HTC EVO 4G, Froyo 2.2 Final release, Unrevoked3 and ROOT
Sprint and HTC released Froyo today as an over-the-air update to all of you out there that haven't already rooted your phone. Well, my EVO was rooted within the first 48 hours of me owning the phone. I recently dropped back to the stock unrooted image only to use Unrevoked3 to root it again.
By having a rooted phone, I can't get the Froyo update over the air, but I can still put it on my phone, and you can too. Here's how to do it.
Step 0: I'm adding this late, but if you don't want to have to search for your apps again, check out AppBrain. Install it before the upgrade, sync your phone up with the website, create a new list on the website and copy all your apps to that as a backup. After you are done with the upgrade, install AppBrain first and sync it back up. All your apps will be there waiting for you.
Step 1: You need to have a phone rooted with Unrevoked3. That's the way I know how to go about it, so go root your phone with Unrevoked3 and come back.
Step 2: Download the rooted Froyo image from here. (Thanks netarchy!!!)
Step 3: Copy the .zip file to the root of your SD card on the phone.
Step 4: Power down the phone and reboot into the boot loader. To do this, make sure the power is off and hold the volume down button while holding down the power button.
Step 5: Once in the boot loader, use the volume rocker to navigate to RECOVERY. Select it by pressing the power button. This will bring you to Clockwork.
Step 6: From ClockworkMod Recovery, select " wipe data/factory reset". Confirm it and do the reset.
Step 7: Select "install zip from sdcard", then "choose zip from sdcard".
Step 8: Navigate to and select "HTC-OTA-3.26.651.6-Final-Froyo-Rooted-Odexed-netarchy-signed.zip". Confirm the install.
Step 9: Once the install is done, navigate back to the top level of Clockwork and select "reboot system now".
And you're done! You should now reboot into Froyo. You can verify this by going to Settings -> About Phone -> Software information. You should see "Android Version 2.2" at the very top!
Once you have updated Froyo, you need to apply a couple of radio updates. You do this the same way you installed the Froyo zip file. After each install, reboot the phone and let it do a full reboot. After it's rebooted, power down and boot into the boot loader to apply the other one. Follow the instructions above (you don't have to wipe data for the radio updates) and you'll be just fine. Here are those two files:
Radio update: 2.15.00.07.28
Wimax Update 26023
Enjoy the speed of Froyo and have fun with your newly rooted phone! For the full thread on xda, click here.
-Greg
Update: I've seen a HUGE spike in traffic in the last hour (that's to be expected) and I can see that a lot of you guys are doing the upgrade (I love Woopra). Leave some comments below and let me know if everything ran OK for you.
HTC EVO 4G – A week later
I wanted to hold off writing my review of my new phone because I wanted to spend a week with it and learn all about it. I got the HTC EVO 4G on launch day and I immediately fell in love with it. I'm not the only one either, because I ended up ordering my wife one 2 days later.
So far the phone is amazing. Yes, I will admit that there is a bit of a battery life issue, but with a screen this size and the fact that you're going to spend every extra second playing with the damn thing, you're going to burn through some battery. You can get 2 spare batteries and a charger on eBay for about $11, so it's no big deal to carry an extra in your pocket.
Android and HTC Sense are amazing. With the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, everything runs like a bat out of hell. In fact, I can't say anything bad about the software on this phone. It's very intuitive to use and you pick things up very quickly. It took me all of 3 days to figure everything out, but I'm an experienced user. When it only took my wife the same time to figure the phone out, I knew it wasn't just me. The phone is that easy to use.
My wife told me "I've never been excited about a cell phone before, but I am out this". I feel the same way. Going from the Treo Pro to this is like going from a Yugo to a Ferrari. It's that good. The camera puts out some excellent pictures and now that Qik is up and running, the video calls are really good. I've also tested video calling on Fring with my friend Jef and it seems to work great too. Everything on this phone is snappy and beautiful. From what I've seen about the specs on the new iPhone 4, the EVO 4G should kick it's ass in everything except resolution.
If you're on the fence about getting an EVO, I'd say go for it. You won't be disappointed.
PAM (Phone as Modem) using Samsung Instinct
Wow... 2 posts in 1 day. This is almost unheard of for me! This past weekend I picked up a Samsung Instinct. It's a really cool phone with all kinds of cool little gadgets, but if you just go plugging it in, it won't work as a modem. I've figured out a little way around that.
First, you'll notice that when you plug your phone in using the USB cable, it turns off the phone completely and accesses the SD card in the phone. A simple way around this is to just remove the card. Easy, right? Now you're going to need to change a setting in the phone. You're going to type ##DEBUGMENU# on your keypad (##332846368# for those of you that can't spell). You'll need your MSL next. You can normally get this by asking the person at your local Sprint store very nicely. It'll be a 6 digit number that you'll type in and it'll bring you to a menu. Go to "Toggle NAI" and Toggle modem off. Yes, I said turn it off. Trust me, this is the only way it's going to work. Once you've got all of that done, create a new Dial-up Networking Connection using your Samsung modem. Leave the Username and Password blank and use #777 as your dialup number. That's it! Pretty simple, eh?
I'm still working out some bugs with this. The connection doesn't stay up very long, but it will auto-redial, so it doesn't go down for long. I'm getting about 1.5 Megabit down and 256k up, so it's not blindingly fast, but it works. Hell, as I write this, I'm sitting in at the bar drinking a beer. And yes, I'm using my new Samsung Instinct as a modem to do it.
BEWARE! According to Sprint, even though you have an unlimited data plan, you still have to pay for a PAM plan. I'm not doing this currently as I'm only testing out the functionality. I suggest that if you want to use your Instinct as a modem, you buy a plan with Sprint.