For those of you who have been waiting (a long time) for ICS update on the Droid Bionic, I have some good news for you. There’s a custom ICS ROM called “SpearmintGum Gummy Kang” ROM that will allow you to fully experience ICS.

The only thing that’s not working? The camera works for photos but video recording isn’t working.

Still, this is a fully-functional ICS ROM for your Droid Bionic that can be used as a daily driver.

Make sure to make a full backup of your current ROM and give this ROM a try. And let me know how it works for you.

Download ROM: (2 files)

Download SpearmintGum Gummy Kang

Credits – XDA

Here’s another method of rooting your Droid Bionic using the MotoFail rooting tool.

Step 1. Make sure “USB Debugging” is checked ON under Settings->Applications->Development.

Step 2. Connect your Droid Bionic to your computer via micro-USB cable and make sure USB connection is set to “Charge Only”.

Step 3. Download MotoFail for Windows or Linux/Mac.

Download MotoFail for Windows

Download MotoFail for Linux/Mac

Step 4. Make sure you have drivers installed, you can check by going to Device Manager and you should have something like “MOT Composite ADB Interface”.  If you don’t, download MotoHelper and install.  Then plug-out and plug-in your phone.

Step 5. Double-click on “Run.bat” for Windows and for Linux or Mac type “./run.sh” in terminal.  Rooting should begin.

Step 6. After couple reboots, your Droid Bionic should be rooted.

For those of you on System version 5.5.893 or older, this is the new root method for your Droid Bionic.  If you have an earlier version, you can do a system upgrade or follow the older root method here.

There’s also another root method, you can use that one too.

Step 1. Set your phone as “Charge Only” after connecting USB cable from your phone to the computer.

Step 2. Make sure USB Debugging is checked on under Settings->Applications->Development.

Step 3. Connect your phone to your computer via USB Cable.

Step 4. For Windows, you need to install Motorola drivers.

Download drivers here:

Download Droid Bionic Windows drivers

As you can see in above screenshot, you can double-check your drivers are installed correctly by opening up Device Manager in Control Panel.  You should get Mot Composite ADB Interface under Android USB Devices or something very similar to that.

Step 5. Next download DroidBionicRootNew.zip and unzip, you should find a folder called files and a file called runme.bat.

Download DroidBionicRootNew.zip

Step 6. Simply double-click on runme.bat to start the rooting process.

Step 7. After couple reboots, your Droid Bionic should be rooted.  You can verify by updating the SuperUser app and Superuser request should pop up.

Having trouble?  You can leave your questions here and me or other handful of Droid Bionic users will get back to you.

You can also watch the YouTube video tutorial in the beginning of this post.

What to do next?

Please see our Droid Bionic Root Guide.

Can’t wait for official version of ICS to arrive for your rooted Droid Bionic?  (Trust us, we know how you feel.)

If you don’t mind the camera and 3G/4G working, you can try out an alpha version of ICS ROM that’s working flawlessly otherwise.  You don’t have to use this ICS ROM as daily driver but you can surely try it out by making a backup of your current ROM in recovery then restoring back to it when you are done.

ICS?  Lookin’ good on Droid Bionic, that’s for sure.

Download:

Download ICS Alpha ROM

Want a really “fast” ROM on your rooted Droid Bionic?  If so, you might want to give Eclipse ROM a go, it’s simply really fast without any overclocking. I’ve been using Liberty ROM before this but the Eclipse ROM brings you full AOSP experience and feels much faster than any other ROM I’ve tried so far on the Droid Bionic.

Try it out and let me know what you think of this ROM!

Download ROM here:

Download Eclipse ROM

Donate to ROM Developer Here

To install new ROMs using SafeStrap recovery, you will have to do one more step than using the regular Bootstrap recovery.

The only difference is that  you need to enable Safe System, which effectively backs up your primary filesystem so it’s more “safe”.

Other than that, installation is same as the regular Bootstrap recovery.

Here’s a video tutorial guide to walk you through:

For those of you ROM flasholics, you might want to install SafeStrap Recovery, which is much “safer” than Bootstrap as you can access Recovery of your phone from boot.  This is good in case something goes wrong.

For example, if you flashed a new ROM but ends up in a boot-loop, you will have a tough time getting your phone working again.  But with SafeStrap, you can easily boot into Recovery and restore your backed up ROMs.

Installation is pretty simple, just make sure to remove Bootstrap app if you’ve installed it and install the Safestrap apk file.  Then run “install recovery”.

To access the new SafeStrap recovery, you can simply press the Menu button during boot when the SafeStrap boot splash comes on.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to install SafeStrap:

So you want custom boot animation on your Droid Bionic? Perhaps the Droid Razr boot animation I am using right now?

Well, if you have a rooted Droid Bionic running a custom ROM, most likely all you need to do is copy over the bootanimation.zip file to /system/media or /data/local directory and reboot.

Step 1. Download Droid Razr bootanimation.zip on your computer then copy over to your Droid Bionic’s internal storage of microSD card.

Download Droid Razr boot animation

Step 2. Download ES File Explorer app from the Market then make sure “Root Explorer” and “Mount File System” is checked on.

Step 3. Find the bootanimation.zip you copied over earlier and do a long-press then “Copy”.

Step 4. Browse to /system/media folder (or it could be /data/local) and paste the file and reboot.  Your phone should display the Droid Razr boot animation now.  For more boot animations, check out AndroidBootAnimation.com.

One of the pleasures of rooting your Droid Bionic is that you can get much better life with a custom ROM and I think I have found the perfect ROM that gives you a ton more battery life. The Liberty3 ROM that I reviewed the other day is giving my Droid Bionic with extended battery well over 2 days of battery life with normal web surfing and some Pandora listenin.

Anyways, I just wanted to update you guys that Liberty3 ROM does really well with battery life over other BLUR-based ROMs, it’s a surprise to me and you can try it too.

(Above shows near 2 days of battery and still have 37% left!!!)

Above shows my Battery Monitor Widget app showing I still have nearly 11 hours left on 37% of battery, which is about right.

I personally really like the new BLUR (or whatever Moto calls it) on the new Droid Bionic (well it’s old already I pre-ordered a RAZR yesterday) but if you like plain, vanilla Android experience (or AOSP), there’s a ROM made just for you, the Liberty3 ROM.

UPDATE: Liberty3 ROM gets really great battery life!

The Liberty3 ROM sorta reminds me of CyanogenMod7 a bit but it has some nice features I really need like DSP manager.  When listening to music on my earbuds at the driving range, DSP manager rocks my sound.

With that said, there’s also lots of tweaks you can do on the Liberty3 ROM including a graphical init.d tweaking support, which comes in handy if you know nothing about code (and even if you did).

Overall, the Liberty3 ROM is the best AOSP experience you will get out of your Droid Bionic so go try it out and let me know what you think!

Download ROM here:

Download Liberty3 ROM

Donate to ROM developer here