Eclair on HTC Hero: going rogue with Villainrom

I flashed my HTC Hero again, this time with an Android 2.1 image from Villainrom. Why not wait for the official update? Well, we’ve been waiting for quite some time now, the HTC-update might not even work on a rooted device and a colleague of mine was running Villainrom 10.1 for over a month now and was quite pleased with it.
So if you want to go rogue as well, go Villainrom using this installation guide. And in case things happen that aren’t described in that detailed howto, here are 5 things I had to learn the hard way;

  1. Formatting your SDCARD when on a Modaco rom might not work, having a colleague nearby who can format for you on his handset or PC might help.
  2. If flashrec complains “Could not run command” but your device is already rooted then forget about flashrec, you’re a superuser now
  3. nandroid+ext might not work, just perform a normal nandroid backup
  4. market downloads sometimes don’t work, in my case this was solved by resetting privacy and location-sharing settings to their (permissive) default settings
  5. Villainrom provides OTA-updates, but these aren’t always applied, re-downloading and re-applying the update did the trick for me.

My first Android 2.1 impressions; clearly snappier (and tests show 2.2 to be a lot faster still), some great apps on the market that weren’t there for 1.5 (Google Goggles looks great!) and most importantly; one of the best mobile browsers around (as confirmed by Quirksmode Webkit tests). So yes, I love my Eclair!

15 thoughts on “Eclair on HTC Hero: going rogue with Villainrom”

  1. I have followed your advice and the same guide and updated my phone to 2.1. I have to say that the 1.5 was allot faster than the villian 10.3. Did you install that version or did you try the SuperHero?

    Reply
    • no, i’m on villainrom 10.3 indeed. i don’t have the impression 2.1 is slower then 1.5. on the contrary; the biggest difference for me is the 2.1 browser, which loads and renders pages a lot quicker then it’s 1.5 ancestor (and which does localstorage and appcache and geolocation the html5-way instead of relying on gears).
      but i do notice some lag when e.g. opening up a new application or re-activating an app that I used yesterday (but which is still running in the background, not sure what is happening though.
      superhero might be an option, especially if JIT would be included (unclear if it is in SH2.0). the villain-guys are also brewing a froyo-based build, which has JIT by default and which will be a lot faster, but that’s not available yet. if you did your nandroid backup, you could off course restore your 1.5?

      Reply
      • Offcourse no nandroid backup :-). It was the locked mobistar version. Perhaps I’ll go back to the goldcar 1.5 and install the official update.
        I just have the feeling that browsing through the menu’s etc is goin’ slower. Slower than before that is. Strange that I’m experiencing this, while everyone on the internet finds it faster than before…
        Are there profiling tools etc, perhaps I could trace back my problem?

        Reply
        • you could flash the modaco hero 3.2 rom (which is the leading 1.5-based rom.

          I just have the feeling that browsing through the menu’s etc is goin’ slower.

          indeed, that’s the “lag” i was trying to describe. no idea how to profile/trace this, maybe there’s some info to be found in villainrom forums?

          Reply
    • Villain is much faster than 1.5 for me.
      Did you wipe before installing Villain ?
      Install OS Monitor to see who’s the ressource hog.

      Reply
  2. That is definitly an option. The lag is really annoying, I’ll try some different roms, just have to find the time :-). ATM the superhero rom seems the most appealing for the speed boost.

    Reply

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