I'm on Orange as well, so i've got all the useless demo apps and games.

I know when I got my Motorola V9, I had it flashed within about an hour of getting it home and I removed all the demo versions and freed up a load of space.

I might have a read up on the procedure and see how I feel.


I've actually just charged it for the first time since friday so that's a start !

I've got the 'always on' data connection turned off and just update as and when I need to. I've also got 3G turned off and I tried my best not to hammer it as much, although i didn't do very well in that respect.

I set up the wi-fi connection with my sky router which worked fine, so i was doing some surfing with that.

had a good half an hour playing a couple of games on it and made some calls and texts as well and it was just down to about 4% earlier this afternoon before I re-charged.

It invalidates your warranty if you debrand the phone.

The only thing that looks daunting to some is creating the goldcard but if you have a look at my thread there is a simple app which does all the work for you.

Have a look at my thread here, http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1267031

Oh I know that - i remember the very first time I flashed a phone. It didn't work the first time and I went into a mass panic thinking i'd have to buy a new one.

Eventually managed to resolve the problem, re-flashed it and it worked fine. I was fine with doing it after that.

I'd be slightly more hesitant with the Desire, due to it being worth about 3 times as much as most of the other phones i've had in the past

But then that's not to say I won't do it either ..

No idea then - sorry. Have you tried contacting HTC or your network provider? Sounds like an app problem to me more than anything. Maybe try installing a task killer, then running it before you shut down to see if that helps - if it does then an app is probably doing it.

They probably said the same about the Hero, or the Magic, or the G1. All of which are still stuck with old versions of Android.

If you follow the instructions carefully enough and make sure you run everything on your pc as an administrator then you will be fine. Mine worked first time without any problems.

They can take a very long time to shut down. Try using an application manger to kill some of the apps before shutting down, if it is an app causing the problem then you should be able to find the culprit that way.

The Hero has been updated to 2.1
HTC Desire is basically Nexus One plus Sense UI. It should be much easier to update as the hardware is up-to-date, HTC only need to update Sense. Whereas with Hero etc further optimisations were needed before they could load 2.1

I think i'm going to give it a go - i just need to get an adaptor for the Micro SD card first.

If it means getting the 2.2 update sooner then it's got to be worth it i think.

You don't need an adapter. Just plug the phone into your pc and select the disk access or whatever it is called on your phone when prompted. Simply find the new drive that appears in my computer, right click and format.

Uh-oh .. shouldn't have said that. I'll probably do it later on then .. hehe

The phone will act like an adapter and you can even create the gold card using the phone as the adapter.

Just remember all your phone settings, contacts etc are backed up to the card in your phone so you will be best to use a spare card for the gold card. It doesn't matter about the size of the card either.

Also make a list of your apps as you will need to reinstall these after updating your phone. I think that android market may also give the option to re download them but don't rely solely on this if you have a lot of important apps.

I've actually used the free orange backup utility to back them up online, but i'll probably export them to a CSV file as a double precaution.

Everything else on there is backed up so we're good to go.

I haven't got that many apps installed but once i'm back up and de-branded, i'll just fire up the wi-fi - that'll sort that out in no time.

here goes nothing .. *gulp*

*edit*

makes you wonder actually, if there's a stock de-branded version of the software out there, if people will try and reverse engineer it to come up with custom versions ??

Let us know how you get on.

It's done. I've just switched it back on and it's fine - just set up the various accounts e.t.c.

It prompted me for a software update which i've just kicked off as well so it's all looking good so far.

Can you just re-format the MicroSD card and start using it again as normal ?

Or do you have to restore the image in the hex editor ?

(You can probably guess I didn't save the original image )

I'm considering flashing a de-branded version on my Desire - I've already unlocked it to let me put an O2 sim in, will putting the new ROM on affect that at all? If it does 're-lock' it can I just enter the code that I used to unlock it the first time?

You can reformat and use the original SD card again, i did this without problems. Mine did an update upon first bootup too, nothing to worry about to be honest.

If you're on Orange i would recommend Your Orange and Orange Wednesdays as two great apps to install on your Desire

As far as i am aware, the actual phone lock side of things is different to the firmware so i don't think you'll have a problem. I am on Orange with a contract so haven't bothered unlocking my Desire.

Yep, just worked this out, cheers

Was a bit confused because originally, it had a full directory tree on the phone and now there's only a couple.

Just really wanted to work out where to upload all the pictures and music again but it's all good now.

Restored the phonebook backup fine as well.


I'll have a look at those for sure - just need to get my speccy emulator back on first !!

Good stuff. The Your Orange app tells you your current balance, mins, texts, mms remaining etc and Orange Wednesdays gets you film times, trailers, finds the cinema nearest to you, gives you directions and lets you get the orange wednesdays tickets

I might use that orange app - i know i fairly religiously check my balance using my online billing, but it might be handy to have it on the handset.

same with the orange wednesdays app - i use that quite a lot but it'll be handy having it with me i guess.

i just need to get my high score on 'toss it' all over again now .. heh

Any good games you know of?

Well 'Toss it' is horribly addictive. Full and free as well.

I had the Air Traffic Control game beforehand, although i uninstalled it because it only ran once, then you had to reboot the phone to run it again. Maybe it'll work properly with the de-branded version.

I had Tower Defence as well, but that's only a 'lite' version.

The main one I had was the speccy emulator "Xpectroid". Best one I tried - although 'Marvin' has integrated World of Spectrum lookup, I found Xpectroid easier to work and also, more importantly for me, found it very easy to play "Chaos" with !!

Tried the air traffic control game and had the same problem. Everything else works ok though.

Got the two Orange apps as well and I like them! Very useful.

Think i'll skip that game until there is a fix then. Glad everything else went smoothly for you.