My HTC Desire - rooted and fed a dose of CyanogenMod

As you may know if you live in the tablet/smartphone world, "rooting" a device is becoming very common.

Essentially just gaining "root" (administrator) access to your device grants you the ability to turn it from a stock vendor locked down tool to a fire breathing, do-what-you-like all purpose machine.


Of course, it does depend on the specific device and whether it can be rooted successfully or easily without bricking it. On that note, neither I or the guys at CyanogenMod take any responsibility for what happens should you attempt to root your device and/or install CyanogenMod on it.

Anyway, yes, CyanogenMod. My phone is an HTC Desire (Bravo) GSM device which was running a stock Android 2.1 with HTC Sense UI on top. If you have or have seen an HTC Android phone you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
HTC's default tweaks and interface are actually pretty nice, it has to be said. But once I heard about CyanogenMod and the benefits of rooting, the power user in me just couldn't resist.

A quick note though, for my HTC Desire I had to use a different method of rooting than that listed in the CyanogenMod Desire wiki page. They instruct you to use revolutionary method but for some reason, the "HBOOT" version of my phone's bootloader was quite a bit older than that which was required (or that which was listed on the revolutionary page anyway). I'm unsure why exactly, as I thought most Bravo HTC Desires would be pretty much the same, but perhaps not.

Nevertheless, I looked around a little more for ways of rooting my HTC and used instead the pure Unrevoked rooting method, which was fast, easy and painless. Much as the website immediately states.
Then I simply followed the rest of the CyanogenMod Desire wiki and wiped the old data (after backing up my data first, of course!) installed the CyanogenMod from it's zip file in the newly installed ClockworkMod Recovery mode and rebooted. After a very nice animated CyanogenMod splash screen, I came to the default home screen.

Success ;) Of course you can change themes to whatever you like with the new found freedom.

Did I find it worth it? Absolutely.

Not only do I have more freedom and features at my fingertips, it's also overall a more smooth and pretty experience. The beauty of this venture is my HTC phone went from it's stock version of Android 2.1 all the way to Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) on which CyanogenMod is currently based, so for me it's like a free upgrade even without the modifications.