Android Tips for Rooted Phones

Introduction

Having a rooted Google Android phone is great as it allows you to hack away at almost anything on the software side of the phone. Below I will be compiling a list of handy things which may help you.

Improve 3G Speeds

Most carriers do not use the standard defaults of 3G settings. After rooting my phone (Magic 32G in new Zealand - both with CyanogenMod & later DWANG), my 3G download speed was reduced quite significantly. To retain the speeds, I needed to edit the phone configuration file (in my case the /system/build.sapphire.prop) from:

ro.ril.hsxpa=1 
ro.ril.gprsclass=10

to the original settings (provided originally by my carrier, Vodafone NZ) of:

ro.ril.hsxpa=2
ro.ril.gprsclass=12

I did 3 tests on both the old and the new settings show (speeds in kbps) to prove my point:

Default Root DL/UL Settings	Original DL/UL Settings
283 / 61	1250 / 284
232 / 300	997 / 293
193 / 251	1245 / 312

Each time you upgrade your phone however you will need to change these settings. A simple way if you have adb configured is:

adb remount
adb shell sed -i 's/ro.ril.hsxpa=1/ro.ril.hsxpa=2/g' /system/build.sapphire.prop
adb shell sed -i 's/ro.ril.gprsclass=10/ro.ril.gprsclass=12/g' /system/build.sapphire.prop