[markgamber]

The Bad News: My Touch is trashed. I tried all the bootloader tricks, all the system tricks, everything I could think of. No matter what I did I ended up with Coke 2.31 as a bootloader. As far as the system...at least I could turn the phone on and off with the Alltel rom. With anything else, turning it off was a death sentence. If I reset with the power applied, it would boot into the system. Without power, it would go to the bootloader and that was the end of that. Finally, plugging it into a USB port would bring up the "No idea what you just plugged in" message from the computer. After three days of this, I finally had enough and took it to the Sprint store to either get it fixed or, if they laughed at me and told me to hit the road, get a new phone.

The Good News: The guy at the Sprint store (and repair center) looked at the phone and said it didn't look like there was any water damage (there wasn't) and if that's the case, it should cost $35 and a couple of days to replace it. Done. And I don't even have insurance. To be fair, something did happen to it a couple of days ago. I was sitting in a baseball stadium and the temperature was in the mid 90's when I felt it reset in my shirt pocket. It was trashed after that.

The Lesson Learned: Amazingly enough, kudos to Sprint! If I spend less than $400, I'll be happy. If I actually get away with spending $35 and get a new phone out of the deal, it'll be a great day! And after this debacle, I'm done with custom and "leaked" roms. I needed a working phone more than I needed a new one, even at $35, and now I'm phoneless for 2-5 days. I'll leave the custom stuff for those who don't actually use the phone.