• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root So much information - opinions appreciated!

D

DCC

Lurker
Hi all,

First off, massive thanks to all those that have compiled the rooting guides - really helpful!

Where I'm at: I have a desire, which was rolling on stock 2.2. Now i have rooted with the unrevoked method, got me a goldcard, partitioned a class 6 sd card with a 1gig of ext 3.

So i think i've basically done everything except load a new ROM.

This is now where i'm falling down! there is so much choice and info! I'm not a complete tech ****, but i'm pretty new to tinkering with android.

So really, what i wanted was some opinions on the best rom for me! I've got some months left on my contract and the lack of internal memory has really begun to ruin my desire love affair! so A2SD is the biggest driver here. Equally i would really to play with the way it looks, and i think i'm ready for a Sense-less life!

I've been reading about SURoot's rom, which i understand is rocking some ICS. which sounds like a lot of fun! but it also seems to not be running A2sd? also i wasn't sure if i would have to root my phone with a different method to get it to work? In other words, given that for all intents and purpose i'm a massive noob, is dGB too advanced for me!?

If so, can someone recommend a good starting rom, that will solve my internal memory woes for now?!

Thanks for reading - look forward to your sage advice!
 
dGB is GB not ics. It doesn't use sd-ext for a2sd+ it uses a custom hboot which needs to be fastboot flashed (see adb and fastboot faq* - adb not relevant today though) but not.until you have s-off'd your phone (see revolutionary faq*)

Dgb is advanced. It's stripped back for people who use 3rd party replacements. I would recommend a less stripped back aosp Rom first so you can learn the differences between sense and aosp roms. Because dgb is so stripped, it won't give you chance to decide what stock features you like and what you want to replace with 3rd party apps. Dgb assumes you already know this.

I recommend going with oxygen firstly as that's a good, solid all rounder. I would recommend redux 1.2 (which dgb is loosely based on) but download links are down.

*faqs are in "all things root guide" sticky thread
 
  • Like
Reactions: DCC
You're still s-on because you used unrevoked (unless you've done something else as well) so you cant change hboot. For that reason you probably won't get the best out of dGB which doesn't include apps2sd support .

Oxygen supports a2sd using ext3 however either of the mildwild rooms seem very popular at the moment.

Its also worth taking a look at cyanogenmod too which supports a2sd via a market app called simple2sd (I think darktremor works too). Remember though you will have to flash the Google apps separately (the market isn't even pre-installed).
 
thanks both. I have actually found a couple posts now of people that i think reached the same juncture as i did! i'm going for redux atm - i found a working mirror in the XDA thread.

I was reading about mildwild as well - which is actually how i came to find dGB. I think redux looks pretty safe for now, and i'll venture into the world of new Hboots once i get my head around the basics! thanks for the advice.
 
I can certainly recommend mildwild.. either CM or Oxygen based. Whilst you can save memory by changing Hboot it's not a neccessity. I have found the latest versions of both to be stable with decent battery life.
 
if your after a rom without sense, then your right in that redux is rock solid and a great rom although it is no longer being developed. if you want sense then teppics rooted stock or leedroid are good starter roms. hope this helps a bit.
 
so i've had oxygen based mildwild 3.9 for a week now... I'm struggling quite a lot with stability and battery life - has anyone else had this?

for example on the stability front, i'm getting random reboots and it wont do a full titanium backup without a restart. Facebook requires the odd force close too (although in fairness, thats par for the course!).

On the battery front, I was abroad this week so it was roaming without data. because i was roaming it was getting the very very lightest use, but was still barely clearing the day. i have done the usual of disabling all juicy features and reducing brightness, but i was getting much better life with stock!

is it worth going to the CM based Mildwild? Or can someone recommend another stable rom with decent life? Redux didnt work for me first (and second) time...

thanks for all the replies above!
 
You say redux didn't work? Why? What happened?
You wiping before flashing?
Because if you are and it doesn't work, that sounds to me like errors on the nand section.
But I'm probably jumping the gun here.

Go try Miui! Just use another launcher :-P
 
Haven't used mildwild myself but you could try to reflash the ROM or a factory reset.

Perhaps someone could comment on the battery use. Oxygen is great for battery life, not sure why the MW version should be very different. The are a number of threads about battery calibration. This won't get you any more juice but it will make your battery indication more accurate.
 
MW Oxy was good for battery when I last used it, though that was 2.6 or so. Can't test 4.0 (most recent AFAIK) as I'm currently charging a new battery (so next few cycles won't be normal anyway).
 
re redux - i was able to get the rom itself going, but then when i flashed the A2SD script it would hang on boot. Although in fairness, i think this may have actually been the redux rom that couldn't restart... i tried several battery pulls and reflashes with multiple downloads... no idea!

Re MW - i haven't tried 4.0 yet, only 3.9. having read a few of the older threads, it seems that 3.5 onwards people started commenting on battery life... not sure.

Miui - i have seen the roms, but they dont get much press in the forums - what are they like? it seems everyone keeps going between MW oxy and dGB - but on SUroots advice above, i'm not sure that a week into flashing roms, i'm ready for dGB!

i've just installed juice defender as well, so will see if that has an effect! on the battery stats, it seems that the screen is whats killing it at ~70% usage... but ive cranked all the settings right down!

exciting/scary/frustrating/fun times!

p.s. whats this v6 supercharger i've seen as well?

sorry for all the questions... but i've struggled to find many threads with relevant user experiences!
 
If you use the phone significantly the screen will be the biggest power drain (unless you spend all of your time running Maps!). So don't worry about that. I think Sense accounted the power usage differently, but it's so long since I had that that I cannot be certain.

When you say "flashed the a2sd script" on Redux, do you remember exactly what you flashed? Redux includes an a2sd script, so nothing needs flashing. Moving the dalvik cache to sd-ext was a separate flash, so it might have been that?

MIUI are perhaps the most customised non-Sense ROMs - not just different launcher, but whole different UI from AOSP. They were very popular last year, though you see fewer posts about them here now. Maybe that's just 'cos the hard core who are still hanging on to their Desires are all AOSP fans ;). Seriously though, you might well like them but they aren't the most battery efficient ROMs - for that you want dGB, Redux, Oxygen or some of the MildWild builds (but apparently not all).
 
  • Like
Reactions: DCC
nicka3200 said:
Haven't used mildwild myself but you could try to reflash the ROM or a factory reset.

Perhaps someone could comment on the battery use...
Click to expand...

Hi, I installed MW 4.0 Oxy in the early hours of Saturday morning, so, I have been using it for ~4 days & have found the battery life to be excellent. Today, for example, I had 78% charge left after taking it off charge around midnight last night. Admittedly, I don't use many "active" apps (no FB/Twitter - g+ & gmail are manual sync), but I make lots of calls, lots of SMS/gmail, web browsing, wifi is always on & bluetooth is on & connected to landline all the time I am at home. HTH :)

*edited to add*
Have you checked the battery stats to see what is using your battery??
 
  • Like
Reactions: DCC
sorry, yes i meant the dalvik cache script! cool i might try a couple miui ones - any good starting rom you could suggest?

in the mean time, i think i'm going to try MW 4.0 and see if that changes anything at all! i can see why this gets addictive...
 
It gets very addictive :D

MIUI XJ was the most popular one last summer, and the only one I've used. Not really up on the current state of MIUI play, but that might not be a bad starting place.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DCC
For me, Miui was just.. Nice.. Ya know.
Very easy to customize, which at the time is what I wanted.
Only thing I didn't like was the launcher, so I used GoLauncher instead.

Just Nandroid then get flashing!
See what suites you best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom