[HTC Desire C] AirCombat:
It looks like CM10 is the way to go for ROM on this phone... if there's enough demand (or if someone hasn't already written one) I may re-write this for CM10 if I have the spare time.

Unlocking, Rooting, and installing Custom ROMs can brick your phone! If you're going to follow these instructions, then make sure you FOLLOW THEM! Don't skip steps, or assume you have all the software if you don't. Best case it just won't work but worst case you'll need to completely restore your phone and that can be difficult and sometimes impossible! Proceed with caution, especially for new users. I used Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit for these steps -- however they will also work fine (if you're a semi-experienced linux user) on Ubuntu 13.04 and Fedora 18. Check my profile for my email if you have questions and nobody is answering here, as I don't come on XDA much anymore. Catch me over at eevblog.com/forum if you need, my username there is MrAureliusR.

Now I have a bunch of thanks :) Thanks everyone who gave me thanks! :good::good:

You'll Need:

HTC Desire C (obv)

Working internet connection to go to HTCDev Boot Unlocker

An archiving software, eg WinZip, WinRAR, 7zip, etc (in Windows)

A copy of Superboot for the Desire C, which you can download here . You can follow their instructions if you want, I'll be basing this part off of theirs anyway with additional info for newbs

A copy of a recovery module, namely CWM for Desire C -- found here (written by munjeni -- all credit goes to him!!)

A copy of Nameless ROM (I use v7, all versions can be found here (written by einstein.frat -- all credit goes to him!!)

Here's the direct download for Nameless v7.2 build 7

http://d-h.st/Ta5

A copy of WinRAR is helpful -- go here if you need one and pick the English .exe near the top.

Also, when going to the HTCDev website, pay close attention to the box that says

Required Software

. You need all three of the things they ask for, namely:

Android SDK Tools

HTC Sync Manager (it contains the USB drivers for your phone)

Java Runtime Environment

I won't give links for these as they provide them there. As I mention below, these are super important! Don't forget!

IMPORTANT NOTES:​

ALL the files you need (with the exception of software that is downloaded and installed (ie Android SDK Tools and HTC Sync Manager, WinRAR)

should be put into C:\Android ... this makes things SO much easier when you go into command prompt as all you need to type is cd C:\Android before typing the other commands I give.

Another point to keep in mind -- any time you need to put the Desire C into "bootloader" mode, you need to disconnect the phone from the USB cable, and take the battery out, put it back in, and power on by holding Power + Volume Down at the SAME TIME. Easiest way for a newb to do this is push Volume down FIRST and hold it, then hold the power button too till the screen lights up. If it just boots normally, you didn't take the battery out. Hold them till the screen lights up with a bunch of text. You'll use the volume buttons to move through the menu, and the power button works like the Enter button - it selects whatever option you have highlighted. Before you finish step 1, it will say ***LOCKED*** at the top. Afterward, it will say ***UNLOCKED*** ... also, you always need fastboot mode. You have to select this from the list. Sometimes, you might need to select Bootloader and THEN fastboot. Either way, for any of these steps to work, it needs to say FASTBOOT USB at the top above the menu options. This means you've selected fastboot mode AND the USB cable is plugged in, plus the drivers have been installed and your computer can communicate with the phone (FYI this is why HTC Sync Manager must be installed).

This method, like all ROM installs, requires a factory wipe. This means that EVERYTHING on the internal memory (texts, contacts, apps that aren't on the SD card, calendar info, basically all your personal info) will be wiped. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO SOME BACKUP FIRST! I will stress there are TWO TIMES at LEAST you should back everything up -- first, right now, before you've done anything, and second, when in recovery mode right before we wipe again and overwrite the original ROM. That way you have fail safes and an easy way to restore in case of error. If you follow the instructions closely, you shouldn't have any problems... also, if you later want to relock and unroot, having your stock ROM is invaluable! It's quite likely you'll never get it out of your wireless provider!

