[G2 and Desire Z Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dcpathak:
Dear StipeP,

Greetings!

I bought my Desire Z, my very first android mobile in April 2010 and since then I was thinking 'O my God! what the **** people are talking about rooting their mobile!!!'. It was not that I was not curious, it was the difficult looking procedure and always lingering fear of bricking my set :confused:. At that time, I was a toooooootal noob :(. Then HTC pushed gingerbread update. All was well before ICE rolled out and some other mobiles were getting it while desire z was no where in line. I decided I should give it a try but still I preferred some 'one click root' methods over the detailed one given at XDA (it seemed too intimidating). But every such method could not root a desire z on android 2.3.3 (they could have when I was on Froyo). Then I finally made my mind to take the bull by horn and started reading as much as possible about rooting the hard way. Finally, I went for the XDA-wiki and also stumbled upon a guy named Strawmetal's wonderful effort of putting all the necessary files and instructions at one place. One night, I sat after dinner just rooted it (though I remembered all possible Gods at some steps like matching the MD5 sums:fingers-crossed:). I was so excited that I didn't sleep the whole night!:D

Now, question was which ROM to install ( I hated to be back on Froyo). I started fiddling with some gingerbread ROMs and then shifted to ICS ROMs. There are problems as mentioned by others. I would mention below some pros and cons (those matter to me) of these ROMs:

1. Gingerbread ROMs are generally quite stable. Some excellent examples are Virtuous Glite v2.01, EliteMod120316 (this is awesome!) etc. I found BeatMod Bliss Sense hybrid to be too heavy (it's a Sense 3.5 ROM).

2. Camera works fine with Gingerbread ROMs generally (It was good in EliteMod120316).

3. ICS ROMs are faster. Even browser there seems faster to.They give a lot of customization options (Rightnow, I'm on EliteMod 120728 and believe me, it would just enthrall you with its beauty and customization options:)).

4. For me, ability to read Hindi fonts is a bonus and ICS ROMs do this.

5. Regarding Camera on ICS ROMs, it is true that they are not good. But the Camera on EliteMod 120728 is working well. Only you cannot record 720p video:crying:).

6. I'm yet to try some other good ROMs like CM9 unofficial so cannot say much about them.

7. One issue that I faced was that I could download from Play Store when using a gingerbread ROM but could not when using ICS ROMs. It was giving "error 403". Finally, resolved that today (of course, with help from others).

One thing that I should mention here is that after rooting and trying some ROMs, I felt frustrated and thought is there any way to go back to stock gingerbread rom without loosing root. Main issues was Camera (I use it a lot). But more I read and kept finding/trying new ROMs, more the desire to revert to gingerbread subsided. Finally, when I got EliteMod 120316, I was more than content. And now am using EliteMod 120728 (an ICS ROM).

Last but not least, I believe that the biggest advantage of rooting my desire z is not ability to run custom ROMs but the learning process and getting an opportunity to mingle with extra-ordinarily helpful XDA-guys.

Now, you have to take a decision about taking the plunge :)

Best of luck