Hard Reset!

Full of iPhone envy, I decided I needed to do something to relieve myself of the jealousy of not having one.

I decided to Hard Reset my TYTN II phone, wiping everything from it. A bit drastic?

Yes but.. I did backup everything before the point of no return. As I didn't check if the backup was 100% ok, I put a lot of faith that it would restore correctly. Thankfully everything seemed to be in its place and working.

With that test run acceptable, I thought I'd try one of the cooked (custom) ROMs featured on the XDA developers site. It looks like quite a daunting process, but I also watched a video on this site for a live walkthrough.

DISCLAIMER: I didn't have any problems. If you try this as well, I accept no responsibility for anything going wrong. But it LOOKS harder than it is.

I wanted a updated Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM, so I've decided to start with Dutty's Diamond V1 Build 19588 which as the name suggests, is a port of some HTC Diamond features.

It does feel a bit faster and solid. I had a few minor things not working properly (two program launch buttons went to a blank screen and I couldn't switch the phone off at all at one point), but I think that's due to me being a nOOb rather than real problems.

Soon after I decided I wanted to try another cooked ROM. This one is called ROMeOS v4.1.

From what I read this is a popular and stable ROM, and has a much anticipated accelerated driver (though not complete as yet) as an extra file.

I would have loaded this file first, but it didn't have a Radio (no not FM, but a receiver for calling, GPS etc.) With a first flash I was a bit nervous about that, so I went with Dutty's first.

First impression of this one was that it is quite fast, maybe a little bare on the apps. At least it has a calculator. You don't know how useful it is when you need to do some quick math.

So far so good. The radio's not so great though. I just put on a eMonster radio based on a Japanese eMobile ROM that uses the TYTN II phone.

It seems pretty good so far. It's picked up six satellites sitting in my apartment. Gotta love that.

Although I've had a few headaches, this phone tinkering has given me something new to do in little ol' Tokyo.