Saturday, October 29, 2011

G1 rooting & battery issues

HTC Dream - alias Google G1 - was the first Android powered phone ever to be released. Full slide qwerty keyboard, wifi, gps, camera. What more could you wish for? Well you might want to tether your phone's internet connection via WiFi or bluetooth. For internet tethering you must have on your device an Android operating system greater than 1.6 & also root rights. 
Now, the rooting process for HTC G1 has been explained everywhere on the internet, I won't go into details. 
Here are a few very very very IMPORTANT things you must keep in mind when rooting your Android device (in our case HTC G1):

1. Use an SD card partitioned accordingly when installing the new operating system. For example, AmonRa has an option that partitions your sd card for installing the new operating system.
2. If your new Android doesn't load as expected:
  • wipe everything - (using AmonRa's menu)
  • allow the OS to start (5-10 minutes)
3. Battery live troubleshooting:
  • calibrate your battery if it drains fast
  • overcharging the battery will damage it.
    • It seems that overcharging a battery, even if it's a li-ion damages the battery in time. The HTC Dream battery, when damaged will slightly change its shape. Notice how the battery is not flat any more and can be rotated freely on a flat surface. Even you can't see this only by visual inspecting the battery, the deformation exists. Check out the movie below to see how to spot a faulty battery that needs to be replaced.  
    • If you phone goes dead in a few minutes when running on battery - don't reinstall the Android OS 1000 times, it's a hardware problem - the battery must be replaced.

1 comment:

  1. You have shared such a great article in this post. I got some useful knowledge from this post. Thanks for posting it. Keep it up. Test and tagging 

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