1. Yes, one can brick the rezound - permanently unusable. Many wild & crazy Cowboys at xda permanently brick phones all the time. It seems a game to them, and verizon or insurance keeps buying them replacement phones.
Things are more complicated than Motorola phones because HTC gives us more access.
At
Welcome to HTCdev one waives his warranty to be able to unlock the bootloader.
After unlocking the bootloader loader the stock recovery is completely replaced with Amon RA recovery or TWRP recovery.
SuperSU.zip is installed by the recovery to gain root access. Now you can run Titanium Backup and Wifi Teather programs.
At http:unlimited. io one can obtain S-OFF which allows access to all partitions. This provides more features like the ability to go backwards in operating system version. They also provide you replacement hboot bootloader.
The biggest risk to bricking is flashing a hboot. If the flashing fails, you get bricked. The replacement hboot are not signed by HTC, so if the command to go from S-OFF to S-ON occurs you get bricked.
My opinion is to get unlocked, rooted, and S-OFF but never use a custom hboot. Every new version of the Android os comes with a new stock hboot, and that is the only time I install a new hboot.
Another way people screw up is by mixing up parts from different versions. Believe it or not people have used cell radio firmware from gingerbread with ics. People have also done the opposite. There have been bricking incidents where people mixed partitions contents between versions.
Personally I need a compelling reason to use a rom. Some roms start with the stock Android os, get rid of Verizon apps, eliminate HTC sense, add optional gsm support, etc.. These don't sound so bad.
Most roms start with android os from a completely different HTC phone. Initially they brick phones and break some phone functions. It's always a question of whether the rom's features are worth dealing with its broken functions.
I consider the rezound developers so reckless and immature that I won't use any rom they make. But, I will be very tempted if cyanogenmod 10 comes.
I rom my Motorola Droid X, currently using gummy.
The safe way to rom is always start with a fresh RUU install and then only replace components with those explicitly stated as being safe for your version of the operating system by a trusted developer.
I've seen people with screwed up phones after going from one rom to another without first going back to stock first. They have serial romers who change roms every few days.
Rezound land is more like the wild west compared to Droid X land.
2. The Rezound has the best cell radio of any verizon 4G phone. 720p screen is nice, but not in full blown outdoor sunlight. Best to stand in the shade of a tree. Battery isn't great, so buy Verizon store extended battery or charge often.
Regardz
Howard
