Got tired waiting for ICS so back to MIUI

ICS on my phone was sweet - battery life was excellent, games (3d and what not) were running smoothly but and this is a BIG but..No camera. I know that edowar is working on it and its a pretty hard problem to crack. It's a hardware driver problem and Foxconn isn't really going to fork over that one any time soon.

My Home screen

So we go back to MIUI. Imagine my surprise that TJ's MIUI wasn't the only one out there for my CM Magnum. People made forks and ran with it. I mean RAN. I found 4 more other ROMs for my phone and all based on TJ's stuff. TJ is a god!

As for the choosing which on to flash into my phone - I wasn't really that scientific about it. I just basically went for the "eye-candy" factor. I decided on CacingKalung's MIUI 2.2.3 ROM.

It's about 117MB (make that about 120ish if you download the extras which I did.) and it installs flawlessly.

I'm reinstalling my stuff and let's see how this works out while waiting for a stable,working ICS for my phone.

So far, its pretty sweet.

Adb can't detect my Android Phone. Damn.

So you open a command line and type in adb devices and, guess what, it can't detect your Android phone. This could be because of a variety of reasons like you installed a custom ROM. In any case, adb can't detect your device. Fortunately, the fix is just to install a driver. The bad part is the phone manufacturers sometimes don't post their USB drivers on the net.

How do we fix this?

1. Identify who really makes your phone. Like mine, which is sold as the Cherry Mobile Magnum HD but its actually a Foxconn phone. Do a google search or a lsusb command if your running a Linux box. You should be able then to get the ATTR{idVendor} value.

2. With that, go to this webpage. That should explain how to get your device recognized and help you figure out who made your phone.

3. You should be able to figure out which OEM driver to get.

Install and then you might have to do a reboot. When you get back, your Android phone now should be recognized by running adb devices again. You should be looking at something like below.

adb devices

This is related to my older post: Getting Ubuntu to play nice with your Android device.

ICS for your Cherry Mobile Magnum

I'm trying out Alpha1 Alpha2  Alpha3 AOSP ICS Rom for Huawei x6 and other FB0 devices. The ROM is cooked by edowar. The ROM is currently Alpha, its working but its still a ways off.

Although, its still alpha it did install painlessly. The procedure is:


1. Downloaded new rom. (.zip) to your SD card
2. Go to 'backup and restore ' and take a backup
3. Reset userdata, cache and dalvik !important
4. Install the zip from SD card
5. Reboot system and you are done

After the install if you already rooted your Cherry Mobile Magnum, it stays rooted. After the reboot, you'll notice that it doesn't have any apps. So get GAPPS and install it following the same procedure for the ROM.

Unfortunately the ROM, doesn't have support for the camera and WIFI yet. Edowar and team are still working on it. And they as nice as the ICS rom is to look at, they don't have an ETA.

Despite of the shortcomings, my preview of the ICS rom has had me convinced that to wait for a release. From what I can see, the ROM is pretty stable (1 reboot for the week I had it) and is choke full of eye candy.

Can't wait!

CM Magnum HD + MIUI = iDroid

MIUI Home screen

I bought my Cherry Mobile Magnum HD about about a year ago and if you have been following this blog, you'll remember that I installed and been using the Welcomm ROM. The Welcomm ROM has served me well but time to look for another.

Enter the MIUI.

Now MIUI is a custom Android ROM. The most striking feature is its UI. Its very reminiscent of a iPhone's user interface. That's why I sometimes confuse people when I tell them that I have an iDroid. *big grin*

Now, you will notice that in the official MIUI webpage that the Cherry Mobile Magnum (or its variants) are not support. That's because it isn't. I'm using a modified MIUI ROM by an Indonesian guy named TJ_Style. He hangs around the andro-id.net website.

To get your grubby hands on the rom, you'll have to register to the andro-id.net forum. Just run the site thru a translator since most of the post is in Indonesian.

Also, you'll need to get that custom CWM recovery for your phone so you can install the ROM and get superuser rights. That shouldn't to hard.

Anyway, here's a couple more screenshots of my newly flashed Cherry Mobile Magnum: