[Hero CDMA Android Development] abcdfv:
Constructive criticism is welcome.

This is my first guide and it's quite late here so I'm going to go through this lightly first, and more in detail later.

Note: I am NOT responsible for any damage your phone may or may not receive. It is your fault for following this guide, not my fault for writing it. Just for the sake of saving you from a headache, I would recommend backing up your contacts before starting this guide.

Phase 1: Prepping your CDMA Hero for rooting/flashing.

1. Ensure that USB debugging and installing apps from unknown sources is enabled. You can do this by going into Settings> Applications Check unknown sources. From there go into Development and ensure that "Enable USB debugging" is checked.

2. Mount your SD card on your computer by plugging in the USB cable, and dragging down the notification area. BACKUP YOUR DATA! ALWAYS!

3. After your data is backed up, Safely remove hardware (I find it annoying to get the "this disk may contains errors" every time i plug it in) your Hero. Using your notification area, unmount your SD card.

4. On your hero, navigate to Settings> SD card and phone storage> unmount SD card. Then format your card. It should Auto re-mount after this.

5. Download FlashRec (great tool!) and Amon-RA's recovery image. Place them onto the root of your SD card (not in any folders, just drag and drop them.) Unmount your SDcard.

6. I used Linda File manager (from the market), but you can use one of your choice. Navigate to the root of your SDcard (you'll probably start there, if you dont just click sdcard.) Open flashrec with the installer, and wait until it's finished.

7. Open FlashRec, and attempt to make a backup (i simply named mine "/sdcard/backup"). If it success proceed to the next step. if not, refer to post 2.

8. In FlashRec, type "/sdcard/recovery-RA-heroc-v1.5.2.img" without the quotes. Linux is Case-sensitive, so the capital letters have to be included. tap "download recovery image". Wait for it to finish, when it does reboot into recovery mode by powering off your phone. After it's off, hold HOME and the power button. You should see some green text on a black background.

9. First things first, Make a nandroid backup. It can, and will save your ass at some point in time. Before you flash ANYTHING to your phone, ALWAYS do a nandroid backup. Congratulations, you can now flash a custom ROM!

Phase 2:Flashing your custom ROM

Since I love Flipz and his work so much I'll be using his ROM in my guide (let me know if you have a problem with it Flipz).

0. Do a nandroid backup before you even think about downloading a ROM :)

1. Download Fresh 1.0.

2. Do not unzip it, leave it as it is and copy it to the root of your SD card. You can do this either from recovery mode (by enabling usb mode) or through the notification bar. Proceed to recovery mode by holding HOME+END CALL (or just disable USB mode) and select "flash update from .zip" Select the Fresh ROM and wait. It should automatically reboot after it finishes installing.

3. Be patient while it's booting, it took me about 5 minutes for the first boot, after that it gets much faster. Once it loads, everything should be all fine and dandy. If it's not, well aren't you glad you made your backup? Just proceed back into recovery and do a nandroid restore.

4. You can now delete all those .apks and .zips and whatnot. Mount your SD card on the computer, and move your backed up files back onto your card.

5: Enjoy! If you don't like the clear lock, Flipz has a patch on his website (geekfor.me) to replace it with a clear screen. This should keep all of your contacts and settings in place, but I make no promises.

Sources:

The Unlockr