[ROM][2012.09.19] Lenovo A750 custom ROM (GB&ICS)

Please note this is a rewrite and cleanup of first post. Original firstpost is in post#3.

Here I publish the ROM's I make for the MT6575 based Lenovo Dual SIM phone
The current and advised ROM is A750_ROW_S114_cybermaus_ICS_V3.1 described in post#2 below

This is the original A750 thread, but as not everyone can post in developer threads, I also have a publicly available new Q&A thread.
I advise you post your question here (if a more advanced and development specific A750 question) or in the Q&A question.

I am not going to be policing, so you can post where you like, but I invite everyone to use this new thread for any Q&A, and this thread for ROM releases and deep development talk only. Please understand I do not know everything, so using the Q&A thread is better then PM'ing me, as that way maybe others know the answer too.

Also, I am moving file hosting to Dev-Host. So if you encounter a dead link to a ROM file, do look here in my Dev-Host folder.

ICS IceCream Sandwich

Starting 2012/09/12 I have a second flavor of ICS ROM for the A750

ICS V1 ~ V1.3 are based on the original Lenovo A750 ROM's Most people tried them, but went on to APKHOT because of multilang. There was a V2, but never released
ICS V3 and onward is based on the Lenovo P700 ROM, see below

ICS V1 series

It is a update.zip type update. If you already got S306, and rooted/gapps'ed it yourself, you could stick to that, this is the same, with some minor extra cleanup.

'Normal' cleanup actions:
- Prevented update from overwriting Recovery
- Added root (Chainfire) & gapps (CM9 120429) & Maps & Streetview
- Cleaned Chinese & SmsReg
- Replace talking Unicom bootup with silent butterfly
- Set to US/en & added MoreLocale2
- Added MobileUncle 2.0.9

Instructions for A750_S306_120530_cybermaus_ICS_V1:
Assuming you have the custom recovery. If not, flash the recovery from my 4-shared using the flash tool.

- Put S306 V1 zip file on SD card (do not unzip)
- Also put S306 V1.3 zip file on the SD card (do not unzip)
- Boot into Recovery
- First apply V1, then apply V1.3
- Potentially, clear userdata and cache, especially if you come from any S14x GB
- Reboot, and wait for it to complete.

BTW: It should probably be noted that while I packaged V1.2 and V1.3, it was again bgcngm who we have to thank for knowing how to solve the location problems.

If you already lost recovery due to the S306 OTA update, reinstall it using the flash method from first post.
Please always respond if you tested it, even if you did not like it.
Oh, and if you do like it, press the thanks button of course.


ICS V3 series

For a long time I guessed the P700 is similar to the A750, but why bother. Until I recently heard it has a multilingual ROW (Rest Of World 海外版) version!
So I took the leap, and transplanted the A750 kernel into the P700 ROM (needed because the screen driver is different), and installed it on my A750.

It works pretty well. I did not need to fix location services or gapps (though I did put the newest in there). Also did I not need to clean up any Chinese apps. And the Calender is Chinese free, and the Dialer free of Chinese city names. So I barely had to do anything. Also GAPPS TTS was in there, though I still cannot find the settings menu.

But alas, the only 'multilang' in the ROW was Vietnamese. I guess "Rest Of World" is pretty limited.
Also, for those of you that liked it, the Security App (Anti-Virus, and limit permissions per App, so sort of a firewall) is also missing. I may put it back in later, but I want to run vanilla for a while to test stability.

But it is still nice and clean, and all programs a month newer. And Chinese out of the browser/email-setup/calender/dialer. Oh, and for all of you that went to APKHOT because of the newer SIM taskbar icons: It also has the newer icons. For an ongoing list of findings in post #585

So for those of you that want to try: A750_ROW_S113_cybermaus_ICS_V3 based on P700_ROW_S113_120801.
Assuming you have the custom recovery. If not, flash the recovery from my 4-shared using the flash tool.


