What is Custom Recovery? How to install it on your phone?

As we have rooted / hacked / gained administrative access of our phone by following the rooting guide from the previous post. Now the next step in customizing your phone is to install a "Custom Recovery".


"Custom recovery" What is it?

Many of us have used computer and there are many backup / restore which takes backup of your complete OS if in case you need to get your system back to way it was instead of having a clean install. Like in windows using recovery tool we create an ISO image of OS which has all the software and all the data. using which we can bring the system back to previous state without having the need to clean boot the whole computer.

Similarly Android phones comes preloaded with manufacturer's recovery image installed which in reality is of no use. So android developers have came up with customized recoveries. Which allows us to do a lot more than the pre-installed recoveries.


"Custom Recovery" what it does?


* It allows you to backup / restore image of your current ROM.
* It allows you to do a factory rest & wipe cache.
* Allows you to install / update the Custom ROMS.[Key feature]
* It allows you to create partition on your SD card.

and there are many more but these are the most used options which you would need to know as you will be using it extensively in future.


"Customer Recovery" which one to use?

As android is open source many developers have developed their own "Custom Recoveries". The most user friendly is the "Clockworkmod" aka "Rom manager". It has a friendly GUI and easy to understand menu options, I personally use this.



With the above overview you must now have a basic idea as to what a "Custom Recovery" is and its main functions. So lets go ahead and get started with installation of Custom Recovery.



Pre-Requisite:
* Download Latest Version of ROM Manager from the market.
* Make sure your phone is rooted else this app will not work.

Procedure:


1. Once the ROM manager is downloaded and installed, go ahead and open it.
2. As you open the app it will prompt to select your phone model.

3. Optimus One would be listed on the top go ahead and select it.
4. In middle of operation "Superuser" will ask to allow root permission for the application, go ahead and allow it.
5. Open Rom Manager again and select the option "Flash ClockworkMod" Recovery. [make sure you have internet working]

6. Once you hit it the top it will the the download progress of the same.
7. Make sure you are keeping an eye on the download as once it is completed "Superuser" will again prompt to "Allow Access"    which would go away in 10 secs and you will have to download it again.

8. Once you allow it will reboot your phone and will install the recovery for you and restart your phone.

There you go you have installed recovery on your phone. The first thing you should do after you install the recovery is to go ahead and take a backup of your current ROM.


* To take the backup of your Current ROM. [Make sure you have at least 250-450 mb free on sd card]
  - Select "Backup Current ROM".
  - It will prompt to give it a name, by default it will have present day's date.
  - Hit ok, your phone will restart and will boot in recovery mode showing some messages regarding backup process. [don't freak out as it is totally normal]
  - Once the backup is completed the phone will restart normally.


Now you are set with a Rooted Phone and have installed a Custom Recovery. The next steps is to install a Custom ROM which would be followed in the next Post.

How to Root Your Optimus One.?

Overview :

Its a common tendency one seeks to do a lot more with their availble resources without paying or by paying very less and get more. I would term it as human tendency rather than indian tendency. After one is used to android and all of its feature the next big thing which comes to your mind is ROOTING / HACKING your own phone to become the administrator and make changes according to your need.

For example : You have a XP/Vista computer on which you have two accounts Administrator / guest. Being administrator you are termed as the boss of the machine. And being a guest you have limited access of your own machine.

Same is in the case of Android phone, by default you are a standard user of the phone you have the ability to install/uninstall apps make changes to the phones by the options availble in settings but you cannot fiddle around with the system files. To make changes to system files means you change the behaviour of the phone.

It is like a house, if you are the owner you can breakdown any wall and modify it the way you like, but if you are tenant you have to use the way it is and modify yourself according to the structure of a house.

The terminology used in android to gain administrator access of the phone is called ROOTING. ROOT is the user name or account that by default has access to all commands and files on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system. It is also referred to as the root account, root user and the superuser.

With all the above information one must be clear that android is a linux based phone. Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.


So our main objective is to get Root access of the phone and install Custom ROMS on the phone unleash the real power of your device. So fasten your seat belts to and get ready to ROOT your phone.





Pre-Requisite:
I am not going to go with complicated method of using many queries to gain root access instead we will use some tools availble over the internet.
1] Ginger Break -v1.20 {easily availble on the market}



Steps:
1] Download the APK file on your phone or download it on your computer and transfer it to the phone.
2] Once the file is on your phone, Browse to the file using Flie Explorer.
3] Open the file it will ask to install the application, go ahead and install it.
* if it prompts to allow "Unknown Resources Allow installation of Non-Market Application."
* Go ahead and enable it from Setting -> Application -> Check mark "Unknown Resources"
4] Once the application is installed, open the application and hit "ROOT"
5] It will run all the exploits to get access of your phone which will normally take around 5-10 mins.
6] Once the root is completed the phone will restart itself.
7] Once the phone is restarted you will see a new application called "Super User"


There you go..!! you have rooted your phone and have gained administrative access of your phone.
Hurray..!!! Now take a Dive in the pool .... :P

The Next step would be installing Custom recoveries / kernels / Custom ROMS / tweeks / Upgrading android.

beginners guide to rooting

The whole Android Experience....!!

Back in past when I was searching the whole net for the best phone I could buy in the decent budget of 6-7K. I never would come to conclusion as to which phone would be the best one. Problem with using a touch screen was texting as I wasnt sure about the experience of using a TS. So I was just running in loops looking for a Bar Phone.

After some laid back search, came acrross the android tehnology OS. I researched a lot over it and came to know how people have gone rave over the stability of the OS and diffrent things which can be done with the hardware provided. The reason I never heard of it was that Android was being offerred on High End phones only i.e 20K+.

At those time Samsung Star was quite famous for 3" screen and Touch Screen. I fiddled with it got comfortable with touch screen. The only androids which were offerred in BUDGET range was Galaxy 3 & Galaxy 5. I was getting more inclined towards Galaxy 3 which was quite odd looking because of the screen resolution provided. I settled with Galaxy 5 to get my hands on with Android experience till Optimus One was launched in India. Though Galaxy 5 was less on specs compared to Galaxy 3 but it could beat G3 in any Technical comparison except the mutli-touch.

I was delighted with the whole Android experience, It was like I was living the dream of having a great phone which was easy on my pockets. I played, fiddled with almost everything I could then I sold it to my friend to get my own Optimus One. Waited for weeks to get it but got it finally and was never disappointed with anything whatsoever. I got my own thread started on a website to compare the specs of G3 & O1 where people were discussing the performance with O1 & G3. It is a very long thread which is still continued.

Check out the thread it is posted by noobdroid (ME :P)

LG Optimus One Thread

So this is how I came in touch with the wonderful OS called ANDROID and with this blog I will try helping out others who are eager with ROOTING / CUSTOM ROMS / Installing recoveries / Tweaks and will try to answers all the questions to best of my ability.