Motorola Droid :: Some Tips From A Seasoned Android User

I wanted to go over a few things with everyone. Don't any of you take this the wrong way as I am just writing this to try and help everyone new to the scene.

When I first got into Android I had a G1, that was a little over a year ago. I used it stock for about 2 months and then started going to a site called xda developers. Some of you probably know about it, for those who don't it is a site that focuses on developing and hacking WinMo and Android. I learned a ton of stuff there, but at first it was SCARY, so much information and so many new technical terms I had never heard of before. I took my time reading things and asking people questions for about 2 weeks and when I was finally confident in myself I rooted my G1. It took me like 2+ hours to do it, I installed a new Recovery, flashed a new SPL and Radio, I even got a Sense UI ROM installed on it. It felt great.

Now here we are with a much higher spec'd phone, the Droid, and it has attracted a TON of new users. It is great because now Android is evolving faster then it ever has, and we are getting tons of new developers creating some amazing stuff. It has all happened so fast and a lot of you are trying to learn everything as quickly as possible. The Sholes SMUpdater app has made all of this VERY easy for anyone to do, but the problem with this is that now when something goes wrong you have no idea how to fix it. When you want to do some modifications that involve ADB or Terminal Emulator you have no knowledge on how they work. By skipping all the hard parts you have basically shorted yourself on TONS of knowledge which, to me, is sort of a requirement to rooting/rom flashing.

Now I agree that SMUpdater is a great tool to save time from having to learn everything, and it makes it easy to get the newest Sholes ROM. But there is SOOO much more to Android hacking/development then Sholes. When you want to try something new and different then what will you do? This is why I HIGHLY recommend that everyone does some heavy researching, take a weekend, or some blocks of free time, and read. Read until you can't see straight. Let it all sink in, and practice practice practice. I promise you will become such a better user, you will understand what is going on with the system.

If you don't study and learn, then what happens when something breaks? You can't always expect someone on a forum to come to your rescue. Of course there will always be things that happen which require some really advanced users to fix, and even I have t ask for help from time to time. But to not learn even the basics is just absurd, it hurts you and it hurts the community because we have to spend all our time fixing very basic and simple problems.

I hope no one here took offense to this because I am doing this to really help everyone here out. The more we all know then the more we can do.