Rom for Milestone?

[Constant]

Ok so I've rooted my milestone with the thought of being able to rom it with droid roms, because the phone is almost a twin..
Now that doesn't work because my Rom ward doesn't respond everytime it's supposed to reboot for installing the rom.
Now Is there any descent froyo/froyo-gingerbread rom out there that I can actually use?
Argh why is the Milestone such a bugger

 

[Diordman]

The Droid ROMs won't work in the Milestone as the latter has a locked bootloader. So, you need a ROM which contains a Milestone signed kernel plus the nice bits from a later Android version.

If you have a Milestone 1 (A853), try the following combination:

Androidiani OpenRecovery for Milestone
androidiani-openrecovery - Project Hosting on Google Code

CyanogenMod 7 RC3 for Milestone A853
CyanogenMod 7 RC3 for Milestone A853 | android.doshaska.net

Make sure you read the instructions on both of these sites thoroughly. I recommend using Titanium Backup to backup all your apps and their data to the SD card. Then once you have the ROM installed you can download Titanium backup and use it to restore all the apps and their data again (as opposed to a Nandroid restore of everything - see below).

Install the Open Recovery. Follow the instructions on the CM7 for Milestone page for putting the ROM update on the SD card. It needs to go in the /sdcard/OpenRecovery/updates directory.

Boot into Androidiani OpenRecovery and using the right arrow on the keyboard scroll down to the Nandroid option and select it with the button in the middle of the arrow keys. The select Backup > Backup All. This will backup everything on your phone to the SD card so you can return to stock if you get into problems or don't like the new ROM.

Then select the Wipe Data/Factory Reset option. You may need to scroll down with the right arrow key in order to see this option as some options are hidden. I tried installing the ROM without doing the factory reset, but the phone stuck at the CM7 boot screen. So make sure you do the reset before the following step:

Then use the Apply Update option to install the CM7 ROM you put in /sdcard/OpenRecovery/updates.

I find CM7 is a bit laggy sometimes on my Milestone but it's good to be able to move apps onto the SD card and have other cool features from Froyo & Gingerbread.

 

[Constant]

Thanks alot but I have one question before I try this out, I live in Europe and our network here is GSM, is this rom adapted to European networks?
Just so that I'l be able to call.. want to make sure.

 

[Diordman]

You shouldn't have any problem with GSM & making phone calls, etc. I'm in the UK and it worked okay for me. If you read the installation section on the CyanogenMod 7 RC3 for Milestone link, it says the following:

“- the included RIL files are for the European frequencies, if you are in Canada, US, Lat Am or Thailand, you will need to replace them to get 3g working”

In your post you didn't say how you tried to install the Droid ROM, whether through openrecovery or the standard recovery.

If you want to install the androidiani-openrecovery as I recommended (which allows you to do a backup and other useful stuff), then you first need to install vulnerable recovery. This is a recovery program which is like the standard one but has a vulnerability (exploit) which enables you to install the modified open recovery.

The link to vulnerable recovery is found in the Vulnerable Recovery SBF Flash section of the following page:

sbf [And Developers]

and the file you download is called vulnerable_recovery_only_RAMDLD90_78.zip. When you unzip it you'll get an sbf file, vulnerable_recovery_only_RAMDLD90_78.sbf

The sbf file is flashed onto the Milestone using a Motorola program called RSD Lite. See the link to version 4.6.0 of the program on the following page:

tools:rsd_lite [And Developers]

If you search you'll find plenty of web pages describing how to flash an sbf file with RSD Lite. If you're running it on Windows 7 you may find that the sbf file isn't recognised by the program. This is due to a bug and a workaround is to alter the length of the filename. By experiment I found that if I called it vulnerable_recovery_only123456.sbf that gave the right number of characters and the Start button was enabled. Some people recommend using a short filename or placing the file in the C:\ root directory, but that didn't work for me.

Once you've flashed the vulnerable recovery, download the androidiani-openrecovery, unzip it and copy the extracted update.zip file and OpenRecovery folder and contents to the root directory of the phone's SD card. Start the phone in vulnerable recovery and apply the update.zip you put in the root directory. Then you can reboot into OpenRecovery, do your backups and install CM7.

Any questions, just ask but try searching the web first as there are plenty of good tutorials and forum discussions.

 

[Constant]

Confusing me so much, all that stuff that I need to install :s

 

[Diordman]

Yes, it's confusing the first time you do it, though quite easy once you know how.

Luckily, Motorola have finally released Froyo for European Milestone users, so that would be worth trying out first.

https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/manager/softwareupgrades

 

[Constant]

Now this is a surprise, this is a recent right? this update release?

edit: I downloaded and motorola software update for the Milestone but the download is called ' Application ' and is .exe
When I open it, it just instals my motorola drivers.. :/

 

[Diordman]

The update was announced today.

I've not installed it myself, so I can't give advice on it, although I did hear that someone's phone was updating very slowly. I imagine that the server is busy with all the people trying to download. If you have a look at the forums, you'll be able to see how other people get on with it. Good Luck.

 

[Constant]

Oh I wasn't even aware u are a fellow Milestone user.
Thanks for bringing me up to date on this release, and I will check the forums