Root Guide to Regaining your Sanity - Rooted Stock ROM

[ron scubadiver]

I think the Dev's around here have done a great job, but custom ROM's are not for everyone and my experience is the March 2013 OTA has made the V a lot better.

Assuming you already are S-Off and running a custom rom:

Make backups of Apps, user data and a Nandroid before you start!

1. RUU your phone. It may be necessary to flash setver.zip or flash a different hboot, but most users will not have to do either. I have found the best method is to recover the RUU zip from your windows temp directory and put it in the root of the SD card as a PG86IMG.zip.

2. Take the OTA's. Do not enable the connection optimizer.

3. Install a custom recovery using fastboot. I took the 4ext recovery out of the .zip it leaves on the sd card and flashed it as a recovery.img

If you don't already have the paid version of 4ext recovery, it will make your life easier because it can boot directly to recovery from the app. Install after step 5.


4. Root your phone with superuser SU.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1538053

5. Get busybox from the Play Store and install it.


6. Flash jbear hboot 1.58.5858 available here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=30014044&postcount=7


7. Now, disable all the crap you don't intend to use. Most of this can be done from ICS.

8. Resist the urge to flash all kinds of weird stuff that can not be undone. It will probably make your phone unstable.

9. Enjoy your phone with greater stability and battery life than you have previously experienced.

[Guides, please review this for accuracy and clarity.]

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

I think the Dev's around here have done a great job, but custom ROM's are not for everyone and my experience is the March 2013 OTA has made the V a lot better.

8. Resist the urge to flash all kinds of weird stuff that can not be undone. It will probably make your phone unstable.

I'd ask that you elaborate on number 8, and be specific.

 

[ron scubadiver]

I'd ask that you elaborate on number 8, and be specific.

Anyone who really wants to mix and match, experiment, overclock, have some special feature or a very different look, will probably be happier sticking with a custom ROM. I did that for a 6 weeks, learned a lot, sometimes had fun, and sometimes thought I bricked my phone. In fact, I went found this path when I was nearly bricked and went RUU to get things going again. This is how I regained my sanity. Don't follow #8 and go straight back to being a flashaholic.

A rooted stock ROM still provides a lot of enhancements over unrooted:

1. Remove the obnoxious VM boot animation and noise.

2. Run host file add blocking.

3. Backups.

4. Root based WiFi tether is free and works better than non root.

5. Freeze additional app's with MyBackup pro, delete with a root file explorer if you are brave and know what you are doing. I have been very conservative about the latter, limiting deletions to deodexed apps that can be replaced via play.

Memory use is only 336 MB after boot. Battery life is very good, but don't forget to turn 4G off when not using it.