Droid Hype

One of my favorite roms on the Sensation 4G is Bulletproof 1.4, based on Sense 3.0. It has the right mix of tweaks and mods to make it smooth and quick in the heavily populated world of S4G roms. However, one thing that was missing from the rom is the ability to wake the phone via the volume buttons. The version based on Sense 3.5 has it, but not on this Sense 3.0 version. So like any rom junkie, I ended up messing around with the android.policy.jar file and manage to smali/baksmali edit the file needed to make this happen.

For your enjoyment, download the zip below (log in first) and flash it via your recovery. Cache wipe isn’t necessary but it won’t hurt.

There is no guarantee that this will work with any other rom. It’s also highly suggested that you back up your /system/framework/android.policy.jar file or just run a nandroid on your existing rom. This was done entirely on a stock BP 1.4 environment and has been tested on this rom specifically.

  Volume Wake for Bulletproof 1.4 Rom (284.9 KiB, 3 hits)
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PS: If you have another rom you’d like this mod done on, I can run the edit for you. Just let me know what rom and what Sense version etc.

There’s a new radio just ripped from the RUU of the new Sensation XE. What’s great is that this radio works perfectly fine on the regular TMOUS Sensation 4G. Whether or not it has any added benefit has yet to be seen since it is so new. However, from initial speed tests it seems it’s slightly better or on par with previous releases.

The radio should show as 10.58.9035.00P_10.15.9035.02_2 under your phone settings on your S4G. Please head over to this XDA thread to download the latest release. Please confirm the md5sum before flashing! If it does not match, please re-download again or else you risk bricking your phone. You can check md5 via the adb shell or any free md5sum checker program.

To flash, all you need to do is place the downloaded PG58IMG.zip file at the root of your sdcard. Then reboot into your bootloader and it will prompt you to update it.

After the radio is done flashing, proceed to reboot the phone. You will most likely get stuck at the white HTC screen. Don’t worry, it’s easily fixable.

With adb, issue the command adb reboot recovery while on that white HTC screen. This is assuming you have adb tools installed and your phone is connected to your computer. If you do not have adb install, download the attached zip below that contains all you need for adb.

Once you are in recovery (Clockworkmod in my case), wipe cache, then go to advanced and wipe dalvik. Now reboot your phone and you should get past the white HTC screen now. You can also delete the zip file that you placed on your sdcard earlier or move it for safe storage somewhere else. It is best not to leave it sitting on your sdcard.

  Android ADB and Fastboot tools (13.2 MiB, 80 hits)
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A lot of custom rom users on the Sensation 4G have noticed screen of death occurrences and reboots/lockups. A developer on XDA has dug deep and found that the HTC RUU (Rom Upgrade Utility) and OTA (Over The Air) updates differ in that a rpm image located on the RUU is not present on the OTA release. By not flashing this rpm image to the correct partition, the odd problems people have been facing with custom roms have been creeping up. From initial reports, it seems this is working for the people who have flashed the rpm.img file correctly.

I’ve actually never had the screen of death issue, but I prefer to have the correct rpm flashed anyway.

The link to the XDA thread contains a bootloader zip that reflashes your recovery and bootloader as well as the rpm.img in question. I prefer to flash the rpm file via fastboot USB since I don’t need to update or fuss with my recovery and whatnot. I also find it safer to do it via fastboot instead of a bootloader flash file.

If you already have the Android SDK installed and working, the fastboot tool is located in the tools directory. If you don’t have the SDK installed, download the zip below which contains the drivers you will need as well as the adb and fastboot executables for Windows. There is no need to install the entire SDK if all you want to use are the adb and fastboot tools.

** Flashing anything is your responsibility. What works for others may not work for you. Although this has worked fine for me, I am not responsible for what you may possibly do to your device.

