my_Phone - just modded ....

been really looooong since i last blogged. topic this time is .... modding. dun really wanna write another techie blog. not that i dislike 'em, they are good and contain pretty useful information but just dun wanna mix it with my blogroll :)

read the DISCLAIMER section at the bottom before you read this entry.
it all satrted when i was trying to install Yahoo ! Go 3. its a really cool j2me application with whole bunch of widgets, yahoo mails, maps bla bla bla .... so desperately wanted this, fortunately / unfortunately i got an error saying you need software higher than R1JC001 or something. after googling for a while, came across this tech blog which opened doors for me to the whole new world of modding.

initially it looked pretty complex and risky ... indeed it is, for beginners. but once you go through couple of tutorials, you have decent knowledge to take the first step. of course it is a "risky" business. flashing could actually screw up your phone royally (for those of you who don't know what flashing is .... flashing is a process by which you write some data to EEPROM im sure u must've read this in your CS books but now is the time to do it ;) and in the process, you would loose existing data if any). but this is the risk that makes you feel good when you do it successfully :)

fortunately fair amount of firmwares, patches, packs are floating around for k790i (and alike) and then i have been using this phone for almost 2 yrs now, so was willing to take the risk ;) and hell yeah ... it pays off. you can completely customize your phone just the way you want it. you can upgrade your phone's firmware, audio drivers, camera drivers, menu icons, menu layout and the list goes on. i burned the walkman's drivers to my phone, it worked well but ain't that great. i mean i can see the loudness has improved but nothing noticeable when it comes to the quality of sound. it will only work within the limits of the hardware :) of course you can modd the hardware too but lets leave that to the real pros ;) as far as camera is concerned there is no need to get rid of cybershot drivers and put custom drivers... well you certainly can do it but it already is one of the best. i also changed the menu icons. k790i has a very good display quality but if you are bored of the same old stuff, you can put your own. this is not same as the "theme" thing. a theme only modifies the background, foreground and style but not the layout, icons not even menu text. if you want to put your own menu icons, you will need 12 or 24 images for each menu item in selected/unselected state and then you write them to phone's file system. in fact the SE system was sooo impressive that the menu is xml driven and all you need to do is put your image's name/path in the xml. if you spend time understanding the menu structure, the layout, you can customize your entire menu. and beilieve me customizing menus are like simplest thing and completely follows WYSIWYM pattern. you can even have flash-based menus, wallpapers etc. you can get skins for your music player. the best part was to patch the firmware with an elfpack. SE phones (k790i) can be patched to run elfs which are popular in the *nix world. once your phone supports elf, you can run elves on it. not all elves work on all phones but you still have a support for additional format :) you can give a complete makeover to your phone.

need a kick-start?
gather all possible data such as platform, software version etc about your phone. go through forums (there are dozens of em) understand what you can do and what you can't before you actually begin. you will then need to download couple of tools likfe FAR manager, SEToolLite, XS++ etc. backup your GDFS using these tools. in fact back up everything you can. i lost all my contacts as i forgot to back up my data. :( you will need to hunt for firmwares for your phones depending on your platform and CID#. you can then burn the main firmware and filesystem. once you have successfully burned the firmware, first thing you might want to do is delete the data account, wap profiles etc. and put your own as im not sure how they might reflect in your bills ;) and then from here it all depends on what you want to customize, apply patches etc.

and last but not the least. finally i got the Yahoo! Go app working. its simply awesome. Yahoo rocks. anytime.

DISCLAIMER: Do not try this unless you know what you are doing. flashing can seriously damage your phone's hardware. some of the operations can not be undone while some can be. some operations can make your phone unusable and you may not be able to recover it. your phone's warranty gets void when you debrand your phone. try this at your own risk. this blog entry was written only to make you aware of such possibilities and to share knowledge. any damage/loss caused will solely be the responsibility of the owner.


- signing off
ameyas7