new blobs for the things that changed (and thus have a different hash). You don't delete the blobs directly because it's not obvious which ones are used and which aren't. When CWR cleans up space, it reads the backup files and deletes blobs that aren't associated with any existing backups.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This should be stickied!!

My apologies for the newb questions, but last night I modded my phone to Eclipse 2.1 version 10-20-12 with the latest GAPPS 10-21-12 ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1934572 ). This latest GAPPS seems to be missing a bunch of applications including GMAIL registration (to access the Play store successfully) as well Google Now and many other Google based apps (Google Maps, Google Voice, etc etc). I don't believe the ROM was installed incorrectly - I went through the prerequisite Wipe Cache/Wipe Partition/Wipe Dvalik Cache and even Fix Permissions. Also the Voice Search application is missing, but maybe that's tied in with the Google suite of apps not running correctly.
Being that I'm a newb on this site I can't post the question over on the Eclipse page (not allowed access with less then 10 posts) but I find it impossible to properly register/access Google Play as well as using any of the Google Apps. I went ahead and downloaded Google Now separately and installed the APKs but this just resulted in the program crashing when the GPS is enabled (keeping it disabled keeps Google Now at the "Initializing" screen).
Thanks for any support that can be provided.

ResolveD
Disregard the previous post - used GAPPS from 10-12-12 (w/o Dvalik cache wipe) and Google Now, Voice Search, G-mail register, Google Play all work fine now. The only issue I see is presently with the Google Now browser not scrolling through links, but you can always use the magnifying glass (which shows you previews of the webpages it finds).
Anyways HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ROM!!! Eclipse 10-20 build (4.1.2) w/10-12 GAPPS. Easily the best ROM out there so far :laugh:

Deleting System apps
Now that I have finally rooted my VZW GS3, and installed Titanium Backup Pro, am I able to delete system apps from there without damaging anything? I have not installed a custom ROM, all I have done is root, unlock bootloader and install CWM. I want to get rid of bloatware (e.g. Polaris Viewer) can I use TI BU Pro?

levilib said:
Now that I have finally rooted my VZW GS3, and installed Titanium Backup Pro, am I able to delete system apps from there without damaging anything? I have not installed a custom ROM, all I have done is root, unlock bootloader and install CWM. I want to get rid of bloatware (e.g. Polaris Viewer) can I use TI BU Pro?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

levilib said:
Now that I have finally rooted my VZW GS3, and installed Titanium Backup Pro, am I able to delete system apps from there without damaging anything? I have not installed a custom ROM, all I have done is root, unlock bootloader and install CWM. I want to get rid of bloatware (e.g. Polaris Viewer) can I use TI BU Pro?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just wanted to add that it may be better to just freeze the apps, or at least run a nandroid backup so you can revert to stock. Without all system apps intact an OTA update would fail.

apacseven said:
Just wanted to add that it may be better to just freeze the apps, or at least run a nandroid backup so you can revert to stock. Without all system apps intact an OTA update would fail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not worried about an OTA update, and I made a nandroid, I just want to make sure I'm not going to delete anything important. are there any apps you can think of that I would want to delete but it would cause problems?

[FAQ] [REF]★ All you need to know about Android | Read this before you post/root ! ★

