[Samsung Galaxy Mini] nenad163:
Hi all, I wanted to start a thread for beginners like me to not get confused from all the similar threads and to keep it clean for instructions that are related for basic setting up the phone.

It would be nice to keep the first post updated with data that are 100% correct for any region or provider based phone.

So, :D to get started with me, i have read through the threads for a couple of days but still have some questions that hopefully someone will answer.

1) SIM-Unlock

I recently got my Mini from my provider Telenor in Serbia, and the first thing for carrier based phones someone will probably want is to SIM-unlock them. You can check if your phone is locked by entering *#7465625# in the dialer pad.

The cleanest and fastest solution that works 100% so far is from this thread

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1335548

I used the second method since I'm on OSX and have no way of installing Android SDK but can find a hex editor ("Hex Fiend" ) that works under OSX.

2) ROM-Upgrade

For people that have SIM-free phones the first step may be upgrading to newer ROM(and since Ginger is the favorite ROM my guess that I don't need to write any info for Froyo based devices), my suggestion is that you download Official ROM-s from sammobile.com because they are guaranteed 100% clean and you can also find carrier based ROM-s if you mess something up and want to take your phone for warranty reparation.

How to update your phone to Ginger is described here

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1255305

After the update it is recommended to do cache and data cleanup. And a hard reset by entering *2767*3855# in the dialer pad.

Go into restore mode(Power off your phone, hold Home and Power button), and when a menu comes up select "clear cache", and "clean data", select reset afterwards and wait for it to boot :).

After this you are ready to go and explore Android OS :)

3) Install CWM

And that's it for people who want to just use their phone as an android device. But. If you want to get the maximum potential from your device custom ROM-s are a must. For flashing custom ROM-s you will need Clock Work Mod to be installed, which is described here

http://yagyagaire.blogspot.com/2011/09/installing-clock-work-mod-recovery-in.html

4) Custom ROM

Afterwards download the custom Rom of your choice from xda :), the installation instructions may wary form ROM to ROM but they always are described in their threads( SO READ THEM CAREFULLY ), here

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1318735

And here is where i stopper, and need further help from experienced people :D

My questions are:

1. After i installed the custom ROM, I need to repartition and reformat my sd-card to a different file system ex. ex-fat for faster performance using Clock Work Mod???

2. Do I have to do some zip-aligning and how???

3. How many partitions do i must have on my sd-card and what size/file system must they be??? ( i know one must be for swap, one for dalvik, and one to expand internal storage but I don't know how big and which file system).

4. I want to use a custom kernel for undervolting(no OC is needed) and thus i need to move the dalvik to sd card as far as I understood, is there a tutorial or is it intuitive from the app that is used to do this???