Available in GSM (Euro and NAM freqs sep) and CDMA.
Key Features:
- Android 1.5 with HTC's SenseUI
- 528mhz processor
- 288MB RAM
- 3.2" Capacitive Touchscreen (Multitouch)
- 5MP Camera
- 3.5mm Audio Jack
CDMA Note: The CDMA version of the Hero will NOT see major updates released OTA from Sprint. They'll be available for download on your home PC and you can flash from there.
Rooting the 2.1 GSM Hero
All this was done on a 2.1 OTA-updated HTC Hero, using Win7 x64. Needless to say, if you fuck your Hero up, it's your own fault. Take a look at the forum links below to read the original instructions:
http://villainrom.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=379
http://villainrom.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1735
http://villainrom.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=2028
This guide assumes:
- You are rooting a GSM HTC Hero, running Android 2.1
- You are using a PC that is running Windows 7/Vista.
- You know your way around Windows
- You do not have HTC Sync installed if you do, uninstall it now.
Rooting happens in two parts - the Recovery ROM, and the System ROM.
Installing a Recovery ROM
You will need to do this first. The great thing about a Recovery ROM is that after it's installed, you never have to worry about bricking your device from System ROMs. Just backup with nandroid beforehand, and restore when things go wrong.
Installing Android Debug Bridge + SDK
Follow only steps 1 and 2 from here - http://www.villainrom.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1735 - the rest is explained below.
ADB USB Connection
- Enable USB Debugging, and then plug your phone into your PC via the USB cable. Select "HTC Sync" on the phone.
- Let windows install any drivers it wants, and it should fail on the last driver "adb"
- Download http://villainrom.co.uk/download/file.php?id=144 and extract the folder to the android sdk folder.
- Left Click "Start"
- Right Click "Computer"
- Left Click "Manage" from the menu
- Choose Device Manager from the list on the left and you should have a warning ! over a device called ADB
- Right click on that and choose "Update Driver Software"
- Select "Browse my computer…" > "Let me pick from…" > "Next" > "Have Disk…" > "Browse"
- In the browse window, navigate to the folder that you extracted from the rar earlier and pick "android_winusb" > "OK"
- "Android Composite ADB Interface" should show in the list of "compatible hardware" now, so select that and click "Next" to install the driver.
- You now have your HTC Hero set up for an ADB connection.
Installing the Recovery ROM
- Download this file and extract it - http://www.villainrom.co.uk/uploads/GSMRoot.zip
- Open up a Command Prompt (cmd.exe)
- cd to the folder extracted from the zip
- Run runindos.bat
- Wait a while, and you will see the following messages on the screen:
Files copied and permissions set, rebooting HTC Andriod 2.1
Your phone will now reboot into normal mode, then reboot into recovery mode
If it does not reboot the second time, wait 10 minutes and manually reboot and begin again
Your phone is now rebooting in Rooted Recovery mode, do a backup and load yourROMs
- Wait a little longer until you see a blue Care Bear
Congratulations, you've installed a custom Recovery ROM, and can now flash custom Android ROMs on your device. Don't exit this Care Bear menu, continue reading on.
Installing a rooted System ROM
We're using FroydVillain 1.4.0 for this, there's a hotfix for it (1.4.1) but wait until after this to give it a go.
- Download the ROM from here: http://www.villainrom.co.uk/releases/FroydVillain1.4.0/download.php
- On the phone, use the scroll ball to scroll down to USB-MS Toggle. Press down on the ball to select this. Your phone's SD card will now mount as a flash drive on your PC.
- Copy the FroydVillain zip (FroydVillain-1.4.0-release-signed.zip) to the drive.
- Right-click on the mounted drive and click on Eject
- Back on the phone, press the Home button to return to the main menu.
- This time, scroll down to Backup/Restore. Select this.
- Select Nand backup. Press the Home button to confirm.
- When the backup finishes, go back to the main menu by using the Back button
- THIS time, scroll down to Wipe
- Wipe everything except SD:ext partition. Go back to the main menu when you're finished.
- Finally, select Flash zip from sdcard.
- Select your newly downloaded zip file
- Wait a while, when it's done, select Reboot system now from the main menu.
The first boot takes a good while, don't panic. Fix yourself a drink while you're waiting.
And that's it. Enjoy your rooted Hero!
Note: Performance may be sluggish the first few times you run programs/turn the phone on. This is merely the phone trying to compile the program and building a program cache.
