[HD2 General] Kitestyle:
Hi all,

Thanks to all for contributing here - so much good stuff! I wanted to post this here to help others in my situation.

My wife and I got a pair of HD2's during the week. Absolutely loving them.

I was too scared of bricking two brand new phones so I set about removing all traces of Telstra and tweaking them to our satisfaction without flashing the ROMS. After a few days I'm pretty happy with the results so far:

From standard to these (at the minute, changing all the time!):

on imgur.com look at /DPgJT.jpg and /9qUiN.jpg (I'm link restricted..)

I would say that you can do everything you want with these phones without having to flash the rom if you prefer not to.

For anyone looking to de-telstrify their phones, here's some easy steps (from memory). I'm put together this little guide as there's just too much information to wade through at the start. All of these recommendations are subjective, stuff I like but you might not!

1. Get ActiveSync (if pc doesn't have it) and use it to connect phone, explore to phone's storage card. Copy cabs here to run from your phone.

2. Join these forums so you can download relevant cab files, add your experiences, etc. One way to find cab files listed below is by putting cab name (as shown) in google, then clicking xda forum links in the results.

3. Start with "Unlock_Quicklinks_Telstra.cab". Frees 3 front quicklinks.

4. Get "Co0kie.HomeTab_v1.6.1.cab". Consider installing Max Manila instead – you need to pick one or the other; I like Cookie so far- seems simpler, seems less theme oriented and more tweakable. I like the 3 pages of quicklinks side by side.

5. Get "CHTEditor.v1.6.1.CAB" which lets you edit cookie. Make a quicklink button for it. Go in and play with settings to your liking. (Don't touch what you don't understand for the moment, take it slow..) Can replace 'Telstra 3G' with whatever (I've got "Dave's HD2" in the screenshot) using 'custom operator text'.

6. Also make quicklink for file explorer – you'll be using a lot.

7. Get "HD2Tweak 1.2.0_English.cab". Create quicklink to it and then play with settings in there. You can use 10. – Device startup – animation to stop the testra vid that plays on boot. Faster bootup and one more ad gone.

8. Also create button for "hd2 soft reset" which comes with above. Any time you need to reboot after install, if the cab doesn't prompt you then can use this button. Very handy.

9. Get "Duttys Task Manager for Leo.cab" This makes a nice file manager tool in top right corner, good for killing programs.

10 Get "BsB Tweaks 1.6.cab" and you have it all covered. I like this one for 'Tap time' to stop accidental taps. Also under the menu you can enable shake for screenshots and can reassign the 'phone' soft button.

At this point you have lots of quicklink buttons for adding new stuff, and lots of tools installed to some of those buttons. There is some crossover with all these tweak tools but they seem to co-exist peacefully as far as I can tell and all have something to offer that the other doesn't have.

Now it's time to clean up a bit more.

*With cookies you can drag your quicklinks around to arrange them. Just hold them until they pop up in the add/remove screen.

*Set your slider options so only the slider elements you like come up.

*Go into contacts and delete all those pricey branded services that you won't ever use unless you're drunk – you can always get your mate to ring instead.

*Personally I hate being pushed towards things and stuff like 'sensis search' just makes me angry. So I fired up File explorer and navigated to My device=>windows=>start menu=> programs and started deleting stuff I don't want to see. From here I believe it's only shortcuts so nothing is uninstalled for the moment. (Do this at own risk though). Just hold your finger on the file and a menu will pop up and you can choose delete.

Ok at this point there's very little branded stuff left on the phone (that I've found yet). Time for making it look nice. This is totally subjective and almost all the options are on xda developers. I would recommend:

10. Make folders in your storage card: sliders, clocks, wallpapers, installed. Makes it easy to organise/change these (by reinstalling the cab file)

11. Go to the site ppcmods to download the cabs for great sliders and clocks. Very nice collection.

12. Get "V6 TEST 5 HD2 GSM Only 1.66 WEE.cab" for the colour icons at the top. Great mod.

13. "AM Slider trasparente con cornice Sense 2.5.cab" and "- Orologio Trasparente Antonio_Sense2.5.CAB" make the slider and calendar transparent respectively.

14. For backgrounds the best I've found is to install this patch "HQWallpaperPatch_v1.21_forManila2.5.1920.cab" so you can have fullscreen (no black bands at top and bottom)

15. Followed by installing "HDWall" onto your PC – you can use this to make any pic a cab file. It gives you a nice preview as well so you can see what will be under the clocks/calendar/etc. Great program.

That's it, appearance tweaked as you like it.

You'll probably want/need some other apps that have been discussed and linked to pretty well – this was intended more to be a getting started guide to get you to a place where you like the look of the phone and there's no angrifying stuff in your face.

Last thing I can think of – you need to go into mail, and in your inbox view, choose menu => tools(scroll down to see) =>options=>signatures and take out the "Sent by Telstra NExtG".

Hope this helps.