Evo Shift

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The stable release of CM 7.2.0 was released on June 16 and of course I jumped right in on day 1 and did an update to my phone. Updating from a previous version is much much much easier than the first install noted in my previous post (Installing a Cyanogen 7 on my Evo Shift). All I had to do was download the image and install the ROM in recovery mode.

For some reason the bluetooth wasn’t working, but after a series of Dalvik Cache resets and phone resets something corrected itself and now everything appears to be working fine.

As for performance I got a 48.487 & 50.716 MFLOPS Single Thread on Linkpack.  On Quadrant I had a 2273.  Both are better than my 7.2 rc2 scores.  I’m sure if I did a compare to Lisa’s phone (stock ROM) it would blow away her scores.  I wonder if she will ever break down and ask me to do an update for her too.

Update 1:  Bluetooth is not fully working.  When a call is initiated by the phone has a crackling sound when the phone initiates the connection. Reported as Cyanogen issue 5349.

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Below are the steps that I took to updating my Evo Shift from 2.3.3 to cyanogen 7.2 RC2.  So far RC2 seems really stable.  I haven’t tested the bluetooth yet, but so far everything else seems to be working just fine (no crashes and no reboots).  It is running much better than the stock phone with root.

5/27/2012 Update:  Well I’ve learned a few things since the first post.  First, bluetooth works just fine.  Second, I didn’t format my SD card right to allow a partition to be used as internal memory.  I’ve updated the steps below to capture this.  Finally, here are a few performance test after a reboot results Linpack Single Thread: 50.87, Multi Thread: 37.398, Quadrant Standard: 2182

Backing up the Phone

Evo Shift

  1. Install ROM Manager, Titanium Backup Root, SMS Backup & Restore, Astro, and Disk Usage to the phone (not sd card),
  2. Optional: ROM Manager Touch Mod if a power user
  3. Backup SMS text with SMS Backup
    1. Make sure you backup to SD card
  4. Using Disk Usage, see if there are any large caches worth deleting.
    1. I noticed google maps and Pulse had a lot of space.
  5. Do a backup using ROM Manager Backup
  6. Do a backup using Titanium Backup
  7. Optional:  To be safe just copy the whole SD card to a folder on your computer.  If you do this then you can skip steps 8-11.
  8. Copy to a computer the non-app files.  This includes all your pictures (DCIM folder), any ringtones and notifications, downloaded files from browsers
    1. If you do not need to re-partition your SD Card this step can likely be skipped, but I think it is a good idea just in case
  9. Copy to your computer the ROM Manager Backup file.
    1. Mine was in the clockworkmod folder
  10. Copy to your computer the Titanium Backup backup files.
    1. Mine was in the TitaniumBackup folder
    2. optionally:  You can copy your backups to Dropbox or google Drive from the App
  11. Copy to your computer the SMS Backups
    1. Mine was the SMSBackupRestore folder (the .xml file)

Flashing the Phone

I followed several wiki forums and suggestions to create my sequence of steps, but this link (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/HTC_Evo_Shift_4G:_Full_Update_Guide)  by far was the most helpful.

  1. Skipped downgrade from 2.3.4 to 2.3.3 since I never did the update (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1558532)
  2. Reboot into recovery
  3. Select One: (A) Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory (I think this is the best option) or (B) SD Card not as internal
    1. Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory
      1. Partition SD Card with SD Ext = 4096MB and  SWAP = 256MB
      2. Shutdown Phone and take out SD Card
      3. Using Minitool Partition Wizard, delete the EXT partition and apply the change.  Then to the same partition section create an ext3 partition. Note:  I’ve read several other forums that have had mixed results.  I tried a FAT32, ext2, and an ext 4 before I found the ext3 to be recognized correctly.
    2. Partition SD Card with SD Ext = 0 MB and  SWAP = 256MB
  4. Restart phone
  5. Download ROM, kernel, and Google apps and place files in root (/mnt/sdcard/) of the SD card
    1. ROM: CM7 nightly 255 (http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?type=nightly&device=speedy or here since the link was broken http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/cyanogenmod/nightly/speedy/ select cm_speedy_full-255.zip)  or CM 7.2 RC2 (http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?device=speedy&type=RC select update-cm-7.2.0-RC2-plusfixes-speedy-signed.zip)
    2. Kernel: Scary Kernel 3 (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010934)
    3. Google Apps: Gapps (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps)
  6. Restart the phone in recovery mode
    1. Power off the phone.  Then while holding down on the volume button press power.
  7. Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset.
  8. Then select the option to Wipe cache partition.
  9. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select nightly ROM
  10. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select Kernel
  11. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select Gapps

