Applying Custom Roms to HTC Phones

[Behemoth]

My old man asked me if I could flash his HTC Wildfire with a custom ROM as he feels he'd benefit from doing so, had his phone been a Nokia I'd be more than happy to have a play, I know what I'm doing with those.

Anyway he's sent me a link, and I have to say like the look of what he's linked me to and whilst his phone is on contract with Talk Mobile, I have the same phone which is Sim Free (bought it like that)

Essentially it's a version of Gingerbread thats compatible with the WildFire, anyway I know one of the risks is potentially bricking the phone, and whilst I don't mind bricking mine as I can always grab a cheap replacement off ebay, I don't want to brick his !

This is what he's looking at

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/08/2...id_smartphone/

Anyone ever done it with any flavour of the HTC brand of phones and how easy is it to do ?

[kopite]

I have done it on my hero and desire hd. Its usually preetty easy to do

best place to look is over at xda developers. Here`s the forum for the wildfire s

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1035

The development forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1038 is a good place to start.

You`ll prolly need to root the phone first so check out this post http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1195275

Then pick a rom Cant really help with that as I dont recognise any of the cooks on there from hero/Desire hd development but CM7 ports are usually pretty good if you want vanilla.

[Behemoth]

Thanks will have alook at that tomorrow evening when I'm not half asleep !

[Biscuit]

Research research research. XDA is a good place to start but do as much cross referencing with other sites (such as modaco) to get the best understanding you can before yo make any bold steps. Its not too difficult to do, but there is a lot of different ROMs around and a lot of confusing terminology so don't rush!
Fortunately there are ways of retrieving phones even if you do brick them however with the wildfire there doesn't seem to be too much info on it

Here is the XDA forum for the original wildfire. I'm not sure if it is actually the S which you have or not but don't get them mixed up as i don't know if the ROMs are interchangeable, i suspect they aren't.

[Betty_Swallocks]

Just don't bother asking any questions on XDA. I've never seen such an unfriendly place for people with limited experience. You'd just get flamed for not using the search and wading through posts with hundreds of pages of replies for the one bit of info you need.

[Biscuit]

Just don't bother asking any questions on XDA. I've never seen such an unfriendly place for people with limited experience. You'd just get flamed for not using the search and wading through posts with hundreds of pages of replies for the one bit of info you need.

Couldn't agree more. Even if you ask a question which isnt directly answered in any other thread you will STILL get flamed for not searching and pointed towards a vaguely relevant thread instead of just being given an answer. More often than not the people who actually have the answers just wont say anything at all and you will get a couple of no-brain numpties who dont even understand the question saying random things. If i start a thread i will often start it with, 'i have searched but couldn't find any information directly relating to the question'.

I think Modaco is a bit more forgiving in this sense.

[Behemoth]

Not something that I'm going to do with out looking into it properly, would be nice to be able to use a new version of the Andriod OS on the phone I've got, that and it's a bit od experience also and is an Ace up my sleeve should I never need it.

Mine is the original Wildfire, not the S sadly.

[capt_cornflake]

Can't comment on the htc specifics, but I can give some advice on android Roms.

Android Roms generally fall into 2 categories:
1) "cooked" roms, which which are hacked versions of manufacturers roms, usually just removing bloatware, and perhaps replacing some alternative versions of stock applications. some of these are better than stock, but because it's relatively easy, there are a lot of novices...
2) Roms built from source (aosp -android open source project), the best known of which is cyanogenmod

Personally, I would strongly recommend cyanogenmod. I'm currently running it on a Samsung galaxy s and hp Touchpad. And once the source for ice cream sandwich is out there likely won't be too long to wait before cyanogenmod has been migrated (at least in nightlies)
I don't know about the htc specifics, but generally you need to a) root the phone and b) install clockwork recovery mod.
Not sure from thread above if you have the wildfire or wildfire s, but only the wildfire is listed in the stable ports.
If that's what you have there's a full guide here

[huwwatkins]

One thing to bear in mind is that with cyanogen you will loose the sense interface.

[kaelthun]

You should defo have a good hard look at the XDA developers forums. Those guys have helped me sort out many an Android smartphone. From Sony Ericssons to HTC to my current Samsung - they've got it all. Also, using google to look through their site makes it easy to find 'legacy' threads so give that a try. I'm running a custom 2.2 and I'm happy

[iamlorro]

if you do it, please let me know - one family member has cyanogen on a san francisco, which has meant another with a wildfire has become v. jealous!

the details I've found so far make it look more complicated than the san fran root + rom install, which was pretty easy!

[Pancake]

Its more complicated for HTC Phones as most of the older ones have the Bootloader locked, the wildfire will be 10x as fast once you get rid of Sence

[lhayati]

XDA developers is the place to go, but in most cases you have to unlock the bootloader, flash a recovery then you can flash your roms.

[Mehta23]

I'd recommend popping over to the Android Forums. They helped a lot when I was rooting my phone.