[T-Mobile Sidekick 4G] CupCakeBombardme:
Hi all,

I finally decided to add a custom rom to my SK4G. I had retired it for a year or so, not from getting a new phone, but rather my youngest child dropped it in a mud puddle. I had put it in rice and all that good stuff. I was able to get it to turn back on, but it has very very very low battery. So I put it on the charger, and it would briefly show the charging symbol and disappear. So I had assumed that it was totally shot, And while I was disappointed, because I love this phone, it still was not surprising. I mean it was in a mud puddle right. LoL

Well about 2 weeks ago I got bored, and figured what the smudge, I will ticker with it. I figured, I couldnt do any worse to it than what was already done. So I once again tried to see if it would charge. Tried by wall charger, by car charger, and by USB charging. But alas once again nothing. Well my husband also has a SK4G. So I ganked his battery for a little bit, and lo and behold, it worked. Turned on flawlessly, and not one issue in the operating system at all. Well at least as flawlessly as a stock SK4g could get. lol

So I was thinking maybe the charger slot had shorted out for whatever, from it being in the mud puddle. I put the battery from my SK4G in my husbands phone and agin tried all 3 charging methinds, and still nothing. So I pluged my phone in with his battery and it went to charing just fine. Okay so, new battery. Not that bad, but I dont order anything over the net. I hate waiting, I live in a big enough city, I figured I could go to one of the electronic stores and get one.

So I tried 5 different places, no one had a replacement for it, but once gain I was impatient and didnt want to wait. Did some googling and found out Batteries plus carries a replacement for it. Wasnt thrilled by the fact that they charge 2 to 3 times more for it that other places. But whatever, if it got my phone running again, okay. I had my oldest son pick me up one on his way home from work. Gave him the stock battery numbers and all that. He brings it home, and I go to put it in and..................It is not even close to being a compatible replacement for the samsung battery. Went back down there and returned it. Told the sales clerk that their website was completely wrong. Upon looking through their wall of replacement cell batteries, I did find another battery that was a perfect match. Only to have the "Battery Expert" argue with me about it being the right one. Finally got him to stop running his mouth and bought the battery.

I had just recently ended my contract with t-mobile, and wanted to take my SK4G with me to a new carrier. Well in order to do that, I needed to unlock the network. So it was research time. Googled and found XDA. Which from then on has ben invaluable to the process. Found Sidekick 4G Unlocking *Follow Directions Closely written by troby86 and SuperOneClick - Root/Unroot Your Samsung Sidekick 4G by Ayoteddy .Had a few problems with SOC. It kept freezing at step 7. Took me a few to find the reason why ( answer is in the forums here, just took some digging and reading to find. The culprit was the "Exploit setting needed to be set to "psneuter". Changed that and finshed rooting with out any more problems on that part.

Next had to unlock the network, following the above mentioned thread. Tried it 2 or 3 times to no avail. Then it dawned on me that I hadnt rebooted after I got it rooted. So rebooted and tried the terminal part of it again. And Bingo! It took the commands or whatever you would like to call them. SK4G was now unlocked. Yay!

SInce I had already been in the forum looking at the unlock and root guides. I decided why not go ahead and put a custom rom on it too. I loved my SK I just loathed the software on it. Constantly freezing while surfing the net or trying to use facebook. I spent a bunch of time browsing the forums, reading the comments on all the roms and trying to decide which rom I wanted to use. I had orginally choose CM6-Merged.

So read the thread on it, and even watched a youtube video by sinesolder. The next task was to chase down all the files I needed to install that, plus the CWM stuff too. I flashed CWM using the app "Root Manager" in the play store. Next was to swap out the "recovery" file. Took a few mins to find it, but did. Placed it in the root of the SDcard along with the update zip. Downloaded Astro file manager from the play store. Went to bottem of list and copied the recovery file, then pasted in system/bin folder. Rebooted, clicked reinstall packages on the stock (blue) recovery screen. But it was a no go. it would not give me the orange CWM. It just ket saying E :file invalid, or some such rubbish. So back to combing the forums again. Had stumbled upon a post some where here, that said something about MNT/SDcard. And sure enough, I copied the recovery file from the MNT/SDcard directory, then pasted in the system/bin. Reboot again, reinstall packages and BAM Orange CWM! But before I flashed my first rom, i wanted to get the red CWM/voodoo recovery. That way I didnt have to worry about mounts while flashing. After much reading again in the forum, I found that the red CWM was already included with the Bali Kernal. Reboot again, then install from SDcard, choose Bali Kernal and installed. Woo Hoo red CWM was up and going. phew.... lol or so I thought. Plugged phone in and put CM6 - Merged on the SD. Back to recovery, wipe factory, wipe cache, wipe dalvik. Then install from SDcard again, chose CM-6 Merged.

This is where I had a bit of a panic. As I was not paying atternion the what Kernal or Baseband the rom was made to run with. So that ended up soft-bricking my phone. But yet again, XDA to the rescue. Searched it out and found the "ODIN to stock" thread. Just had to track down the right TAR and PIT files. I was orginally on KJ2 stock before I did anything, but I could only find the KD1 TAR. No biggie tho, just used the ODIN to stock method and I was back in business again.

Since I am far from having any real knowledge about roms and their internal workings and what-nots. I went about just trying to find roms that would run off of the Bali Kernal and the KD1 baseband. I did find working links to a few of them, not exactly sure how many, but I had serval choices. I went with GingerClone v.2.

Back to reboot, wipe factory, wipe cache, wipe dalvik. Install from SDcard, chose GingerClone and installed. Booted up and everyhting was all hunky dory again. Ran that rom for a few days. And yes it was a really nice rom, and it was faster than stock. It just was quicte what I was looking for.

Back to looking for ROM files, seeing which links were still good and trying to figure out which one I thought would work best for me. Tried TouchMIUIwiz v3, and again very good rom, but still not quite right. Decided to spend a whole day just comparing roms that would work with Bali and KD1. There are only a few roms that are made with KD1. So I wanted to go back to KJ2. I was thinking the only way I could do that was if I wiped again and the hooked up to Kios (or whatever it is called), But no, I found a working like to a KJ2 file. After another set of wiping in recovery, then Flashed the KJ2, then Flashed Nexus CM. Been messing with in for fwe days, and have to say I really really like this one. It has been smooth as glass and quick as a rabbit. I am thinking as long as I dont run into any major problems or bugs with it, this wil be my daily driver.

But I do have a question, since most of you have been here for awhile, and have been able to try out alot of these roms when they were new. Whick rom, in your own opinion, would make web surfing fast and smooth, and also works awesome with facebook? have already rooted and unlocked my husbands SK4G, but he surfs the web and does his facebooking from his SK, and it loves to freeze up and lag out when using both of those things.

Now that I am at the bottom with this, very sorry if my post seemed to long or anything else. Thanks in advance!