1. Download the ADB/Fastboot zip located in this post. You will need to be a registered user to download any files from DH.
2. Open a command prompt to where you unzip’d the adb/fastboot file you just downloaded.
3. Install the HTC drivers if you do not have that already.
4. Disable fastboot under Settings->Power and then power down.
5. Hold down volume – and then hit the power button.
6. You are now in the bootloader (white) screen. Select fastboot from the options and hit the power button.
7. Connect your USB cable from your phone to your computer.
8. The fastboot banner should change to fastboot usb. If you don’t see this, stop and check your driver install.
9. Download the rpm.img zip attached to this post and place it in the same directory as where you unzip’d the adb/fastboot zip. The md5sum for this file when unzip’d is 59a52ec272c0dbdaf262f1f32e543b4c. If your md5 does not match, DO NOT FLASH. Please redownload and try again.
10. Issue the command “fastboot devices” and make sure your device shows up.
11. If it does, issue the command “fastboot flash rpm rpm.img“. This should take all of 5 seconds to flash over to your handset.
12. Once it flashes and you get the OK, unplug the USB cable and reboot the device via the menu and your power button.
13. Enjoy and be free of the screen of death.

  Android ADB and Fastboot tools (13.2 MiB, 80 hits)
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  Sensation 4G rpm.img file (57.5 KiB, 19 hits)
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Over the weekend, the T-Mobile HTC Sensation 4G was “cracked” and to everyone’s delight s-off (security off) was achieved. This basically allows for custom kernals and roms to be installed via, you guessed it, a custom recovery.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Power off your phone and then press volume down and the power button. A white screen (bootloader) will appear. Please note down the h-boot version your Sensation is running. Also note that you have s-on listed at the top of this white screen.
2. Reboot and let the OS load completely.
3. Download the Revolutionary application from revolutionary.io. You will be prompted to enter some information including a serial key and the information from your bootloader screen in the earlier step. Keep this page open!
4. Read the short description of what Revolutionary is on their wiki.
5. Download and install the correct HTC drivers from their wiki.
6. Extract and run the Revolutionary.exe file as administrator (assuming you are on Windows 7).
7. Plug your phone into your computer. The Revolutionary application should now detect your phone and will provide you with a unique serial key. Copy this serial key down by right clicking, selecting mark, then right clicking again.
8. Go back to the Revolutionary.io website and enter in your serial key. You will be provided with a unqiue beta key. Copy this beta key and enter/paste it into the Revolutionary application.
9. Your phone will be temp rooted and it will reboot into another white screen, which will be the fastboot screen.
10. Let the application perform some tasks and it will reboot the white screen at least once. On the second load, you should see Revolutionary on the first line and s-off will be shown on the second line.
11. The application will now ask if you wish to flash a custom clockworkmod recovery. By all means select yes. If you do not get this option, do not worry and just follow the steps in the next section.
12. Now if you were prompted for recovery flashing, let it finish and then load the root zip found on the Revolutionary wiki. This will perma-root your device if you are on the stock rom.
13. The last step is to find a rom to try. At the moment, InsertCoin and Virtuous Sensation seem to have the most development. These roms work on T-Mobile US Sensation 4Gs, so wifi calling is included. The kernals have been OC’d as well, nice touch.

Flashing Clockworkmod recovery manually

In case the Revolutionary application did not prompt you for recovery flash, here’s how to do it manually. You must have adb installed and working.

Hold down volume – and power and boot into your bootlooader. Select fastboot and then plug your USB cable in. The screen should say fastboot USB now.

1. Download this CWM 4.0.1.4 recovery image for the Sensation (Pyramid).
2. Open up a command prompt to your tools directory of adb.
3. Issue the command: fastboot flash recovery cwm-4.0.1.4-pyramid-fixed.img
4. It should show two lines saying sending and successfully flashed.
5. Power down and then hold volume – and power. Selection recovery from the menu and you should be greeted with a blue CWM menu.

*Update* – Clockworkmod recovery 4.0.1.5 is now available via Rom Manager. Download the app from the market and hit the recovery flash option and you are good to go!

The official LG Gingerbread update is finally out for the LG/T-Mobile G2x! You will need to grab the LG Mobile Software updater. Please note that this will break any root access you already have.

So in typical DroidHype fashion, here is a link to grab a ClockworkMod flashable pre-rooted zip of the new 2.3.3 update.

Good job LG and T-Mobile for finally pushing this out!

Via [XDA]

*Update* – this appears to be LG’s release and not an official T-Mobile release. Once T-Mobile finalizes their testing, this will get signed and the over-the-air (OTA) will be sent out. Either way, this is good in LG’s eyes which means it should be good for most!

*Update* – LG’s release is indeed the same as the T-Mobile release. Flash away folks!

The Seidio guys have been making quality cases and accessories for many phones in recent years, but it seems something isn’t right with their current Surface case for the LG G2x.

