In a departure from traditional All About Symbian conservatism, Steve Litchfield goes exploring the world of firmware modding, specifically looking at the Samsung i8910 HD, a flagship smartphone in terms of specifications that has been under-curated by its manufacturer. Can a third party, armed with no source code whatsoever, really mess around with the files in the firmware to produce a better device? Short answer? Yes. With a few caveats. Here's the tale of how the i8910 HD gets transformed with HX 3.17...
Read on in the full article.
It's only due to the efforts of Andy aka Hyperx that I'm still a satisfied and proud user of the Samsung i18910HD. If it hadn't been for him, I would have dumped this phone a long time ago.
I can well imagine the frustrations of the average user, who depends solely on Samsung for updates.
And shame on you, Samsung, for your half-hearted, lethargic support. I would think twice before ever buying a Samsung phone again.
While we are at it, I would like to mention that HX has also done great works in releasing speed editions of these firmware. Speed editions are free of some "deemed" useless but heavy applications, giving a really, really fast UI experience. HX 2.11_Speed is the latest that I am using.
I personally moved to modded roms January'10, a mere 2 months after the purchase of my i8910. It took me very less time to realize that Samsung is not all interested in maintaining this device or related software. HX has been working alone and it is a surprise that he alone keeps the frequency as well as the quality of firmware high. Hats off to him.
Apart from the questionable legality of using DLL's filched from another manufacturer's ROM. You have got to wonder what HyperX could do if he was given proper support from the manufacturer.
If I were Samsung, I'd be beating a path to this guy's door with a chequebook.
It's worth noting that even after flashing with one of Hyperx's custom firmwares, it is very easy to re-flash the i8910 back to an official Samsung firmware, thus reducing any "warranty void" issues which may occur from using custom firmwares.
Samsung couldn't care less about support. Samsung and LG are notorious for releasing abandonware devices. And apart from a few shining models (like the i8910), most of them are crap anyway.
My advice - stay away from Samsung and LG.
Buy anything else than those two brands.
What I would like to see is for some Symbian^3 stuff to enter the hacking community. S^3 is open source, so there are no legal issues working on it. While you can't run S^3 on existing devices without new drivers for graphics, many parts will be compatible with S^1, especially the apps. That could mean pervasive kinetic scrolling and single tapping throughout the UI.
For interested people, there is an initiative to port the S^3 homescreen to S^1 devices.
Steve, although you're not an advocate of hacking, almost everything Hyperx has done in his firmwares can be done without actually reflashing the device.
And Nokia hacking is just as easy BTW. There have been huge advancemenets in the past 2 months.
"almost everything Hyperx has done in his firmwares can be done without actually reflashing the device"
Eh? How could the focus in video mode or the extra 60MB on C: be achieved through another means - do pray tell 8-)
I'd be curious to know why so many people consider modding a device to be "illegal". I agree that a manufacturer may be within their rights if they refuse to repair a device which has been flashed with 3rd party FW, but that doesn't make actually doing this illegal. Also, even if the small-print says that such activity is illegal in the eyes of the manufacturer, such a statement may not carry any real weight, as what someone does with their own property is generally their own business... this is especially relevant if the manufacturer can't be bothered to properly support the device in the first place, which could well be seen as illegal...
Autofocus in video mode is turned on by changing ONE text file - it's quite easy to do that, reboot the phone, and hey presto, activated!
More disk space is somewhat more complicated, but a lot can be achieved by (for example) moving system sounds and the such like from C: to E:
The lipsinc problem on video recording can usually be fix by changing saving to folder from 'mass memory' to 'memory card'.
John.C
allthough admittedly you can achieve some effects by editing and moving .txt files and all this has to be on the hacked phone anyways. The sheer ammount of time involved is much greater than simply reinstaling apps especcially with batch installers. Also some of the hacks like aditional homescreens can only be run if you have c2z hack enabled all the time which brings extra dimension of instability on the phone.
Npw as for increasing c drive without flashing is impossible and no ammount of copying sounds to e or caching there will increase said drive. All it does is helps preserve mesly 18 mb you allready have so that you dont hit the brick wall in one browsing session.
The real breakthrough of hx is the huge ammount of c being released cause while preserving original functions all other cookers have been able to get 55-60 mb on c by deleting regional customizations and some other things. What andy has done is gone past beyond that magis 60 mb mark by identifying dead ends, that is all the stuff that samsug got stock with symbian licence but never bothered to implement. That dead code helped it push to average 85 mb while preserving all and past 100 in case of speed firmwares. Well done.
Like many other i8910 users, if it had not been for 'cooked' roms from people like HyperX I would have got rid of this phone long ago. HyperX has produced some great roms, each one better than the last. If you just want a really fast phone with no frills then install one of his 'Speed' editions. :icon14:
This article/author is so ignorant. There is one big community who gave us repacking firmwares and most part of tweaks that Hyperx uses. I can not believe that you gave all credits to one man
It is not just the work of one guy. I think Andy (HyperX) would be embarrassed if he read that since he has collected alot of work from a list of very intelligent people and fully acknowledges them.
I'm mounting other custom ROM as I consider myself a puritan and I don't want my phone 'prehacked' with 3rd party themes etc, but I'm one happy bunny with 162MB of free RAM, 58MB C drive and overall performance of ROM I'm having ATM. My phone is still fully recognized by Samsung PC studio and with recent 24 constant FPS in 'lipsync' and HX pre-focus mod, I'm even more happy to be an owner of i8910, still it's not thanks to Samsung who done a really great job to cripple this nice piece of samrtphone. Try it to believe it... I'm able to record constant 24fps with 100% accurate lipsync in truly great focus with my phone now. Samsung broke this phone with their sloppy coding skills and I think they know it too damn well... just see how they continue to stay quiet on i8910 field...