Whenever I mention CMD or command prompt I'm telling you to go to Start --> Run and then type in "cmd" (no quotation marks) and hit enter

Step 1: Unlock your Bootloader

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So, the first step is to unlock your bootloader. As I mentioned before, there are instructions on the HTCDev website. But I'll give you quick pointers on that process:

Go to the HTCDev website

When you select your phone model from the list, the Desire C is NOT listed. Instead, scroll to the bottom of the list and click "All Other Supported Models"

HTCDev will require you to register. It's a good idea because that website can be very useful

The website will also ask you if you are sure you want to do this -- remember, doing any of these things can and probably will void your warranty -- make sure you're willing to part with it before proceeding.

MAKE SURE you have all the software I mentioned above installed. I cannot stress this enough as many, many questions on other threads were resolved by simply ensuring the latest versions of all three are installed. Just follow the links before you do anything else on the Step 1 page. Some of the files are big (>100MB) so it might take a while depending on your connection speed. Be patient -- these are vital to everything working!!!

Follow the steps CLOSELY

. It's pretty easy, even for someone who doesn't have much experience. However if you can open My Computer and you know where the Run... dialog is in Windows you'll be fine. A key pointer that I almost missed is

you HAVE to remove your battery, you can't just choose the Power Off option after hitting your Power button

. This is because you need the phone to coldboot (boot from scratch)

At the end of three pages, they will email you a file that you'll need to finish the process. This is why you had to register, and why it's important to use a real email address. Before you follow that last step, make sure you select, copy and paste EXACTLY what they ask for, or else it probably won't work.

You'll get the binary unlock file via email. Download this, and copy it to the same directory you used for the previous steps (I used C:\Android because it's the easiest to get to when using Command Prompt ... FYI if they don't mention it, you have to use the command cd C:\Android (or whatever directory you put the files you gathered in the second page into) before it will recognize fastboot as a command, because you need to be in the directory that executable is in. Super important for newbs who haven't used cmd before!!!

Follow the last few steps, and voila! You have a bootloader unlocked HTC Desire C :laugh:

Was that so hard??? Not really. Now for the second step, installing Superboot. This step is pretty easy too.

Step 2: Load Superboot

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So next step. This one is quite a bit easier.

Go to this link and download Superboot r1 for Desire C

Extract the .zip to a directory (I used, again, C:\Android\r1-golf-superboot or something like that)

Reboot your phone into bootloader mode, just like you did at the beginning of the HTCDev steps in the last step. It should now say ***UNLOCKED*** at the top. If it doesn't, you did something wrong in the first step. Go back and re-read everything and make sure you did it right. Remember, every time you want to get into bootloader mode, you have to remove the battery first, then power on while holding Volume Down

Once your phone is rebooted into Bootloader, and it's connected via USB cable, select Fastboot (again, just like last time) in the menu. It should say FASTBOOT USB at the top

Now go into the folder you created with r1-golf-superboot in it, and just double-click

install-superboot-windows.bat

If it was successful, it'll say so. Nothing will have changed on the phone's screen. Reboot the phone. It should automatically load and reboot the phone. While booting up it may take a bit longer because superboot is setting up your superuser privileges.

For advanced users:

Another easier way (at least for me) is once you've extracted r1-golf-superboot.rar, copy the boot.superboot.img into your working directory (C:\Android)

Boot the phone into fastboot USB mode

Type the command: fastboot boot boot.superboot.img and bang! It'll load and reboot automatically. I like this method because I like to do every command line step by hand, call it a Linux user habit.

Now you're unlocked, and Rooted!! How easy was that? Superboot is great for newbs because it automatically installs superuser (su) and the superuser APK, no messing around with anything else required.

Step 3: Install CWM Touch Recovery for HTC Desire C

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This step is super, super important because it

allows you to back up your current config

and also to wipe everything. Backing up is almost completely necessary! If something DOES go wrong you can just restore the backup you're going to make. Plus you also use CWM Recovery mode to later install the Nameless ROM (or any ROM) from a .zip file.

Again, there's instructions on the download page thread, but I'll help with some pointers for newbs here.

