The Android 1.6 Image + some ideas

 GW620  No Responses »
May 302010
 

So, I’ve been running my 1.6 Apps2SD image for a few days now, and I’m loving it so far! 

My favourite improvements are:

  1. Battery life
      • It used to last about 24 hrs for me, unless I hardly used the phone at all.  It seems like I’m getting around %50 more life.  My last charge cycle took 1day, 16hrs to drop from %100 to 5%.  Not too shabby.  That’s with wifi, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Weather all running in the background.  :)
  2. Apps
      • It’s totally subjective, but it feels like there are more apps available in the market for this version.
      • Wooo!  Dosbox works.  I just wish World Of Xeen was playable.
  3. SSHD
      • Oh dropbear, how to a love thee, let me count the ways!
      • The ability to ssh to the phone instead of using adb shell is a HUGE improvement.  Cursor keys work as expected, Nano works as expected, bash tab completion, colour ls even in Windows, the list goes on and on.  This may be my most favourite new feature.

We’ve also had some great ideas over on the XDA thread.   I’m going to work on making a very flexible boot.img that will allow a number of different things:

  1. Non nandroid flashing. 
    • You’ll have to nandroid the boot.img on once, but after that it’ll give you the option of flashing a firmware file from /sdcard during bootup.
  2. Recovery boot
    • I may be able to make something that’ll boot up a recovery image from /sdcard so we can make+restore nandroid backups and do other recovery stuff during bootup without needing to use “fastboot boot everecovery01a.img”  This will also allow Windows users to back up their phones without needing a linux VM or access to a Mac.

I’ll be working on this today, and will provide an update later on.  I expect I’ll be able to get 1 working today, but 2 will be a little trickier.

ADB Source Code

 GW620  No Responses »
May 282010
 

Here’s the source for the version of ADB that works in Linux. I don’t think I made any major changes to it – I was trying to make it work properly in OSX when I still thought the problemdetailed here was an issue with ADB. It turned out to have more to do with LG, but I’d fumbled around a little in the ADB code trying to make it work initially, and this version seems to work in Linux with the new firmware. I suspect that what’s actually going on is that the version of ADB distributed in the SDK is older than the one distributed with the AOSP, and the AOSP version just works, but here’s the source regardless. :)

Android 1.6 Apps2SD+SSHD

 GW620  No Responses »
May 272010
 

Update: Something seems to have gone horribly wrong with the first image. Give this one a try instead. A few people have confirmed that it works.  It’s a slightly smaller repack of the same image – I reduced the size by removing a few of the apps I’d crammed in to /system/app, so you’ll have to install Facebook and Google Sky yourself now. ;)

Well, Rogers/LG is being brutally slow releasing the 1.6 update.  There is already a Korean update for the KH5200 that mostly works on the GW620, so I spent some time today making it run as smooth as possible.  I currently have an image that is working well, but you have to manually config the APN after installing or there’s no 3G connectivity.

The image is as done as it’s going to get tonight.  Don’t get it here!  Make sure to read the Known issues while it’s downloading – there are some things you need to do to make the image work properly.

The status so far:

  • Running well on 1.6
  • 3G works after manual APN setup
  • Rooted with SuperUser APK
  • Bash/nano/busybox/terminfo available
  • Made the required mods to the initrd to enable tolemaC’s Apps2SD method
  • tolesetup works
  • Cleaned up most of the cruft from the Korean image (e.g. Maple Story, Seoul Subway map, etc)
  • Added upgraded Google maps + Google Nav to the system.img so it doesn’t take valuable userdata space
  • Added a bunch of apps and utilities to the remaining free space on the system.img.  It’s now packed to the brim with goodness.
  • Set the init.rd to mount the /system partition as read/write.  No more “adb remount” to make changes
  • Included the excellent TagLauncher home screen.  It’s free, and it rocks!
  • SSHD out of the box!  Now you can ssh to your phone.  Login as with “gw620” for the username and password.  You can change the user/pass by editing the /system/bin/rundropbear file.
  • Lots of other little things

ToDo:

  • Get the APN auto-configured
  • See if I can remove the obnoxious password from the “Enable Root” menu

Known Issues:

  • Google Goggles crashes after taking a pic
  • First boots in Korean.  You need to hit “next” at the bottom, and then select English.
  • Will definitely require a wipe of userdata or factory reset before installing.   Go in to the hidden menu and do a factory reset, OR when you boot up in fastboot mode to burn the image do a “fastboot –w”
  • You need to manually add the APN before data connectivity will work.  To add the APN follow these instructions:
    1. Install the image (duh)  ;)
    2. boot up, and go to the dialer
    3. enter 3845#*5200# to enter the hidden menu
    4. Click on Module Test
    5. Click on Stability Test
    6. Click on Enable Root
    7. Enter the password “eve&adam&&620love!”
    8. reboot the phone
    9. open a command prompt on your computer
    10. “adb shell am start -a android.settings.APN_SETTINGS”
    11. The APN config will open on the phone.
    12. Click “New APN”
    13. Enter the APN info.  For Rogers, just set the name as “Rogers” and the APN as “internet.com” and leave everything else as default.  Other carriers will have to look online to get their APN settings.
    14. That’s it.  Data should now work.  :)

Thanks to tolemaC for his excellent work on the tolesetup utility, which I’ve blatantly ripped from his most excellent 1.5 image.

Thanks to everyone that has hit that little donate button too, and to everyone who’s sent encouraging words and suggestions.  :)

Changed Web Hosting Provider

 Blog  No Responses »
May 202010
 

Quick note – I just changed my webhost from Sunwave over to GoDaddy.  For the same price I get 30x the storage and 60x the transfer/bandwidth, plus 24/7 support!  Crazy!

There may have been some service disruption yesterday as the DNS records propagated, but it looks like it’s all good now. 

The extra storage on the new host should allow me to host more than 1 firmware image at a time – Woohoo!

Donations

 Blog  No Responses »
May 112010
 

A few of you have donated to my site in the past week – Thank you!

I wanted some way to publicly thank donators, so I’ve changed the donation system to optionally show your name and link to a site of your choice.  Unfortunately, the folks that have already donated previously aren’t included in the list but I’m looking for a way to get their usernames in there.

Also, I’ll be including a list of any non-anonymous donators in a small “Thanks!” app on each firmware I release. 

Your support is very appreciated, and keeps me hacking away!

 Posted by at 9:15 pm  Tagged with:

Rooted Rogers 1.6 ROM

 GW620  No Responses »
May 082010
 

Update: Don’t use this unless you really have to – the new Korean 1.6 image is WAY more stable. This one crashes, apps don’t work, and it basically sucks.

Ok, here’s a quick and dirty root of the Rogers beta 1.6 rom.

3g will not work unless you do a factory reset.

The ABI problem is fixed, so NDK code will install. (e.g. Dosbox, Google Goggles, etc)

I’ve been running this for a week, and it’s fairly stable. Outside of having to factory-reset to get 3g working, everything has been smooth with it.

I’ll work on an Apps2SD version once I have a final version from Rogers in my hands.

Enjoy – and let me know if you have any issues. :)

There are a few issues now – this is definitely early Beta… Don’t install unless you can handle a little instability.