I recently got tired of constantly running out of space on my HTC Hero. So rather than deal with the continued frustration, I finally flashed my Hero with the new Android 2.2 ROM from Cyanogenmod. I have to say I could not be happier! Everything worked after the ROM flash, that is right, no problems! Currently, my Hero is overclocked to 768 MHZ and the performance boost is definitely noticeable. The ability to move the applications to the SD card has solved my constant issue with space on the Hero and Android 2.2-only apps like Chrome to Phone, Google Goggles, and others are now available. The Cyanogenmod ROM comes rooted and I verified wireless tether worked perfectly as well as ROM manager and setCPU.  With this ROM you can utilize the setCPU application and overclock the CPU; which is how I set the Hero’s Cpu to 768 MHZ vs the stock 528 MHZ.  As I mentioned above, this is a considerable speed boost and if you are willing to take the risk, flashing your ROM for this reason alone is worth it. Below, I will briefly outline the steps I took to make my HTC Hero virtually a new phone.

DISCLAIMER:  Follow the guide below at YOUR OWN RISK.  TwistByte, LLC its affiliates, assigns, advertisers, hosts, or other entity related to TwistByte, LLC will not be held responsible for any damage to personal or other property as a result of following this guide. Further THIS PROCESS WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA. You will need to backup your application data, emails, sms, etc.. that you want to keep. This process could BRICK THE PHONE which may leave it in an unusable state.  Finally, flashing your ROM may VOID your manufacturer warranty.

As you are aware from the disclaimer above, this process could brick your phone and result in data loss if you haven’t backed everything up.  Now, I had a recent backup of all my data and followed the steps below carefully and didn’t have a problem on my Hero, but that might not be the case for everyone.  Basically, be careful when flashing ROMs, especially if flashing your main device.

1 ) If you have the most up to date software from sprint than you will not be able to root your phone, so I flashed the original 2.1 update provided from sprint back to my phone. If you dont have this download I think you can get it on the web. The file is called HTC Sprint Hero MR 2.27.651.5 2.exe

2 ) After a clean install of the original 2.1 ROM go to http://unrevoked.com and download unrevoked for HTC Hero.  Open the application and click on button to root your device

3 ) Install ROM Manager from the android market

4 ) Back up your existing ROM

5 ) Download Cyanogenmod 6 from the site here for HTC Hero CDMA

6 ) Copy the zip file you downloaded to the SD Card, open ROM Manager and click ‘Install ROM from SD card’. Then choose your zip file you copied there

7 ) If you want all the google apps and market then copy one of these ROMs here to your SD Card and install the same way you did in 6. Make sure you uncheck clear the data check boxes.

8 ) Now install setCPU from the market and accept the defaults. It will dynamically overclock to 768 mhz. Note that overclocking your phone will likely reduce battery life and increase overall heat output of the Cpu, as such, monitor your phone carefully when overclocking.

Some of the applications I installed:

Sprint Visual Voice Mail from xda-forums

Pure Grid Calendar -- replacement for htc calendar widget

Fancy Widget -- replacement for main clock/weather widget

Wireless Tether -- wireless router

Memory Usage Plus -- The widget you see on the home screen is from memory usage plus. displays active, avail, free memory

CPU Usage Plus -- Nice to see which processes are running and using CPU

I created the following video when I was running Cyanogenmod 6.1 RC1 I had some issues with this experimental ROM (force closes) so I flashed the Cyanogenmod 6.0 stable release and this version is much better, no force closes, better performance over all. This ROM only allows setCPU to over clock to 691 mhz but if you use the interactive scaling and the 691 mhz max it really performs well. More information on interactive governor can be found here

Here is a real short video with my HTC Hero running Cyanogenmod 6.0. As you can see the screen is very responsive and the applications start up quickly. I removed the live wallpaper because that was slowing down the phone in general and was just not worth it IMO

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