Spaced Out ::

Well I guess the day had to come, but sadly (particularly after the Gingerbread upgrade) my San Fran passed away…. well mostly. All of a sudden reception became very bad unless I was actually underneath a transmitter and it looks like the internal (GSM) antenna was damaged. O well…..

…..so two days later I took delivery of a shiny new San Francisco II. Basically the same unit (Google Play identify it as a Blade S) but with an uprated 800MHz CPU, 5MP camera (with flash) and forward facing camera (good for Skype). It ships with Gingerbread, but locked of course. One of the online sellers producers a good guide to unlocking your phone which I ran through and it worked (rooting subsequently required if you replace with a stock unlocked ROM). After which I then realised that the far simpler thing would have been to install a TPT for my phone which re-partitioned the memory and installed ClockWordMod to allow me to flash a new ROM. This was fast and simple. The main forum has a few ROMs available (there aren’t a vast selection) including Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0) but I think Gingerbread is a bit faster so plumped for Fish ‘n Chips which works rather well.

The phone just works…..switching over was painless if a little time consuming in parts installing software on the phone. However being able to just switch the microSD card across is a boon. Lets hope this one last 2 years.