Root Which is better? Rooted 2.1 or OTA 2.2?

sonicwind said:

Really the only thing I rooted was to use the free Wireless Tether, which BTW came in hugely handy over my recent vacation to Portland. I've been following all the hype around Froyo, and now see a host of problems are having after upgrading with the OTA update. I like new stuff. I'm interested in Froyo. I have no doubt it will be long before it's rooted and I understand that PDANet works fine. I've used PDANet on Windows, Palm and iPhone, so I know that's good stuff. Worth the money, if the charge for it. I had multiple Palm and Windows Mobile paid versions.

I understand there are some other apps that need root that are good, but I haven't used any yet. I tried JuiceDefender but I really haven't USED it to see if it helps with the deplorable battery life.

So now I'm thinking I'll probably just stick with my rooted 2.1 for a while, because I'm really just not hearing enough good things about Frodo, ho hum.

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Why not use rooted 2.2? Lots of solid ROMs out there, including rooted stock.

perfectly fine to stay on rooted 2.1, especially if it does everything you need.

If you're satisfied with how it's working I wouldn't change it. I installed 2.2 on my wife's Evo and it runs great with decent battery life. I'm running the newest Fresh and get outstanding battery life and everything works perfect. Fresh is noticeably faster and has much better battery life compared to my wife's but not much else is different. She came home today from work and had 77% battery left and used it quite a bit for texting, downloaded a few apps, and has it synced every 15 minutes with Exchange over data network. Not bad at all for Stock 2.2 and a ten hour workday.

The only thing I turned off on her phone was gtalk and I told her not to use facebook app until I can look into it further.

My wifes Evo 2.1 and my mom and dads DroidXs all work better and smoother than my Evo 2.2.

sonicwind said:

alright so all this Android rooting stuff is way more complex convoluted than with the iPhone jailbreaking, unfortunately. So many root methods, so many roms, so many possible extra steps and and errors. I do see over at xda that apparently there are a whole batch of ROMS based on the new release, and I presume I can just use the unrevoked features on my 2.1 EVO to load one of them, probably the plain vanilla one based off the OTA 2.2 to start with. What's not available yet is a root for people who were still stock and installed the update automatically. I'll have to read up on this some more to see what possible steps may be required. It looks like people are having to do additional steps like wiping data first for everything to be working. I need everything, 4G included to be working.

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rooting is way more simple then it looks. you just have to start and be willing to spend some time wiping, flashing, maybe re-flashing, trying things (ROMs and kernels) and at the same time having a non-functional phone while you do that. after the first try going through the process it becomes comfortable.

use SimpleRoot.

sonicwind said:

I guess she just has 4G turned off all the time. Which is kind of like never taking a car out of second gear and saying it has good gas mileage as long as you never go over 35mph on the highway.

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We don't have 4G here but thanks for the cynical comparison in assuming we have 4G service since everyone in the United States obviously has it. It's kind of like thinking you know it all but later on you find out all you know is nothing.

sonicwind said:

Oh I see, so rooting is way simple, you just have to do all this complicated stuff. Don't try and sugar coat it. Unless you have a buddy that will tell you exactly what you need to do for your particular situation if you don't spend quite a bit of time reading and filtering through all the various suggestions like "use SimpleRoot" or "use Unrevoked" and also be prepared for when those things don't work exactly as expected and doing extry wiping, flashing, maybe reflishing, trying things you are going to end up with a bricked phone.

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This is so true. Rooting is so easy, yet so complicated. It's easy when you understand the "why" behind the steps you are taking. Then, if something goes wrong, you already know how to correct it. But if you don't understand the basics, and you are just blindly looking for procedures, that's when unexpected results puts you in limbo, and you dig yourself deeper into a hole trying to get out.

It took me an hour to figure out if I had properly installed the Android SDK. The installer just kinda stops with the command prompt hanging open.

It took me 4 hours to get adb to find my phone when it was plugged in. Solution was to install some modified USB drivers 3 times.

I sat at step three of the old 4-step simpleroot, waiting for something to happen. After an hour, I finally realized that the little message asking me to go visit some bit.ly URL was not some ad; it was part of the flash hack necessary to gain root access. I felt like a major ****.

After simplerooting, I thought I needed to flash a stock rooted ROM to keep my root powers, so I ended up doing this whole other operation that wasn't necessary.

Now that I was rooted, I had no clue what to do with it, other than download a screenshot app. ROM Manager wasn't working right; it couldn't auto-reboot my phone to go to recovery. I had to do that manually.

Yeah, it was not smooth sailing, and I didn't ask for help on the forums.

But now, if you were to ask me how hard it is to root, I'd say it's pretty darn easy. Give me your phone, and I'll have it rooted and optimized in under 30 min

I would stay, I'm on rooted 2.2 with Toast Kernal(XDA has amazing modders) My battery like Sucks.. Works great if I turn on Airplane Mode. I don't know what the deal is. Could be my area (cell-towers). like Somebody said before, if your happy stay with what you got. I'm tired of redoing my system over and over again.

Have you tried Google Gesture Search, free form the Market?

And no - don't even equate to gesture anything in the iPhone world.

I have literally hundreds of contacts - and it's changed the way I use my phone.

OBTW - if you have full root/nand access, the first thing you do is make a Titanium Backup of your apps, your desktop, you mail account and anything with a Titantium badge in the list.

The next thing you do is a nandroid backup of your happy 2.1 config.

Then step up to 2.2 - I prefer the stock rooted odexed rom, but that's just me. Hit a factory reset to ensure that you're all set, reset the radio+PRL, restore from Titanium - presto, all your stuff is there.

Make a nandroid backup of that, too.

Next, bring in any custom kernel your heart desires. I'm trying netarchy-toastmod 4.0.2 right now.

If you don't like it - you do a house cleaning and a nandroid restore of whatever previous image you liked.

Do this for as many configs as you have SD card space to make backups.

It's easy.

Root is about choices, not about regretting that you put the wrong thing on and got stuck.

Getting stuck is nearly unpossible with full root and paying careful attention to every piece of advice the XDA devs have to offer.

It's just that simple, once you get the hang of what you did for your first full root.