[HTC Incredible S] Lynt:
There's no exploit that has been found yet to S-OFF your HBOOT 1.16.0000 Incredible S, but you can unlock the bootloader, flash a recovery image, and install a custom ROM.

If you're not sure about doing this, I'd advise against it - things can go wrong, and there is a chance you'll damage your phone. Also be aware that HTC's unlock process effectively voids your warranty, and it will erase everything on your phone, as if your stock ROM went back to how it was when you first bought the phone.

1. Go to http://htcdev.com/ and create a free account. Once done, click the "Unlock Bootloader" link, or click here. Note that the Incredible S v1.16.0000 wasn't listed at the time of writing this, but the process still works fine.

Follow the instructions there to the letter; it's a pretty simple process - the guide says you'll need HTC Sync installed, but you may just need USB drivers. I installed HTC Sync for this process and then uninstalled it from my PC afterwards.

Part of this process involves grabbing some files from the Android SDK; you might not have that installed, so download them HERE. Put them somewhere easy to find, like the root of your C: drive in a folder called "android" (I'll use this for the rest of the instructions).

2. You'll know the process is going well when your phone flashes up an image asking if you're sure you want to unlock your bootloader. If you're still sure, select yes, and the process will complete.

3. Once done, your phone's bootloader will be unlocked, enabling you to flash a recovery image.

4. Go to here and download the recovery image for the Incredible S. Put it in the "android" folder along with the other files needed for HTC's unlock process, above. This file is the ClockWorkMod recovery image for the IncS.

5. Shut down your phone. Plug it in via USB to your PC which you set up during the HTC unlock process. Hold volume down, and press power and the phone will boot into the bootloader. Wait for it to scan your SD card (takes a few seconds), then ensure "Fastboot" is highlighted and press power.

6. On your PC, load up a command prompt - open the Start menu, go to Run, and type "cmd".

7. In the command prompt window, type the following, assuming the HTC unlock files and the recovery image you downloaded in step 4 is all in C:android.

cd c:android

Then type:

fastboot flash recovery <recovery_name.img>

Don't forget the .img on the end, and replace "recovery_name" with the specific name of the recovery image you want to use. For ClockWorkMod linked to in step 4, you'd type:

fastboot flash recovery cwm-4.0.1.4-vivo.img

After a few seconds, ClockWordMod will have been flashed to your phone.

8. Reboot your phone, there should be an option in the fastboot menu (volume up and down to navigate, power to select). It should boot as per normal. Put it into USB disk mode, and download a ROM that you'd like to use. CyanogenMod is a good start: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/htc-incredible-s

Download the ROM and place it in the root of your SD card (ie. not in any folders or anything).

9. Power off the phone. Hold volume down and press power to boot back into the bootloader. Use volume down to select "Recovery" and press power. ClockWorkMod recovery will load.

10. Using volume up/down and power to select, go down to Backup/Restore. Select it, then hit Backup. ClockWorkMod will backup your stock ROM in case there are any dramas and you want to go back to it.

11. After that (takes around 3-4 minutes), go back to the main menu. Select wipe data/factory reset and confirm. Go back to the main menu, select Advanced > Wipe Dalvik cache > confirm. Always best to do these 2 things before flashing a new ROM.

12. Go back to the main menu, and select "Install zip from SDcard". Next choose "Select Zip from SD card" and select the ROM you'd like to install. Confirm this action, and ClockWorkMod will install your new ROM. After that's done, shut the phone down.

13. Ordinarily you'd be done after that, and you could boot into your new ROM. However HBOOT 1.16 does some weird stuff and tends to cause issues; I think it interferes with the installation of the boot.img that ordinarily would be flashed with the ROM. Anyhow, grab the ROM that you downloaded earlier (CyanogenMod, in my example), and on your PC, unzip the file somewhere. Once unzipped, inside you'll see a file called "boot.img". Put this in the same folder as your other Android tools that you used earlier. Power your phone on, hold volume down, and instead of loading recovery by choosing "recovery", choose "usb fastboot".

14. Open up your command prompt again (Start > Run > "cmd"), and type (using the "android" folder for this example):

cd c:android
fastboot flash boot boot.img

This will flash the boot.img to your phone.

Power off the phone, reboot it, and you should be good to go. There may be more efficient ways to do some of the above, but I'm not a massive guru at this stuff, I just haaaate Sense and bloatware. If any gurus notice any errors, please let me know.

* Edit: Bear in mind that by default, a CM7 install won't include any Google apps (this includes the market app); this needs to be flashed as a separate update via recovery. At the time of writing, a link to information about the Google apps package for CM7 is here:

http://xdaforums.com/archive/t-1297579.html

Have updated the title as this should work with HBOOT 2.00+; haven't tested this myself though.

Apologies, not around this site too often these days, at least until an official ICS ROM is out, so I probably won't respond to PMs. Good luck, and hope the above info helps - but it may pay to do some due diligence yourself first, in case it's out of date.