It was inevitable, that someone would port the Sense UI enabled HTC Desire ROM over to it’s sibling, the Nexus One. One thing not predicted, was how quickly it was done.

Thanks to Paul at Modaco, the Desire ROM is available for download and can be installed on any rooted Nexus One.

A word of warning though, this is a very Alpha build (no not even Beta yet), so it is a bit glitchy. But if you want to try it out do the following (if you haven’t already done so):

I. Root the Nexus One
II. Flash a Recovery and Load the Custom ROM
(In the second procedure, just make sure to use the Modaco Sense UI ROM from our Downloads section instead of another one).

Enjoy, leave your feedback! How do you like it? Think there is a point to buying a Desire now?

Thanks Modaco!
Thanks Breakthecycle2!

Weary of rooting your device? Maybe you just want to try that new experimental ROM? There can be many reason to be worry about messing with your phone, but with all the built in back up features rooting provides you, its never been easier to just hit “restart” and try again. So here’s how to backup and restore your Android phone so you can take full advantage of it fearlessly.

I. Before You Begin

1. If you have not already rooted, you need to do that and flash a custom recovery image. So if you have Donut on your phone you need to follow this procedure (just do the How To Downgrade/Unroot procedure and the How To Root procedure so that you have a custom recovery image, don’t load a ROM, Radio, or SPL yet).

If you have a Nexus One, do this procedure to gain root, then do the next procedure but STOP after Section II.

2. Once you have a custom recovery image then you can proceed.

II. Boot into Recovery

1. Depending on your phone it is a different button combo to get into recovery mode, but simply turn off your phone then turn it back on by holding down Power and [whatever your button is listed below] until you get to your custom recovery screen. (If you get to an ! screen, that is the original recovery screen that came with Android and means you did not flash a custom one, go back to Section I and do the unroot and root procedures then come back):

G1, Dream, MyTouch, Magic, Hero – Hold HOME and Power while the phone is off to get to recovery.
Nexus One – Hold Volume Down and Power to get to bootloader mode, then use the volume keys to get to the Recovery option and press the power button to reboot into recovery.

2. Once you are in recovery mode, you can go to the next step.

III. Performing a Nandroid Backup

1. Once in recovery mode, simply use the trackball to select the option that says Backup (on different recovery images it says different things but it will say something like backup or Nand backup or Nandroid backup).

2. Once you push that it will backup your entire phone to your SD card. Now that you have that (I would recommend copying the entire nandroid folder to your computer so you never delete it off the card on accident), you can now load ROMs, Radios, etc. and know you can always get right back to this point by putting that Nandroid backup on the root of you SD card and get it back.

IV. Restoring a Nandroid Backup

1. Simply put the nandroid folder back onto your sd card (if you removed it).

2. Boot into recovery mode.

3. Select Restore (may be called Nand or Nandroid restore as well) and wait for it to finish.

4. Once done, click reboot phone and you’re back to the way things used to be.

So you can finally shut up those iPhone friends of yours that can’t find anything wrong with your Nexus One besides the fact that they can pinch to zoom on a webpage and you can’t, nanny nanny boo boo… Here’s how to enable MultiTouch Browsing in the Native Browser of the Nexus One (instead of downloading the inferior Dolphin Browser).

Thanks Cyanogen!

I. Before You Begin

1. You MUST have root access. Do our How To Root the Nexus One procedure then come back to this one when you are done (it is also recommended to do the How To Load a Custom ROM procedure as well after that one and load the Modaco ROM from our Downloads section, but up to you).

2. Please be aware that this will reset your bookmarks and browser settings.

II. Download the files

1. Download these 3 files and save them to the tools folder of the Android SDK you have downloaded from the root procedure:

Browser.apk
XML file
Jar File

2. Make sure they are saved to the Tools folder inside the Android SDK folder.

(If you do not have an AndroidSDK folder, follow this procedure first: How To Setup ADB)

III. Transfer them to the Phone

1. Plug the phone in via USB cable and ignore the notifications in the notification bar.

2. Make sure that USB Debugging is on in the Applications > Development menu of the settings on the phone.

2. Open the command prompt by opening the Start menu and typing CMD in the search box (or typing that into the Run program if on XP).

3. Type the following into the command prompt with hitting enter at the end of each line:

cd\
cd c:\AndroidSDK\Tools

*The above assumes your sdk folder was renamed to AndroidSDK and is on the root of the C drive like in our rooting procedure.

adb devices

*Make sure that a serial number pops up indicating the computer can see your phone.

adb shell stop
adb remount
adb shell rm /system/app/Browser.odex
adb push Browser.apk /system/app
adb push com.cyanogenmod.android.jar /system/framework
adb push com.cyanogenmod.android.xml /system/etc/permissions
adb shell reboot

4. Once the phone reboots you are all set, enjoy!

Reported Issues:

Issue: When I type ADB devices, no serial number shows up.

Solution: Download the following file and extract it to somewhere on your computer:

Nexus One ADB Drivers

Then find the Nexus One in your Devices menu on your computer and right click the Nexus One.

Click Properties, click the Hardware Tab, click Properties, click Change Settings, click the Driver Tab, click Update Driver and then click manually search from the driver on my computer and select the USB Driver folder you just downloaded and extracted and let it update the driver.

So apparently the issue that some Nexus One’s have been having with staying on 3G can be easily fixed.  LKontheRun discovered that if he went into Menu > Settings > Wireless & Network Settings > Mobile Networks > Network Operators > waited for it to scan > then selected Select Automatically that his phone had 3G reception where it used to have EDGE.

So while Google still hasn’t responded to any of this or come out with their own update, feel free to give this a try and let us know if it worked.

Have root access, but now you want to load some custom ROMs for even MORE features?! We’ll we’re here to help

Thanks Paul at Modaco!
Thanks Amon Ra!

I. Before You Begin

1. You MUST have root access! Do our How To Root the Nexus One procedure and THEN come back to this procedure and continue.

II. Flash a Custom Recovery Image

1. Download the Nexus One Amon Ra Recovery Image below:

Nexus One Recovery Image (Link under Download in the first Post)

2. Save the recovery image file inside the superboot folder you used to root the phone.

3. Turn the phone off and then plug it in via USB cable.

4. Turn it on by holding down Power and the Trackball to get into fastboot mode.

5. Open a command prompt and type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line:

cd\
cd c:\superboot
fastboot-windows devices

*this is to check that the computer can see the phone (a serial should pop up if it can)

6. Then type:

fastboot-windows flash recovery recovery-RA-nexus-v1.5.3.img

7. This should flash the recovery image onto the phone.

III. Flash the Custom ROM

1. Download the ROM you want from our Android ROMs section. (Make sure to choose a ROM for the Nexus One and not another phone!)

2. Turn off the phone.

3. Turn it back on by holding down Volume Down and Power until the bootloader screen comes up. Let it finish searching then select Recovery by using the volume buttons and click power to select.

4. Once the recovery screen comes up, select Nandroid Backup (to save a backup just in case, optional)

5. Then select Mass Storage On and plug your phone into the computer.

6. Copy the ROM .zip file to your phone’s SD card then unplug the phone.

7. Click USB MS Toggle.

8. Click Apply .zip from SD Card and then select the ROM you just copied.

9. Wait for it to finish loading and click Reboot. All done!

Reported Issues

Issue: SU Requests brings up a blank black screen.

Solution: Goto Settings > Applications > Development and turn on USB Debugging and then Reboot the phone.

Thanks Peter for sending this in!
Thanks Wagz!

Multitouch, custom ROMs, maybe even Sense UI on your Nexus One? We’ll it all begins with rooting it first. So thanks to Paul at Modaco here’s how.

I. Root the Nexus One

1. Download Superboot (first download link on the page)

Superboot

2. Once it is saved to your computer, unzip it to your C: by right clicking it and clicking Extract Files…
Once it is extracted to the C:, rename the folder to Superboot (this will make life easier later).

3. Turn off your Nexus One and then plug it in to your computer via USB cable.

4. Turn the phone back on by holding down the trackball and hitting power (keep holding it down until the fastboot screen comes up).

5. Open the Command Prompt on your computer by opening the Start Menu, then either typing cmd and hitting enter in the search box (for Vista and higher) or by clicking Run and typing cmd and hitting enter (for XP).

6. Once it opens type the following with hitting enter at the end of each line:

cd\
cd C:\Superboot
fastboot-windows devices

*Your phones serial number should display proving that it is connected and your computer can see it.

Then type:

fastboot-windows oem unlock

7. Then follow what the screen says to do on your phone and select Yes.

*You may get an error in the command prompt, just ignore it.
**Also your phone may reboot, if it does just turn it off, then turn it back on by holding down Power and the Trackball to get back to fastboot before continuing on to the next step.

8. Now, while the phone is still connected, go on your computer to the Superboot folder and open it. Inside you will see a file called, install-superboot-windows.bat

9. Double click install-superboot-windows.bat and wait for it to finish. All done, rooted!

II. Load a Custom ROM (OPTIONAL)

Goto our How To Load a Custom ROM on the Nexus One procedure.

So if you have used the 1 click root and then decided there was a new recovery image you wanted to flash, you may have noticed that the 1 click root won’t let you flash a new one once you have a custom one on the phone already. Well, here is how to flash a new recovery image when you already have root access.

I. Flash a New Recovery Image

1. Find the recovery image you want and MAKE SURE IT IS FOR YOUR PHONE (should say in where you download it what phone it is for).

2. Write down the filename of the recovery image EXACTLY as it is written (i.e. RA-Hero-Recovery-v1.2.2.img).

3. Put the recovery image file on the SD card (not in any folders).

4. Download Terminal from the Market if you don’t already have it and install it (there are a few different terminals in the Market some have an onscreen keyboard and some don’t experiment till you get one, also hold down Menu in some of them to bring up the onscreen keyboard if you don’t see it).

5. Open the Terminal program and type the following (with hitting enter at the end of each line):

su
flash_image recovery /sdcard/name-of-recovery.img

6. In the above text, replace name-of-recovery.img with the name of your recovery image (make sure the .img is on the end).

7. Phone should pause for a second and then show you a new blank line. Turn it off and back on by holding down Home and Power to ensure it flashed correctly. Done.