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.

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:

Rooting your CM Magnum again

Ok, so you had to update your CM Magnum to Gingerbread via the official Cherry Mobile ROM. This will basically "unroot" your already rooted phone and bring it to 2.3.4 or something. I know its been months since then but I have been doing stuff. I do have a life.

But that still brings us back to the issue at hand, how do I root my Magnum, Ideos X6, etc. again? OK, I can answer that but remember,

I. Will. Laugh. At. You(twice as hard). If. You. Blame. Me. If. You. Brick. Your. Phone.

 So, as far as I know, these don't work:

• Rageagainstthecage - my old procedure
• Gingerbreak - no break from what I can see
• SuperOneClick - well after a few hundred clicks, fail

How do I know? Duh, I tried them of course.

The only one that I have verified that works is tj_styles CWM recovery procedure. Najmods has posted the procedure here.

But if you are too lazy to open a new tab (sheesh...) then here is the procedure:

AWRRR! Walk the Plank, Android!

First step: Replace original recovery with ClockWorkmod Recovery
1. Download ClockWorkMod Recovery
2. Put the device in download mode (Power+Vol Up) and connect to PC,
and the PC will recognize the device as Removable Disc/Storage open it and you will find FIH > Image folder and select recovery.img, copy it anywhere to your PC as backup just in case if anything go wrong
3. Replace recovery.img in 'image' folder with recovery.img inside the Clockworkmod Recovery v4.0.0.9 you download and extracted earlier
4. Disconnect device from PC, open up the battery and reboot.

Second step (DO FIRST STEP FIRST): Rooting the phone
1. Download Su 2.3.6.3 signed.zip and put it in sdcard (but don't put it in any folder)
2. Put the device in recovery mode (Power+Vol Up & Vol Down)
3. Select "install zip from sdcard" and select "Choose zip from sdcard" and search for 'Su 2.3.6.3 signed.zip' and click install.
4. Select "back" and click "reboot system now"

Now to install busybox and do something really stupid/cool like put a perl/ruby/whatever interpreter in my phone. Why install a perl/ruby/whatever interpreter in my phone, you ask? Because I can.

What is your excuse?

And then one day....CM7 came

Yes you read that right! CyanogenMod 7.1.0 can now be installed on your Cherry Mobile MagnumHD and I have pictures to prove it!

Well...its not exactly my phone as of yet. I pulled that one from the XDA-Developers site. But it shows that you can now install Cyanogen on your Magnum. The CSL-Mi410 is basically the same phone as the CM-MagnumHD.

For the full set of images proving this fact go here.

As for me, I'm waiting for a bit. The images were put up on August 13, 4 days before this post. I'm taking a see and wait approach.

I'll probably try it out this weekend or something.

*BIG GRIN*

CM's update and their s****** instructions! AMP!

Last week Cherry Mobile just release their update for the MagnumHD. Thanks to Aryan Limjap for the shoutout telling me about it. Its a nb0 file about 160MB which uncompressed to about 402MB. Sweet, right? Screw that, they goof the instructions.

They said to download the file, and copy it into your SD card. No problem unless your one of those asses who didn't buy a SD card or believed he didn't need one. And if you couldn't afford one, then you might be simple be screwed. Fine lets move on.

Next, they said to enter bootloader mode - done by pressing and holding the volume up + down + power buttons. Now, they didn't explicitly say to hold all three buttons down at the same time. Unless, you're like me, you'd be forgiven if you thought that you should press and hold the volume up then down and then power in sequence. But then again...You're such a newb.

Now, you should Press ‘Home’key to show the update utility. Use the volume buttons to select the option “Download nb0 from SD card”. I think this is where it gets scary for you tadpoles. You should see a bunch of text popping up. Now if it says something to the effect that is was successful then no worries. But if not, then you'll have to do an extra step.

You have to rename that stupid file: FB0-318B-0-5019-A01.nb0 to say firmware.nb0. After you have rename it just re-enter the bootloader mode. And redo the whole "Download nb0 from SD card" procedure.

BTW, make sure that you have atleast 70% battery when doing this. We don't want any bricked CM Magnums, do we?

One more thing, by doing this, you will need to root your phone again. Yeah, I know, what at bitch.

Fixing that buggy stock ROM on your CM MagnumHD

My phone's
home pane

For those who are lucky enough to get Cherry Mobile's MagnumHD, we all can agree that the stock ROM f***** sucks. I really mean it sucks - the random restarts, the FCs, context buttons stop responding and the the most annoying is the screen times out (i.e. blacks out) when you make a phone call. So, being a geek, I will have none of this and I started scheming (along with Aryan Limjap which BTW, provides us the lovely images attached to this post) to get a fix into my CM Magnum. Warranty be damn!

System Pane

And what do you know, the Indians Indonesians came up with a better ROM. As you can see I'm now running a Wellcom-A99 ROM on my CM MagnumHD. I can tell you it runs better, cooler and longer. Also I would like to point out the Android version 2.2.2. I will still flash this thing to 2.3 when it comes out. But trust me on this, MY PHONE IS RUNNING BETTER on this ROM.

You might wonder how is this possible, then you apparently didn't inherit enough "bright" genes from your parents. But to get my point moving, CM MagnumHD is OEM phone from Foxconn and is rebranded in a lot of other countries.

