Messing with your Liquid for dummies

[Guest Quipeace]

Messing with your liquid for dummies

Introduction

I don’t know about you guys, but I think it’s quite hard to get into the whole flashing-your-liquid scene. I personally managed to figure out how to set up my phone and computer to flash roms and generally mess with my liquid, but I think many newcomers won’t or weren’t so lucky and therefore have to stick with the stock Acer 1.6 roms.

Having more people in the community is a good thing, as it speeds up debugging and reduces the time other people have to wait for answers on the forum. That is why I decided to write this small guide.

As I mainly use Windows 7 (pretty much because of school…) this guide will be geared to other Windows users, however, I’m pretty sure Mac and Linux users will be able to follow this guide as well.

Chances of bricking your Liquid are very low, and you will be able to recover your phone from nearly every mistake. Ofcourse, it could still happen, which is why I'm going to tell you the folowing:

Although the chances of something going wrong are low, I am not responsible for any damage to your phone or data stored on your phone.

If at any time you want to return to stock, you can simply flash one of Acers official roms (explained later on). Flashing those will erase ALL data on your phone. There will be no sign that you ever did something to your Liquid.

Setting up your computer

The first thing you will want to do is properly set up your computer, as that will make the following steps a whole lot easier. You will want to unplug your Liquid for now.

Installing the drivers

We´ll start with installing the drivers, you can download them from here:

http://loadbalancing.modaco.com/download.p...deaga2n2d0pn68v

extract the archive and run “setup.exe”, follow the directions and press “next” when you see the windows “new device found” dialog.

As I already have the drivers installed I can’t give exact directions, but it should be pretty straight forward.

Installing the Android SDK to get ADB running

"adb", or Android Debugging Bridge is a tool supplied by Google to help debugging applications you develop, however, we will mainly use it to easily boot to different parts of your phone, like the bootloader or the recovery menu.

adb comes with the Android SDK, together with some other useful tools so it really pays to install it.

You can download the Android SDK from here (Just download the package, don't mind the directions on the page):

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

When you're done downloading, you will want to extract it to a permanent and safe place. The "Installer" will do that for you.

Now we are going to set the "enviroment variable" for the SDK, we have to do that so that Windows knows where to look for the tools, I'm not sure how to do this on Linux or Mac, so I'm afraid I can't help you with that.

Open your start menu and right click on "My Computer", click on "advanced system settings" (or something simmilar to that, my Windows is in Dutch) and then on "Enviroment Variables".

If you're Windows is English and you're using windows Vista or 7 you can also search for "enviroment" in the search bar.

Now read the following two lines before you continue

When you've got the enviroment variables screen open, scroll down and look for the variable called "PATH" or "path", double click it.

Now, make sure you don't delete anything that's already there.

At the very end of the string add the following, if there is no path variable you will have to create it:

If there is already a semicolon (:P at the end:

PATHTOSDK\tools;

If there isn't:

;PATHTOSDK\tools;

You replace PATHTOSDK by the actual path ofcourse :).

Testing

First you have to make sure that debugging is enabled on your phone, navigate to "Settings -> Applications -> Development" and enable debugging.

Now, plug-in your phone and open a command line (Windows key + R, type "cmd").

If your device is rooted, run the following command:

"adb remount"

If everything went right, you should now get a message that the remount was successful.

Running "adb devices" will return the devices connected to your computer, that will also work without root.

I'll continue this tutorial later, I've got too many other things to do at the moment. Please let me know if I made any mistakes so I can fix them.

If you feel like something requires further explanation, please post as well ;)

This tutorial will be continued here:

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?p...AcerLiquidGuide

Edited June 7, 2011 by Paul

[Guest scash]

Excellent guide! Cleared up some things I was confused on. Good job mate

[Guest three_pineapples]

You might be interested in expanding my tutorial located here: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?p...AcerLiquidGuide

So far you haven't covered anything i covered :) Would love to have your improvements, etc and provide a centralised place for people to find tutorials!