[FAQ] [REF]★ All you need to know about Android | Read this before you post/root ! ★
Understanding the Android world before rooting your LG Nexus 5
Here is a *noob friendly* collection of information every user that wants to root their phone should know. Many people blindly follow guides without even knowing what "Rooting" means. Hopefully, this will help new users (and old ones, why not?) understand what is happening with their phone, and what they will put up with.
This may seem as a lot to read, but there are no shortcuts. You either read and learn what you're dealing with, or find out the hard way.
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Contents
Post 1:
★What does rooting mean?
★The advantages of rooting
★The disadvantages of rooting
★What about the internal memory? How does that work?
★Things you hear people talk about
★How to backup your stuff
★Flashing a custom ROM
★ADB and Fastboot
★Restoring your Nexus 5 to STOCK
Post 2:
★Tips and Tricks
★Questions and Misconceptions
Let's get started, shall we?
What does rooting mean?​
To 'root' your phone means to gain administrative rights on the file system of your phone (in linux, root is the username of the master admin, kind of being an Administrator on Windows). With root access, you can install and uninstall anything you want on the phone. Android is, in fact, based on Linux.
Most phones come with limited access regarding what you can and can't do on it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it can keep users from accidentally breaking something they shouldn't mess with on the phone, especially in regards to the operating system. However, many manufacturers limit your rights to things that aren't really so mission critical, too, and rooting the phone gets around this.
If you have a few unnecessary applications (bloatware) pre-installed on your phone that you cannot uninstall, rooting will give you this ability. It will also allow you to upgrade to newer versions of Android before your phone's manufacturer and/or cell provider make the updates available to you.
So now you know what rooting means. And I bet you are now thinking "Should I do it, or not?" Well, hope this helps you decide:
The advantages of rooting​
-De-bloat your phone. Uninstall any unwanted system apps.
-More control over how the CPU acts. This can increase performance or battery life, depends on how you configure it.
-More control over power consumption. This implies undervolting your CPU, giving it less power, so it consumes less.
-More control over how apps start up. Prevent apps from starting up when they don't need to.
-Change your Baseband (Radio). Try different radio versions, with the purpose of reducing battery drain or improving your signal strength.
-Flash custom ROMs. Bored of the stock ROM and look? Browse through the hundreds of custom ROMs provided by this community, each having different features and looks.
-Backups. The ability to completely backup your phone, and fully restoring it to the time of the backup. This is done with a Nandroid Backup (we'll talk about this later)
-Mods and Inovations. Use many mods, fixes, tweaks or features created by the community!
-Custom Kernels. As a Nexus device, the Nexus 5 will have tons of kernels with different features, supporting better performance, or battery life! To see what a kernel is, keep reading.
-Run apps that need Root Permission. These apps can be very useful, like Titanium Backup, Root Explorer, Terminal Emulator and many others!
The disadvantages of rooting​
-Rooting will void your warranty (Although reverting root is very easy)
-The process a bit dangerous. Something could (99.9% probably not, but still) go wrong, and end up bricking your phone. So, yes, the process is 0.1% risky. You can end up deleting everything on your phone. You'll have to handle this process gently and with care.
-You will be able to do a lot more mistakes. These may cause damage to your phone (But hey, that's why we have these kind of threads, eh?)
-No more over the air official updates. You'll have to update your phone manually, through your recovery. (Which isn't that hard)
Now that you fully know what rooting implies, let's continue exploring the Android world.
What about the internal memory? How does that work?​
Now, as you might already know, each phone has an internal memory. In the Nexus 5's case, it's either 16GB or 32GB. This internal memory needs to hold a lot of things, not only your personal data. This is why you only have available to use 12.9 GB or 28 GB.
An Android's internal memory is partitioned into many chunks that have their separate purposes.
These are all the Nexus 5's partitions, and their names.
Code:
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system /system
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata /data
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/cache /cache
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist /persist
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem /firmware
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/boot /boot
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/recovery /recovery
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/misc /misc
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem /radio
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/sbl1 /sbl1
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/tz /tz
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/rpm /rpm
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/sdi /sdi
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/aboot /aboot
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/imgdata /imgdata
Yes, there are quite a lot. You, as a user, don't need to care about all of them. Here are the ones you will need to know about:
/system- size: about 0.5GB
This partition holds the Android OS itself. Kind of like the C:// disk on your every day Windows PC. This partition has many folders and files you cannot normally get to, due to safety reasons. For example, system/app is where all the system apps are installed.
If something gets deleted from this partition, Android will most probably won't work properly.
/data- size: either 12.9GB, or 28GB
This is where all your personal data is kept. This includes apps, sms, contacts, e-mails etc. It also stores your system settings, like wallpaper, and all those stuff you set up when you got your phone. The most important folders on this partition are data/app (where your apps are stored), data/data (where you app data is stored, like highscores and stuff), and data/media.
Data/media might be considered your sd-card. Yes, I know the Nexus 5 doesn't have an sd-card, but this folder works like one. When you connect your phone to your PC, this is the folder that pops up, with all your music, images, videos, and whatever else you keep on your phone.
Things are getting a bit more complicated, eh? Just bare with me. Next, I will be explaining the different terms you will be encountering throughout your Android experience.
Things you hear people talk about​
Kernel
The kernel is an essential part of any Linux based operating system. It's the program that manages input and output requests of the operating system. Imagine you're at a restaurant. You give your order to a waiter. He takes it to the chef, the chef makes your food, then the waiter brings it back to you, and you enjoy it. In this case, you are the Android system, the waiter is the Kernel, and the chef is the hardware. The system gives the Kernel a request, like firing up another processor core when you play a heavy game, and the Kernel fulfills the request.
Here is an image for better understanding
Recovery
This is a secondary, mini operating system that has access to your internal memory. It contains a few commands that would normally help you recover your Android system in case of a failure, like factory resetting. You will see that, for rooting, you will need to install a custom recovery.
The stock recovery does not have the ability to write custom ROMs (I'll explain these later) on your internal memory. A custom recovery has this option, and many more.
Here are some images for you to fully understand:
Stock recovery:
Custom Recovery
You can see that the Custom Recovery has more options, including "Backup and Restore", Advanced, and Install zip from Sd-card.
You can get in Recovery by powering off your phone, then hold Power+Volume Down button until a black screen with colored text appears. Then, use the volume buttons to select 'Recovery", and then press the Power Button to select it.
Bootloader
The bootloader is the first thing that fires up when you open your phone. As the name says (Boot+Loader), this program loads the kernel, which when boots up the Android system.
The same bootloader can also boot in recovery, as explained above.
When you first get the phone, the bootloader is in a locked state. That means that you cannot use fastboot commands like "fastboot flash" or "fastboot boot". With other words, you cannot simply flash a custom recovery. Thankfully, Google gave us the option to unlock the bootloader very easily, and flash a custom recovery of our choice.
Custom ROMs
A custom ROM is a ZIP file that contains an altered version of the Android OS. There will be many custom ROMs for the Nexus 5, made by wonderful and skilled devs for the community. You can install a Custom ROM with your Custom Recovery. Custom ROMs contain the following folders and files:
META-INF- This folder holds the installation info and data. A custom recovery does not know on it's own how to install a ROM. In this folder, there's a txt file that contains a script, with the purpose of telling the recovery what to do.
System- This folder contains the stuff that will be installed on the /system partition that we talked earlier about.
boot.img- Among others, this file contains the kernel that comes with the ROM.
Dalvik Cache
Android is an open source OS, which supports many different architectures. While it's mainly used in the ARM architecture, it could run on x86. Even with in the ARM there are still some variations. Just like in x86, there are many extensions and SSE is an example of that; ARM is no different and there are some variations from one ARM CPU to another. Dalvik is basically a VM(Virtual Machine) engine, this keep the apps to be universal across many architecture. While this is good, this costs processing power. Meaning, if the apps have to run through VM everytime, they will be very slow. Dalvik cache is basically cache of those apps that's already gone through the VM thus it doesn't require to go through the VM everytime. And when an app run, it run from this version instead. Since each ROM may contain different version of app or optimization or even different kernel or Android version, using dalvik cache from different ROM can get you into trouble. Think of it like trying to run application designed for Windows XP on Windows 7 or Windows 8. It may work, it may not work, or it may even crash. Wiping the Dalvik cache will force the Android OS to optimize all the installed apps all over again.
