Mobility Digest » ROMs

Windows Mobile Interview: XDA TV Throwback Episode

Albert Bunn — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:40:57 +0000

Hey there, it’s Albert again. I haven’t posted an entry in a little bit because I’ve been pretty busy lately, but I thought I’d like to write again and shed some light on a spectacular YouTube video I watched around a week ago. For some of you that haven’t been there, one of the only other blogs beside Mobility Digest (that I know of anyway) that posts anything about Windows Mobile 6 anymore is XDA DEVELOPERS, and the other day I saw something on their YouTube channel that really caught my eye: They did sort of an interview between “Azrienoch” and “CajunFlavoredBob”. They talked a little bit about how “CajunFlavoredBob” got into Windows Mobile (and later their forum) and his past devices and his current HD2 and why he liked Windows Mobile and continues to use it to this very day. The almost eight minute video features interesting nuggets of information starting with where the name “XDA DEVELOPERS” came from – which led them into exposing to the world that British people have cell phones, and that one of those foreign carriers got one of HTC’s devices custom branded as the “XDA”. He shared about his first phone device, the HTC “Wallaby” and really nailed exactly what I thought about how the market has changed: We’re moving into higher end, yet more disposable devices. If I’m not mistaken, the launch cost of the Samsung i700 was in the $600 neighborhood, and you can get powerful smartphones today on contract for next to nothing which seems to be really hurting the industry to me. What this does is it screws up the value of everything – any mobile handheld now depreciates faster than video games pertaining to sports.

Anyway, “Bob” goes on to tell us about some more evolutionary HTC Windows Mobile handhelds which included the well known Blue Angel, the original HTC Touch, the Titan, Touch Pro, and the Touch Pro 2. He went into a little more detail on his Touch Pro 2 and held it up beside the Wizard to demonstrate how deep HTC’s “Sense/Manila” made it into the system before Microsoft screwed over the Windows Mobile userbase. From there, they moved on to talking about how (little) the messaging program changed over the years and how our messaging habits as a culture have evolved before he kind of got ready to wrap up the video.

Toward the end, he shared how he had tried Android on his HD2, but it just didn’t “feel” the same to him, and while he said he was learning, Windows Mobile is still his “Daily Driver”. After this part, they add in a random clip of their weird girl and she told her HD2 story (ironically, she basically just ranted about why she didn’t like it), and then “Cajun” comes back and talks a little bit more about holding onto his HD2 for the immediate future since he could still run the “modern” Android platform but also be able to use Windows Mobile which he (and still many of us) are comfortable with. To conclude they shared some “deep” thoughts about how since Windows Mobile 6 had no real successor, it will be tough for many of us to say “goodbye” and admit that the platform is kind of almost “dead”, although it will certainly live on here and on XDA Developers for a very very long time.

::AB

Artemis HD2 ROM Updated (HTC HD2) (version 64.0) (8/26)

Albert Bunn — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:25:25 +0000

For all our HD2 owners surfing the blog here, popular ROM author Sternas has released yet another update to his ever popular Artemis HD2 Custom ROM for HTC’s revolutionary HD2. Version 64.0 was more of a simpler performance upgrade with just a few modifications made “under the hood” for memory and performance, but still a good looking ROM packed full of useful goodies and preinstalled software, while not overdoing it. Sternas has a vast number of screenshots of the ROM that can only be described as a multitude so that you can get a pretty good idea of what Artemis HD2 looks like before you even put it on your device (I know I am personally a little “leary” sometims myself of ROM threads without screenshots). For those of you fortunate enough to still own what is arguably still the best mobile phone ever built, head on down to Sternas’s thread at XDA DEVELOPERS to learn more abut the Artemis HD2 ROM.

::AB

HTC EVO 3D from Sprint $49.99 today only

Doug Smith — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:30:28 +0000

Looking to start Monday off right? Why not treat yourself to Sprint’s flagship device from HTC, the EVO 3D for $50 bucks! Wirefly just dropped the price to finish August sales strong. You can take advantage of it today only which includes a two year contract of course. In other EVO 3D good news, if you are not fearful of rooting your device, I saw that legendary ROM Chef NRGZ28 was looking for volunteers to do some testing on ROM for the EVO 3D he is working on.

