[Captivate Android Development] Charles Brennan:
Well . . . . Yes, No & Maybe!! : . . . .)

Thought I would get me a head start on climbin' up the Ole Learnin' Curve (in anticipation of a Phoenix Family GB!) :) and installed a GB ROM Friday night.

READ THE OP!! :eek:

The reason I did this, is a noob like me, gets confused easily :confused: from trying to pick up the lingo, since ALL you Devs use a shorthand that may as well be Sanskrit.

It usually sounds like THIS:

"Hey, no problem! :) FTS, DL the ROM, Factory wipe, wipe stats, clear Dalvik and just CWM the zipped, before you TiBu!" :)

"See?? EASY!!" :D

That incomprehensible instruction in dev-speak tranlates to noob-ese, something like this:

1) Back up all data and apps, preferably onto some other medium entirely.

2) Flash To Stock using: (insert bunch of instructions here) ranging anywhere from running update.zip with Clock Work Mod, to using Odin One Click to force a replacement factory ROM onto the machine.

3) Download the LATEST, GREATEST, (as of 15 minutes ago) Phoenix ROM! (After you figure out how to use those free download sites that keep trying to download everything BUT the file you're after, onto your machine!) :mad:

4) Get into CWM recovery mode and wipe data, battery stats, Dalvik caches and (just to be on the Safe Side) perhaps even random partitions of flash memory, located hither and yon, on the machine.

5) Get the previously downloaded ROM onto your phone, somehow, using at least three different, totally incompatible methods (depending on your Religion) to do so.

6) Get into Clock Work Mod recovery mode and flash the new ROM. Do not fail to provide a web link that purports to be a thread to explain how to flash with CWM, but instead, raises more questions than it answered.

7) Download Titanium Backup from the market (if not already on the ROM) and configure it to chase down your data and begin restoring your application files.

See?!?!?!?!? :confused:

THOSE instructions are a LOOOOONNNNNNNGGGG ways away from:

"FTS, DL the ROM, Factory wipe, wipe stats, clear Dalvik and just CWM the zipped, before you TiBu!" :)

At least, to a noob, they are.

And GB adds a little more complexity that can seriously brick your phone, if you don't translate Dev-Speak into Noob-ese BEFORE you start! :eek:

Which is why Mr. OverAchiever jumped the gun on waiting for a Phoenix Rom; so's he could be ready for when it DOES show up! :)

Does Launcher Pro work all right on GB?

Sorta.

What killed me, was using a Froyo version of Home Switcher to switch to/launch Launcher Pro. Status Notification Bar kept force closing on me.

OK . . . . . . . . Not convenient, but not a Big Deal, either . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . until I learned that in-coming calls were blanked out/blacked out, since apparently it depends on the notification status bar to turn Android thingies on and off, inside the Cappy.

I would get this maddening blacked-out screen which kept me from responding to the incoming ring while people around me, looked at me like I not only rode on the slow bus, but licked the windows. Then I would have to wait until the call quit and my screen came back to life, then hit my dialer, check the log and return the call. :mad:

OK, into CWM, Factory Wipe and re-install the apps only, this time; no data and certainly no system. I had skipped system settings the last time and skipped this AND data settings this time.

BOOM! :eek:

Force close on status notification bar AGAIN!! :mad:

Well, hey. Most of the success in my life, has been from being too Damn' Dumb to know when I was whipped. :o

Once more into the breach and cycle of CWM, Factory Wipe and re-install the apps, only this time I did a few apps at a time.

Left out Home Switcher, left out Launcher Pro.

(Which is my all-time favorite launcher, so don't go tryin' to offer me cool launcher alternatives.)

Used the Rom's default launcher (which I thought was Truly Horrid!) and loaded everything the way I wanted it.

Worked! :)

Then, simultaneously holding my breath and pushing my luck, I installed Home Switcher and Launcher Pro.

Frabjous Day! :D

In a scant 55 minutes I had my Captivate running like *I* wanted it to run (and NOT like some Dev thought I should be running it!) ;) and all was well for the rest of the weekend.

The other surprise was checking my apps at the market. The apps that I had updated right before I backed them all up ("nandroided" them; is that a verb, now?!?) :confused: to an external SD card, NOW suddenly required about 10 or 12 updates, since the Market somehow figured out I was Social Climbing and using GB now and it decided that I simply MUST upgrade those Ghetto Froyo versions of my favorite apps with the more genteel GB versions.

That included the Titanium Backup. It now boasts a new feature that deprives you of keying in a folder location of your choosing and instead, now forces you to play Easter Egg Hunt with your own files. Frustrating the first few times you set it up, (after a Factory Wipe, say.) but livable.

Short Answer: SUUURE, they'll all restore! :D

Longer answer: But not all of them will work like they used to and some of them may do wonky things to your phone. :(

Longest answer: Restore the minimum apps needed to do the job, like TiBU and Root Explorer, etc and try to get as many apps as possible from the market, since some of your apps will behave and some of them won't. THEN, restore the remainder of your apps from TiBU and/or LP, a few at a time, testing EVERYTHING in between restores.

It's a Brand New Ball Game and it's got Brand New Rules, Folks.

Little steps, little steps, until we know more about how this stuff behaves. out here in the cold, cruel, Real World.

One guy's opinion, Charles Brennan