[Flipout and Charm General] G1-Amateur:
Here's how I bricked my phone, for the ones who're interested:

I think it's a pretty funny story, so keep reading if you're searching for some entertaining story.

So I Bought a flipout because I wanted a small phone. I was pretty satisfied by the phone and it's performance, althought it's kinda an effeminate phone. Anyways, before I knew it (When I booted up the phone for the first time) I was disgusted by Orange's laggy intro: it was supposed to be an explosion followed by an implosion which created the Orange logo (sort of XBOX style). The reality was less: a very laggy 2 or 3 fps intro. Bravo Orange if you were actually aiming for this rate.

When I boot up the phone it shows the menu just like any other phone, but it came with another disgusting fact: MotoBlur. Lag, lag and lag. There it was, in all it's glory:

- It's laggy (not as much as Orange's intro...)

- Uses default services (calendar, gallery) with some unfinished 3D features (that caused needless lag)

- "Happenings" which connects your twitter, facebook and other things.

Although I have to say, I did like the lil tab that shows above and tells you on which screen you were. It looks kinda like the following (excuse me my drawing skills):

.: : . |^| . : :.

resp. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3

Anyways, I had to get rid of this "MotoBlur" and the first thing I had to do was to root my device. I remember the days with the G1 which were a hassle to just root your phone, so I was hesitating if I really wanted to go through all this again...

But after a lil search, I found that nowadays we have superoneclick, androot, z4root, etc... etc... So I tried one of these "new" apk's which gave me a small error, so then I tried z4root which was quite easy, fast and simple. I was in. Things were going my way, hell, I even found a brand-new-looking 4GB microSD on my work. Just out of nowhere there it was, very small, laying down on the ground waiting for me to get picked up.

What goes up, must go down...

So there I was with my first steps trying to remove MotoBlur, and although I knew there were tut's about how to remove Orange and Blur, I just couldnt wait. I made backups of my system apk's with Titanium which was quite easy, and it was that precise moment when I was like "GET!", i'm sick of this MotoBlur, let's remove these "things". They are right in front of me, just get rid of them... And while continuously hitting the "remove" button I was daydreaming of a simple usefull handy phone. Bam, bam, bam, I deleted one app after the other, even Google Talk didn't had a chance. Everything was going smooth, bye Blur.Calendar.apk, bye odex, bye Blur.gallery.apk, bye Blur.happenings.apk,... ... ... about 20 apk's later, I was quite satisfied.

But you know how it goes when you just delete stuff without greater knowledge. You BRICK your phone. But people, this was just the start. I had some force close after this one man operation, but my phone was smoother. I have to admit, things were comming unexpected. First I couldnt find my gallery (removed). Then I found out I couldnt download anymore from the Android Market because I deleted Blur.calendar.apk which is connected with Calendar.apk which syncs my G-Mail account which is needed before you can download anything from the Market. Hah! Owned.

Backups.

So there I was having these problems, but the phone still works great. I have to admit I silently thought: luckely I made a backup, and was kinda proud I wasn't one of those noobs who just goes forward without a save game, right? Right? Guys...? Anyone...? . ... ...Wrong! The reality was I couldn't even "restore" with Titanium. The backups weren't real backups, but just data-backups which were stored on my sdcard in .tar format. Aaarrgh!

No problem, no problem. There has to be a way to fix this, someone did this stupidity before me. Obviously. Ofcourse. No?

When I was searching about why I couldn't fix my Titanium backups, someone answered to someone else that's because he couldn't sideload the apps. He needs to root his phone in a way so sideloading is enabled. Great! Sideloading it will be then.

Sideloading is def a great way to install .apk's without the market, because I tried a factory reset (hoping that would solve everything) and I couldn't download anymore from the market. I had to sideload ASTRO which was successful with the right ADB drivers - even though I didn't knew what ADB meant I did register on MotoDev's website (so I can download the little bastard).

Easy peasy. Now I'm back on track with ASTRO and an easy install of Flan Gallery (fixed camera) replaced my gallery. We're off to set!

Despite this minor victory I was aware I'm still not were I wanted to be. Factory reset doesn't get me were I want to be and I'm still having issues. But no problem no problem. This time I'll turn my questions to the community, not google. That's eventually why there is a community? That's why we are open source? Yes. Score. Win.

So maybe some knowledgeable people will reply because they can help the ones who are trying to learn. I think I'll start with how to fix the calendar-issue and then I'll try to make a ROM-backup, so I can install a new ROM or whatever. That's probably a better idea then before. Cool, I even got a quick reply by someone who told me to go to this-and-this site, which is better for noobs. Allrighty then...

Trying my own way.

Since things weren't going were I wanted to, I thought now it's time to give it a real last try by searching about this mystery "ADB" and eventually to push some apps into system/app/ so I could fix all this misery. I found what I was searching for, however the tut about how to push apps sounded like someone was holding a gun against the writer's head. It really sounded like he wrote it against his will.

Desperate attempts.

I started today (15 april) around 5pm local time with this whole pushing-thing because I thought I had the knowledge that I needed and even surprised myself by actually successfuly pushing some apk's using a quick and nice XDA how-to, but then things went from worse to worser. I pushed Blur.calendar.apk, Blur.service.apk, Blur.email.apk, Blur, Blur, Blur... Ironically thát what I wanted to remove at the start came voluntary back in my system/app/ of my phone.

That's quite funny especially when I rebooted my phone and I kept getting force close com.motorola.blur.service.main and I couldn't get around this except by using voice-commands (double tap home button). "Find ASTRO" I said. Finding ASTRO... Opening ASTRO... Ingenious! It was quite amazing that this feature actually works without any bugs or misunderstandings. So I started root manager, rebooted the system with r/w settings so I can try a final attempt by trying to remove blur-service.apk from the system/app/ which actually didn't had any impact. Nothing really happened.

The end.

And there I was having these problems, and the phone doesn't work. A friend of me adviced me on Steam-chat to hard-reset the phone. I could care less, but we had a little discussion about what has more effect hard-reset or factory-reset? Btw... Holding down the power button and the camera button...?! The phone doesn't even has a camera button! Hilarious.

I eventually did the hard-reset with another tut and now the phone is... ehm... kinda... pretty... bricked. It just boots up and then gives 1 continously looping force close of the blur service (which I allready had), and another force close when I finish setting up the blur account wizard. At the end of the wizard it just force close and shows the wizard again,... and again... and again...

Mathematical summon:

+1 noob

+1 bricked phone

- $$$

- (a lot of) time

+ frustrations/stress

+1 story

Equals a possitive outcome?