Setting the phone backup

This section is widely variable.  Here are a list of things that I have done

  1. At the first startup enter in your google id and go through the other startup questions
  2. If you selected Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory above then go to Google store (now called Google Play) and download Link2SD.  In Link2SD press Menu->Storage.  If the SD Card 2nd Part shows that there is space then partition worked fine.  If not then use Minitool Partition Wizard to format the ext3 partition to a different type (repeat unit Link2SD recognizes the SD Card 2nd Part)
    1. I think the partition type is dependent on the phone.
  3. Titanium Backup
  4. Copy the Titanium Backup files to your SD Card.
    1. If you did a backup to Dropbox or Google Drive then re-connect those accounts
  5. In Titanium Backup
    1. Select Menu->Batch->Restore missing apps + all system data
      1. This will get all your programs back
    2. Then, Menu->Market Tools->Market Doctor->User & system Apps
      1. This will make sure all your programs are connected with the Market
  6. In Google Play, download all the updates to your phone
  7. Go to SMSBackupRestore and restore the backup created
  8. Optional: Go to Menu->Settings->CyanogenMod settings->Performance->CPU Settings.  As recommended on another forum set Governor to Smartass ( used Scary), Min CU Frequency to 122 (I used 245), Max CPU Frequence to 806 (I used 1209), Select Set on boot
  9. Copy back your non-app files
  10. From here you are somewhat backup and going.   My experience is that many of the apps still forget the login and some other things.  But with having a new ROM there are several tweaks and settings to play with

 

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Here is a small issue that I ran into.

After upgrading my HTC Evo Shift to Gingerbread I discovered that I could no longer connect my phone to my computer and get to the SD card.  I tried installing the latest HTC Sync software, but that didn’t seem to fix the problem.  I read a few other blogs and then tried getting the latest Android SDK.  After installing that I’m back up and running.  Pretty simple, but pretty annoying.

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This weekend I updated my Spring HTC Evo Shift to Gingerbread (Android 2.3).  There was a pushed update by Sprint, but since I had rooted my phone it wouldn’t take.  Lisa has the same phone, but not rooted and the update went just fine.  So I resorted the internet to figure out what to do.  I found this link which listed and went to the “ROOTED “Official Update” – x99_GB_Sense_Stock_Rooted” which linked to the ROM download.  I tried downloading this on my phone, but the download site 4shared.com keeps restarting the counter.  So I downloaded this on my PC and placed it into the root directory.  Before I implemented the root I looked into how to best back up my phone before proceeding.    There was a good post on the same forum with the ROM that mentioned to use the following 3 programs:

I did a backup of the call logs, SMS, and then Apps (in that order).  The I went to bootloader and did the following:

  • wipe data / factory reset
  • install ROM

Everything loaded up fine and I started the recovery process.  First I had to enter in my google account info and then downloaded the Titanium Backup App.  Did the batch restore.  This worked out pretty well.  It was kind of annoying to choose to reinstall everything, but at least it worked for the most part.  Some of the apps didn’t ask to reinstall, not too sure why, but I looked in my downloaded app in Google Market and just manually selected to re-download them.

At one point I got an error that my phone was full at which point I realized that all the apps were installing to the phone and not the SD card.  Before the update I had changed the settings in my phone to default to installing them on the SD card , obviously the new ROM didn’t have this.  This link shows what to do for Android 2.2 and I suspect that it works for 2.3, but haven’t tried.  I found that Titanium Backup had an option to move all apps to the SD card.  I did this and then moved a few that I use frequently back to the phone.

Well everything to restore pretty well.  A few apps asked for login information again, but after that retained their setting.  Some kept crashing, Google Maps and Facebook, but after going into the Manage Applications menu and clearing the Apps cache they worked fine. Next, I ran the restore function for both the SMS and call log apps.  Presto their back.

The next problem that I found is that the weather & toggle widget that I use to emulate the HTC Sense clock wasn’t available to add as a widget.  It was installed, so I uninstalled it, then re-installed it.  Another Google search turned up that in Android 2.3 widgets can only be selected for apps installed on the phone, not on the SD card.  So a quick move to the phone and my phone is back exactly the way it was before (except for 2.3 of course).

All in all, a pretty painless process.  It took a bit longer than I imaged, but I’m happy that with only a couple of hicups my phone looks just as it was before the update.

The main thing I noticed from about 2.3 is how fast it turns on and off.  Actually, I noticed this from Lisa’s phone when we were in Italy and was somewhat jealous.  Other than that I haven’t seen or had a chance to see if the battery life is the better as claimed by Google.

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