Root Total noob with questions

[jeep_man]

I bought my T-bolt on release day and for the most part I like it...except battery life. I have debated to buy the GNEX retail and get ICS but now everyones assuming its gonna be $650. To me its not worth that much considering the T-Bolt is still a great phone. I dont mind sense and I have GB on it. I have never rooted before and have a few questions?

I understand what rooting is, but I have a question of will it give me improved battery life. The feature of ICS that I want the most is to be able to just shut down/delete any app(VZW bloat). If I root I should be able to just delete the bloat?

If I do this will I see a significant amount of battery increase or do I have to run a custom rom that totally changes the look and feel of the T-bolt? If so, when is the best guess for a stable ICS ROM? I have watched the youtube video of how to root and I am sure I can handle it, but after I root where do I get the ROMS from? If I root, will my market still work? Can I ever go back to stock (unrooted)

I appreciate all of your help and advice. This is by far the best android forum out there.

 

[xeno2011]

In my experience, I didn't start getting better battery life until after I rooted AND installed a custom ROM. I tried just rooting at first, and the best you can do is uninstall some bloat (at a slight risk of messing up your ROM) and freeze other bloat using Titanium Backup.

I don't think there are any ICS based ROM's at the moment. There is a ICS launcher on the market, which can give you the look and feel of ICS.

You might want to try one of the Gingerbread custom ROM's, like BAMF Forever, Liquid Gingersense, Liquid Smooth 3.1. The first two are Sense based ROM's, the last is AOSP. If you are looking to run the ICS launcher, then you probably want to run a AOSP ROM, since it will give you the least amount of bloat, plus, you'll be running the ICS launcher and don't need Sense. However, if you want your phone to maintain the current look and feel that it has, then a Sense based ROM would be the way to go.

You can get ROM's by following the links in this post:

http://androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/310708-thunderbolt-rom-list-updated-11-1-a.html

The market will work fine after the update. Be sure to backup your ROM and data before installing a new ROM, in case anything goes wrong. There are many helpful people here who can answer your questions once you get ready to take the plunge. Just carefully follow the steps in this post after you root:

http://androidforums.com/thunderbolt-all-things-root/353591-how-some-root-terminology.html

Revolutionary root can be found here (you do this first, before installing ROM's):

http://revolutionary.io/

Don't forget to install superuser after you root:

http://goo-inside.me/superuser/su-2.3.6.3-efgh-signed.zip

And yes, you can go back to stock after rooting.

 

[chuey2482]

Jeepman - I recently rooted (Revolutionary - do it.. these awesome developers have made it very easy) and flashed several custom ROM's, settled on BAMF SoaBliss 1.03 you said you don't mind Sense. You will really like the ROM. Its debloated and you can still remove some apps that you don't want. Ultra smooth, cool UI..

Battery life before SoaBliss, was decent. After nightly charge, moderate use, it would need charge or battery swap around 5pm.. Now, after nightly charge, moderate use, I'll have 15% at bedtime. Ready for another nightly charge. Second battery only needed for road trips.

I don't think I have any extreme settings for saving battery.

Watch the video on YouTube. Follow the directions on the Revolutionary thread..

Root it. You will appreciate your TBolt even more.

 

[eipee73]

Jeepman - I recently rooted (Revolutionary - do it.. these awesome developers have made it very easy) and flashed several custom ROM's, settled on BAMF SoaBliss 3.1. you said you don't mind Sense. You will really like the ROM. Its debloated and you can still remove some apps that you don't want. Ultra smooth, cool UI..

Battery life before SoaBliss, was decent. After nightly charge, moderate use, it would need charge or battery swap around 5pm.. Now, after nightly charge, moderate use, I'll have 15% at bedtime. Ready for another nightly charge. Second battery only needed for road trips.

I don't think I have any extreme settings for saving battery.

Watch the video on YouTube. Follow the directions on the Revolutionary thread..

Root it. You will appreciate your TBolt even more.

Just wondering about the ROM you're running. I've tried a few different sense ROM's but they all seem to have a decent amount of lag which I can't stand.

I'm running Liquid Smooth 3.1 right now and it's smooth as hell...just wondering if you could further explain your experience with your ROM.

 

[chuey2482]

re: battery life - forgot to mention I am in a 3G area. When I travel to 4G, second battery is needed. Will usually only get 7-8 hrs moderate use.

Have been running SoaBliss 1.03 for 3 weeks. I don't experience any lag except at startup. I'll let it sit for 2-3 mins after startup to get any base processes running and its very smooth from that point. texting, emailing, internet, all is smooth. UI is smooth from screen to screen.. if I flick the screen, it will roll 2 times back to home page. Graphic are running smooth.

The only thing I've experienced with SoaBliss is sometimes 1-3 times in 3 weeks, it will fail to recognize the SDCard.. or loses it while running. A single restart always fixes this. NBD..

Other than that, I'm running default governor and not underclocking. I've flashed several other ROMs.. (Got amazing Quadrant score 3049 with LiquidSmooth 3.1 overclocked to 1.5ghz but it raped the battery) but I like the Sense 3.5 the best.

Not much else to tell. Anything else, more specific, let me know and I'll take a shot at answering it.

Cya.

 

[eipee73]

re: battery life - forgot to mention I am in a 3G area. When I travel to 4G, second battery is needed. Will usually only get 7-8 hrs moderate use.

Have been running SoaBliss 1.03 for 3 weeks. I don't experience any lag except at startup. I'll let it sit for 2-3 mins after startup to get any base processes running and its very smooth from that point. texting, emailing, internet, all is smooth. UI is smooth from screen to screen.. if I flick the screen, it will roll 2 times back to home page. Graphic are running smooth.

The only thing I've experienced with SoaBliss is sometimes 1-3 times in 3 weeks, it will fail to recognize the SDCard.. or loses it while running. A single restart always fixes this. NBD..

Other than that, I'm running default governor and not underclocking. I've flashed several other ROMs.. (Got amazing Quadrant score 3049 with LiquidSmooth 3.1 overclocked to 1.5ghz but it raped the battery) but I like the Sense 3.5 the best.

Not much else to tell. Anything else, more specific, let me know and I'll take a shot at answering it.

Cya.

Everything with Liquid Smooth 3.1 is incredibly snappy, but there are just random things that HTC provides that I miss like hell....such insignificant things like Facebook for HTC Sense which allows the pulling of pictures/contacts, linking of contacts within people, and just the dialer which allows contact search...

Really insignificant things, but it does make me really consider going back to Sense.

 

[chuey2482]

Eipee73, download and flash it. You'll be up and running in 15 mins. Get a feel for SoaBliss then you can decide which to keep. I BU'd my SoaBliss environment, reset and cleared cache, flashed LiquidSmooth, worked with it for couple of hours, then restored.
give it a try.. its dam sweet.