Ok, so now, after you read all this stuff, you're probably thinking "Ok, I will never get the hang of this". Don't worry. With time, you will know all of these from reflex. And, after you got over that, and manned up again, you probably thought "Ok, let's root this damn thing!". Not quite yet. We aren't done. There are still some crucial things that you need to know. So let's continue.
How to backup your stuff​
Before you do anything EVER, you'll always have to backup your stuff, even if you don't feel like it, or your dog died (in which case I'm truly sorry), but, no matter what you're about to do, always have a recent backup sitting around.
There are many ways and things you can and will probably have to backup.
1. Backup your entire phone, by creating a Nandroid Backup.
As you saw in the 'Custom Recovery" picture above, you have a "Backup and Restore" option. Here it is again:
With every occasion, it's best to use it as often as possible. It only takes about 2 minutes, but it could be a life saver.
A Nandroid will backup:
/system
/data (Except /data/media, where your "sd-card" is, because it's too large and not that important)
/cache (Yes, there is a cache partition, and it will be backed up, although not really necessary)
kernel (The kernel will be backed up too)
***Optional tip: I always keep a recent nandroid backup on my PC, in case I somehow wipe all my phone's contents, and my backup among with them. The Nandroid backup is saved at this location, which can be accessed with a root file explorer, like ES File Explorer : mnt/shell/emulated/clockworkmod/backup or sdcard/TWRP. If you want to copy it to your storage, just copy the latest backup, and then move it to your PC.
2. Your apps and data only
This can be very useful when changing ROMs. You just got bored of your ROM, and want to move to another one. The only way of taking your apps and data with you is by backing them up with an application like Titanium Backup. The backups will be saved in data/media, and will be restored using the same app with which you backup up on the new ROM.
3. Your SMS, Contacts, MMS etc.
These things can be backed up by special apps on the Play Store. Ok, contacts will be restored by Google Sync ( although not always done properly, that's why I still back them up), but SMS will not be restored. There are many free apps that back them up for you, nice an easily, for them to be restored in case of a ROM change or data loss.
4. Your storage (data/media, sd-card)
You just connect your phone to your PC, select all folders, and copy all over on your PC. This will be useful when you unlock the bootloader. A bootloader unlock will wipe all the stuff on your phone (This can be avoided, read guides). So keeping a copy of your sd-card contents on your PC isn't such a bad idea.
Now you know how to keep it safe by creating backups. I will say it again, you are never too safe! Backup when you do a modification, even if it's tiny. Now, after you've finished reading the above, you will probably attempt to root. You will use one of the guides out there ( I will link one at the end of this thread ) to install a custom recovery, and gain root access. But what to do with it? Well, you will most likely end up flashing a custom ROM.
Flashing a custom ROM​
You will get bored of the stock ROM, and will decide to flash a custom ROM. But you haven't done it before, and you don't really understand the process.Before you do anything, you must:
-Make sure that the files are for your phone ! If you flash files that were made for another phone, you might end up with a brick!
-Never panic! There is always a way out! That's what backups are for!
-Read all the instructions! Every ROM thread has instructions. Read them!
{By the way, flashing = installing}
Now, let me take you through the whole flashing process. ( Use the steps in the ROM threads if instructed differently than here )
1. You will search far and wide in these forums for a custom ROM that fits your needs. Every ROM comes as a ZIP file. So when you decide on a ROM, download the zip. For copyright reasons, Google Apps (Play Store, Google Now etc) don't come included with the ROM. So you will have to download them too. They are usually linked on the ROM main thread.
Some ROMs might have addons too, so check them out, and download the ones you want.
2. You now downloaded the ROM, Google Apps, and some addons. The next step will be to put them on your sd-card. Connect your phone to your PC, and make an easy access folder, like "Root Stuffs" where you'll put all these zips.
3. Now, let the backup process begin. You first backup your apps, app data , SMS, Contacts etc., like I explained above. I recommend Titanium Backup for apps and SMS, MC Backup for contacts.
4. Now you are ready to go in recovery. Power down your phone. Then, press and hold the Power Button and the Volume Down button at the same time. You will be brought to the Bootloader Screen. Now, with the Volume Buttons, switch through the options until you find "Recovery". Then press the Power Button again.
5. Now you will be booted in your Custom Recovery. Depending on your recovery, you will have the options on your screen.
CWM Recovery:
6. You will go to the Backup and Restore menu, and select "Backup". If you made a backup before, you can select "Delete" first, and delete it, for space consumption purposes.
7. After the backup finished, you will return to the main screen. There, select 'Wipe data/ Factory Reset". This will wipe everything in /data except /media, so your sd-card will remain untouched. Don't worry, you have a Nandroid Backup!
8. After the wipe finished, you will go to "Install zip from sd-card". You'll have to navigate to the folder where you put the ROM, and select it. You'll see it will nicely install.
9. After the ROM finished installing, you will have to flash the Google Apps zip, and the mods. Install them the same way you installed the ROM itself.
10. After you have flashed everything, you can select "Reboot system now" . First boot will take longer to complete. Again, don't panic. You have a Nandoid bakcup . You will end up with the ROM booted, and you'll continue setting it up.
TWRP Recovery:
6. Go to the "Backup" menu, select "Boot", "System", and "Data", then swipe the thing on the bottom on the screen to start backing up.
7. Once you're done, use the home button to get to the main screen. Select "Wipe", and swipe the thing again to Factory Data Reset. This will wipe data, cache and dalvik cache. This will not wipe your internal storage (Music, photos, etc).
8. After the wipe finished, use the home button again to get to the main screen. From there, select the 'Install" option. You'll have to navigate to the folder where you put the ROM, and select it. Then, by using the "Add more zips" option, add the Gapps package, and and then any addons or mods, in this order. Then swipe the bottom thing to flash.
9. After you have flashed everything, you can select "Reboot" . First boot will take longer to complete. Again, don't panic. You have a Nandoid bakcup . You will end up with the ROM booted, and you'll continue setting it up.
***In case something went bad, like your phone doesn't boot for more than 10 minutes, or the animation endlessly repeats itself (Boot Loop), do the following:
11*. Hold down the Power +Volume Buttons until the phone shuts down. Then release them for a second, and immediately press them again. You will be brought to the bootloader screen. Enter recovery.
12*. In recovery, go to the "Backup and Restore" menu, and select "Restore" for CWM, or "Restore" for TWRP. Then pick the backup you did earlier, and wait for it to complete. Then, select "Reboot system now", and you should be booted back in your original ROM.
Now, let's say that after you flashed a ROM, it either did not boot, or you had some bugs with it. You will go to the thread ROM to report your problem. Here's how to not post:
"This ROM doesn't work"
You will have to be a lot more specific than that. In reporting a problem, you will have to do the following:
-Say what you did (Flashing process)
-What you flashed afterwards
-What you did to reproduce the bug
-What recovery you use
-ROM Version
-even provide a logcat <This is quite advanced> (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1726238)
You have to give as many details as possible, so the developer can sort things out.
ADB and Fastboot​
ADB (Android Debug Bridge)
The Android Debugging Bridge is kind of a toolkit, that has many commands to control your Android from your PC. This is an essential part of your Android experience. With ADB, you can do many stuff that you couldn't normally do, like backup your apps, or push and pull packages from your phone.
ADB is also used by many of the useful tools out there, like toolkits, and all sort of programs that enhance your Android experience.
With ADB, you can also Logcat. Logcatting is creating a log of everything that happens on your Android phone while it's on. This is used to find the sources of bugs.
Example of ADB Commands:
Code:
adb pull /system/app/RANDOM APP = creates a copy of a system app on your PC
adb push app /system/app = Copies an app from your PC to your system partition
adb reboot bootloader/recovery = Reboots the phone in bootloader or recovery
adb logcat = Starts a logcat
Fastboot
Fastboot is also a toolkit of commands, but a bit different from ADB. While with ADB, you can do simple actions, with fastboot, you can do major ones, like flashing a whole partition, or formatting one. Fastboot is usually the preferred method to flash a recovery. Also, Fastboot usually works with .img files.
Fastboot is also a very easy method of bricking your phone. Always make sure you are flashing the right files for your phone. Furthermore, fastboot is not the preferred method for recovering your phone. It is the last resort. ADB and/or recovery is much easier and safer.
Example of Fastboot commands:
Code:
fastboot erase boot = Erases the kernel
fastboot erase recovery = Erases the recovery
fastboot flash system system.img = Flashes the System partition with an image
fastboot flash boot boot.img = Flashes kernel
fastboot flash userdata data.img = Flashes Data partition
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img = Flashes a new recovery
fastboot reboot = Reboots the phone
To use ADB and Fastboot, you must first have ADB drivers and Fastboot drivers installed. Here is a very good guide to set up these two useful things:
http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-set-up-android-adb-and-fastboot-on-windows-tutorial/
Restoring your Nexus 5 to STOCK​
I moved the whole guide here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2513701
Check it out.
Now please proceed to the next post​

