I'm pretty new to this whole rooting thing. I've looked it up before, but never had the time. Now I'm looking at it again, but I can't seem to find any simple easy to understand instructions. Been googling around for about 3 hours now. Pretty much, what I'm wondering (and this would probably help other people as well), is what exactly would I need to do this(Rom's, applications, files, etc). And hopefully some simple instructions. What I have found is your huge gigantic list of Roms, but what does each one do, what version of android are they? Some looked like they were the old 1.x version, but yet posted in November? I was hoping to find a lean version of the OS without the Verzion and HTC stuff packed in there. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in adavance,
-Ed-
Let me start off by saying this is the first phone I rooted so I'm pretty much a n00b too. So here's what I did and what I would suggest:
-Go to this thread:
http://androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/418539-thunderbolt-root-unroot-thread.html
-Utilize the revolutionary tool, but prior to doing this take a look at the video that is posted on that subject. The video is a step by step walkthrough of rooting your device. It is executed perfectly and very basically. It's near impossible to screw up if you follow the instructions. The description of the video has links to everything you should need.
-Once you have watched the video attempt to follow along with it while you root. As I said, it's super basic and easy to follow, a very well done video.
-Once you have rooted your phone I would suggest downloading ROM Manager and Titanium Backup from the market.
-ROM Manager will allow you to flash ROMs without having to load
into recovery and it will provide you a means of backing up the
state of your phone. It's incredibly important to do this before
you attempt to flash a ROM so you have a point to return to.
It is also important to learn and understand how to Backup/Restore
from Recovery. It's the only way to recover from a reboot loop as
you won't be able to access applications. Please see comments below regarding
issues others have had with ROM Manager.
-Titanium Backup will allow you to back up your applications and
data in them. This honestly isn't as important as ROM Manager as
you can always re-download apps from the market, but it makes
things easier when bringing up a new ROM.
-Once you have downloaded these applications (and have root access) I would suggest utilizing them. First, back up your phone with ROM Manager. This can be done by going into ROM Manager and selecting
Backup Current ROM. **NOTE** Do this with a high battery level and
NOT plugged into anything (computer nor wall charger)
-After you have told it to backup I would suggest returning to ROM Manager and selecting
Manage and Restore Backups to ensure the backup you took is in the list.
-Next, open Titanium Backup and select
Backup/Restore then press your menu button and select
Batch. I always choose
Backup all user apps + system data. Some of this data may not restore properly if Sense is missing, so when restoring to an Vanilla Android ROM I would suggest only restoring user apps.
-Things should be backed up now and you can attempt to flash a ROM
-First, connect your phone to a computer and enable disk drive. You will need to place ROMs onto the SD card in order to load them. it is suggested that you just put them at the highest level of the card, not within a folder.
-Download desired ROM.
DO NOT UNZIP THE FILES
=In your case I would suggest Liquid Smooth 3.1
(
Liquid Smooth Roms)
or
Cyanogen
(
[Rom] Unofficial Cyanogenmod 7 2.3.7 Builds [Updated 11/14/11 06:00 Pm Est] - RootzWiki)
I personally prefer Liquid Smooth 3.1 for a Vanilla Android Experience.
-Once you have placed these on the root of your SD card disconnect the phone from the computer. Also, do NOT place it on the charger.
-Open ROM Manager and select
Install ROM from SD Card. Find the desired .zip file and select it. A menu will pop up, select
Wipe Data and Cache and
Wipe Dalvik Cache. We do not need to perform a ROM backup as we did that earlier.
-Select OK and let it work away. This could take a bit of time to boot up the first time, so just let it do it's thing for a while.
That's it, you should be up and running a new ROM. Just remember, stay patient and don't panic. Those are possibly the most important things.
If you need more help there are plenty of great resources on these forums and I'm sure they'll help you out.
If you have more questions just let us know.
-BEST OF LUCK