• Philippines - CM MagnumHD
• China - Huawei Ideos X6
• US - Viewsonic ViewPad 4
• India Indonesia - Wellcom A99
• India - OliveSmart V-S300

With the Apps

And that is why children, I can stick an Wellcom A99 ROM on my CM MagnumHD. But still want to beat this into your head, if you are doing this you are voiding your phone's warranty. As for me, I already voided mine when I rooted my phone. Refer to the screenshot with the apps.

So if you understand what I am telling you and you still want to flash in the Welcomm ROM then click here. Just scroll down and look for the link. The download is about 200MB. 

And btw, did I mention to you all that there's still a slight chance that this will put your phone into a boot-loop or (worse) brick your phone?

Edit: Mecha50 corrected me that the A99 ROM is Indonesian. My bad.

Your Nexus One or Moto Droid suck balls

Screenshot after benchmarking
with Quadrant

Being the idiot that I am, I got sucked into a "hot" debate on which Android device is faster. And as we all know, everyone wants to say that they have the "better" device. Well, they can all kiss my phone's ass! So talked about it and we agreed to use a benchmarking tool and get the bottom of this. We all got this benchmarking tool called Quadrant from the Market. It free by the way. And well all agreed to get the Standard Edition. This would be the 1.1.7 version with a build date of Feb 1, 2011.

And let the benchmarking begin! And my Cherry Mobile Magnum HD kicks all their asses! And then some!

The graph does not lie!

"Screw that. The results your getting must be a fluke." they said, I then replied: "I don't know. Am I the one bending over and getting screwed?"

I couldn't begin to tell you how big my grin was walking away.

hehehehehe!

Void your warranty and root your CM Magnum HD at the same time

This is basically a repost of Takahiro Sonogi's post over at PHAC. He posted a way to root your Cherry Mobile Magnum HD which is also known as Viewsonic ViewPad 4 and Huawei Ideos X6 (also known as Huawei U9000).

There a lot of reasons to root your Magnum HD, one of them is to void your warranty. The other good reasons are:

1. To install custom ROMs. The problem is just that the device is so brand spanking new that there are no custom roms...yet.
2. To turn it into a target dev device. Which is my reason. It just sucks writing code that needs access to some /system binaries and get cock blocked because its not rooted.
3. Its Friday night and got nothing to do. Ok I made this one up.

In any case, I'm telling you again ROOTING YOUR CM MAGNUM VOIDS THE WARRANTY. I want to be clear about that.

Now if you are one of those Windows GUI babies and doesn't know his way around CMD or DOS you are way over your head. Stop what you are doing because YOU MIGHT BRICK YOUR PHONE AND I WILL LAUGH AT YOU. You heard me, if you screw this one up and blame me, I. WILL. LAUGH. AT. YOU.

If you haven't changed the webpage then download and install the Android SDK.

Here are steps to root your CM Magnum HD

adb devices

1. Take your Magnum and plug it in into your PC and make sure it is recognized by ADB. Run ADB from the command line and type adb devices. If there are no devices, then you need to install something like a USB device driver. There should be on with your phone. Whatever the case you are looking for something like the screen shot on the right;
2. Then download something called rageagainstthecage. Unpack it and put it somewhere where you can get to it from the command line. 
3. Copy the rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin to /data/local/tmp folder on the device:
   

   adb push rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp
   adb shell

4. Now do a CHMOD and run it:
   

   chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
   /data/local/tmp/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin

5. Get a copy of Superuser (SU) and busybox. Now unpack it. Do the following:
   

   mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
   
   adb push su /system/xbin
   adb push busybox /system/xbin
   adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
   adb shell
   
   chown 0.0 /system/xbin/su
   chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su
   chmod 755 /system/xbin/busybox
   chmod 644 /system/app/Superuser.apk
   
   ln -s /system/xbin/su /system/bin/su

6. Reboot and redo step 1. Once you get your PC to recognize your phone do the last step.



Got root?

7. And for the moment of truth, if you haven't bricked your phone yet, time to see if we really have root access. Refer to the screen shot. You are looking for the "#" symbol. You might have to accept a prompt from your phone.

If you got this far, congratulations. You just voided your phone's warranty and rooted your Magnum HD at the same time.

Woot!

Screencaps from my new phone

So, I got a new phone yesterday. I decide to get something that sweet and Android. Sweet! I had to drag my resident Android ph33rk to come with me when I decided to get this phone. It's always nice to have someone who knows his stuff to help buy, well...stuff. So a shout out to Aryan Limyap.

"BAI, Don't hate." ;-)

So what phone Did I get? I got the Cherry Mobile Magnum HD. And anyone who said shit about Cherry Mobile either doesn't own one or doesn't know crap about buying a smart phone.

The price is steep but not that painfully when you think about getting a Galaxy5 or HTC Desire at 30k. That's at least a 10-12k different. On a side note, the CM Magnum HD specs kicks the Galaxy5 and HTC  Desire specs in the ass.

I paid 20k for mine because I had to get a 16G MicroSD card. I am also thinking of shelling out a couple more hundred buck to get a quality screen protector and case for it.

Yeah, I know you might hate me right now. Especially, my sister who is one of those rabid and lunatic Apple users. I love you ngit but "heck no, I ain't getting no IPhone."

Here are more screens:

phone screencaps