This short guide takes you through the steps needed to install a custom Android 2.1 ROM onto the original T-Mobile Pulse.

The official T-Mobile Android 2.1 ROM was removed from T-Mobiles website because it had a few bugs, the worst of which meant that you’d lose the odd text message. However the latest ‘custom’ ROMS appear to have fixed these problems.

I decided it was time to change my mobile phone. Being a Linux nerd I decided to opt for an Android based phone.
There are quite a number to choose from. The HTC Hero being the most popular, but at the time this would have cost me £360 of my hard earned cash.
T-Mobile have released an ‘own brand’ phone, the pulse, manufactured by Huawei. At the time of writing you can get one for under £150.

The pulses spec is very similar to that of the hero, but with slightly less memory, leaving just 60mb left to install new apps into. For reasons best known to google, android apps cannot be installed onto the SD card which is a real shame not least for the apps market in general.