Rob's Rants

OK … I could be spending Labor Day shopping at T-Mobile to replace my $350 brick if this goes horribly wrong. But, I think ookba’s ROM has reached the point of reasonable stability. So I’m willing to give it a shot. This will be a play-by-play — you can live or die along with me!

Why Am I Flashing?

This is an incomplete answer. Partly, just because I can. There really isn’t that much wrong with the stock WM 6.1 ROM. Unlike my previous Wing, there is no major memory leak affecting performance. The T-Mobile ROM also doesn’t have too much bloatware which can’t be turned off — dumping the MyFaves display is pretty simple for example.

I guess part of me wants to move to WM 6.5 simply because I expected it to be released by now and I expected that new phones released during the summer would have it. Also since Microsoft has finally confirmed that 6.5 will be released this month, I expect that most 3rd-party programs will support it so there shouldn’t be that much risk in switching. So — we’ll see how it goes.

Background Parameters

Phone Info:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
• OS Rev: 5.2.21048 (Build 21048.1.6.3)
• Radio Version 61.25t.25.19U_3.44.25.30
• RIL Version 2.002
• ROM Version: 1.17.531.5 (50264)
• ROM Date: 06/03/09
• Protocol Version: 61.25t.25.19U

Flashing Computer Info:

• Model: Dell Studio 1735
• OS: Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1)

If your system parameters differ by much, good luck.

Flashing Steps

1. Read, re-read, and re-re-read ookba’s tutorial about flashing and unbricking your phone: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=551959
2. Read, re-read, and re-re-read the HardSPL flashing instructions at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=550620
3. Fully charge phone battery over night!
4. Remove SIM and SD cards.
5. Power device on.
6. Bypass missing SIM error screen (hit DONE).
7. Connect to PC and allow ActiveSync to connect (I actually don’t sync my phone via ActiveSync, so I always choose “Connect without setting up device” . Allow any additional programs to finish communicating (for example, one of my PC Corel photo programs “sees” the pictures on the device when it’s connected. Let this finish.)
8. Download and unzip 1.17 Hard SPL patch. (I created a folder on the desktop to hold the files.)
9. Disable firewall software on PC! It’s bad enough that the Vista User Access Control pops up as programs run … having more warnings or possible interruptions due to virus/firewall programs just makes this worse.
10. Execute ‘auto.bat’ and follow directions on PC screen — hit any key as requested.
11. Screen on phone pops up warning about untrusted software. Hit Yes and then click trackball on the next screen (there is an OK button that is partly obscured on our screen — you need to hit OK to continue).
12. Phone goes blank for about 30 seconds.


ROM Update Start Screen

13. Rom Update Utility pops up on PC.
14. Check box and hit next:
15. Second update screen appears. Verify that you have the device connected, etc. and hit NEXT.
16. You’ll see the progress screen warning that the update might take 10 minutes … it won’t (we’re not installing a complete ROM, just the SPL fix). After just a few seconds, the bar is at 100% and you are done.


Install Complete

After this step is complete you should verify that the SPL version is correct before you continue trying to flash a custom ROM. To do this, enter the bootloader (with phone off, hold Volume Up on side and power on) and see what’s listed on the tri-colored bootloader screen.

The text you want to see flashes by in less than a second, and is the first line in yellow at the top of the screen. You can enter the bootloader without continuing and wiping your phone clean, so don’t worry too much about this step. What you want to see is the string: “1.17.HARD” at the end of this line. If you don’t want to go through the process of actually setting your phone back to the factory default, then hit any key to exit the bootloader without continuing. I needed to start it twice before I read the line correctly and verified that my phone said “1.17.HARD.” Excellent it worked ….

In part 2, I flash the cooked ROM!

Windows Mobile 6.5 … er, excuse me, Windows Phone 6.5 … here I come.

In Part 1, I successfully installed the HardSPL security fix on my phone. The process and instructions worked like a charm. So I’m, willing to try part 2. Here it goes.

As before, I created a dedicated working directory on my PC and downloaded the file from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=551642. The file is in a RAR archive (as opposed to a ZIP archive) so you will need to uncompress it before you can use it. I use 7Zip, but WinRAR and other programs work for this too.

Please see Part 1 of this series to see the parameters of my Dash 3G and the computer I am using to flash.

As before, here are the steps.

1. Read, re-read, and re-re-read the flashing tutorial and the entire thread about this ROM (yes, all 266 posts at the time of this writing).
2. Fully charge phone battery.
3. Remove SIM and MicroSD from phone.
4. Prepare computer by disabling firewall/virus software.
5. Connect phone and allow ActiveSync to connect.
6. Run ROM Update Utility (my ohone was HardSPL’d in Part 1)
7. Follow prompts … Hit OK
8. ActiveSync connection drops … bootloader screen starts.
9. Wait. Progress bar on phone and screen. The progress bar on phone and screen moved steadily for about 90 seconds to 100%.
10. Computer shows Rom Update Utility completion.
11. Phone booted to 3volution/HTC start screen and hung there for about a minute. Then booted to WinMo 6.5 screen with “Preparing Device” message.
12. After 2 minutes moved to SIM Failure screen.
13. Phone rebooted again to 3volution/HTC screen then to WinMo6.5 screen.
14. Clicked OK on Sim screen and saw 3volution homescreen! Success!

