Rooted, Overclocked, Now what?

[stealthgriffin]

So this all started when I realized that having your SD card mounted and receiving a call/text message that relied on a sound file on said SD card can result in a full wipe of your ringtone/notifications customization.

I wanted to save my notifications and ringtones to my phone's internal memory so I would never have this problem again.

So after about 3 hours of research I came to the conclusion that rooting my droid was going to be my only option and I started reading up on that.

Now, 2 of the 6 other Moto Droids in my family have been rooted for all of the fun reasons: overclocking, wifi tethering, custom boot animations etc etc but I didn't really think I'd want any of those, except for maybe the overclock.

So using How-To Root your stock 2.1 Droid I successfully gained root access to my droid and did the moving of the notifications and ringtones to my internal memory.

But seeing how relatively painless it was, I decided to try my hand at Overclocking. I used Complete How-To on How to Mod Your Phone (2.1 ROM, O/C, MM, Boot Animation, etc) to install a 1ghz low voltage kernel and set up SetCPU and now have my droid ticking along at a nifty 1ghz.

Now I've run into a "problem". I'm currently running completely otherwise stock Android, except for LauncherPro, which is an awesome home screen app. It was slick before, but the Overclocking made it fly. But now I'm kind of interested in doing more with my droid (slightly obsessive/compulsive personality here!) but I don't know what I want to do yet.

I really like the look of LauncherPro and while I wouldn't mind reskinning the icons and what not, I'm willing to live with what I've got.

Any suggestions? I realize it's kind of vague, but yeeeeah.

[sandfreak]

download rom manager pro from the market and have fun.

[skourg3]

What do you like to do?

My first advice would be to try flashing a ROM or two. These don't always add a whole lot to the user experience directly, but they usually offer more options/settings and the ability to theme them. I would say either install a ROM with a theme pre-loaded (I use JRummy's v0.8 Cyanogen remix w/Cyan theme), or else install a ROM and then find a theme to install over it (I like HexFusion by PMizzle). Installing themes can come in the form of .zips (that you would download and install through recovery, or if you get the premium version of ROM Manager it takes care of the details for you; highly recommended for convenience) or else MetaMorph themes (requires the MetaMorph app).

From there, it's up to you. I can't think of a whole lot more that I use on a daily basis in terms of user experience, but now you have the option to make stuff yourself. Any interest in developing stuff yourself? If you don't like to program, you can try making a theme if you like design work. Find something neat you like? You can put together tutorials, compile information into a convenient place, etc to help others and give some back to the community.

Once you find a ROM you like, you'll be at the point where most stuff you do will be tweaking it. Trying different kernels, different overclocking settings, etc. to get the most out of your battery life. Trying different themes. Stuff like that. The fun part for me, beyond maximizing my user experience, is picking up some knowledge about how android internals work in a high-level way (what files are used for specific things, such as config files, images, etc.) and learning how to work with them.

[thorn11166]

install froyo!

[demon69120]

Haha yeah install Froyo, get the new baseband (trippled my download speeds) and then theme it up. The rest of the customization is there already, just use the market.

[stealthgriffin]

Thanks for the advice!

I spent much of Saturday night getting the files together to move to Froyo and got that process started, then spent Sunday (at work, yay weekends?) getting everything back to normal and installed BGill's Clean Black Theme and using eGlass and FolderOrganizer to retheme all of my folders and app icons for LauncherPro.

Then I uprooted my brother's Droid to 2.2 and LauncherPro (he was running 2.0.1 Root and wasn't really doing anything but Wireless Tether with it).

Haven't tried the new baseband yet, its on my list of things to do.