Tips and Tricks​
1. Try to not use toolkits. (I'm not disregarding any toolkit dev. They did a wonderful job)
Chromium_ said:
It has been proven that every time you use a toolkit, god kills a kitten. Save the kittens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Due to the fact that people are lazy in nature , toolkits have been made so that users don't struggle with rooting their phone. But there are many reasons for you to not use one:
-->you won't learn anything from using a toolkit, and, if something goes wrong, a toolkit can rarely fix your problem. It's better if you rely on your own forces.
-->you put the fate of your phone in someone else's hands. If a bit of code is wrong, then your phone could get bricked.
-->you miss out all the fun. Why buy a Nexus device if you don't want to explore the depths of the Android OS?
2. Never panic
Whenever you don't know what to do, and you're stuck, don't panic. There are many people here that can help you. Don't try doing anything blindly. Search the forums, or start a thread in the Q&As section, and we will help you.
3. Read everything carefully!!
(If you read this, post a cat picture in this thread, and you will be rewarded with a thanks from me)
I might have said it a couple of times throuout this post, but always read everything. Someone wrote something for a reason. Usually, if you read everything, and do what you are told, you are bound to be failproof.
4. Battery pull emulation
If you hold the Power Button and both Volume buttons for 10-15 seconds, the Nexus 5 will power off, as if it had its battery pulled out. Useful when you get stuck.
5. Never try to make any system modification(root or flash ROM/recovery) without having enough time and resources to troubleshoot.
While most of the time, this is relatively painless when the you follow the instruction carefully. That said, things can go wrong. So, don't just say I saw a new ROM when I woke up and I wanna try it, and you have 30 minutes before going to work. Even if it only take 5 minutes to flash the ROM, if a thing goes wrong, those 25 minutes you have left may not be enough to fix your problem and you have no phone to use that day.
When you flash something, always make sure you have about an hour of free time, and a PC with ADB and Fastboot, ready to make us of if something goes wrong.
Ok, so now you know pretty much all a normal user should know. But there are still questions that are very frequently asked that need answering. Here are some questions and answers about popular problems and misconceptions. You might encounter these problems later, so give it one more minute of your time:
Questions and Misconceptions​
1. My Nexus 5 is getting very hot. Hardware problem?
Nope. There are many reasons that contribute to your phone getting hot, like
-the fact that it doesn't have any way of cooling itself
-the fact that a quad core produces more heat
-etc.
Don't worry. Everything is working as it should. For example, the Ipad gets 3 times hotter than the Nexus.
2. If I am rooted, will I receive OTA updates? (See Return to stock section)
Yes, and no.
You will be able to download the update by having installed the Stock ROM with stock kernel, though it will not be installed automatically, due to the fact that you have a custom recovery. You will need to install it manually.
3. The Nexus 5 audio quality is horrible. Why?
It isn't horrible. It's normal, but the max volume isn't as loud as on other devices. I have been a piano player for 12 years. I have quite a sensitive ear, and I can tell you that the audio quality on the Nexus is comparable with that of an Ipod. The only major difference is that, with the Ipod, you can go deaf with the max volume.
4. Which kernel/ ROM should I use?
Don't ever ask this question. What's good for others isn't necessarily good for you. You'll have to try the many kernels and ROMs yourself.
5. Google Now doesn't activate with "Ok, Google". Why?
Make sure your language is English (United States) in Settings>Language & Input.
6. My battery life is short. What should I do?
-Use a custom kernel made for battery life (like Franco)
-Use the Greenify app from the play store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify&hl=ro)
-Don't use Automatic Brightness. Set the brightness to about 35%.
7. My Baseband and IMEI are unknown. What do I do?
Flash the factory images, and then boot in the stock recovery and do a factory data reset. If it does not solve the issue, repeat. I had to do it 3 times for it to work.
8. What's the difference between "Development" and "Original Development"?
Original Development - Usually original pieces of work, based on the original AOSP source, or coded by yourself.
Development - Projects based on works from the Original Development, or that don't include actual developing (Stock rooted ROMs)
This is all for now. I hope you understand what's up with this Rooting process. If you have any questions, don't be shy to ask in this thread
If there is anything to be added to this thread, please post below
Thank you for the time you allocated to reading this! You are now smarter :good:
Good day, and Happy flashing!!!
For credits, useful links and other stuff, see the post below.​

