Updating the ROM in Your Mobile Device
Follow the forum instructions carefully, because it's possible to brick the device. Often, the first release day of any community-released code will be athwart with danger -- the experimenters that day know it and like the thrill. We don't. The first day of a recent Google TV upgrade bricked numerous devices. As a beginner, wait a few days after a release for the kinks to get ironed out, and always reads the forums carefully.
Remember this: The phone or tablet you purchased is yours. It does not belong to the carrier that you bought it from despite the fact that the device is emblazoned with its corporate identity, logo or splash screen.
This outright ownership you have in the device means that you can do whatever you like with it once you've walked out of the store, assuming you don't mess with the radio hardware and cause interference to your fellow users.
This state-of-play lends itself to the question: What to do with the corporate logo-dripping thing? How can you really make it your own? Customize it? Theme it? Move the soft buttons around? That all goes only so far.
The real mark of ownership in the device is to replace the ROM (Read Only Memory) with one that suits you more than the carrier or manufacturer.
What Is ROM?
The ROM is the memory within the phone or tablet that's used to run the base device. It consists of the code that boots the device and runs it as it relates to its hardware.
For example, the ROM will contain code that tells the phone's GPS or WiFi chip how to behave. ROM is distinct from Apps, which aren't hard-coded into the phone's operating system .
Although Apps also tell the chips what to do, they're less rigid in their approach and can be customized more easily by the end-user through UIs. ROM is also distinct from RAM (Random Access Memory) that can be written to.
ROMs are loosely related to one or more of four areas: Speed enhancement; customizing the look and feel; bug fixes not supplied by the phone company or manufacturer; and pre-official ports of operating systems, just for the hell of it.
When to Look for a New ROM
If there's something that your device doesn't seem to be doing properly, there's a chance fellow owners have identified the issue and created a fix. The nature of the passionate developer community means this fix can be released significantly faster than one approved by a manufacturer, which may not even bother to fix it, and may even be focused on the next hardware incarnation -- you a long-forgotten blip in its revenue stream.
The developer-created fix will often be provided as a patch, initially, and then incorporated into an updated ROM.
A good example of this is a common issue whereby some Honeycomb tablets don't support ad hoc WiFi tethering that's necessary for some phones. Toshiba's Thrive's Honeycomb 3.2 operating system, for example, doesn't. So Dalepi, a member of the Toshiba Thrive Forum, coded a fix. Dalepi then incorporated that fix into a ROM that he made available at the Forum's website.
Owners run his code on their tablets rather than the factory-supplied code, because it's the owner's tablet and not Toshiba's, and Dalepi's code in this case suits the owner better than Toshiba's code.
Follow the forum instructions carefully, because it's possible to brick the device. Often, the first release day of any community-released code will be athwart with danger -- the experimenters that day know it and like the thrill. We don't. The first day of a recent Google TV upgrade bricked numerous devices. As a beginner, wait a few days after a release for the kinks to get ironed out, and always reads the forums carefully.
Remember this: The phone or tablet you purchased is yours. It does not belong to the carrier that you bought it from despite the fact that the device is emblazoned with its corporate identity, logo or splash screen.
This outright ownership you have in the device means that you can do whatever you like with it once you've walked out of the store, assuming you don't mess with the radio hardware and cause interference to your fellow users.
This state-of-play lends itself to the question: What to do with the corporate logo-dripping thing? How can you really make it your own? Customize it? Theme it? Move the soft buttons around? That all goes only so far.
The real mark of ownership in the device is to replace the ROM (Read Only Memory) with one that suits you more than the carrier or manufacturer.
What Is ROM?
The ROM is the memory within the phone or tablet that's used to run the base device. It consists of the code that boots the device and runs it as it relates to its hardware.
For example, the ROM will contain code that tells the phone's GPS or WiFi chip how to behave. ROM is distinct from Apps, which aren't hard-coded into the phone's operating system .
Although Apps also tell the chips what to do, they're less rigid in their approach and can be customized more easily by the end-user through UIs. ROM is also distinct from RAM (Random Access Memory) that can be written to.
ROMs are loosely related to one or more of four areas: Speed enhancement; customizing the look and feel; bug fixes not supplied by the phone company or manufacturer; and pre-official ports of operating systems, just for the hell of it.
When to Look for a New ROM
If there's something that your device doesn't seem to be doing properly, there's a chance fellow owners have identified the issue and created a fix. The nature of the passionate developer community means this fix can be released significantly faster than one approved by a manufacturer, which may not even bother to fix it, and may even be focused on the next hardware incarnation -- you a long-forgotten blip in its revenue stream.
The developer-created fix will often be provided as a patch, initially, and then incorporated into an updated ROM.
A good example of this is a common issue whereby some Honeycomb tablets don't support ad hoc WiFi tethering that's necessary for some phones. Toshiba's Thrive's Honeycomb 3.2 operating system, for example, doesn't. So Dalepi, a member of the Toshiba Thrive Forum, coded a fix. Dalepi then incorporated that fix into a ROM that he made available at the Forum's website.
Owners run his code on their tablets rather than the factory-supplied code, because it's the owner's tablet and not Toshiba's, and Dalepi's code in this case suits the owner better than Toshiba's code.
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