Ad-Free Android on HTC Desire

“Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today.” — Victor Papanek

For anyone trying to remove ads on the HTC Desire phone (so they don’t show in apps or in the browser), here’s what I had to do:

Note: Firstly, following these steps will prevent Over The Air (OTA) updates from working. Secondly, this requires a bit of work: connecting your phone to your PC via USB, running software on your PC to root your phone, installing and running an app on your phone, watching the app fail, then moving and symlinking files around via the command line to fix it all up. If you’re unsure about any of this, don’t do it – hopefully this’ll get easier in future.

  1. Follow the steps in Root the HTC Desire (Unrevoked Method)
  2. Install Android SDK on your PC to get the adb tool (needed in the next step)
  3. Now follow these steps

Software used: Unrevoked 3, Android SDK, AdFree Android

If you know of an easier way to go ad-free on the Desire, please comment.

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