After getting a tip from a friend that Cyanogen was worth trying out, and being curious about running a more vanilla (specifically, not-tied-to-the-Sense-UI) version of Android, I finally installed it.
I found the full update guide on the CyanogenMod wiki site to be overly and unnecessarily complex. As noted in a previous post, I was running the leaked Android 2.2 w/Sense OTA update image, which meant that I already had fairly up-to-date radio firmware and the ClockworkMod recovery. Instead of backrevving to stock 2.1, I instead:
- Installed unrevoked forever, which obviates the need to use dangerous hacks like dinc_ota.zip to update radio firmware.
- Installed the latest radio firmware available on the CyanogenMod forums. (I also installed the custom splash. 🙂 )
- Downloaded the latest version of CyanogenMod and Google Apps for HDPI devices and copied them to the SD card.
- Rebooted into ClockworkMod Recovery, wiped the phone, and installed the images.
It was all very straightforward. The only snag that I ran into was the Mail app continuously crashing, which I resolved by removing the included Mail.apk and installing the Mail.apk from the CyanogenMod forums.
So far, I’m pleased. The phone is much snappier. There’s a small but noticeable lag in interface response on the Sense ROM (nowhere near what my old iPhone had) which does not exist in Cyanogen, and it makes using it less frustrating.