UPDATE 2/28/2014: The download link to the 2.0 version of this ROM in the Android forums is down. I am not the mod’s author, so I cannot provide new ones. At this point with how old the phone is it seems modders have abandoned the project, as there have been no new links crop up that I’ve seen.
I’d blogged previously about admining the Pantech Breakout, which despite not being able to overclock was still advantageous for the ability to uninstall the junk software Verizon puts on the phone. When I’d originally written that post there were no custom ROMs available, but that’s changed.
As I started reading about the “Broken Out” ROM in the Android forums it seemed that almost everyone had a positive experience with it, and my Pantech Breakout was already admined. Wouldn’t take much to try it out. So I created a backup of my stock ROM in case I needed to go back and did a clean install (deleting all cache etc.). The ROM author claimed that he’d removed virtually everything Verizon and Pantech had thrown into the phone outside the stock Android 2.3.3 and made some performance tweaks. It’s one thing to admin and be able to uninstall previously uninstallable apps, but stripping the fluff out of the OS itself is a step beyond.
Performance Improvements
It was clear immediately how much faster the phone had become. Right off the bat the Breakout had roughly 2-3x the available RAM as before, not to mention substantially more storage space. This is important since this phone is not one of the ones that comes with 1GB built in space, and Android still does not allow all apps to be installed to your SD card. Even with the ones you can, there’s still a chunk of them residing on the phone storage, so you’re always losing space to install apps.
There’d always been a lag in the Google Play store downloading and installing apps, which was now a smooth transition. Browsing menus and jumping between apps was equally pleasing. Android savvy folks know that the OS will close apps that haven’t been used in awhile when RAM gets low to allow for what is currently running, which can be annoying if simply opening a web browser closes Facebook every time a link is clicked. Simply having the memory to have these things run together and toggle between with no closures makes a big performance increase.
Though as far as I’m aware there are still no overclock kernels for the Pantech Breakout, using this ROM feels like having done so. I’m no stranger to admining and such, but the performance gains were less profound on previous phones simply by trying new ROMs. In this case it becomes glaringly obvious how much crap was installed on the stock phone and how it turned a decent piece of hardware into something far less usable than it could be.
Stability With The Pantech Breakout ROM
Some users have mentioned trouble with using Bluetooth and it affecting their clock (very strange), but I’ve not encountered that issue. I’ve had one or two force close instances, but only with Facebook and strangely only early into using the ROM. Other than that it’s been very stable.
I reboot the phone about once a week out of habit, but it runs 24/7 otherwise.
I would recommend the “Broken Out” ROM to anyone with this phone. If you’ve been on the fence about admining this is definitely a reason to do it, and if you’re already admined installing this app only takes about 10-15 minutes tops if you’ve already got apps like Titanium Backup. Slap the zip file on your SD card, boot into recovery, format the cache and user data, and install. Done.
For more detailed instructions on admining the Pantech Breakout read my previous post, and visit the ROM’s page in the Android forums for more details about installing the ROM if you’re stuck.
I have a copy of the broken out rom 2.0
I’ll upload if there is any interest
yes, please!!!
Could you please send me a link?
Thank you
Can I get a copy of this ROM thanks
Not seeing any good links to BrokenOutBreakout2.0.zip.
If someone has one, can they post it?
Thanks.
Where are the new downloads to the 2.0 version? The original download page is broken.
I haven’t looked again recently, but the last time I was checking it out I couldn’t find a new download page. It’s possible that since it’s an old phone at this point there isn’t much support for it in the modding community anymore. I’ll check it out again and see what I can find, but from what I’ve gathered so far it seems the mod author has moved on.
When you go to the download page for 2.0 (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54501789/Breakout/BrokenOutBreakout2.0.zip), it has a 404 error. I was hoping that there was a user of this custom rom who had uploaded the 2.0 version for others to download.
Yeah that’s been noted near the top of the post. I’ve done some looking and haven’t been able to find a link from anyone else to the ROM. Unfortunately, as the phone is now several years old the modders seem to have abandoned the project, so it’s going to be difficult to find support for it.
I’ve read the posts for this ROM and there seem to be some issues with 2.0. Some are saying that 1.2 is the more stable version.
What version are you using? What issues have you experienced, if any?
I read that also, but decided to give 2.0 a try. Maybe I got lucky, but I haven’t really had any issues. Once in awhile when I touch the phone button at the bottom it brings the call screen up and pops back to the desktop, but when I touch it a second time it works. That’s the only minor annoyance I’ve encountered.
ok so i admined my pantech breakout and got the broken out rom. under network it says broken out. so does this mean my phone is free to be used with any carrier like straight talk. it was a verizon phone.
I’m not sure about that one. Haven’t tried changing carriers with mine and didn’t see anything specifically about that in the Broken Out forum. My guess would be that it’s possible, but if it’s a Verizon phone the carrier you switch to would have to support CDMA (like Verizon does), which would exclude carriers like AT&T that use GSM.
Check this out for more of an explanation on that – https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407896,00.asp
This seems like I’m missing something obvious, since I was able to successfully admin and this seems so simple, but it tells me to move the zip file to external sd card. I have no idea how to do that. When I went to flash the rom from the recovery mode, it wasn’t there. I see the BreakoutRoot.zip but nothing else…any thoughts?
If you connect your phone to your computer via USB cable, you should be able to pull down your menu from the top and select USB Data mode. It will pop up a warning message that any apps you have running from your memory card will be unavailable – say yes. This will mount your phone to your PC like a flash drive and show up as a new device. From there you can copy/paste your zip file to the base directory of your phone’s mem card and it should show up in recovery mode. To ensure your phone doesn’t confuse the two files, if you’ve already admined it you can delete the admin.zip since you won’t need it anymore. Make sure when in recovery to also tell it to wipe your Dalvik cache and such.
One last note that happens with my phone – when you first connect it to the PC it will see the phone as either a modem or other type of device first. Wait about 30 seconds and it will interface as a removable device instead, which is what you want.