A Sensational Rooting

I have been eagerly awaiting a method to perm-root my HTC Sensation, and recently, that method arrived! If you have an HTC Sensation, here is the post at the XDA website giving a clear walk through. Everything worked perfect for me:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1192300

Before...

...And after! rooted and s-off!

ClockWorkRecovery is flashed!

Benefits of rooting

I have had two android phones: The HTC MyTouch 4G and the HTC Sensation 4G. When I first got the MyTouch 4G I was a bit wary about rooting the phone. There didn’t seem to be a huge benefit to rooting, and the risks seemed high. Every rooting related website has copious warnings about how you will brick your phone if you screw something up, and how you will void your warranty.

After owning the MyTough 4G for a few months, curiosity got the better of me. I took the plunge and rooted the phone and flashed a new Rom. It was like getting a new phone! Everything was so much better. Later, I got the HTC Sensation. I got it the day it came out, and I had to wait a few months before someone figured out how to root it. I am now a firm believer in rooting android phones.

Before I start into my reasons for rooting, let me first explain the difference between rooting and flashing a new rom. Rooting the phones gives you super user or administrator access to your phone. This allows you to modify system settings and have much more control over your phone. However, just rooting your phone won’t make any big changes. You will still be running the stock android firmware that came with your phone, and all your apps and settings will remain untouched.

Once you are rooted, you will have the ability to flash a new rom. Flashing a rom means putting a custom flavor of android onto your device. It’s a completely new operating system for your phone. A new rom is where the most significant performance and battery life increases come from. These first 4 reasons apply to just rooting, 5-7 have to do with custom roms.

This picture of Jabba represents bloatware

Here are 7 reasons why you should root your phone:

1. Ability to remove bloatware crap.
   
   Cell phone companies always put a bunch of apps on that you can’t delete! I hate it. What if I never use Amazon mp3? What if I don’t want to play the Nova demo? Too bad! They are stuck there forever! (I can almost hear the maniacal laughter coming from the cell phone companies.)But no. They are not stuck there forever. After rooting your phone, install titanium backup, and uninstall any bloatware apps that you want. (More about titanium backup on number 3.)
   
   
2. Cool visualizations.
   
   There is a root-only app on the market called Anim Mod. It rewrites files in your system to create really cool transition visualizations. See Anim Mod in action here:
   
   
3. Ability to back up your apps
   
   Lets say you just spent the last year getting 3 gold stars on every Angry Birds level in existence. When it comes time for a new phone, how can you transfer all your games and progress in those games? Or how can you ensure that dropping your phone in the toilet won’t destroy all your hard Angry Birds work?
   
   There is a root-only app called Titanium Backup. With this app you can backup all your apps and all the user data from your phone. This is essential since I like to try out new roms a lot. I just back up all my apps and user data, and flash the new rom which wipes out everything. Then I restore all my apps exactly as they were when I backed them up. Titanium backup will restore other stuff too such as the wifi passwords that were remembered and system settings.
   
   
4. Wifi Hotspots / USB tethering
   
   Rooting allows you to create wifi hotspots from your phone. This means you can make a wifi network that a number of people can connect to and use the 4g internet. My roommates and I actually used to game online through wifi hotspots before our apartment complex upgraded their archaic internet service.
   
   USB tethering is the same idea. It is the ability to use your phone’s internet while it’s plugged into the computer.
   
   Now, it is possible to do this without rooting. You either can pay an outrageous sum of money per month to your cell phone company, or you can buy an app such as EasyTether. However, once you are rooted, there are several good free apps available such as Barnacle Wifi Tether. In fact, I personally have never used a rooting app, because most good roms such as CyanogenMod come with tethering and wifi hotspot capabilities built in.
   
   
5. On T-Mobile, 3g phones such as the vibrant or MyTouch 3g get 4g speeds.
   
   This one probably won’t apply to very many people. My friend used to have a MyTouch 3g. He decided to root it in hopes of speeding up the very sluggish phone. We were both shocked to find out he had 4g speeds after it was rooted! This only works on T-Mobile because the 3g and 4g basically use the same technology.
   
   
6. Faster and smoother
   
   These stock android phones have so much extra crap going on that is unnecessary. After you root and flash a new rom the phone will be noticeably faster. Custom roms are optimized for speed so all the unnecessary bloat will be cut out leaving behind a streamlined android operating system.
   