A750_ROW_S114_cybermaus_ICS_V3.1

Based on factory ROM P700_ROW_S114_120903, and located in my Dev_host. Similar to V3, but newer, and a few extra tweaks.

Summery of changes:
- Same as on V3, and additionally:
- Whatever Lenovo fixed in their S114 (there is a unconfirmed suggestion that it may be signal strength related)
- Different (better?) call-log and Caller-ID behavior, see post #3 below
- Prepared busybox (you need to run script /system/xbin/installbusybox as root if you want it)
- Added a tweak so USB-Debug notification is no longer shown
- Added a tweak so Wifi works on all 14 international channels (rather than only the 11 US ones, may be undone if you set a different locale)
- Kept the original S306 radio firmware (baseband). They had the same timestamp as the P700 one anyway.

Instructions:

This is a update.zip type ROM. If you are on any ICS ROM, you do not need to flash V3 first, you can directly flash V3.1"
- Put ROW_S114 zip on SD card
- Boot into recovery
- Apply zip file
- Reboot, and wait for it to complete.
- If you came from a domestic Chinese ROM, clean data for calender, notes, desktop and if possible contacts, using these utilities. Or if you do not mind, wipe all data from recovery.

=================

BTW: Due to new forum rules, resulting in a large number of people that cannot post into developer threads and that subsequently PM me, I open op a new Q&A thread.

I am not going to be policing, so you can post where you like, but I invite everyone to use this new thread for any Q&A, and this thread for ROM releases and deep development talk only.

Consequently, if you PM'ed me, look for your reply in this new thread

Thanks

====================

PS: do drop me a reply if you use or tried it! Or press the 'thanks' button.

HELP, I lost my IMEI ! / Caller ID

Please note the content below was originally in post#1. I cleanup Post#1 a little, to make it clearer to new users.

=================

Hi All

My second Lenovo A750 ROM release: A750_S148_120428_cybermaus_V1

Edit: For ICS rom check the 2nd post.

Fixed toward V0
- Different GAPPS, resulting in
- More stable Play Store with less unlisted apps
- WiFi based Location services (from for example Places) working (GPS did work in V0)
- NANP (US style) numbering formating removed from phone
- Replaced Unicom talking bootup animation with silent Lenove butterfly
- Added 'new phone Setup' program

Still to improve (if you know how, on a MT6573/MT6575, let me know!)
- Caller ID lookup in Contacts should ignore IDD prefixes
- SMS app trips over hyphens and brackets in stored numbers
- Arabic/Hebrew RTL fix not applied yet.
- Remove 'new phone Setup' program again?

This is a simple and clean ROM, not too much done, essentially just the factory S148 ROM (A750_S148_120428) rooted, cleansed from Chinese and with Google Play Store and other GAPPS.

So it is mostly clean. It does not even have the Skype/YouTube/Flash apps, as I believe such apps change too often to be in the system portion. I upload the ones I got from Etowalk separately, in folder Etotalk_apk, you can install yourself.

Specific changes:
- Rooted the phone
- Set to boot in US-english
- Added MoreLocale for extra languages
- Removed Chinese apps, incl Chinese keyboard
- Removed SmsReg.apk
- Left Lenovo Security (anti-malware) intact
- Added Google framework
- Added modded Play Store 3.x.16-mod from XDA
- Added MobileUncle toolbox V2.0.9
- Added CWMR Touch / 593zn.com recovery image

Most images are unmodified from stock S148, even boot.img is unmodified. Only system.img was really changed, you could flash only that.

You will also need the flash tool and USB driver. For example tool SP_Flash_tool_v3.1208.01 and driver USB_VCOM_Driver. The flashing is the
typical Mediatek MT6573/MT6575 based flashing sequence as shown by bgcngm, the undisputed champion of Mediatek ROMS.

Which reminds me: Thanks to bgcngm for his help, and to jazzor for his help

Instructions:

By default, the ROM will not overwrite USERDATA. If you want a clean slate, first extract empty.userdata.rar. Also do this if you get "weird" behaviour after flashing, like Play Store not starting, your old setting may be incompatible with the new ROM

By default, the ROM will not overwrite FAT (the internal SD card). If you like an empty internal SD card, extract empty.fat.rar before flashing.

