Changing ROMs on a UK DEXT

[CharlesKnight]

I'm completely new to all this - where can I find a good guide to hold my hand when flashing?

[frankwest]

you say no APN support, what does this mean - on my unrooted Dext, for some reason, I have to manually enter the APN if I change provider, is this what you mean or do you mean it does not support 3G

[tickler136]

It won't let you save the APN details when you type them in. There are people claiming to be able to send you a patch to sort this out, but I haven't tried the patch to test the validity of these claims.

[dext85]

guys i have unlocked orange uk dext 1.3.2 too, i want to root, please point me in the right direction as to what rooting method,recovery image to use, and what rom gives best battery life ( not bothered about blur ) ?????

thanks

[neils58]

guys i have unlocked orange uk dext 1.3.2 too, i want to root, please point me in the right direction as to what rooting method,recovery image to use, and what rom gives best battery life ( not bothered about blur ) ?????

thanks

The stickied thread [How To Root ...] Worked for me. This Youtube vid by CliqAndroid is helpful too It was pretty painless to root and put Handler 1.5 on there, and everything works including 3G.

One question i have now is that i am getting notifications about some OTA updates to 1.4.2 every hour - I assume that i shouldn't put any OTA updates on so have been ignoring them. Should I wipe and put a 1.4.8 rom like PureHandler or Adlxmod on? Will these update the radio to 1.4.8, and would I still get UK 3g reception with them? are there any significant benefits to one of these over Handler 1.5?
Failing that, how can i permanently ignore the OTA update messages?

[Freddie34]

Ive seen a few threads around for how to stop the phone trying to update but I avoided this by upgrading to 1.4.8, unlocking and using a VF SIM instead of the Orange service. I assume updates are delivered via Orange so if you are not connected to the Orange network you won't get the updates.

I did similar to you, rooted and put on Handler 1.5 as per the instructions to root the phone (from an original 1.3.20 build for me).

I played with that for a day or two then decided I wanted to get rid of as much blur as possible, so I first flashed the 1.4.2/1.4.8 update and ROM from KB7SQI, then put on Pure Handler (now on 1.0 release). So I have 1.4.8/PureHandler 1.0 on the phone with a VF SIM. I have 3G on Orange UK and VF UK okay. I did have to manually enter the Internet APN just once for VF but it saved okay and no problems since.

Pure Handler does not include the radio, it relies on there being a 1.4.8 radio in the system so do not flash it unless you have a successful ROM upgrade with 1.4.8 first (e.g. KB7SQIs).

I think if you do the OTA update to 1.4.2 it will then trigger the OTA update to 1.4.8. If you do this I believe it will unroot the phone from what i've read elsewhere.

[neils58]

Cheers Freddie, i'll give that a go tommorrow. Does bluetooth / camera work ok on PureHandler?
What third party apps will I need to replace Blur? Only thing I really care about is the facebook profile pics in my contacts, but does Blur change anything else I might miss?

[Freddie34]

Bluetooth and camera work. I didn't really use any of the social apps on blur (which was why I could lose it).

The one app I did like with the stock build (gone now) was the unified messenger - it handled SMS, standard email and Corporate Sync with Exchange (inc. calendar, contacts, email) and seemed to work well. But now I use Touchdown for Corp mail which is a good tool and works well (although integration with phone contacts is not very good). The Handcent SMS app with the ROM looks okay too.

I've found a few minor actions end up in a force close and for some reason adding contacts to the favourites menu doesn't work. Otherwise I haven't found any big issues yet. You can probably tell i'm not a big power user running hundreds of different apps - i just want something that's stable, not sluggish, does voice/SMS/Email/Browser well, 2G/3G/WiFi, a physical keyboard and ... a good battery life.

Almost got them all - I had 100% battery at 8am this morning and i've made about 60 mins of voice calls and used WiFi sparingly (although it's been switched on all the time) and its down to 76%, 13 hours later. So I figure about 36 - 40 hours before recharging which is okay for me .. having to charge twice a day would not be acceptable.