Go to this link and download the file. It's an attachment called CWM_Touch_Desire_C.rar on the first post. If you have trouble opening this .rar then just search WinRAR in Google and download that, it's free and works great. Don't worry, even though it's a beta in my experience it's completely stable. Not to mention a great piece of software by munjeni :)

You're going to use fastboot to install this. It's a quick, pain-free process like the last step. Just remember to do everything exactly as follows:

Extract the one file in the .rar (recovery.img) to C:\Android

Open up cmd again and go to C:\Android (cd C:\Android)

type in fastboot flash recovery recovery.img and hit enter. Boom! Done. just remember to reboot your phone before cotinuing with the next step.

EDIT: Also, before installing the ROM, it's a VERY good idea to make a backup using CWM Recovery. Boot into bootloader mode, select recovery, choose Backup and Restore, and pick Backup. If it defaults to your internal memory, then pick backup to external SD.

NOTE: It's up to you which recovery to use. Once you've downloaded a compatible .img file, the easiest thing to do is rename it to recovery.img and type the above command.

Here's a link to TWRP recovery for the Desire C: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2148015

Step 4: Install Nameless ROM v7 for HTC Desire C

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This is the final step, and the most difficult one. There's a couple different steps that need to be done properly for everything to work.

UPDATED FOR VERSION 7 OF NAMELESS

Go here and download version 7 to your desktop. (NaMeLeSsR0m_v7.o.0_HtCDeSiReC.zip) The boot.img is inside the archive now (as of v7, if you have an earlier version you need to get the boot.img that goes with it, ask in this thread or in the Nameless thread)

Once the .zip for the ROM is downloaded, remove the boot.img and put it in your android folder (C:\Android). Copy the rest of the archive onto the SD card. You can either do this using a cardreader (if your computer has one built-in or you have one for your camera or something) or because you have the HTC Sync Manager installed you can just boot into your regular version of android and when you connect the USB cable, pick "Disk drive" as the connection type. Then just drag and drop the file into the SD card. MAKE SURE that you're a) copying it to the SD card, NOT the internal memory b) copying it directly into the top level folder of the SD card. For example, if it shows up as drive J:, then you copy it to J:\ and not into any folder

Now, reboot your phone back into bootloader mode. Again, select fastboot, and make sure it says FASTBOOT USB. Remember, you need to unplug the USB cable, remove the battery, power up into bootloader (Power + Volume Down) and then reconnect the USB cable after it boots (see Important Notes at the top if you've forgotten).

Open cmd and go to C:\Android

Type in fastboot flash boot boot.img and bang! It's done. This step is crucial or your Wi-Fi won't work -- also with v6, this is necessary for other features to work, like customization. If you've come here and you've already installed the ROM and your Wi-Fi just says error, you need to flash the boot.img onto the phone.

Now that you've flashed the boot.img, select Reboot in Bootloader on the phone. You can disconnect the USB cable now. However, make sure your phone is mostly (minimum %80) charged

When the bootloader comes up again, this time select Recovery. This is the software you installed in the last step. This is a REALLY great little recovery program that has a lot of neat options and awesome features. It's very easy to use and it even uses touch! However I have huge hands and I just continue to use the volume up/down and power buttons to move through the menus.

Once you're in recovery mode, the FIRST THING you should do is select backup/restore and backup everything, to the SD card. I had a problem with this step: even though I picked SD for the backup it told me there was only 93MB of room and it probably wasn't enough. This makes me think that it was trying to backup to internal memory. (EDIT: You have to just choose backup, not backup to SD card, because it's switched -- backup to SD card will try to backup to the phone's internal memory... the reason I didn't realize this earlier was because I had very little room left on my 2gb sd card and thought that 93mb seemed right ^_^) Anyway, IF THAT HAPPENS TO YOU, and you are unable to back up, DO NOT PROCEED ANY FURTHER. If people are having this problem I will find a way to fix it. Personally, I was VERY VERY stupid and decided to install the ROM anyway, without a backup -- however, if my phone had died or any of a thousand other things had gone wrong I would have had MAJOR problems... DON'T do this without a backup!!!!! I cannot stress this enough. If something goes wrong and you have a backup to restore you will feel like such a pro. If something goes wrong and you don't you'll feel like a fool and spend hours trying to restore your original ROM.

After you've backed up, go back to the main menu (using the touch buttons at the bottom of the screen) and select wipe data/factory reset. Scroll down to the one 'Yes' option and select it.

