Note – these are only applicable to Motorola Droid (A855)
1) Root your droid – use the Droid Rootkit from AGreen BHM (link here). It only works on Windows (not Mac or Linux) — and uses the ADB (Android API’s Debug Bridge). It walks you through the fairly arduous process of wiping your phone, reverting back to an outdated rooted ROM, updating the baseband, installing a new rom, etc.. There are tons of links out there explaining why you should root, but very few explaining how. I still hope to take the time to learn the mechanics of this at some point, but for now will just use other people’s rooted ROMs.
2) Install ROM Manager – this lets you backup your phone’s image (through its ‘nandroid’ program) and also install anyone’s ROM to your phone. Requires root access, but is free through the marketplace. There’s a paid version which provides access to ROM’s as well.
3) View log output from your droid – connect usb to your computer, enable usb debugging (settings -> applications -> development). On your computer (Windows), run adb.exe (from step 1) passing logcat as arg (adb logcat). Now all output from your Android will appear in your console.
4) Fix that problem that when you try to install an app, the entire phone reboots during the install process. If you enable debugging, you may see this error: java.lang.SecurityException: Requires android.permission.ASEC_CREATE permission — it turned out the problem (for me) was that it was trying to install the app to my SDCard, but for some reason failed. Therefore, I unmounted my SDCard, re-installed the app, and then re-mounted my SDCard — worked fine.
5) Restart your phone into bootloader. There are at least two ways to do this:
- Start with phone powered off. Press and hold both the directional keypad “up” (pointing toward screen) and the power button until the screen lights up. Then let go
- Start with phone powered on. Connect via USB with usb debugging enabled. At a command prompt on your PC, invoke adb.exe with commands “reboot-bootloader’ (e.g., “adb reboot-bootloader”).
6) Restart your phone into recovery. There are at least two ways to do this:
- Start with phone powered off. Press and hold both the x button on the pullout keyboard and the power button until you get the Motorola logo — at which point you must continue to hold the ‘x’ key, but can let go of the power button.
- Start with phone powered on. Connect via USB with usb debugging enabled. At a command prompt on your PC, invoke adb.exe with commands “reboot recovery”) (e.g., “adb reboot recovery”).
You will then see the recovery screen. The directional keypad moves you around, and the power button is equivalent to “back.” Ideal if you have clockwork recovery (which comes with ROM Manager) installed.
