My advice
Beginners in unlocking and debranding the ZTE Blade Andriod phone will find this site more educational first.
Once you more familiar with flashing the Andriod phone, you probably may feel more confident knowing the process and to re-flash as much as you like or have a go at installing
cyanogenMod (Stable Aftermarket firmware Andriod 2.3 rom).
And if you don't like the looks you can always go back to the
original stock roms.
My experience
The ZTE Blade (Aka Orange San Francisco) is probably the most affordable Android on the market at the time of release, I have helped a friend and my dad get this phone.
Why unlock and de-brand?
No disrespect to Orange, for some people their packages could be beneficial. Yet for these two unlocks I knew they didn't want to use Orange deals and want to stick with their original Mobile network for good reason. Well for a start my Dad rarely uses the phone and probably still has lots of credit next month and doesn't need to top up for months.
Also that I think Orange over branded that phone mobile way too orangey.
Pulling hairout moments
Thanks to the open community there are lots of helpful tutorials in unlocking and flashing in various ways. I can see they practically almost perfected it with the combination of
ClockworkMod Recovery Image and
Rom Manager. I found various tutorials in many flavours all aimed at unlocking and debranding in different ways.
Both times I spent hours at being careful and going through loops on and off and eventually succeeding with different tutorials used for different stages.
In the end I found these
steps the least probmatic and easiest. In these detailed steps I found that are certain builds of the phone require different steps. The steps help explain how to identifiy your phone build model.
After doing the first initial custom rom change, I have a small feeling that I should be able to do the
more easier way of flashing the andriod rom.
The Stages Explained
There are five stages, unlocking, identify build model, root phone, install flash recovery, and install new custom rom.
Unlocking the phone network I followed chapter '
How to Unlock the ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco'.
Indentify build model of the phone so you know what guides to follow I installed, 'Ask Mr Pigfish' from the 'Andriod Market' explained
here The model I found was a 'GEN1'
Root phone, so your phone can do more super user (system commands) in the background. This is you can start flashing your phone.
Install flash recovery, installs a special image in the phone so you can reboot your phone in a special developer mode. So we can start flashing the phone rom.
install new custom rom, install the rom of choice that seems good at the time :)
Further reading
Unlocking ZTE Blade Phone
(See chapter 'How to Unlock the ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco')
