When is a gold card needed?

[Guest subvertbeats]

Hi all

I created a gold card (using the 4GB card that came with my desire).

I successfully rooted the phone, and have flashed a few roms and mods without issue.

I was under the impression that the gold car was needed to:

1) root the phone

2) flash custom roms

However, I experimented at the weekend and swapped my gold card for a new 16GB card (not gold card) and copied a new rom to it (Pauls r5) and flashed from that card using ROM Manager.

At first reboot, it stuck at the 'quietly brilliant' screen. At this point I thought it must be that I needed the gold card in.

After removing the battery and rebooting however, the Desire booted just fine into the new rom.

So when is the gold card actually needed?

(Note I have an o2 branded Desire, but the first thing I did after rooting when I got the phone was flash an unbranded rom)

Thanks in advance

Edited July 19, 2010 by subvertbeats

[Guest miguelsanchez79]

debranding, rooting - gold card needed

flashing roms - not needed

[Guest subvertbeats]

debranding, rooting - gold card needed

flashing roms - not needed

Thanks Miguel!

[Guest Koh KW]

Thanks Miguel!

From what I understood (as my Desire is T-Mobile branded), I had to use the gold-card to debrand it before I managed to root it successfully.

I tried to skip that step, but I got exceptions during the root process. After debranding the phone, I no longer see anything related to T-Mobile (especially during boot time).

Subsequently you don't actually need the gold card anymore. All you need is a good recovery (i.e. Clockworkmod, etc) to flash ROMs.

Hope this helps.