As you can see from the above picture, that corner mark was made by the inner edge of the Seidio Surface case. The case either needs to have it’s inner edges shaved slightly to prevent this from happening. This is just one corner, the other three corners have similar cosmetic blemishes now.

Is this a repeat of what happened with Evo users from last year? For the time being, I’m back to using my softer TPU case. A note has been sent into Seidio technical support, I’ll see what they have to say about this.

It looks like all the freezes, lock ups, reboots and hot batteries on the T-mobile G2x are caused by a bad batch of batteries? From this forum post on the T-mobile customer forums, many are reporting that getting a newer replacement battery has pretty much eliminated all the above mentioned issues. If you have swapped the entire phone numerous times, try swapping just the battery instead.

The EagleBlood 1.0.3 Revamped rom is probably one of the more popular custom roms for the T-mobile G2x. The only flaw with it is the failure of Swype to work. This is actually not the fault of the rom, but more of the fault of the rom it was built on which is the leaked Gingerbread (2.3.3) rom.

To fix this, flash the following zip like you would any custom rom via Clockworkmod recovery. This should correct the error message that pops up telling you that Swype is in limited functionality.

Swype fix for EagleBlood 1.0.3 Revamped

[Update] – This should work for all ROMs based on the Gingerbread leak for the G2x.

So from a few reports on XDA, there’s some discussion on whether or not removing a piece of protective plastic from the back of the G2x results in better reception. The plastic can either be blue-ish or black like the picture above. It’s located right above the bottom speakers after you remove the back cover of the G2x. There’s no warranty voiding since it’s just a protective piece of plastic like you see on a lot of electronics.

One thing I did notice that was better was wifi calling. My first phone call out via wifi did not break up like it normally did. I’ll try on various access points through out the day, but try this out and see if it does anything for you.

Following yesterdays post about rooting the T-mobile G2x, here comes Clockworkmod (CWM) recovery. @ChrisSoyars just posted a version of CWM on XDA. His steps are done on Linux, but since a majority of us are Windows users here’s how you’ll do it. There are external links here because a lot of this will probably change.

1. Download the  CWM Recovery version 3.1.0.1 with ext4 support. You can choose internal sdcard or external. The following steps are for external sdcard recovery.
2. Grab the nvflash utility and drivers over at MoDaCo.
3. Place the CWM recovery file from Step 1 into the same directory where you extracted nvflash to in step 2.
4. Remove the battery and then hold down both volume buttons and connect your USB cable to your computer.
5. Your computer will prompt you for drivers — navigate to the drivers you downloaded in step 2 and install them.
6. Once the drivers are installed, unplug the USB cable from your phone only.
7. Now once again, hold down both volume buttons but this time keep holding them down while plugging in your USB cable.
8. Open a command prompt (Start->Run->cmd) and navigate to the directory you extracted nvflash to and copy/paste the following: nvflash.exe –bct E1108_Hynix_512MB_H8TBR00U0MLR-0DM_300MHz_final_emmc_x8.bct –bl fastboot.bin –download 5 p999-ext4-ums-external-recovery.img
9. Your screen will show SW Upgrade and your command prompt will cycle through a bunch of nvflash operations. Once the flash is done, it will tell you so. Give it a few minutes after that and then unplug the USB cable.
10. Hold volume down and power when booting up to gain access to the CWM recovery. You can let go once you get past the LG boot screen. If you let go prematurely, it will drop you into the SW Upgrade screen. Use the volume buttons to navigate and the power button to select your options.

Tip: If you issue a nvflash command, you will need to unplug your USB cable and replug it every time or else the next nvflash command will not take. I’m not sure why this happens, but repeating a nvflash command back to back doesn’t seem to work.

[Update 04/28/2011] – Update the steps with better instructions and with the latest release of CWM recovery.

Note: The difference between doing the above and flashing CWM recovery via Rom Manager is that the above steps will allow you to use the volume down and power combination when booting up. If you do this via Rom Manager at this point, you won’t be able to access the recovery in that manner. This is important because if you end up boot looping and can’t boot up correctly, having volume down and power to access recovery will be your life saver.

[Update 05/25/2011] – Krylon360 has released a customized version of CWM that supports ext4 as well as ext3. Go grab it and then load the Trinity kernel for some added performance.