[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] samuel2706:
HELP AND SUPPORT

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DESCRIPTION OF THIS THREAD

Back in 2011 I sat down and wondered what I could do to help a community that helped me so much and continues to help people everyday from bricked phones to shiny new things on their respective devices and this is what I created, with the guidance of certain moderators of course.

[*]I wanted to create a thread in which any question can be asked, be it porting related or anything and we all help each other out, this has been going for a few years now and has been a huge success so I have updated the quick start guide and I will be a more ever-present force in the thread to answer any help and such that you may need, because if we all help each other this place can be a more user-friendly and more interactive place to visit.

Please also note you may PM me if you wish to ask anything in private, or if you feel the need to just say hello.

Please also note that this thread was indeed a sticky at one time however I had other commitments in 2011 (College and such) and it was removed by November 2011.

[*]For donations, I would kindly ask you to donate to the Macmillan cancer care and support, however if you wish to donate to me I will donate it to the charity anyway, myself and Macmillan thank you for your support, no one should have to face cancer alone.

HERE IS A GUIDE TO GET STARTED

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GENERAL KNOWLEDGE v1.0

Rooting - Gives you complete root system access allowing things to be done that usually would be denied.

[*]S-OFF - (HTC Devices) Basically means you can flash ROM's to the SYSTEM partitions and such.

[*]Write Protection - This can mean a variety of things, from a locked boot-loader to SD card access, consult your device forum for information.

[*]Bricked(Soft) - Soft brick means that it can be recovered using appropriate methods found in your device forum.

[*]Bricked(Hard) - Very hard to fix usually means it's beyond repair but can be fixed in certain circumstances and at a local repair dealer for your phone.

[*]Kernels - The backbone of the phone, they are responsible for making everything run, the CPU, Schedulers and such are configurable using the kernel.

[*]CPU0 - Different for each phone however CPU0 is usually the 1st logical processor followed by 1,2,3 for quad core phones.

[*]Dual Core/Quad Core - Dual core means you get CPU0 and CPU1, Quad core means CPU0, CPU1, CPU2 and CPU3 are all available.

[*]Chip-set - This is your main-board, it means what your phone is built upon.

[*]Lib files - Found in /system/lib usually however this can be different, they control the software to firmware gaps on your phone, so they enable sound, camera, video; the major things live here, don't touch it unless you know what you're doing.

[*]Battery Stats - These control how long your battery lasts, they are reset when you delete the file from the system however it's strongly recommended you don't delete them.

[*]AOSP - Basically means the original Google Android software as a bare-bone OS.

[*]Partitions - These are different for each phone and should be treated with great care for example flashing a puppy to the radio partition would be a foolish action.

[*]Launchers - They change the UI of the phone, there are many out there so try them all until you find one that suits you just right.

[*]Logcat - This is only useful if you have an error with your phone, it's a simple adb logcat command however I prefer to use QTADB which is a nice GUI style logct application.

[*]ROM's - You flash these on phones that are able to flash Custom software, you can get many varieties however the main ones are 'Stock' the original phone OS, 'CM' which is AOSP, 'MIUI' An AOSP/AOKP style crossover mimics the iOS UI.

[*]Recovery - When flashed; custom recovery allows you to make changes to the different partitions inside the phone for example flashing a custom ROM.

[*]Flashing - Basically writing information to a partition or making a fool of yourself in public (the latter is not recommended due to laws)

[*]Over-clocking - This means pushing your hardware beyond its manufacturers original settings, this can be useful to create a faster phone but treat it with care as you can damage phone hardware.

[*]Under-clocking - This means lowering the stress on the system by making the hardware run slower than it's intended to do, great for saving battery.

[*]Under-volting - This means under-volting your CPU or GPU, this can cause stability issues but on the plus side can save battery, it's all about striking a balance.

[*]Benchmarking - This means to test your phone to its max and find out how it stacks up against other devices.

[*]IO Schedulers- They control how the system reacts in different situations, there are different types of Schedulers available so use each until you find one suitable for you (protip: Use fiops or noop)

[*]CPU Governors - They control the CPU frequencies and such for example "Performance governor" will give you constant speed, whereas "Conservative governor" will give you low speed.

[*]GPU Governors - They do the same as their CPU counterparts except they control the graphical section of the hardware.

[*]Radios - They control the baseband aspects of a phone (your network and such) they have different names for each device, they are very dangerous to mess around with.

Note:

Updated as of 12/06/13

So what are you waiting for? Ask questions!​

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