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So I'm pretty much sick of HTC Sense (and therefore my Desire in general) for the following reasons:

  1. THE BIG ONE: Lack of space on the phone partition

  2. The Sense UI calendar is rubbish. No view of the day of the week you're picking when creating a new event ... WTF?

  3. Contacts sync with Google Contacts: I have absolutely no way to sync selected groups. I've spent hours going through forum posts ... seems to be a very common problem, and for the desire I see no solution to this one. When my contacts are taking up 15 MB of precious space, I have 2 options: delete a stack of them from my Google account, or find another option on the phone (this is the option I'm leaning towards).

  4. Speed. I played with my friend's Nexus One with Gingerbread, and the speed is incredible. My Desire's speed is lacking.

  5. Battery life. I'm pretty sure Sense and all its background processes are sucking a lot of battery power unnecessarily. I cannot get through a day without charging. If I go to work and forget to charge it during the day, it'll be dead before I get home. And I hardly use my phone at work.

So, assuming Sense is the cause of all or most of the above issues, I figure my Desire and I would be much better friends if I could rid it of all that Sense gunk.

Has anybody done this? Got any links to tutorials I can follow (since I haven't even rooted my phone yet).

Izzy
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Jeeby
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    and your question is? Stack Exchange websites are for questions and answers, not discussions. If you want to discuss how to speed up your Desire, there are more appropriate forums, e.g. xda-developers, cyanogen, etc. – Lie Ryan Jan 09 '11 at 11:46
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    Options? To remove Sense you'll need to Root. See also: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/3728/how-to-root-htc-desire-froyo-2-2-without-putting-a-custom-rom-flashing http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/3911/upgrade-rooted-htc-desire-with-unrevoked3-clockworkmod-to-froyo-2-2 http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/2694/htc-desire-why-not-to-root-and-install-froyo-no-porting – ale Jan 09 '11 at 13:57
  • Lie, I was not aware of the fact that StackExchange is only for questions and answers... i've used StackOverflow for ages and have had many interesting and engaging discussions on there. Same goes for Photo.StackExchange... so what makes Android.StackExchange so special? – Jeeby Jan 10 '11 at 04:42
  • The entire idea of Stack Overflow and, then, Stack Exchange is for places to ask questions and receive, hopefully, one good, correct, answer. It is not a discussion forum; open-ended questions are, for the most part, discouraged. Android isn't "special". – ale Jan 10 '11 at 12:18
  • bah.. its a very fine line you're talking about there, and i'm not sure who's responsibility it is to 'police' those that step over that fine line... personally i dont think my question was that open ended, it had a definite end purpose in mind (solving the issues i have). I'll answer my own question, to demonstrate.. – Jeeby Jan 20 '11 at 23:09

1 Answers1

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Okay so i've solved all of my issues. It was quite simple really, and involved the following:

  1. Root the phone. Easy done - here's a tutorial: http://theunlockr.com/2010/09/20/how-to-root-the-htc-desire-unrevoked-method/

  2. Backup the current phone setup just in case i want to rollback... tutorial: http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-perform-and-restore-a-nandroid-backup/

  3. Download a new custom ROM to install. I went for the Oxygen V2 RC6 Gingerbread ROM for HTC Desire. Its excellent... fast, stable, resolves the space issues by enabling user to force apps to install to SD card, calendar shows the day when picking dates and even in agenda view, selective contacts sync is supported, and battery life seems better. It also makes it super easy to switch between 2G and 3G modes which saves heaps of battery (in 2G mode that is). The ROM is here: http://android-roms.net/desire/2011/01/06/oxygen-v2-0-rc6/ Tutorial on loading custom rom here: http://theunlockr.com/2010/06/07/how-to-load-a-custom-rom-on-the-htc-desire/

Reboot and enjoy the wonders of a pure Android experience... no HTC gunk, no Telstra rubbishware, just pure unadulterated Android excellence.

Note: I do have an issue with this setup... the network seems to drop out occasionally (Telstra). Monitor this thread for a solution: How to fix Telstra network dropouts on Gingerbread Oxygen ROM?

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Jeeby
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