Head on over to Wirefly now to take advantage of this special deal.

Hot Damn, CyanogenMOD on 500K+ Androids

Doug Simmons — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:25:14 +0000

Moves like Jagger baby. And that’s not including derivative ROMs. So CM is a popular custom rom franchise. It’s not so much that it makes your phone better, rather if you’ve got an Android phone, to use a car analogy, if you want to drive stick shift, firing up CyanogenMOD gives your phone a manual transmission, capiche? So let’s not all start saying Google employees are slacking and a ragtag bunch of geeks are finishing the job for them. Different strokes for different folks, and you get many strokes from which to choose by going Android.

Seems a lot of consumers out there like to drive their phone with a stick shift as the team behind CM which is surrounded by a large community of informal contributors typically found on IRC, XDA, the CM forums and everywhere else pretty much, is supporting a couple hundred devices with the devices whose users don’t mind it phoning home to report its existence (not mandatory) striking the 500K mark. Counting those who opted out of the anonymous reporting plus custom roms based on CM plus other custom roms, who the hell knows how many, but a lot. Enough that I’d call it almost a mainstream activity to be taken seriously by the man, running custom Android roms.

What’s interesting to me is that one out of three of those installations are not of an official release or even a release candidate but of a nightly or a kang release, the kind of software that you’re warned extra aggressively to use at your own risk and that it is unstable, buggy etc, the ones you have to google a little harder to track down. It’s interesting because that’s a high ratio and it testifies to the widespread thirst of consumers to have the absolute latest bleeding edge software on their phone and I would submit that the same mentality is present when it comes to buying phones for the people who can afford the tip-top shelf phone available. Maybe Motorola with their stupid locked bootloaders should take note.

Doug Simmons

AT&T’s Dell Streak Android 2.2 update is released

Doug Smith — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:41:55 +0000

I know I have complained about it for a long time and wrote up many articles blasting AT&T for their failed update practices. But I just got word that the Dell Streak update for the locked AT&T Devices has finally been spotted and available for download.

If you don’t get the update notification automatically, you can check for it manually(Menu > Settings > About phone > System updates) or visit the link below on your Streak:

http://mobileupdate.dell.com/?version=GAUSB1A111231

So click the link above and enjoy Froyo on your Dell Streak! If you want some information on Froyo and how it looks and acts on the Dell Streak, check out these two links:

http://mobilitydigest.com/dell-streak-updated-to-android-2-2-froyo/

http://mobilitydigest.com/what-to-expect-from-froyo-on-the-dell-streak/

[read]

AT&T Captivate update to Android 2.2 Froyo is finally here

Doug Smith — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:56:07 +0000

AT&T Captivate device owners rejoice! The Android 2.2 Froyo update is finally here! No this isn’t an early April Fools Day joke either. All you have to do is head on over to the update page (CLICK HERE) and make sure you read everything before hitting the DOWNLOAD button at the bottom of the page!

How Do I Update The Software On My AT&T SGH-i897 (Captivate) Phone To Android 2.2 (Froyo) Through Kies Mini For PC?

An Operating System upgrade from Eclair 2.1 to Froyo 2.2 is now available for the SGH-i897 (Captivate). Please read the FAQ below for information on how to update, to see what is new in Froyo, and much more.

Notice: Please back up all data such as your contacts, pictures, music, videos etc… prior to performing the update as data could be lost .

COMPUTER

Desktop/Laptop Computer Running 32bit Versions Of Either Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, or XP
All Firewall & Anti-Virus Programs Should Be Disabled
Administrative Privileges Required To Download & Install Software Including Drivers
An Available USB Port On The PC That Supports 2.0 USB
Windows Media Runtime 11 (automatically installed by Kies Mini if not present)

PHONE

Fully Charged Battery

OTHER

USB Data Cable (Included In Retail Box)
Any Previous Samsung Kies Software Should Be Removed

TMo US HD2 Official ROM Update Available*

David K — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:55:48 +0000

TMobile has an official statement of the HD2:

A software update for the HTC HD2 is now available for download. This software includes a number of key fixes, including improvements to the device software and access to new applications such as Shazam and AmazonMP3.

Customers can complete the software update by going to http://www.t-mobile.com/wmupgradeand following the step by step instructions to successfully complete the software update.

