My foray into 'tweaking' Android

Okay, I believe I discussed this some time back about me playing around with trying to ROOT and flash my HTC Magic.  It just never took.  Ah well.

heh...  I need me texting on the Galaxy Nexus at the end (and it's missing my Rolodex REX)

I get a little gunshy pretty easy.  And when it comes to messing with my expensive gadgets, I get worried.


I pooched a Treo700w, a Treo650, and nearly a couple other Palms when I would attempt to do some 'fun' with it.  I've jiggered with dozens of WinXP or Ubuntu ISO's for my netbooks, and nearly had a couple unrecoverable.


So when I'm trying with my latest phone, the one I've had over a year now, and contemplating getting a new one, I start getting somewhat braver.


I start to read up, and I'm no slouch -- should be pretty straight forward.  In order to flash a non-signed ROM (version of an operating system) I need a special recovery mode... so you flash that kernel, and you should be fine.  Except it wouldn't boot up.  I could boot into recovery mode, but I had no ROM to flash onto the phone.


Luckily with the help of some G+ friends (and a real chance to play with the Hangouts feature - which is awesome btw), I was able to get it back to where it was before I experiemented (nothing lost, but nothing gained either -- except a healthy dose of respect to not do things wrong).  But so close to having to make a quick choice.


Not my first foray into tweaking, but a true honest try, not a successful one however... *le sigh*.


So, I'm debating about buying the new Galaxy Nexus... I'll have a separate post about that.


Here's my geekery on what happened, play by play.


I rooted my phone with  - http://www.unlockroot.com/
very straight forward (thanks Sylvain)


Then got the Heimdall program from the Cyanogen Wiki site for the Captivate.


I downloaded the Speedmod for the recovery, and I think that it didn't like being installed and then booting into the standard Samsung ROM, which is why it just hung.


I'm debating doing it again (maybe after I have my new phone in hand).  Do it the 'standard cyanogen' way, or go all freaky and try the leaked ICS option?