   
7. Significantly better battery life
   
   I had terrible battery life on the MyTouch 4g. It wouldn’t make it through the day with moderate use. I had to charge it every time I was in the car and whenever I was at home. However, once i rooted and flashed a new rom the battery life was significantly better. I could make it through the day with moderate to heavy use.
   
   Before it was rooted, it drove me crazy how fast the battery life went down when the phone was just idling. After flashing a new rom, the battery life barely went down when it idled. (Battery drain was roughly the same during use however.)
   
   Custom Roms will have many tweaks and optimizations to increase your battery life such as under-clocking and under-powering the CPU when it is not in use.
   

Before I end, here are my counter arguments for the common two reasons NOT to root.

1. ROOTING COULD BRICK YOUR PHONE!!!!! WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBLITY IF YOU SCREW UP YOUR PHONE!!!!!!
   
   Yes, there is a risk of screwing up your phone, but its a very small risk. You will only screw it up if you do something really stupid. Just follow the rooting instructions carefully and you will be fine. Even if you make a mistake, 99% of the time it is fixable. Of all the phones my friends and I have rooted and jailbroken, not a single one has ever been bricked. In fact I’ve fixed a phone or two that were thought to be bricked, but actually weren’t.
   
   
2. Rooting will void your warranty.
   
   This is true. However, Rooting is usually reversable. If your phone starts having problems, just reflash your stock firmware, unroot it, and your phone is back to normal. Go get a replacement if you need. On the other hand, warranties tend to be on the crappy side anyway. If your phone is defective, generally the cell phone companies will send you a refurbished phone and charge you for the shipping. My advice? Be careful with your phone! Buy a nice tpu case for it. Don't use it in the shower. Don't throw it with the GPS on to see how far you can throw. Don’t dangle it over pits of lava. If your phone breaks, its probably obsolete anyway. Go buy a new one.
   

3 great features of Ubuntu and Mac OSx in Windows 7

After I finished quietly weeping from switching back to Windows 7 from Ubuntu, I immediately went to work making Windows more like Ubuntu.

Lets just get this out of the way... IMHO, there is no good desktop cube program in windows. Nor is there any good way to have wobbly windows. The few programs that attempt to recreate these features aren’t nearly as good as in Linux, plus they use waaaaay more resources than Linux uses.

Here are the 4 features I have applied to windows:
1. A good dock
2. 2 finger tap right click and 3 finger tap middle click.
3. Smooth scrolling
4. Scroll with mouse over window instead of having to select the window to scroll

Here are the 3 Windows utilities:

1. Rocket Dock (with stack addon)

Some people like docks, some don’t. I find this one very useful. I don’t use it as a start menu replacement; I put it at the top of my desktop and use it as a launcher. Make sure to use the stack addon to add a fan or grid. This is the link for the addon installation instructions.

One inconvenient thing about the stack addon is that you can't drag new icons into the fan or grid. You have to open the folder, and then drag the program into the folder, and it will then appear in the stack. A minor inconvenience, but not really a big deal. Overall this dock is the best option out there.

I'll give you 2 fingers!
Actually, this is Winston Churchill looking forward to
a day when one could scroll a touchpad with two fingers.

2. TwoFingerScroll

My Synaptics touch pad already has two finger scroll. However, clicking with this touch pad is weird. You have to push down the whole touch pad at the bottom. I find it much more convenient and intuitive to be able to use a two finger tap for a right click and a three finger tap for a middle click. (For example to open a link in a new tab while web browsing.)

This program also does a good job of smooth scrolling. Smooth scrolling is a feature found in Mac OSx, but not in Windows or Linux. Why doesn’t every operating system come with this natively? I mean, what is this, the 1990’s?

In the settings, on the general tab, I have checked “Start with Windows”
On the scrolling tab, I use the “Smart” option under “Scroll mode”
Under the tapping tab, I set Two fingers to be Right button, and Three fingers to be Middle button

I also turned off the normal two finger scrolling settings in the control panel. If this program doesn’t work, try going to the control panel, find your mouse settings, then to the touchpad settings, and turn off scrolling. Just let this program take care of the scrolling.

One more thing. The smooth scrolling only works with my touchpad, not my mouse. I’m pretty sure it is because the normal scroll settings trump this little program, and I don’t think its possible for me to turn off scrolling on a normal mouse.


3. WizMouse

From the WizMouse website:

"WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel."

'Nuff said! I love this feature. Again, I have no idea why Windows doesn’t include this natively. I find it so useful. For example, if I’m following a tutorial for some software, I can scroll the tutorial in the background and stay in the program I am working on. If you’ve never had this feature, you might not understand the significance... but try it!