HOW TO: Flash the Nexus S 4G to MetroPCS

msr4 · 11:01 AM

HOW TO: Flash the Nexus S 4G to MetroPCS

***I'm going to soon grab a Samsung Galaxy Nexus! Look out for my guide on how to flash THAT to MetroPCS, soon!***

This is my first write up of a really detailed tutorial on HowardForums. I spent as much as a hour writing this whole thing out, seriously! I figured I might as well get it up on XDA here as well. o: Leave me with your feedback and how things work out for you.

==How to Flash the Nexus S 4G to MetroPCS==

This is just a very detailed write up on how to get the Nexus S 4G flashed to MetroPCS. I get really in-depth with this tutorial. I don't know how much easier I can make it. This will get you working talk, text, web, mms, and all that good cellphone stuff.

This tutorial is made up of bits and pieces of Bloodykiller's HTC EVO 4G flashing how-to, just re-written with proper MetroPCS settings and all other things specifically for the Nexus S 4G.

==BEFORE WE BEGIN==

Couple of things we'll need before we can begin. Here's the checklist for your grand journey.

- CDMA Workshop 2.7 OR 3.5 (Google it.)
1- QPST build 323 (Google it.)
2- Experience with QPST and CDMA Workshop...
3- These Samsung drivers: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mthba0oaiz...ung_driver.zip
4- This PRL (Enables 3G data, if available): https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ecqcg76gw44wg/3029.prl
5- *MMS is being fixed, ignore it*
6- A ROOTED Nexus S 4G running on STOCK Android 4.0.x, OR Android 2.3.x, with A CUSTOM RECOVERY (This is now a requirement to get working MMS!)
7- Some MiniUSB cables
8- Your Nexus S 4G's MEID added into MetroPCS's database. Look it up, or PM me for help on the matter. I don't do it, but I can help.

Disclaimer: Follow these instructions CAREFULLY. Mess up, and things can go bad, and I'm not responsible for whatever happens. Okay, lets begin.

==1. TALK/TEXT==

1. This is the most crucial part. Your MEID needs to be added into the MetroPCS database. No MEID = No phone. (Or to get smart about it, no talk, or text.)

2. We're going to need to use CDMA Workshop for this part of the tutorial. You need to either download it from somewhere on the interwebs, or be a cool guy and actually buy it, up to you.

Before we can start, you will need to download the Samsung drivers (https://www.dropbox.com/s/mthba0oaiz...ung_driver.zip), unzip it, and install the .msi file inside. Thats it for the drivers part.

3. Now that you've gotten the drivers, make your way to your Nexus S 4G, and open up the dialer. Dial *#*#8778#*#*, and you should be pulled into a menu called PhoneUtil. (If you didn't get into PhoneUtil after dialing the code, you need to be on STOCK Android 2.3.x, or 4.0.x!) Next, tap the modem bullets on both UART and USB.

4. Connect your Nexus S 4G to your PC. You should be getting a message about a new device being installed. Once that finished, go to the Start Menu, and right click on "Computer" and choose "Properties". On the left side, click on Device Manager. Once you're in, expand "Ports (COM & LPT) and look for "SAMSUNG Mobile Modem Diagnotic Serial Port (WDM) (COMx)"

The x in (COMx) is the number of the port you'll be using in QPST and CDMA Workshop. It'll be 1,2,3,4,5 and so forth, whatever.

5. Open up CDMA Workshop. Under the Main tab, find COM Settings, and change the Port to whatever the SAMSUNG Mobile Model Diag Port told us earlier. I got COM6, so I would open up the drop down menu and choose COM6. Don't touch the baud rate. Go down and click "Connect", and then click "Read".

**If the phone does not answer, wake up your Nexus S 4G.**

You should then see a bunch of number and stuff on the left under Phone Information, awesome! Next, make your way to the Security tab. We need to unlock the phone before we can do anything. Under SPC, in the blank field, enter in "000000" (without quotations), then click on SPC and then click send. You should get the message saying "SPC is correct. Phone unlocked", opossum-grade awesome!

6. Go to the NAM tab, and click Read at the bottom. You should see a bunch of numbers and other things, but what we want to look at is "MIN" and "Dir_Number". You need to change these numbers accordingly. Dir_Number is your actual phone number, and MIN is your Mobile Identification Number. Your MIN can be found from one of your older phones. Once you put those in, click on Write at the bottom.

**If the phone does not answer, wake up your Nexus S 4G.**

7. Next, make your way to the "Other" tab. Find PRL, and make sure the boxes read "Universal, and NAM1". Click the Write button, and find the PRL file that you downloaded earlier. (3029.prl) Once you find it, double click it, and wait for it to finish.

Sometimes you will get an error about failing to write to NAM1, no worries. Go back to the main tab, disconnect, and reconnect and at the same time, read again. Go back to security, enter the SPC, and try to rewrite the PRL.