But doing that tells me I’m going to get an update to T-Mobile HD2 MR Software (Version 3.14.531.1) and that’s the only available download.You can see that the download shows a Date Updated of 9/23/10 which matches the 9/26/10 posting we had on a leak of the official ROM. The only difference is that ROM was version 3.14.531.0 (as opposed to .1). In other words, I hope there’s something else coming our way cause this is nothing…it does match the leaked ROM information from the other day though. A little disheartened over here since 3.14.531.0 has some serious Messaging issues and now I’m left with the prospect of updating and needed to reinstall apps, etc for an incremental update. So be it…

I Played With Flashing Fire And Didn’t Get Burned

David K — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:21:36 +0000

I’m not a smart person (but you knew that already). Within the last two days I’ve flashed two phones – a Pure and my HD2 and twice I thought I had bricked a phone and probably deserved bricks. On the Pure I downloaded the latest NRG ROM, extracted the zip to \NRG and went to run the .exe to start flashing. I noticed that the ActiveSync picture was a Fuze – I proceeded. Entered bootloader and it stopped, telling me the device was wrong. But how? OK, unzip it again (into the same directory) thinking that maybe it didn’t unzip right. Start flashing, see the Fuze image, keep going and it crashes again. OK, it must be that I have an older version of SPL (I saw that in some XDA thread),so I get the newest version (which requires disabling all of my antivirus software and a whole song and dance) and flash the latest SPL, go to \NRG and still showing a Fuze image and it fails to install again. What the heck? Oh in the \NRG directory was a former FUZE.nbh file…right. It turned out I had used \NRG in the past and it wasn’t a new directory so when I went to flash it was trying to flash that image. Turns out that if you try to flash the wrong device it doesn’t brick a phone. Interesting. Deleted the Fuze.nbh file and flashed it successfully.

So next up is my HD2 and I wanted the new leaked ROM. Download it, start flashing…and the program crashes during the flash. My phone is in bootloader (tricolor screen) and the software upgrade app is recovering from a crash. Windows noticed that the software may not have installed correctly. Would I like to retry? Well I have a phone in bootloader and I’m not disconnecting the USB, so sure, let’s see where this goes. And…it flashes successfully. Man I’m rusty at flashing. Probably time to get WP7 already…

Anyone else have any near death stories you want to share?

HD2 TMo USA Official ROM Leaked

David K — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:04:44 +0000

I have to say, it’s pretty impressive that TMo is supporting the HD2 enough to release what’s now the third official ROM. It’s also worth noting that the current ROM is glitchy when it comes to messaging (especially if Swype is enabled) so let’s hope that these are resolved in this new ROM. So getting to it, XDA has a leaked copy of an official TMo US ROM for the HD2 that they suspect will be publicly released shortly. Here’s the ROM info:

ROM Info:
Drivers 3.14
Radio 2.14.50.04
SPL Version 2.10
Build 21913.50.9.4
Sense version 2.5.20181424

If you recall, the last ROM was also released online days before the official release and the official release was identical to the leaked version. And for anyone that doesn’t know, you do not need to be unlocked to flash this ROM (since it’s an official ROM). The consensus seems to be that this is a better ROM that the prior official ROM and it comes with a new radio that seems to be better on signal strength.

Since XDA is going to experience some downtime soon, the download links are as follows: Rapidshare MultiUpload FileFactory and a mirror

I’ll be flashing this tomorrow (I left my micro-USB in the office) but if you give it a try tell us what your findings are.

Tilt 2 Official Upgrade Now Available!

Vikram — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:54:22 +0000

ATT and HTC released an official upgrade ROM for the Tilt 2. If you are reading this post it is more than likely that you are already on a custom ROM that is probably much better than this “upgrade” ROM. However, here are some of the changes in the new ROM and here is the download link (scroll down till you see “HTC TILT 2 (AT&T) ROM UPDATE 2.10.502.4 | 08.30.2010“)

What’s included:

HTC Sense replaces TouchFlo 3D

Ability to Format the SD Card directly in the device

Inconsistent Caller ID function Hotfix

TILT 2 Freezes in SMS application Hotfix

Phantom SMS/MMS Count Hotfix

Overall improvement in the devices stability/operation

Remember to backup your phone before you install this upgrade.

[via wmexperts]