Then go back to the main menu, select wipe cache partition, and again say Yes.

Go back to the main menu again, go to Advanced, then select Wipe Dalvik Cache, and select yes. NONE OF THESE STEPS CAN BE UNDONE -- make sure you've backed up first!!!

Now, go back to the main menu, and select "install ZIP from sdcard" ... scroll down and pick the Nameless ROM ZIP file that you copied earlier (NaMeLeSsR0m_v7.o.0_HtCDeSiReC.zip)

NOTE: einstein.frat has changed the installer as of v7 build 5 and up. Simply pick "wipe + install" if you want to do a fresh install, and then pick "Standard" for installation type. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Nameless, then simply go to mounts and storage in the CWM main menu, format /system & /cache, then go back to the main menu; pick advanced, and then Wipe Dalvik Cache. THEN proceed with the installation, and pick don't wipe.

You're basically done!!! Once the phone reboots, DON'T freak out if it takes upwards of 5 minutes on the boot screen... which is now an animation of the world turning!

Enjoy.

You did it!! Hopefully you didn't have too many problems. I really hope this thread helps someone, I remember when I had little experience and I was SO thankful when people put all the info in one place like this. If you did, click on THANKS, I'd appreciate it.

To other users -- if I made any huge, glaring errors please let me know ASAP. I re-read this a couple times but I'm pretty exhausted, I typed this all at one sitting. I did this to help show that I really am serious about this forum and I want to help & learn as much as possible. Plus I'd like to majorly thank all the people who wrote all the amazing software that went into this -- you know who you are!!!

Best of luck

-AC

PS I'll do my best to answer any questions users have in this thread. In my opinion NO QUESTION IS STUPID!!! So don't be afraid. HOWEVER at least do a cursory search, it might already be in here or somewhere else.

CUSTOMIZING THE LOOK OF YOUR DESIRE C (MOVED UP HERE)

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Wow! I've been off XDA for a bit, and I just came back around now (was away visiting family...) can't believe Nameless is at 5.0! I'm installing it now and then I have to re-push my custom battery, lockring and boot animation... I'm going to add those three things in this post here, just so all the info is in one place. :) Remember that to make your phone look really sick a good wallpaper makes ALL the difference. You can find some sweet ones on deviantART and also in the original Nameless ROM thread, einstein.frat lists some cool ones in a post there... I actually use one of the ones that he listed!!! All together I think my phone looks pretty sick, have a look here and here !!! Remember that if this post helped you please click THANKS, these walkthroughs look short but this one took me over an hour to put together. The one above took way longer!!!

REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE TO DO THE COMMAND adb shell sysrw BEFORE YOU CAN PUSH ANY FILES!!!

LOCKRINGS & BATTERY ICON MODS:

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So in the original Nameless thread, somewhere... einstein links to a page full of custom lockrings. I won't go into too much detail in making custom lockrings, but I will explain how to push them onto the phone. Don't follow instructions elsewhere -- if you have all the proper software from my original post that's all you need with the Desire C. Lockrings need to be .jpg, and they need to be 171 x 171 pixels. They also need to be named lockscreen_ring.jpg. You can make pretty much any image a lockring but it's cooler to choose something that's circular. I'm a HUGE Gears of War fan so my lockring looks like this: (red one in the upper left) ... if you want to use any of these go to this post but DO NOT look at his steps!! I'll explain it much simpler here. Just use that page to harvest yourself a lockring.

REMEMBER THIS IMPORTANT TIP: you have to use a program like Photoshop to

resize the image to 171 x 171

... YOU CANNOT USE MS PAINT as it just crops and does not actually resample the image... and 'resizing' it in paint by dragging the little handles creates a gross, blocky, choppy, crap image that nobody wants on their nice HTC Smartphone ;) I downloaded a program called Paint.NET which is actually a great image editor. It's free and does a great job making lockrings and/or battery mods.

Battery mods are more difficult to make... because most battery mods that you'll find are not prepared properly for the Desire C, unless you are comfortable with the stock one you actually have to harvest a preview image of a battery mod, chop it into 100 equal pieces, and the save each one as a different 'frame'. This is a very complicated (and frustrating to do by hand!!) process... IF YOU WANT to try the battery mod that I made (warning: it's not perfect... I mean, it looks fine but if you watch the battery icon while it's charging you'll see what I mean ;) ) I will include it in this post along with my Gears of War lockring...

