business model innovation design we're on a road to nowhere // on a quest to analyze and explore the design of business model innovations, i.e. 'hideous and hidden things' like organizational structures and capabilities, corporate strategies and all things related // on a yellow brick road with a girl, a lion and a straw-man wasting our time // …

Speaking of being good at being a beginner – I need to document and jot down the things I did this Wednesday night for relaxing. Yes, I spent half the night modding and messing around with my old and trusted Android Phone, an HTC Magic (aka Sapphire) 32B stuck at Android 1.6.

Now it’s rooted, running a CyanogenMod 6.0.0 build and making its user a very happy camper. And as I’ve also (re-)added and refactored some apps, I feel tempted to add my own list of Android apps to have:

Aldiko Ebook-Reader and/or Amazon Kindle reader

Adobe pdf-reader

Instafetch and/or HardCopy for Offline-Reading of my Instapaper items – not sure what I prefer, still testing both

AndReader for Offline-Reading of ReadItLater items – my previously used (and bought) Paperdroid stopped working after the CyanogenMod

NewsRob for RSS-reading

WikiDroyd for offline Wikipedia-reading (needs a 400 MB  download, but hey)

Astrid GTD-app

Awesome drop for dropping stuff on my Android

Dropbox

Dolphin Browser and/or Opera Mini Browser – both will stay on the handset, I like the new looks of Dolphin

Twidroyd – newly updated Twitter client

buzz widget – post to buzz easily

tumblr – need to test this

chompSMS – I don’t SMS a lot, but it’s nicer than the standard fare

Shazam – “what’s that playing on the radio?”, Compass, Google Maps, Google Sky, Google Skynet (ok, this one’s a joke)

BarcodeScanner – “what’s that QR/Bacrcode/etc.”

Titanium Backup

CyanogenMod updater

ES File Explorer

SmartKeyboard

Free Advanced Task Killer

Now you’re right that for modding I didn’t had to touch the hardware much (besides the sad fact that I needed to remove the battery several times to start over) – it’s more of a software thing. Needless to say that this elevates the complexity of the task at hand. Wading through tons of (forum) posts, “how to do it” and lifehack-bundles compiled by Windows users does more mischief. So here are my basic steps, done with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 to this HTC Magic 32B:

Begin with rooting the phone (read above how to do it, easy). You need this.

Then it’s following the steps in the wiki: Full Update Guide – HTC Magic (32B) – and check the md5sum of the to make sure the zip isn’t corrupted.

getting ROM Manager (did it with v2.0.3.2) from the Android market onto the 1.6-stuck phone

get the Android SDK (deb packages provided) on your machine, install and get the fastboot executable, place it in the tools subdirectory

download the latest AMON_RA recovery (got RA-sapphire-v1.7.0G) – the G is suitable for my Google branded phone, HTC brands need the H variety.

download the latest CyanogenMod. Don’t unzip this. Get the Google apps package too. They aren’t bundled, no, no.

USB-plug the phone into your machine (enable USB debugging on the handset prior to this)

replace the original recovery image with the RA recovery one (don’t forget to sudo the fastboot command, tripped over this at first)

reboot into Amon_RA’s recovery (first step with this image)

make a nandroid backup (really, make this now and later after you have modded your handset – I had to restore from the backup already, had a working CyanogenMod backup thankgod and it’s always a good feeling being safe)

with the phone connect via USB, open up a cmd prompt and go to the second sequence of steps when dealing with the recovery image: 1. adb devices – a device name and ‘recovery’ should be returned, 2. adb push [path to where you’ve goth the recovery image on your machine]/recovery-RA-sapphire-v1.x.xG.img /sdcard/recovery.img and 3. adb shell flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img

Then, install for the first time (this is a kind of upgrading, too):

copy the Cyanogen ROM and the Google apps package onto the SDCard-/ (you didn’t unzip them files, no, you didn’t)

reboot into recovery (Hold Home + Power) (press the buttons together for several seconds and then again)

I made a full wipe, cleared the cache and all

then via Flash zip from sdcard I applied 1. the CyanogenMod zip-file and 2. the Google apps zip-file

reboot your phone (and yes, the first boot after flashing a new ROM takes longer than “normal”. 5 minutes is not unusual. Right.

be happy (and make your first nandroid backup of your handset to stay happy).

Oh, and messing with hardware and software must wait till tomorrow, that is when the 25 € servers I ordered have arrived … promising endless fun on a Saturday night, messing with lighttpd, Nginx and the ARM architecture.