First of I would like to say that none of these hacks and files are my own work. This stuff was done by all the amazing phone developers over at XDA Developers. I am am simply writing a few posts on rooting the HTC Evo since most of the information was all spread out over the forums and I had a hard time gathering it all together in a organized manner.
The WiFi chip in the HTC Evo supports Wireless N technology, which allows for faster throughput on your WiFi connection. To use this you need a Wireless N capable AP or router. For some reason HTC decided to disable the wireless n capability of this chip but this can be fixed. I am going to assume that the reason this was disabled was battery life but I am not really sure to be honest. Anyway the hack used to be more complicated but some of the nice folks over at XDA packages up a zip file which makes this hack a breeze.
Here are the simple steps to get wireless N working:
EDIT: After doing this hack myself I have decided to recommend against it. I will leave the tutorial up but the enabling of wireless N simply destroys the Evo’s already not so good battery life. You have been warned.
1. Download the following file: wifi_n-4g-stock-signed.zip
2. Mount your phone as a drive
3. Copy the zip file to the root of your sdcard
4. Unmount the phone
5. Open a command prompt in the adb enviorment (C:\android-sdk-windows\tools if you followed my other steps)
6. Issue the following command
- adb reboot recovery
7. You should now be booted into the Clockwork Recovery screen
8. Select update a .zip from sdcard
9. Let the update complete (About 30 seconds)
10. Reboot the phone & turn on WiFi
11. Connect to a wireless N access point to make sure its working.
*Special thanks to folks over at XDA for his instructions on this