[Guest Quipeace]

You might be interested in expanding my tutorial located here: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?p...AcerLiquidGuide

So far you haven't covered anything i covered :) Would love to have your improvements, etc and provide a centralised place for people to find tutorials!

That seems fine to me, I'll link this topic there and edit the wiki.

The main problem I had with the guides there is that they were too specific and thus quickly outdated.

I'll see what I can do ;)

EDIT: Made a small start.

Edited March 21, 2010 by Quipeace

[Guest Quipeace]

First of all, sorry for the double post.

I hope I have enough time to finish the basic guides tomorrow, but wouldn't it be a good idea to sticky the wiki? I think many people don't even know it exists.

[Guest Down to earth Swede]

When I start the setup for the SDK, the newest version, no "new device found" dialog appears. It's just a setup program that starts that downloads and then extracts the different parts of the SDK.

And it doesn't say where it extracts them, so the path is unknown to me. Or are they just extracted below the folder where I extracted the SDK-zipfile to in the first place? Not that it matter since no device was found in the first place.

Is this guide up to date with the new SDK, or are you leaving out some details?

Using windows7, 32 bit.

And, when you talk about adding the semi-colon in the PATH you didn't mention the third alternative : that the PATH variable is empty. Otherwise it would be starting with a ; before the first path (which will be the path to the SDK).

Never mind, i saw that the installer didn't place anything inside program files, nothing in the programs list in the control panel, which an installer normally does. It just extracted some things below the root folder for the SDK, where I found the "tools" map and by that getting the "real path".

Not sure if it will work though, since there was no device found when I started the installer (and you said that should have appeared).

But very nice of you otherwise trying to write this kind of guide. It is needed! But I will also check out the instructions that came with the installer now!

I have tested it now with the phone in debug mode and doing the adb remount command at the command line.

It resulted in "Remount failed : Operation not permitted".

At least it didn't give me an unknown command error so the SDK seems to be partly working...(at least the path to it).

Edit 2:

Well this really seems like the right "for dummies" thread (me and you both). Obviously adb remount can't be done until after you have rooted the device. It is kinda proof of a succesfull root. So that step can't be done before you have rooted in your guide.

The "Remount failed : Operation not permitted" means that the device isn't rooted, of course!

I will try to write a very short version with the easiest possible way of rooting it in the next post.

Edited April 8, 2010 by Down to earth Swede

[Guest Quipeace]

Theres a guide in the wiki mentioned, although I think it's already outdated.

I'm working on my own little rom now so I never really continued the tutorial, I'll correct the things you mentioned right away though.

EDIT: Please edit your post and remove the quote, it's taking up lots of space ^^

Edited April 8, 2010 by Quipeace

[Guest Down to earth Swede]

Theres a guide in the wiki mentioned, although I think it's already outdated.

I'm working on my own little rom now so I never really continued the tutorial, I'll correct the things you mentioned right away though.

EDIT: Please edit your post and remove the quote, it's taking up lots of space ^^

Yeah, it was easier to just download the sdk directly without install and just run adb from the folder in the command prompt.

Then type adb reboot recovery!

I have removed the quote in the earlier post.

[Guest Quipeace]

For those purposes, yeah that is easier. However, having to cd to that directory every time and passing full paths to applications you want to install via ADB is alot more trouble in the long run.

I haven't started on the tutorials on those subjects yet. It looks like people aren't really interested in a barebone build so I'll probably leave that alone and continue the tutorials.

[Guest Down to earth Swede]

For those purposes, yeah that is easier. However, having to cd to that directory every time and passing full paths to applications you want to install via ADB is alot more trouble in the long run.

I haven't started on the tutorials on those subjects yet. It looks like people aren't really interested in a barebone build so I'll probably leave that alone and continue the tutorials.

And it seems like Malez recovery does rooting too. So it's just a matter of adb reboot bootloader and the start installing malez and then just choose to root it from his menu (via the command prompt).

Now that is easy...

Edited April 8, 2010 by Down to earth Swede