Installing a Custom Android ROM on Motorola Droid

In the circle of Android users there is an underground community of ROMs. If you are not familiar with ROM they are more or less customized and often optimized version of the Android operating system for your Android phones. Since Android is open source anyone can take it and edit it them selves. I wrote another article a few weeks ago entitled, "The Power of Open Source for Android" talking more about what ROMs are and how they are good for the community. This article will help get everyday users who are not familiar with things such as rooting your Android phone and installing there own ROMs on their Motorola Droid phones.

The average Android user does not know how to root their phone, or run the Android SDK and work with ADB to push files to there phone via a terminal. If you read the last sentence and had no idea what I was talking about have no fear, we can still get you successfully rooting and running your own stable ROM and even overclocking if you wish.

Now there are many ROMs out for our coveted Motorola Droids, but seeing this is an article geared to the non-technical savvy Android users were going to concentrate on the Sholes mod. What separates the Sholes mod from all the other ROMS is that it can root your Droid for you and do all the tricky stuff that I a non technical savvy person wouldn't know how to do. Also it allows for easy updates through there Sholes mod updated in the Android app store. Now lets root our Droid, flash the recovery image and install a whole new fresh operating system!

Pretty much the only thing you have to do is fire up your Android market and do a search for an app called, "SholesMod Updater" and yes it cost $5 but its more of a donation. The Sholes team does offer a free version via their website but that takes a little more skill to install an app not from the market. And once again this is being written to make things super easy to do so if you are feeling cheap and adventurous head over to their website (I link to it in the last paragraph) and do a Google search for installing apps not from the app store ( I will give you a hint you will need a file explorer app to do this). After you have obtained the SholesMod Updater just run it and follow the instructions. You pretty much are just clicking next a few times.

When its done you will be rebooted into recovery mode, which may look a little scary at first but don't freak out....and you wont be able to use your nice touch screen. To navigate the menus you use the volume up and down button on the side of your phone and the camera button to select options. You will select to install and select the rom version of Sholes that is the latest. Next a bar will appear and it will load and unpack files etc... not to important to us. After it does this you will eventually get to a screen with a list of options for it to install. This is the fun part you get to customize your ROM with features you want or don't want.

All the Options will have things next to them that look like this: (*) or this ( ) the ones with the star are selected and will be installed. So use the volume buttons and camera shutter button to select and de-select options you want then click next when your done. After all this your ROM will go through final installation and re-boot into your freshly baked ROM. On initial boot after installation don't get worried the first boot always takes awhile but after that it will boot up fast again, so no worries!

That is pretty much it! You just rooted your phone, flashed a new recovery image and installed a customized ROM! But if you want to overlook it for super fast speed you need to yes buy another app called "SetCPU". But I will worn only do this at your own risk, cause it could fry your phone, the over clocking thing. But no one really knows for sure, but just saying so you don't blame me if your phone explodes.