LOCKRING STEPS

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Once you've got your lockring ready, follow these steps:

Download this file - HtcLockscreenLite.apk (new link, I'm hosting it now)

Open HtcLockscreenLite.apk with WinRAR

Drag and drop your lockscreen_ring.jpg to the folder /res/drawable-mdpi/ INSIDE the HtcLockringLite.apk archive. If anyone is confused by what I mean by this, don't hesitate to ask and I'll clarify with screenshots.

Put your now customized HtcLockringLite.apk in your ADB folder (C:\Android in my walkthrough above)

Open up cmd and dir to the ADB folder

Remember to type adb shell sysrw first

Type command adb push HtcLockscreenLite.apk /system/app/

Reboot and voila! There's your lockring

EDIT: Answered my own question. You have to re-push the lockring even after pushing SystemUI.apk :) So the one I included will ONLY do my battery mod.

BATTERY MOD STEPS:

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Ugh, I'm getting tired as it's 1:30 AM here in Canada (I wrote the boot animations part about 20 minutes ago, if you were wondering LOL). So I'll try and make this sweet and to the point.

If you're a newb, and you're already nervous just being on the xda-developers website, then making your own battery icon might not be that easy for you. You can do it, but it's not in the scope of this walkthrough. I hope you already have all the .png's needed for the battery modification (If you don't and you want to use the custom battery that I converted for use on this phone, then just skip ahead to the steps below. As far as I can tell this SystemUI.apk that I included below will not change your lockring as well...)

I'm going to assume you already have the 200 or so files that make up the battery icon, as follows:

(or that you're using the linked file below)

stat_sys_battery_0.png

stat_sys_battery_1.png

...

stat_sys_battery_100.png

stat_sys_battery_full.png (an exact copy of battery_100.png, for some reason...)

stat_sys_battery_charge_anim0.png

stat_sys_battery_charge_anim1.png

...

stat_sys_battery_charge_anim100.png

stat_sys_battery_charge_animfull.png (for some reason there's this one too)

If you have all these files, in the size 21 x 21, .PNG format, then you just need to open SystemUI.apk with WinRAR and drag and drop all of them into the /res/drawable-mdpi/ folder. That's MDPI not HDPI ... It'll probably ask you to overwrite if you did it properly. Let it import, and then follow these steps:

Copy your new SystemUI.apk to your ADB folder .. my custom SystemUI.apk is here (if DropBox cuts it off for bandwidth reasons just PM/email me and I'll get it to you).

Open command (cmd) and dir to your ADB folder (outlined above)

Remember to type adb shell sysrw

Type the command adb push SystemUI.apk /system/app/

Voila!! All done. Type adb reboot and check out your sick new mods!!!

BOOT ANIMATIONS:

So you need to find a boot animation that's compatible with this phone, and this version of android (4.0.3). They usually come in .rar format so of course you need WinRAR. Extract this to your folder that you used above, (C:\Android).

The bootanimation that I use can be downloaded here. That bootanimation was made by user kevinrocksman ... once downloaded you extract both files to C:\Android, open up cmd and dir C:\Android (or again, wherever your files and adb are) and then type: (if your file names are different, then PM me and I'll help figure it out. I'm guessing that all the files need to be in a .zip called hTC_bootup.zip no matter what the frames are... I can help :))

adb push hTC_bootup.zip /system/customize/resource

adb push htc_boot.mp3 /system/customize/resource

And presto!! Do a reboot from adb by typing in reboot and watch the magic happen ;) Technically that mp3 could be anything, as long as you adhere to the format (ie, MP3, 320kbps, filename: htc_boot.mp3, length 3 seconds). Actually, I have a feeling that mine glitched, because that sound seems like it should be longer than 3 seconds, but hey, its still cool so I haven't screwed with it yet.

EDIT: I have a new .mp3 that's way cooler, it sounds like an old-school modem booting up! You can replace the one above by downloading it here