All in all — a pretty painless process. And at first glance, the 3volution ROM looks awesome! I will be reviewing after I get my mail accounts etc. set back up!

It’s been one day since I flashed my phone with a “cooked” (custom) ROM that I found on XDA-Developers. And so far I have no regrets.

3volution Homescreen

ROM chef “ookba” did an excellent job on this package, including some very clean and tasteful themes for the phone. I normally find most phone themes so cluttered and distracting that the first thing I do is set the background to a simple, plain black. But the default “Islands” wallpaper on this ROM is actually so nice I want to keep it. And it passed the ultimate test … my wife saw it and said that she’d like to flash to this ROM just for the look of it. And, perhaps greatest of all, as you can see in the homescreen picture to the right, there are some decent colored battery, signal, and other icons baked right in! I don’t have to spend another day with those shitty white icons that ship with the default Windows Mobile ROMs.

Once installed, it only took me about an hour to reinstall all my software and get my mail accounts set back up. I have to say, using an Exchange server at work for my primary contacts manager is a blessing, as is Google Apps’ support of IMAP4. Long gone are the days of losing mail that was saved to your handheld. It takes only 5 minutes to completely rebuild my mailboxes from the server. Add to that my Google Apps Calendar for personal use and my Exchange calendar, and my life is back under control within 15 minutes of wiping my phone.

Cool Tools

Windows Mobile 6.5 added some nice features, and chef ookba made sure that critical system things were accessible. Like putting Internet Connection Sharing right on the main app list (it works — one of the first things I checked). He has also added several tools to allow easy management of the look of the ROM as well as several useful 3rd party apps that you would normally need to add separately to a default WinMo installation. Eight of them are shown on this capture of the Tools menu. Especially nice is the implementation of the “Titanium” homescreen architecture, which really advances the look and feel of the phone light years beyond the standard Windows Mobile homescreen and well beyond even the sliding panels in WinMo 6.5.

So, the bottom line after 1 day – the phone works perfectly after flashing, the ROM looks and works well, and I am very happy I took the plunge. More information as I dig deeper into the ROM and use it for daily work.

And it’s awesome!

This is just a quick post to confirm what a number of people already know — the 3volution ROM for the Dash 3G is solid. I’ve used and abused the phone for 3 weeks now and it is still fast, clean, and stable. The only bug I’ve found so far is that the Fn key doesn’t work in the Skyfire browser, if you’ve clicked a link in an e-mail to launch it. It works fine if you start the browser on its own. Weird.

But otherwise I can say that Windows Mobile 6.5 looks and performs great. The other day I realized that as I was walking to work, I was running Pandora, connected to my bluetooth headphones, Google Maps was running with Latitude turned on, I had Nimbuzz and GV Dialer running in the background, and I was sending and receiving e-mail on an Exchange account and a Google Apps account. And the phone didn’t even slow down when I switched screens. I am impressed. Together, the Dash 3G and the 3volution ROM are a fantastic pair.

I’ve been running a custom ROM on my Dash 3G since its creator, Ookba, released it on XDA-Developers.com. I had been running his version 3VO.1.60.090209 since it was first released.

Since then a couple of supposedly improved versions have been released, and although the 090209 version had only one major flaw as far as my use was concerned (a weird bug where the ALT key didn’t function correctly when the SkyFire browser was launched from an e-mail link – it worked fine everywhere else) I thought I’d upgrade anyway to take advantage of any additional fixes Ookba built in.

I downloaded the latest version posted (3VO.2.50.112509) and installed it following the same procedure I used initially. The install worked flawlessly.

Although I initially had a problem where it seemed that the keyboard map was wrong and the SHIFT and ALT keys wouldn’t work, I believe that I had a corrupted download. Because I re-downloaded the file and flashed again and everything seemed to work.

So far, this release solved my major problem — the keyboard now works in Skyfire. I’m sure there are many more things to cover and I’ll write about them soon.

I just wish I could say the same thing for the ROM. The 112509 version had a major bug in it that left me dead in the water: It appears that the English keyboard maps are totally corrupted in this version and the SHIFT and ALT keys don’t work properly. And unlike before, where it only affected Skyfire, in this version they were broken everywhere. So the 3VO.2.50.112509 version was a total bust for me — and I cannot recommend that anyone use it — at least until the keyboard map issue is fixed.

For what it’s worth, I did switch the keyboard map and tried not only the stock Dash 3G map but a British version and the map for the Sprint Snap. Neither fixed the issue.

So – rather than rolling all the way back to the 3VO.1.60.090209 version, I rolled back to a version between that and the 3VO.2.50.112509 version. I am currently running the 3VO.2.00.101009 version. After 15 minutes of configuring my mail and getting my apps set back up it seems like a good successor to the 090209 version. There are some cosmetic changes to the START menu — I don’t know what else was supposedly fixed or tweaked. I’ll write about anything that comes up.