Let’s create the scene. My HTC One had been customised big time. I had unlocked the bootloader via HTC Dev website, turned it from s-on to s-off, rooted and installed a custom 4.2.2 ROM and firmware. So in essence I had removed all the 3 branding and had a phone I could customised in every way possible. I was also running the 4.2.2 update before HTC released it officially.

So what should have been a simple update to the firmware on Saturday lunchtime, ended up deleting all my data, media, photos, videos, absolutely everything. From there I tried to correct the mistake and made even more errors. My twitter friend Paul provided some great guidance, but somehow I ended up in an even worse position due to two other people trying to help and making matters worse. So its 6pm, and I know if I can’t sort problem out before the HTC One battery dies, my phone potentially would be dead forever. Bricked. Yes, I had spent 6 hours so far trying to resolve and nothing was working. I must admit, I even thought of calling it a day, and filming a hammer strength test and uploading it to my YouTube channel. To give you an idea, I couldn’t install any apps, WiFi had stopped working, error messages and force closes were happening, phone wasn’t switching on and more. My HTC One was sinking like the Titanic.

I had one last option left, which was installing a RUU. This is an official HTC release and the RUU was an old version of software that came originally with the phone. But whilst that worked, I still was not out out of the water, as I had red error texts messages. Another hour later and realising the information provided earlier by 2 people had been wrong, I slowly unravelled the mistakes.

So, finally at 11pm on Saturday, I had a phone in good working order and with my apps and games reinstalled. I also had received my first over the air update from HTC and now just need the new official 4.2.2 update which is due to land today or tomorrow in the UK. I have also relocked the bootloader and secured the phone back to s-on and unrooted. So I have a pure stock HTC One silver 32gb phone. And ironically I have 17gb more memory free.

Result.

Now, as I have been unofficially using the new 4.2.2 update from HTC and now am back with the older version, I am really surprised at how different the phone feels. The new update vastly improves the touch sensitivity, accelerates the camera forward in quality and adds new video highlight themes. Addresses the three dot menu button, tweaked the home button options to a much better position, in fact improves the whole operation of the HTC One. This is how the phone should have been released from day one. It really it a superb phone but is soon to be replaced by my Sony Z Ultra.

Now I know some people like customising ROMs, but to be honest you shouldn’t need to nowadays. With a good launcher like Apex or Nova that should give you all the tweaking you need.

PS. Saturday was a day where everything went wrong. I burnt my finger and mouth . I knocked two boxes off the kitchen worktop on to the tiled floor. And as my disaster was unfolding I had friendly comments on twitter suggesting I should get an iPhone as it backs all your data up perfectly, and perhaps as I was breaking everything to lie down in bed, with a warning not to fall out! One thing is for sure, the backup of an iPhone is first class.