Useful links
[GUIDE] Nexus 5 - How to Unlock Bootloader, Install Custom Recovery and Root
[INDEX] Google Nexus 5 - ROMs, Kernels, MODs, Recoveries, Themes
[HELP THREAD] Nexus 5 | Ask any question
[MODEM] [EFS] Nexus 5 Flashable Modems and EFS Backup
Nexus 5 OTA Help-Desk
Credits and Thanks!!
@rootSU
For providing me a template, inspiration, and much of the info. His original thread in the S3 forums: (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2362743)
@paxChristos
For the logcat part
@efrant
For pointing out some mistakes
@someone0
For this post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=47474453&postcount=81
​

Very good post. Im not new to rooting but I am when it comes to Nexus Devices. Im use to rooting phones with external SD cards so I have one question.
When Im going to flash a rom or zip or whatever in custom recovery, I know I have to "Wipe data/factory reset" then "wipe calivk". I know that the data wipe is for apps, app data and system settings. My question is will it also delete pictures, music, videos and other files/file folders like that on the device?

MMontanez347 said:
Very good post. Im not new to rooting but I am when it comes to Nexus Devices. Im use to rooting phones with external SD cards so I have one question.
When Im going to flash a rom or zip or whatever in custom recovery, I know I have to "Wipe data/factory reset" then "wipe calivk". I know that the data wipe is for apps, app data and system settings. My question is will it also delete pictures, music, videos and other files/file folders like that on the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A Factory Data Reset doesn't wipe the data/media folder, where all the things that should be on the sd-card are. You can use the option with no worries.

Very informative, didn't read the whole thing though. I stop at the advantage of flashing custom ROM. In my past experience, gaining root <> able to flash custom ROM. If I understand correctly, even if you can gain root access but not able to unlock the boot-loader, getting a custom ROM would be problematic. IMO, I wouldn't list that there. Sure this maybe beyond noobie scope and doesn't pertain to Nexus 5 specifically. But I wouldn't use that as a rule of thumb. Having used the Sprint Photon 4G, I have respectfully disagree with you on that. Gaining root, mean having admin privilege for the OS not the boot-loader.
---------- Post added at 11:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 PM ----------
MMontanez347 said:
Very good post. Im not new to rooting but I am when it comes to Nexus Devices. Im use to rooting phones with external SD cards so I have one question.
When Im going to flash a rom or zip or whatever in custom recovery, I know I have to "Wipe data/factory reset" then "wipe calivk". I know that the data wipe is for apps, app data and system settings. My question is will it also delete pictures, music, videos and other files/file folders like that on the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I understand of basic android OS is that the system and apps are sitting on separate partition. And so is you normal partition for data, which usually the phone shown as SD card even though it's not a separate internal SD card. The phone usually have one large pool of storage space, think of it like an SSD drive. Then it got split into many partitions for many things. It has boot sector, recovery partition(for storing recovery method, either stock, CWM or TWRP), boot partition, system partition and maybe may other system relation usage partitions. Those partition are already planed out(fixed) by the people who create the ROM for the device. And the rest of the space will be given for the user to do other thing under one partition. And this partition usually won't get wipe. If you have used any custom recovery like CWM or TWRP, there usually be an option to wipe or not wipe certain things. This is possible because all those things are stored in separate partition.

someone0 said:
Very informative, didn't read the whole thing though. I stop at the advantage of flashing custom ROM. In my past experience, gaining root <> able to flash custom ROM. If I understand correctly, even if you can gain root access but not able to unlock the boot-loader, getting a custom ROM would be problematic. IMO, I wouldn't list that there. Sure this maybe beyond noobie scope and doesn't pertain to Nexus 5 specifically. But I wouldn't use that as a rule of thumb. Having used the Sprint Photon 4G, I have respectfully disagree with you on that. Gaining root, mean having admin privilege for the OS not the boot-loader.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well yeah, but from being able to flash a custom ROM to being able to get root access in your current ROM, there is only one simple step, that is installing SU binaries, and a superuser app. I just didn't want to confuse new users by changing the term used only for one small step.