By default, the ROM will clean out CACHE. If for some reason you feel CACHE should not be cleared, deselect the CACHE from flashing.

IMPORTANT: If you want to play it safe, it may be wise to backup your phone's IMEI file before you flash or reset to factory defaults. See here for help on backup or restoring IMEI

IMPORTANT: If you are trying this ROM on another model phone, which I STRONGLY advise AGAINST, then do NOT flash the first two (preloader and dsp_bl) as you will may not be able to flash it back afterward and thus brick your phone. Someone tried it against an ZP100 and bricked his phone.

Download A750_S148_120428_cybermaus_V1
I will also upload the driver, flash utility and official ROM's there.

Enjoy
May 11, 2012
cybermaus

------------------------------------

Caller ID bug
Caller ID on the on the A750, on the P700 ROW, and I suspect in general on the Lenovo phones.

The lenovo ROW (=Rest Of World) based ROM are much more international then the other Lenovo ROMs. I cannot be sure about the other china brands, but Lenovo in ROMs intended for the local China market, 'update' the phone to nicely recognise chinese cities. I am sure China locals will be pleased with this service. I do not know if/how this applies on phones which are already more international like the multilingual Zopo's and Thl's out there.

In doing so, Lenovo seems to break the normal caller ID function. Not only do you get to see Chinese city names for non-Chinese numbers, but also in some cases it does not resolve an incoming call to your phone book. This seem to be especially true if the incoming call is in local format (no +CC) and the phone book is in international format (with +CC)

The ROW based ROMs work much nicer. No Chinese city names for non Chinese numbers. Also, it finds correct country names. So far, I was called by unknown numbers from California, UK, London, Russia, Romania, Saudi, Yemen and Jordan, and it all correctly resolved them. For California and London even to greater detail then the country. It only shows this for unknown numbers, for known ones it shows the contact name.

Indeed Caller ID seems to work correctly for local vs international format. So if the incoming is formatted without +CC, but leading 0, and the phone book is +CC, it finds it.

And it seems to nicely format all phones according to the desired national formatting. So +1 XXX-XXX-XXXX for US, but +966 X XXX XXXX SA fixed and +966 XX XXX XXXX for SA mobile. And +31 XX XXXXXXX for NL fixed and +31 XXX XXXXXX for NL mobile.Very nice

HOWEVER: The caller-ID lookup now seems 'whitespace-sensitive'. I had a contact number stored as +966 XXX XXXXXX, and he did not find it. But when I changed it to +966 XX XXX XXXX it did find it. Similar for number that had "(XXX)" brackets in it, as was common in NL in the past.

This may or may not be a problem, because if you touch your phone book entry in the edit mode, it will automatically change +966 XXX XXXXXX to +966 XX XXX XXXX. Symilar if you sync through Google. But as I sync with outlook using Android-Sync, many are stored like +CC (XXX) XXXXXXX

So, Caller ID is 'different'. But better? For most people probably yes. But may depend on your situation.

EDIT: I found the whitespace was actually due to me not clearing data. Everything seemed find, but the caller ID was a resulting problem. You need to clear contacts, so it reindexes the phone numbers, and then Caller ID is perfect. Even ignores () brackets. You can clear contacts many ways, but I made a patch for it.

Links to other A750 ROMS and other useful information:
EDIT: I have not kept this list updated. Search this thread for other ROMS, especially Smileyvvv's APKHOT seems popular

Original A750 ROMs: (S14x=GB; S30x=ICS)
A750_S148_120428 - Chinese/English - No root - No play store
A750-S305-120514 - Chinese/English - No root - No play store
A750_S306_120530 Original full S306 (no OTA, flash package)

Please note that all *official* ROMs come with password bbs.lenovomobile.com. If the password is missing, someone did something to the ROM. Also, there are 'root' images availible that only flash boot.img. These work by overwriting system.img *on every restart*. Creative, and I used it myself for a while, but currently I feel the method described below is a better method.

