Upgrading T-Mobile Vibrant to Froyo
I bought a T-Mobile Vibrant (Samsun Galaxy S) in July and I’ve been really happy with it. The only down side was that it had Android 2.1 (Éclair), I was hoping for 2.2 (Froyo). Today, I read an article saying that Samsung was pressuring T-Mobile to not upgrade Vibrants over the air with Froyo so that people will upgrade to other Samsung phones. Oh, I don’t think so. I spent a lot of money on this phone and I will not let some no-talent-ass-clowns at Samsung/T-Mobile keep me from the Froyo goodness.
So, I rooted my phone and installed the Eugene Ginger Clone 2.2 ROM. It’s Froyo with a Ginger look and feel. Very, very, very nice. This was my first attempt at rooting my phone or using a ROM. Here’s how I did it:
1. Root the phone. I spent some time working with the SuperOneClick app from XDA, but couldn’t get it to work. For the Vibrant it would involve toggling USB Debugging multiple times and sacrificing a chicken. I found this post that worked like a champ…much easier. When the phone finished booting, I had the SuperUser app and everything worked great.
2. Backed Up Phone. Now that I had root, I used Titanium Backup from the Google Market to make a back up of the phone. This came in helpful for after I installed the ROM. I had to reinstall of my apps.
3. Install ROM Manager. To install a new ROM, you need to do a few things. First, download the ROM Manager app from the Market. After installing, install the Clockwork Recovery. Before doing this, make sure you have deleted the update.zip file from step one. If you don’t, then Clockwork Recovery will not be installed.
4. Download a ROM. At this point, you can use any ROM you want. I chose the Eugene Ginger Clone R2 ROM because I wanted Froyo and I thought the Ginter interface looked cool. You can download the ROM here. After downloading, connect your phone to a computer and transfer the ROM zip on to the internal storage.
5. Install the ROM. Open ROM Manager, and then choose install ROM from SD. Choosing the ROM you want to install, and then click go. It will automatically reboot your phone and the new ROM will install. Voila!
It took me a few hours to do this, but it would have been much quicker had I not bothered with the SuperOneClick app. Happy rooting! Oh, and I’m not responsible if you brick your phone…