I'll just adding things as I read through, while I'm not a noob by any mean, that doesn't mean I don't see thing missing out. Since sometime the author fill in the missing gap in his/her head. I know I did that a few time. As I read, I though, hmm "Understanding the Android world before rooting" that's helpful. But after I start reading, it's more like a guide to understand the rooting world of android. I understand that's not the purpose here to teach people android, hopefully not to the general XDA members audience. But I would say the headline isn't exactly saying it right. The you start throwing the term Linux. Sure I understand what it is, at least to my understanding. But, it probably wouldn't hurt to stated the first time the term linux is use that Android is a linux based OS as well. Not just saying root is an equivalent of admin in linux. If you are going to assume that the intended audiences don't know what root is, then you should assume the audience know that the same targeted audiences don't know that Android has a deep relationship with linux as well.
I would put extra emphasis on dealing with fastboot. Yes you can do a major operation w/ fastboot. That said, greater power come greater responsibility. It's much easier to brick your device w/ fastboot and less chance of unbricking from using fastboot than recovery or adb.

someone0 said:
I'll just adding things as I read through, while I'm not a noob by any mean, that doesn't mean I don't see thing missing out. Since sometime the author fill in the missing gap in his/her head. I know I did that a few time. As I read, I though, hmm "Understanding the Android world before rooting" that's helpful. But after I start reading, it's more like a guide to understand the rooting world of android. I understand that's not the purpose here to teach people android, hopefully not to the general XDA members audience. But I would say the headline isn't exactly saying it right. The you start throwing the term Linux. Sure I understand what it is, at least to my understanding. But, it probably wouldn't hurt to stated the first time the term linux is use that Android is a linux based OS as well. Not just saying root is an equivalent of admin in linux. If you are going to assume that the intended audiences don't know what root is, then you should assume the audience know that the same targeted audiences don't know that Android has a deep relationship with linux as well.
I would put extra emphasis on dealing with fastboot. Yes you can do a major operation w/ fastboot. That said, greater power come greater responsibility. It's much easier to brick your device w/ fastboot and less chance of unbricking from using fastboot than recovery or adb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Made some modifications. Thanks!
Credited you

Good thing to see this in the N5 section too.

Great job,dude:good:

Well done! Not a noob, but still learned some things.

jd1639 said:
Well done! Not a noob, but still learned some things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They say we never stop learning

abaaaabbbb63 said:
They say we never stop learning
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very true, I am 76 and learn new things all the time.
Very good and informative post.
While I knew the subject, I read the whole thing just in case I missed something.
The list of ALL the partitions was something I did not know.
:good:

Rooting may or may not void your warranty, depending on where you are. In the EU they cannot refuse warranty for a rooted device, or even a fully 'hacked' phone with unlocked bootloader, rooted and custom ROMed or even in the case of HTCs super CID'ed devices. The exception is if the fault is software related, if you brick it, you lose it, but any hardware fault is still covered.

ChrisM75 said:
Rooting may or may not void your warranty, depending on where you are. In the EU they cannot refuse warranty for a rooted device, or even a fully 'hacked' phone with unlocked bootloader, rooted and custom ROMed or even in the case of HTCs super CID'ed devices. The exception is if the fault is software related, if you brick it, you lose it, but any hardware fault is still covered.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still, it does not apply to the whole EU. In countries where the Nexus 5 isn't sold through Google Play, warranty policies may differ. Retailers tend to take advantage of their monopoly over these countries and strip down the warranty coverage, and say that if you modified the software, it goes in the "Unsuitable Usage" category, and they can't do anything to it, not even hardware wise.
Trust me. Retailers know how to crook you with every occasion.

abaaaabbbb63 said:
Still, it does not apply to the whole EU. In countries where the Nexus 5 isn't sold through Google Play, warranty policies may differ. Retailers tend to take advantage of their monopoly over these countries and strip down the warranty coverage, and say that if you modified the software, it goes in the "Unsuitable Usage" category, and they can't do anything to it, not even hardware wise.
Trust me. Retailers know how to crook you with every occasion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They know how to try. Force the issue and they cave in. I went as far as starting court action over this and they then gave in because they know they would lose. Know your rights and use them.

Very useful info. Thanks.
Quick question. I am coming from htc one x. I have fastboot and drivers installed for that device. Will these work for the n5 or do I need to install new specific ones?

columbo67 said:
Very useful info. Thanks.
Quick question. I am coming from htc one x. I have fastboot and drivers installed for that device. Will these work for the n5 or do I need to install new specific ones?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They will work for the n5 (I think.... more like 80% sure). Try and see.

I had a question about the void warranty part. Do you know if it rooting/unlocking bootloader voids the warranty in Canada? I'll be getting the Nexus 5 as my first smartphone but would still like to mess around with rooting after a while, but would Google care if I rooted/unlocked the loader? Also, can you unroot/relock the loader?
Thanks.

[Q] Lost functions after deleting bloatware from rooted Sensation 4G

Hi all, I have a rooted HTC Sensation 4G, which still has T-Mo provided ICS 4.0.3 and I assume Sense 3.6. I never put any other ROMs in, not sure how, just wanted root for stuff like tethering, call recording, etc. The phone has been getting more and more slow as time goes on, and has gotten to the point lately I have nothing left to lose. When making a call, the Contacts lists stays up a good 60 seconds or so before the screen comes up where t is actually dialing for you, or if I manually put a phone number in, it just hangs there just as long before the phone takes over to actually make the call. And do just about anything else, when getting out of what your were doing, I get the white HTC screen, then loading the screen with the time and temp which takes a good 30 seconds. Using the browser often just cuts me off and reverts to the home screen.
I thought finally getting rid of the bloatware may help, got rid of NOVA, Lookout, a lot of wallpapers and widgets I don't use, something called CS and a couple others I looked up online which says is OK to delete, as well as Facebook, Youtube, TV apps, etc.
After I was done, first thing I noticed, no time and temp. display. I used an app called NoBloat and checked "backup and delete" on all I wanted to get rid of. I started trying to install from NoBloat's back-up folder, and even though says installing, I could tell they weren't when I looked for the installations. I found the NoBloat folder on my SD card, and tried the .apk's from there, and the majority would say "Can't install" or something similar. I then wanted to take a screenshot of something, and that function is gone.
I would like to do a reset to start from scratch without losing root. I found out the Senastion is a tough one to root and I paid someone to do it and it took 2 days before I could pick it up. Is there a way to reset without losing root since I still have stock 4.0.3 in it? Thanks much.

do you have a custom recovery installed?