Other modified ROMs (GB):
S750 S143 Etotalk Multilang
A750_S148_120428_RUS by Anton_vrn V1.3 (true Russian translation!)
BM's Hebrew fixed
BaderMQ's multilang+Arabic fix
(please note none of these are really multilang, just multi-locale, which means system apps will remain English, but third party apps can be set to other languages, similar to my ROM's, I simply do not make the claim. Anton is the only one who actually translated the ROM, but to only one new language)

Other modified ROMs (ICS)
My ROM in sepo of course
lenovo750-4.0.3_Anton_vrn_v3.01(true multilang?? Hints that it contains: ar-de-es-fa-fr-in-it-nl-pt-ru-th-tr-vi-zh, but based on S305)
Etotalk S306 multilang_by_Dean : It exists, but I do not know an internet location to download it from.

How to root a ROM yourself:
- Flash the CWMR Recovery partition (the recovery only, not the root&recovery one)
- Reboot into recovery (poweroff - Press/hold Power for 2 secs, then also Up/Down)
- Apply this root update
- Use RootExplorer to remove any Vending* or Phonesky* from /system/app
- Apply the correct GB or ICS GAPPS package, from bottom page here, or its mirror here.
- If a ICS rom, even though not from me, you may still want to apply my ICS V1.3 update, especially if you have location or market compatibility issues.

Its one of the more important (of not most important) issues, and it has focus of myself and more experienced people. It's listed above as "Caller-ID to Contact mapping should ignore IDD prefixes." But alas, afaik, at this moment, no solution exists.

Keep an eye on this thread, and/or this one. Rest assured that as soon as we know how, it will be fixed.

Edit: Caller ID bug is less prominent in ICS ROM's
And in any case, using this, you can work around it.

There is already a Arabic & Hebrew RTL version for A750 out there. Not my me, but by someone more experienced, though A750 is not his focus.

I am playing with my ROM, and while it is not on the top of my list, once I get round to updating it I was thinking of copying his RTL fix to my ROM also. In the mean time, try the other one, and tell me how it works in relation to the issues I still have on the to-do list.

Thanks

Well, you can always try to use the recovery I am using. It seems to work well for Bruno's ROM's.

I have never even attempted to put CWM on these Mediatek based phones. Nor have I heard of anyone else (other than you). Are you able to flash anything with it? I was assuming there was a reason people were not using CWM on Mediatek.


I advise you to put Recovery ROM from here, flash it using this method. And then use that to apply the zip based ROM's.

I am working to update my ROM with Hebrew also (actually, working on other stuff, but will try to also put that in), but be aware, it will also be a 'flash-utility' ROM.

Edit: ROM V1 is coming tomorrow, but no RTL, sorry. I was able to fix the location service and Play Store is now not blocking so many apps.

New V1 upload in first post.

newbie_vlc said:

There are any possibility to get the spanish traduction from the etotalk rom?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Check if the Spanish selection is part of the 'MoreLocale2' app. If not already there, add it as a custom locale.

Edit: If you meant: can I take Etotalk ROM and transplant its Spanish into my ROM, then that is already done! Neither Etotalk nor myself actually translate anything, we both just added the free public app MoreLocale2, which has most translations in it. Using MoreLocale2, the phone becomes 'reasonably' translated, though there may remain some English parts.

cliviu said:

Hi cybermaus
sorry for the noobie question but I didn't own a smartphone since windows mobile. I expect a A750 and it might come unrooted. Do I have to root it before installing the rom or is this done automatically in the flushing process? Thank you.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

This flash is using bootloader method, not recovery, and it will not need root. Upon flash, it will apply root automatically. Use the flash sequence as linked in the first post.

Yes, V0 accidentally had two copies of the rom image inside the rar. It did not hurt, but it bloated the package a bit. The 157GB (164 981 710 bytes) is correct

Good to see you are paying attention though