Steve, you should also try out other flavors like Jined, mwarner, wireless etc. There are bunch of great cookers out there that continued to expand and improve what 7 and HX have initiated back in july last year, let alone honorable record of coding skills of CodeNeos, Andersson, Symbix and the rest of the i8910 scene...
To 'Unregistered' (why don't you all just *********** log in?! 8-( ):
This wasn't really meant to be a roundup of the i8910 modding scene. It was a specific walk through of how to update a device to the latest HX mod. From my novice (to modding) viewpoint, Andy is by far the most visible and active. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place.
If you're a modder who helped HyperX along the way to the HX 3.17 firmware, then apologies for not naming you(r nickname?) specifically.
Steve
slitchfield wrote:To 'Unregistered' (why don't you all just *********** log in?! 8-( ):
Why?
How many more ******* passwords and login names do I want to collect for every odd website on the internet that I visit? I can't be arsed with yet another one to remember for a site that does not rank alongside my Amazon account for security needs. As you are a contributor to the site, it is obviously high enough on your list of priorities, but as a casual user, I've already collected enough account details thank.
Yes, but (especially in a post berating *me* for omitting people's names) you've no idea how ANNOYING it is trying to work out who is who when half the posters are 'Unregistered'. Rafe knows my feelings on all this....
An interesting article Steve - it's great to see that a large site like AAS has covered this topic.
I am also pleased that Fevves mentioned the community aspect of the i8910, as it does come across in the article that it was purely one man's work and that HyperX's firmware is the only one available. HyperX is certainly the most innovative and active member of the community, however, so it is understandable!
For those interested, the custom firmwares range from the highly modified versions (like HyperX's) to those that are pretty much generic firmwares with some of the unnecessary bits taken out and a few minor alterations (e.g. one of my own firmwares, which is a UK oriented firmware (defaults to English), 24fps video and a couple of other mods leaving around 40MB on C: ).
The community caters for all - from those who just want a generic Samsung firmware with a bit more space on C: to those who want an Ultra cut down, minimalistic & fast firmware.
lol still unregistered, actually forgot user/pass but cant be bothered to reset. mainly cause never bothered to participate in the discussions about some users 'hmmm i8910' accusing you of being nokia tool and you did pretty good job defending/ignoring those.
i for one always found your articles unbiased within the constraints that you chose when reviewing. i am glad though that you are stepping out of your comfort zone and are able to glimpse what those frustrations were about in the past year.
anyways "spot on" regarding andy being most visible person regarding cooked firmwares for this phone and you were looking at the right place. now to give homage to those that came before or contributed in some way would require separate article about modding scene and you would be naming names all the way back to the amoebas.
fact is there is no exclusive i8910 scene. most mods were in fact adapted from nokia scene (cept samsung specific hidden menu's), then other things were discovered by i8910 modders that is now actively being used and adapted by nokia modders which got the big boost by availability of hacked jaf etc.....
glad to see you covering the modding scene on this phone (yes there was another article too, i read it, but i didn't comment on it, lol)...most people have been sleeping on it. i think for most of us i8910 users/owners this has been the main reason we have kept the device.
definitely much better than what samsung has fell short of offering. they are a major let down.
sure....you didn't mention everyone in the scene that was involved, but for those in the know, or who visit the site, should know others are involved with the mods that he has compiled into his custom work (which is compiled from various nokia/symbian/samsung forums)
anyways, cheers.
Thanks for this usefull post AAS! And thanks to 'unregistered' and Fevves for the added information and points of view.
Steve, as a regular to your smartphones podcast and AAS, and somone who has considered buying the i8910 HD, and very first time poster, I'd like to say thanks for a great article.
Up until Hyper X I would not have touched this phone due to all it's issues, but am now awaiting my ordered i8910 HD to be delivered with much excitement and ready to whack on the HX FW.
I'm sure HX would've received plenty of help from others in the HD community, but from reading his websites he spent endless hours putting these FW's together and as a result his Mods appear to be a standout.
Laters
The firmware modding scene for Nokia S60v5 devices has picked up lately as well with some feature laden and stable versions coming out over the past couple of weeks. How about AAS cover a similar article on a modded 5800 or N97?
Of course, it's a bit more fragmented than the single source of effort for the Omnia but then there's so much variety around that you could just check out a dozen different firmwares in a single day.
I totally concur with UnUnregistered that I would love to see articles about Nokia modding, especially if they were to include stability fixes for the 5800 messaging client and so on. I would like to be able to trust to actually use that expensive paperweight, without living in constant fear of it spontaneously erasing all of my messages and email accounts again. So much for that 'preservation of the integrity of user data' thing...
On i8910 HD the sound very clear, but it is too sensitive that I can hear some small noise defractions in the sound. While the N86 8MP have much compact sound quality. I prefer the N86's sound quality though. For Milestone? 😃
I really don't understand why people are getting so excited about pre-focus getting added to the i8910 ... my K750i could do that 4 years ago ! Granted, its video quality was nothing to write home about , but my point is that it WAS there ! My second phone having been the N82, I kind of missed that feature , but the tap-to-macro used to do the trick. Samsung had a real winner on its hands with the i8910. They should take a few lessons from Andy. He is what keeps us from throwing our i8910's away in frustration.