Hi, if you mean a custom ROM, no. But if any of these will help, I have BusyBox Free, NoBloat, ROM Manager, ROM Toolbox Lite, Root Browser Lite, Root Checker, Super SU, SuperUser, SuperUser Whitelist, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium Backup installed. I never backed anything up with Titanium BU. Was one of those things I was going to lean to use, but didn't yet. I assume I need to install a custom ROM to get total functionality back without losing root, would be nice to get Kit Kat on this (or is this phone too old to do much with?)
I did manage to install "Sense flip clock & weather" from Google Play which broght back time and temp., and also Screenshot Ultimate which seems to work, but not as easy to use as the native app. A bunch of other screenshot apps seemed not to work at all, so now I can basically get by the way it is now, but still need to get the 60 second dialing lag fixed which is still there, so I'm assuming a fresh ROM install. Thankfully my Wifi Tether app still works. Thanks.

dannykewl said:
Hi, if you mean a custom ROM, no. But if any of these will help, I have BusyBox Free, NoBloat, ROM Manager, ROM Toolbox Lite, Root Browser Lite, Root Checker, Super SU, SuperUser, SuperUser Whitelist, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium Backup installed. I never backed anything up with Titanium BU. Was one of those things I was going to lean to use, but didn't yet. I assume I need to install a custom ROM to get total functionality back without losing root, would be nice to get Kit Kat on this (or is this phone too old to do much with?)
I did manage to install "Sense flip clock & weather" from Google Play which broght back time and temp., and also Screenshot Ultimate which seems to work, but not as easy to use as the native app. A bunch of other screenshot apps seemed not to work at all, so now I can basically get by the way it is now, but still need to get the 60 second dialing lag fixed which is still there, so I'm assuming a fresh ROM install. Thankfully my Wifi Tether app still works. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not a custom rom
a custom recovery such as 4ext ,cwm ,TWRP
if you want to use a custom rom you must have a custom recovery installed
by the way all custom roms come pre-rooted
so don't worry about root(it is the easiest part)
can you post your bootloader details?

Hi rzr86, here is the screen I got, I didn't know if/how to proceed any further. I also noticed I have ClockWorkMod installed if that helps, I had the phone rooted around August of 2013 if that helps, so I think all the apps to do with rooting have not been updated, Thanks again.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}

dannykewl said:
Hi rzr86, here is the screen I got, I didn't know if/how to proceed any further. I also noticed I have ClockWorkMod installed if that helps, I had the phone rooted around August of 2013 if that helps, so I think all the apps to do with rooting have not been updated, Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i suggest to change your recovery to 4ext(since you are on S-ON 4ext has smartflash feature which flashes the boot.img for you while flashing a new rom)
take here the latest version of 4ext recovery
http://www.4shared.com/zip/WnSyLWMaba/4EXT_Recovery_Touch_v1006_RC3_.html
extract the recovery.img and flash it via fastboot command
the command is fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
if you stay with cwm recovery you will have to flash the boot.img manually while flashing a new rom

Hi rzr86, thanks agin, I will do this later tonight when expecting no phone calls. So I would delete the clockwork app, and put the recovery.img from the zip file into my SD card, and tap that, or do I go into the bootloader menu again and tap FASTBOOT and put in the command? Any suggestions on what a good ROM for me would be? I assume the 4EXT Touch Recovery automatically backs up what I have now, or prompts me to? Thanks again.

dannykewl said:
Hi rzr86, thanks agin, I will do this later tonight when expecting no phone calls. So I would delete the clockwork app, and put the recovery.img from the zip file into my SD card, and tap that, or do I go into the bootloader menu again and tap FASTBOOT and put in the command? Any suggestions on what a good ROM for me would be? I assume the 4EXT Touch Recovery automatically backs up what I have now, or prompts me to? Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no don't put the recovery.img in your sdcard
connect your device in your pc in fastboot usb mode
extract the recovery.img from the zip and place it in your adb/fastboot folder on your pc
on that folder open a command window and type the command
don't worry it will overwrite the cwm recovery
AFAIK 4ext restores backups made by cwm because 4ext is based on cwm
about rom you can try vipers 5.3.0 (jelly bean with sense)

Thanks once more rzr86, I think I have enough info to handle it from here, and I'll look up the vipers 5.3.0. I know a lot of people say Sense is worthless and a memory hog, but I'm used to it now, and I'm sure with the new ROM some of that memory will be freed up from bloatware. I'll try the new recovery app later tonight, and I assume I can wait another day to put in the viper ROM if needed. Guess I should back my SD card up, even though I assume none of this touches the SD card. Does the SIM card need to be in, as I have an old Dash I can put the SIM in for now till I'm done. Thanks much again.

dannykewl said:
Thanks once more rzr86, I think I have enough info to handle it from here, and I'll look up the vipers 5.3.0. I know a lot of people say Sense is worthless and a memory hog, but I'm used to it now, and I'm sure with the new ROM some of that memory will be freed up from bloatware. I'll try the new recovery app later tonight, and I assume I can wait another day to put in the viper ROM if needed. Guess I should back my SD card up, even though I assume none of this touches the SD card. Does the SIM card need to be in, as I have an old Dash I can put the SIM in for now till I'm done. Thanks much again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
your simcard nad sdcard will be untounched

rzr86 said:
your simcard nad sdcard will be untounched
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not getting too far, give up for tonight. Used "Minimal ADB and Flashboot" app, stays on "waiting for device". I tried modifying the name as recovery in the file name twice. I tried command from the folder I unzipped the recovery.img to, as well as trying to copy recovery.img to the Minimal program folder and try from there. I read I don't need the whole huge ADB download for what I'm doing on another site. I used this to get Minimal:
http://lifehacker.com/the-easiest-way-to-install-androids-adb-and-fastboot-to-1586992378

dannykewl said:
Not getting too far, give up for tonight. Used "Minimal ADB and Flashboot" app, stays on "waiting for device". I tried modifying the name as recovery in the file name twice. I tried command from the folder I unzipped the recovery.img to, as well as trying to copy recovery.img to the Minimal program folder and try from there. I read I don't need the whole huge ADB download for what I'm doing on another site. I used this to get Minimal:
http://lifehacker.com/the-easiest-way-to-install-androids-adb-and-fastboot-to-1586992378
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
don't use any program
just open a command window in that folder where you have adb/fastboot files
edit: by the way did you select fastboot when you connected the device to pc?(from the bootloader screen)

I used the Fastboot under settings, I'll try the Fastboot by pressing Vol down and Power, wasn't sure which to use, thanks again, and will do without launching a program later in today. I should have known better to try the Fastboot screen if the other didn't work.

