How to convince your significant other to root her HTC EVO 4G
This guest article was written by MildlyDisturbed.
If you're anything like me, then I feel sorry for you.
You have a freshly rooted HTC EVO 4G running the cutting edge of custom ROMs, your battery lasts all day, you can take your movies with you and play them on a TV via HDMI, you can swap kernels to do what you want to do, you can set up a wireless hotspot so your iPhone friends can Facetime each other, you can monitor every last drop of juice left in the battery . . . and your significant other has an EVO she won't let you root because she witnessed the journey you took with your phone and all the failures that came with it.
She asks why her EVO is running so slowly and you have to say it's because Sprint Football, NASCAR, Gmail, Batteryminder, Wordfeud, Words with Friends, Qik, Media, Tango, Animated Wallpaper, Foursquare, Facebook, Maps, Lookout, Voicemail, Cardiotrainer, Groupon, Internet, Automated Task Killer, XFinity, Yelp, and a hoary host of other applications all want to load and take up memory, leaving next to nothing available for running programs. While explaining this, the battery alert pops up and you have to swap the battery out.
You mention that this could all be solved if the phone were just given to you for about an hour, but are told again that she just wants to "keep it simple" because she doesn't want to have all the bells and whistles or to see the face you made that time you thought you bricked your EVO.
If you're anything like me, then you might need something like this.
Your significant other is stuck on a stock EVO platform that while once great, now seems like a desolate computer lab with MS-DOS 6 and Duke Nukem 1 installed on every machine. You say (because she told you) that she doesn't care about the benefits of rooting, WiFi hotspot, responsiveness, playing movies out the HDMI, overclocking for performance, forcing applications to the SD card, underclocking to conserve battery, uninstalling bloatware, and changing ROMs as often as you change your underwear. So tell her that rooting allows more than that.
Tell her all of this too:
- You can change the startup animations and music. Some good ones can be found here (although you may need to sign up for an acount): Android Central forums | Android Forums. You can find a lot more (even a Hello Kitty one) by doing a simple Google search.
- You can use any MP3 as a startup sound; the music will cut off once the phone's booted.
Note: Technically, you don't need root to push music or a boot animation to your EVO if you download the Android SDK and a Java Developer's Edition. However, when I downloaded and installed them, it took a long time to get ADB (push) working properly, so I think having root to do these things just makes it easier.
- You can change how large or small the text and icons are.
- You can change the fonts.
- You can automatically clear the cache for your applications (alternative app here).
- You can stop programs from taking up all the internal space and nagging you about space running out.
- You can map a button on the EVO to control music.
- You can go to sleep listening to music that will eventually turn itself off.
- You can get YouTube and music streaming (and Sirius/XM) working correctly again.
- You can flash a kernel with multitouch so you can press more than 2 points on the EVO (e.g., useful to play a piano app better) or increase the volume past 100%.
- You can cheat at Angry Birds.
- You can use your Wiimote to play games from your childhood.
- You can turn off the backlights on the Home/Menu/Search buttons.
- You can force roaming mode if the Sprint signal isn't cutting it.
- You can hide text messages from people (like the guy who's hell bent on rooting your phone)
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In the end, it's your partner's choice. Just remember that the stock ROM is the stick and the list above is the carrot; no matter how wrong it may seem to let someone you love go unrooted, you just gotta let them walk that walk. Oh, but mentioning that rooting saves kittens might help too.
This guest article was written by MildlyDisturbed, who knows that not all significant others are women and doesn't mind if you substituted "she/her" with "he/him" while reading.
