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

Root Just Rooted My HEro

Yeah_Mick

Newbie
Oct 1, 2009
32
0
ive just rooted my hero on uk orange with instant root, so what can i now do? whats some useful tools? what the latest/best rom i can get on here?

sorry for the stupid quetions, ive had a search about but there was so much information i thought my head was going to exploode.:eek:
 
Well, there are a lot of threads answering your questions (ALL of them)...
But to sum up the things, from my personal experience:

If you want Android 2.1 with HTC Sense then look at VillainROM. Version 4 is a leaked kernel from the HTC Legend and Version 5 is a CDMA Hero port. I've tried them both and i must say they still have a lot of issues and ...eh... performance is not one of their strengths.

If you want to stick with the original 1.5 android with sense, I am sure that your best choice will be the Modaco 3.2 ROM. But then again from my perspective it doesn't bring a lot more out on the table. Slight speed improvement, optimizations and some useful appz that can be downloaded to the stock ROM too if you have root access.
 
Upvote 0
Modaco 3.2 rocks. Much faster I found, especially with the internal memory killer tweak and the ability to change the CPU speeds that you can do with root access.

Villain 5 is probably the best 2.1 rom you can get if you want to go down that route, but as Barretta said, there's quite a few bugs.

So if you want the best performance etc, Modaco 3.2, if you want the features etc of a 2.1 rom, I'd go with Villain 5 :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mike101
Upvote 0
right, im looking to upgrade to the modaco 3.2 rom, what i want to know before i do it is can i somehow back up my phone so all my settings and apps can be reloaded once i have upgraded? does this cause any problems at all? i did it a few years back on my xda and it caused problems with some of the apps running and i was better of just starting from fresh each time. but that was windows not android, just wondered if anybody noticed anything?
 
Upvote 0
Best thing is to do a nandroid backup. Power up the phone with the home key held down, wait for the boot menu to appear, and select nandroid backup. Once this has completed there will be a nandroid directory in the root of your SD card. This contains the complete backup of your phone: OS, contacts, apps, etc etc.

Note that installing modaco 3.2 doesnt wipe your phone or any of your settings (assuming you're currently at version 2.73 of the official ROM), so you dont actually need to back up your apps etc, they will all still be there after installation. However, well worth doing the nandroid backup anyway in case you need to revert to the phone's original state. Of course, once youve got modaco running then you will also have titanium backup which you can use to backup & restore apps piecemeal.

I always perform a nandroid backup before i do anything major to my phone, i.e. change ROM, upgrade radio, or when i finally got around to enabling apps2sd. Never had to restore from one yet, but better safe than sorry.
 
Upvote 0
is the nandroid just a standard thing, or is it something i need to install?

When you want to try a custom ROM you'll need a custom recovery image. Basically your phone has a recovery menu that you can access when switching the phone on and I think it could be used to do a factory reset.

But with a custom recovery image, you can flash roms, do Nandroid backups/restores, factory resets, set up the sd card for apps2sd and more. It's extremely useful.
 
Upvote 0
next question, partitioning and apps2sd.

ive still got the standard 2gb card, i want to partiton it, so i went into recovery mode, and clicked the partition sd, then it started asking me for different sizes. can someone xplain what these are and what sizes i should do, also point me in the direction of apps2sd and how it all works. ive been searching but im confusing myself again.
 
Upvote 0
You don't need a SWAP partition, so put that to 0. The Ext partition is where the apps go, so decide how much space you want to give for that, and then rest becomes the FAT partition where your usual SD stuff goes.

Modaco switches on Apps2sd as soon as you boot with an Ext partition on your card. (I had my card set up before I put modaco on, but I've heard that it deals with it even if you've already been using it and installed loads of apps).
 
Upvote 0
I've heard that it deals with it even if you've already been using it and installed loads of apps.
Yup, i can confirm that. Ran modaco for a few weeks before i got around to repartitioning my SD card, once i'd done that it did all the apps2sd setup automatically.

As for the apps2sd partition, recommend formatting as ext3, have it as the second partition (keep the first one as FAT), and dont bother making it too big (apps really dont need that much space). I used 1 gig of an 8 gig card for apps2sd, and in hindsight that was way too much. Probably wont ever get close to using half that, even if i get really stupid with installing hundreds of apps.
 
Upvote 0
The only thing i can think of is that there is something wrong with the way youve partitioned and/or formatted the SD card. Hopefully you made a nandroid backup before enabling apps2sd, if so i suggest restoring this to get the phone back to a working state, then reformat the SD card and try again.

FWIW, i partitioned my SD card by following the steps in this post (but didnt create a swap partition), and everything worked fine for me.

Otherwise, you could try uninstalling an app and reinstalling, see if that fixes that app. And if it does, do the same for all of your apps :(
 
Upvote 0
1 of the 4 apps i had installed still worked, i reinstalled them and they worked again, but when i removed the card they stopped, i dont want to just hide the problem i want to fix it. i will try the guide you posted up and see what happens.

you mentioned enabling apps2sd? i was under the impression it done it all automatically? do i need to turn it on?
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones