My EVO got run over by a car. Now to unroot and go back to stock ROM.

And so I went almost a year without having to use the warranty service. I wasn’t too upset though, because I had temporarily lost it (which is how it got run over) and was just happy to have gotten it back in my hands given I did the stupid thing of removing the security feature to prevent access by anyone who woudl happen upon it. This was my warning, even though I kept thinking I would do it soon.

Amazingly, the screen was throughly shattered, but the touch screen still worked. I could swipe through the app drawer and other screens as spiffy as I did when the screen was not spidered with shatter marks all over it. However, I removed the Invisishield screen protector from it and could feel the edges of each of the hundred cracks as I ran my finger across them. Also, I could hear a quiet static ‘crackling’ sound as my finger ran across each crack.

So, now I had to unroot the phone in order to send it back to Lockline and have a new one shipped to me. But I didn’t have a whole lot of time to search for the best method, and it ended up taking me two days to find the correct one.

First, you will find that you will the Sprint RU file (which is an EXE and requires you to connect your phone to your PC and run it from there), or an equivalent .ZIP file re-packaged by a cook somewhere to work from your SD card and not require the problematic communication between your PC and phone. I recommend the second method because of the issues I just explained with the EXE file. I was instructed to download HTC Sync, then simply run the EXE and all would be fine. If you can do that, more power to you, but if you have to do the SD card method, here’s how.

 

 

First, you are likely rooted by Unrevoked FOREVER, and thus your radio is set to S-OFF. You need to get that back to S-ON before you try to unroot. Unrevoked has created a zip file specifically to do this, and you can download it here: http://downloads.unrevoked.com/forever/current/unrevoked-forever-son.zip

When you apply it, you want to reboot into recovery mode and you want to see the text “S-ON” at the top line of text. If it still says “S-OFF”, don’t panic. Just re-apply the unervoked-forever-son.zip patch until it does say “S-ON”. it may take two or five times to ‘take’.

Now, find PC31IMG.zip. Most the sites that are hosting it (RapidShare, 4Share, etc. for example) make you wait a couple of minutes unless you pay for quicker access. Go ahead and wait, it’s legit, or pay them to get instant access.  Here is a link to 4Shares 90-second wait:

http://www.4shared.com/get/5U4M4eVi/PC36IMG.html

That link may change after a while. Not sure, but if so, just search for PC31IMG.zip and grab it.

Now, get that PC32IMG.zip to your SD card however you wish, but make sure it’s on the ROOT of the card. Now, when you boot up your phone, boot it up the reovery way by holding down the ‘volume down’ while holding down the power button, and don’t let go until the white 4G screen disappears and you can see the BOOT screen.

Some say the EVO should see the PC31IMG.zip file and ask you if you want to load it (hit yes if so), but I had to go into the Recovery menues and select “apply zip from SD card” and selected the PC32IMG.zip file.

Now, the screen should be white, and will list a few lines quickly, the first two saying something akin to “PC31IMG.* not valid” or something alarming like that. Don’t worry. It’s the last line you want to see saying “Updating” (or it may ask you if you want to update with the PC31IMG.zip, in which case you say yes).

It will do that a while, then eventually it will ask you “apply updates?”, say Yes.

Then it will reboot eventually to the standard symbol of a phone with an arrow pointing into it. It will do that for a while, then reboot into the stock image.

Now, I had to walk away from my phone once during my first attempt, and for some reason, it didn’t take and booted into the Cyanogen7 mod I was running before. So I re-did all ths steps, and that time it worked.

 

 

 

 

 

EVO 3D. Like? If not, leave this site immediately.

What’s there not to like?

Having been a Sprint customer since 1999, I was aware that they never had the cool phones… it was always Verizon, T-Mobile, or At&T that would be the carrier slated on the RSS feeds I’d get about upcoming phones. I felt like Sprint was always dropping the ball (and their losing market share seemed to back my suspicions).

 

Excited? Better be, or leave this site immediatley.

But Sprint FINALLY came into the respectable spotlight last June (2010) with the release of the uber-powerful and uber-capable EVO 4G, the best phone of all the carriers, and still one of the top few. Now, scheduled for about a year later (June? ohpleaseohpleaseohplease), they are to top the EVO by releasing the EVO on steroids… the EVO 3D… now, to be honest, the ONE thing that is lost is the 8MP camera, where most phones have 5MP. That has been downgraded to a 5MP, but TWO of them in stereo for 3D. I’ve seen it argued before that anything above 5MP’s is not necessary, especially in a phone, and to be honest, I have loved the 8MP of my EVO. But I think I’d be okay trading it out for 3D capability with dual 5MPs. Also, there *might* be something about using both cameras to shoot two different parts of the picture (interlaced, perhaps) which in effect would make a 10MP picture. But I don’t want to get my hopes up. However, at the very least, it will allow the user to shoot 3D film. Now that’s just cool, even if not applicable to anything we can think of right now.

But everything else is an upgrade.. the 3D screen will make it so you see 3D without having to wear glasses.

This is an awesome technology I witnessed once in a Naval flight simulator at Whidbey Island AFB. I was amazed then and am still amazed how realistic the runway looked without glasses and in full 3D inside that simulator, even though I was staring at a wall no deeper than 3 feet. So, I already know how this 3D is going to look and can’t wait.

The OS will be Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which is an awesome upgrade from the EVO 4G which was OTA’d up to 2.2 (Froyo). This won’t be *as* exciting for me since I root my phones as soon as I get them, and I’ve been running a Gingerbread ROM (Cyanogen) for the last couple of months and so I’ve already been through my exiting “oh this new feature is cool’ phase with it.

The processor is going from a single core 1GHz to a dual-core 1.2GHz. That should have obvious performance increase, which will be pretty cool given the current single core 1GHz is quite alright in the spiffy-quick department.

All in all, though, the timing will be perfect, as since I am a “premier” customer with Sprint (which means I have been a customer longer than 10 years and/or my bill is over $100/month), I get to upgrade my phone at the New Customer rate (and all the perks) once per year. I got the EVO 4G on June 4th of last year. Here’s hoping the EVO 3D is released June 4th or earlier this year.

So really, what’s there not to like?