Hi rzr86, just tried again, powered up phone using vol down and power, have bootloader screen, selected Fastboot. Also gives other options like Bootloader, Reboot, Reboot Bootloader, and Power Down. If I hit power, says Hboot, then checks something real fast something about SD card and no image?. and the prompt is on Fastboot again, and it does say "Fastboot USB", and I can hear the sound on the PC that the USB is connected. I tried from the original adb-fastboot folder I made and also tried unzipping into a new folder as seen in the pic, still getting "fastboot not recognized, Thanks again.
...".

PS I noticed under Recovery Options says "install from SD card" or something to that effect, would this help? (I just rebooted my phone into normal mode), maybe I should try the other way?

dannykewl said:
PS I noticed under Recovery Options says "install from SD card" or something to that effect, would this help? (I just rebooted my phone into normal mode), maybe I should try the other way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually the zip isn't a flashable one
so you can't use that option
try this way
download and install 4ext updater app(link in my signature)
open the app and select to install 4ext recovery touch
it will do the job for you

rzr86 said:
actually the zip isn't a flashable one
so you can't use that option
try this way
download and install 4ext updater app(link in my signature)
open the app and select to install 4ext recovery touch
it will do the job for you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Success! Thank you! I downloaded and installed RC2, hope that's good, as I feel more comfortable with that vs. RC3 still in testing stage. I will take a night of rest since it's Saturday night here and feel like doing something other than phones the rest of the night, LOL. I assume I'm good to go with putting viper530 in, will try on my own tomorrow night, I assume done in a similar way. Funny last couple of days, haven't been getting as long as a delay making calls usually, sometimes go thru right away instead of lagging for often near a full minute, but regardless I think I should go ahead with a new ROM. I assume viper530 compatible with T-Mobile USA. Thanks much again, rzr86!
Image icon not working to add pic, will try posting URL:
http://www.dannykewl.com/misc/GEDC0277.jpg

dannykewl said:
Success! Thank you! I downloaded and installed RC2, hope that's good, as I feel more comfortable with that vs. RC3 still in testing stage. I will take a night of rest since it's Saturday night here and feel like doing something other than phones the rest of the night, LOL. I assume I'm good to go with putting viper530 in, will try on my own tomorrow night, I assume done in a similar way. Funny last couple of days, haven't been getting as long as a delay making calls usually, sometimes go thru right away instead of lagging for often near a full minute, but regardless I think I should go ahead with a new ROM. I assume viper530 compatible with T-Mobile USA. Thanks much again, rzr86!
Image icon not working to add pic, will try posting URL:
http://www.dannykewl.com/misc/GEDC0277.jpg
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Click to collapse
congrats mate:good:
it is compatible with T-MOBILE USA
but before flashing the new rom make a nandroid backup from 4ext just in case

rzr86 said:
congrats mate:good:
it is compatible with T-MOBILE USA
but before flashing the new rom make a nandroid backup from 4ext just in case
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, I think I did the backup right. I just chose the 4EXT app, it booted into recovery screen, I found Backup from Recovery and backup, chose Backup, then went back to Advanced and chose all 4 from there, I think they were system, boot, data, and cache. Rebooted, saved my whole SD card to my PC via the USB "use as disk drive" option. On the backup screen, the word "nandroid" was nowhere to be found (as some other screenshots showed using CWM), just said 4EXT Recovery something, pic attached. I assume I did right. Does 4EXT store the backup in the ClockWorkMod folder on the SD card? Seems that way to me, as now folders showing a bunch of .tar files under the "backup" folder, and the system, boot, cache, and data folders under the "Advanced" folder, and I don't see much in the 4EXT folder. I also backed up what I could using Titanium backup the other day.
Next I went into your signature and clicked the viper 530 link, and all I see on the resulting page is viper 521. Is there a link you have to 530, or should I use 521? I assume I use 4EXT to flash the new ROM, but from the SD card, thanks again, guess almost there.

dannykewl said:
OK, I think I did the backup right. I just chose the 4EXT app, it booted into recovery screen, I found Backup from Recovery and backup, chose Backup, then went back to Advanced and chose all 4 from there, I think they were system, boot, data, and cache. Rebooted, saved my whole SD card to my PC via the USB "use as disk drive" option. On the backup screen, the word "nandroid" was nowhere to be found (as some other screenshots showed using CWM), just said 4EXT Recovery something, pic attached. I assume I did right. Does 4EXT store the backup in the ClockWorkMod folder on the SD card? Seems that way to me, as now folders showing a bunch of .tar files under the "backup" folder, and the system, boot, cache, and data folders under the "Advanced" folder, and I don't see much in the 4EXT folder. I also backed up what I could using Titanium backup the other day.
Next I went into your signature and clicked the viper 530 link, and all I see on the resulting page is viper 521. Is there a link you have to 530, or should I use 521? I assume I use 4EXT to flash the new ROM, but from the SD card, thanks again, guess almost there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nandroid is the backup you made
and there is no need to make an advanced(advanced backups specific partitions of your rom)
just go backup/restore-> backup and you are done(it backups everything)
and yes the backup is located to the cwm folder of your sdcard
there are links for 5.3.0 in the rom thread but if you can't find them take it from here
http://www.4shared.com/zip/7AmgN5Boce/ViperS_C2_530.html