Help Help needed.....

[Tabasco]

Hi All,

First of all, very sorry to have to ask. I bought a HTC Desire a long time ago for my dad and decided to flashed it to get rid of the awful Orange software. At the time, I think I used something called Goldcard to flash it to Froyo or something.... and installed some simple apps on it. I vaguely remember once flashed, you have to do certain things (rooting??) in order to upgrade to newer firmware.

You probably can tell I have not a clue.....yep, correct, as I don't use Android myself, I never followed the scene afterwards. I'm now trying to read up how to get the latest OS onto the phone. I tried upgrading through the automatic update but that doesn't seem to work.

My first question is, how do I find out exactly what I installed on the phone? How to wipe it and enable it to install the latest firmware like the 'dGB v01_28_2012' that SUroot kindly provided with a guide. As the gap between what I installed and what's available now is so huge I find it a bit difficult to understand....

Again, sorry for noob questions but any help will be greatly appreciated...!

 

[SUroot]

One thing you need to be aware is that HTC have a User Interface Called HTC Sense (Actually its much more than that but for simple explanations lets not go into that).

So the latest official firmware is a million miles away from my dGB. My dGB is compiled from Google's Android open source project. This is the Pure android that google developer phones have, some other manufacturers have, and HTC, Sony and Samsung get BEFORE adding their UI's

If HTC sense is what is being used now, it may well be that its best to stay with that. You cannot add sense to dGB or any other AOSP rom.

Official ROMs are installed via an RUU (Rom Upgrade Utility) which is an .exe you run from a windows PC.

The latest one was not really released officially. Rather it was but it was marked for developers only. As they couldnt be bothered to release it fully, they released one single version that debrands all HTC desires without a gold card and Warranty is no longer voided by doing this.

This is what I would recommend doing really, without rooting and what not.

If you root, you would have a custom recovery and that is a completely different story. best way to check is to turn off the phone, hold volume down and press power. At the white hboot screen use volume to highlight recovery and power to select it. If you are at a black screen with a triangle and exclamation mark, its not rooted.

Software version is settings>About phone, but this may not tell us everything.

 

[Hadron]

The first questions is what is the state of the phone? In particular, was it just debranded (removing Orange bloatware) or rooted (gaining administrator access) as well?

If it's rooted it will have an app called "Superuser" on it, so look for that. Also look in the "about phone" menu for the software version - that will give us some clues too.

The next step will depend on the answers to those questions, and what you want to end up with. However, since you have mentioned custom ROMs, I'd advise going to the root forum and starting by reading the faqs and guides linked from the "all about rooting" sticky post. Start with the rooting FAQ - even if the phone is already rooted, it's important to understand what that means. The root memory faq is also worth reading here. When you've done that, ask us about anything that's unclear.

Edit: and as SUroot's pointed out, you need to know what it is you want to install too. Especially if this is for your father rather than for you, as the change in UI will be significant.

 

[Tabasco]

One thing you need to be aware is that HTC have a User Interface Called HTC Sense (Actually its much more than that but for simple explanations lets not go into that).

So the latest official firmware is a million miles away from my dGB. My dGB is compiled from Google's Android open source project. This is the Pure android that google developer phones have, some other manufacturers have, and HTC, Sony and Samsung get BEFORE adding their UI's

If HTC sense is what is being used now, it may well be that its best to stay with that. You cannot add sense to dGB or any other AOSP rom.

Official ROMs are installed via an RUU (Rom Upgrade Utility) which is an .exe you run from a windows PC.

The latest one was not really released officially. Rather it was but it was marked for developers only. As they couldnt be bothered to release it fully, they released one single version that debrands all HTC desires without a gold card and Warranty is no longer voided by doing this.

This is what I would recommend doing really, without rooting and what not.

If you root, you would have a custom recovery and that is a completely different story. best way to check is to turn off the phone, hold volume down and press power. At the white hboot screen use volume to highlight recovery and power to select it. If you are at a black screen with a triangle and exclamation mark, its not rooted.

Software version is settings>About phone, but this may not tell us everything.

Thank you so much for your reply and apologies for not responding earlier. Work was busy and I couldn't get hold of the phone anyway to check.

I just checked Recovery and it showed a triangle with ! so I guess it's not rooted. (I thought I did!)

The software information is as follows:
Baseband version: 32.49.00.32U_5.11.05.27
Kernel version: 2.6.32.15-gf5a401c / htc-kernel@and18-2 # 1
Build number 2.29.405.2 CL263770 release-keys
Software number: 2.29.405.2
Browser version: Webkit 3.1

Ideally I would like to wipe the phone and start clean - phone has so much stuff downloaded, neither my dad or I had a clue what they are for, lol bless him, at least they were free! I'm still keen to root it though as it seems it does allow more possibilities for odd apps that might be useful.

From what you said, I'm better off installing the factory ROM instead of giving him (and me) anything that's more for advanced users. However, I do want to make his phone more battery efficient and runs a bit smoother. Also if I install the latest factory ROM, will he (or I) be able to install updates in the future easily?

Reading 'Rooting FAQ' now! Wish me luck!

 

[Tabasco]

The first questions is what is the state of the phone? In particular, was it just debranded (removing Orange bloatware) or rooted (gaining administrator access) as well?

If it's rooted it will have an app called "Superuser" on it, so look for that. Also look in the "about phone" menu for the software version - that will give us some clues too.

The next step will depend on the answers to those questions, and what you want to end up with. However, since you have mentioned custom ROMs, I'd advise going to the root forum and starting by reading the faqs and guides linked from the "all about rooting" sticky post. Start with the rooting FAQ - even if the phone is already rooted, it's important to understand what that means. The root memory faq is also worth reading here. When you've done that, ask us about anything that's unclear.

Edit: and as SUroot's pointed out, you need to know what it is you want to install too. Especially if this is for your father rather than for you, as the change in UI will be significant.

Thank you for replying. Reading the FAQ now!

One thing for sure, I will install something that's easier to update so I won't have to worry about not knowing what to do should it need updating in the future!!

 

[SUroot]

Well to be honest, there are no more updates coming officially, so if you stuck the latest 2.3.3 on there, that's it.

For custom Roms with sense (desire is sense 1.0 apparently) there are upto sense 3.5 ported from other devices but if its smooth you want, probably not worth going above sense 2.0

 

[Tabasco]

Well to be honest, there are no more updates coming officially, so if you stuck the latest 2.3.3 on there, that's it.

For custom Roms with sense (desire is sense 1.0 apparently) there are upto sense 3.5 ported from other devices but if its smooth you want, probably not worth going above sense 2.0

Am I right in thinking that Sense comes with most ROMs? I think I will stick to what comes with the official ROM - as if I don't know what it is exactly, chance is dad doesn't need anything more advanced than what's 'standard'.

One question. If I don't care about warranty (since it's an old phone), I don't have to worry about Goldcard anymore, right?

Also downloading the essential stuff now, unrevoked etc.

Edit: looks like Sense is base on HTC's own source so Official ROM should be 'Sense' then.

 

[SUroot]

There are many sense based custom Roms. There are many without.

Desire has 2 year warranty. The oldest desires are just about to go .out of warranty now.

You don't need a goldcard anymore anyway. This is an old and superfluous requirement.

 

[Hadron]

On updates, once you root a phone you should never accept an over the air update - more likely than not it will break something. But once rooted you can change your software to whatever custom ROM you want, so this is no loss.

As SUroot says, if you put official 2.3 on then there won't be any more official updates anyway, but I reckon it's still useful to know about "gotchas" like this.