**If the phone does not answer, wake up your Nexus S 4G.**

8. Almost done with CDMA Workshop! Also, be VERY careful with this part because a simple mistake CAN brick your phone. Finally, head over to this website here: http://www.whiterabbit.org/android/

We need to get our NV items, as well as our MetroPCS MSL. In the field where it says "Enter your login string", type in YourPhoneNumberHere@mymetropcs.com. (So if your phone number were 555-555-5555, you'd put in 5555555555@mymetropcs.com) Before clicking generate, make sure you have the correct version of CDMA Workshop on the bubbles selected! Okay, so you should have gotten a .txt file after clicking generate. Save it to somewhere you can find it.

Go back to CDMA Workshop, and go into the "Memory" tab. Find "NV Items" and click Write. You'll get a warning message, click OK. Find the .txt file you got from whiterabbit, and open it in CDMA Workshop. *Make sure that this process does NOT get interrupted!* Once that's done, not only have you just taken the first steps into getting WEB working, but you've gotten Talk and Text working on your Nexus! Give yourself a pat on the back.

Also, you will need to get your MetroPCS MSL Code. To get this, on the whiterabbit page, near the field that says "Enter 1 MEID/ESN per line in the text area to your left, then click the calculate button.", enter your ESN/MEID in the field, and click generate. Under MetroPCS MSL, write that down, we'll need it later.

Close CDMA Workshop, and reboot your phone.

==2. DATA/WEB==

Time to work with QPST! This stuff is going to really require your attention to "spot the differences". I say that because I'm going to use pictures. on this part to make life simple.

1. Open up QPST Configuration, and while you're doing that connect your Nexus S 4G to your PC, again.

2. Remember that port we used for CDMA Workshop? It might be the same as last time. Mainly, look for the Phone "FFA-6550-ZRF6500". Do you see it? If not, go to Add New Port. Uncheck "Show Serial and USB/QC Diagnotic ports only". Select the ports that showed up and click OK. Wait and see if it finds your phone now. It should.

(If the ports are enabled, but you still don't see your phone, on your Nexus S 4G, go to the dialer, and enter in *#*#8778#*#* and make sure those fields are still on MODEM.

3. With your phone highlighted, go to "Start Clients" at the top, and choose Service Programming.

4. On the new window that showed up, click on your Nexus, and click OK.

5. Another window should come up. Click "Read from Phone" at the bottom, and with the window asking for your SPC, just press OK. Let it read, and make sure that some stuff popped up on Settings. If it did, awesome.

6. Click the right arrow at the top of the window to move the tabs over until you find M.IP, open it. Remember the matching I was talking about earlier? Well, match up the values down here in QPST.

7. When you've matched up those values, under User Profile, you want to click on Profile #0 and click the Edit button. Match up what you see here.

Those red boxes are where your phone number would be. So if your phone number was again, 555-555-5555, you'd need to put in 5555555555@mymetropcs.com in those NAI and Tethered NAI fields.

Once you're done with the matching, click OK, and then, we're going to be doing the same under Profile #1, so click it, and go click Edit, again. You're going to do the EXACT same thing. Match up Profile #1's values with what you did in Profile #0. (Hint: Look at the picture above, and just match it inside of Profile #1)

8. After that, time for more matching! Go to the "PPP Config" tab on the top. We're going to first start off in the "Rm" tab. Copy everything exactly as you see here.

Okay, now we go to the "Um" tab. The only difference here is that you will need to check the "Req PW enc" option, and enter the MetroPCS MSL code that we got earlier.

Make sure you copy those settings, and get that MSL in there. Also, the red blocked off area in the picture above should be your phone number.

Finally, we're going to the "AN" tab. Copy the settings, and make sure you get the MSL code we got earlier in there as well.

Again, the red blocked off area in the picture above is where your phone number would be, and you need to get the MSL code in there.

9. At last, you can finally hit the "Write to phone" button in QPST. Your phone should now be rebooting.

==3. Configuring Web/MMS==

Really simple steps here, if you know what I'll be talking about here. Simple. If you do not know what a build.prop is, it's a sign that you should read this section carefully.

1. When your phone comes back on, go back into the dialer, and dial *#*#8778#*#*, and put your phone back into PDA mode on both UART, and USB.

**If you ever need to use CDMA Workshop or QPST again, you just go back into here, and re-enable MODEM. You need to go back into PDA mode in order to utilize your Nexus's NAND storage.**

2. Connect to a Wi-Fi network, and go into the Google Play Store.

3. Search for the application called "AnyCut", download and install it.

4. Go back. You need to also search for ES File Explorer in the Google Play Store. Download and install it as well.

5. Have that MMS Fix.zip file downloaded and ready to go as well, we're going to need to use it.

6. Let's save us some time for later on, first. Open up AnyCut, and tap on New Shortcut.

7. Tap on Activity.

8. Wait for the list to load, and look for "APNs", tap it, just press Ok, on the following pop-up.

Quote:

SKIP EVERYTHING IN HERE. I'm trying to fix MMS

9. Mount your device in USB Mass Storage mode with your computer.

10. Copy the MMS Fix.zip file to the root of your Nexus S 4G's NAND storage.

11. Unmount properly, and power off your device.

12. Boot into recovery (You need a custom recovery, like ClockworkMod Recovery!). (While your device is off, hold the volume down and power buttons. On the boot loader screen, select Recovery, using the volume keys and the power button.)

13. When you are in your recovery, flash the MMS Fix.zip file, and reboot your device.

14. We're back into the Android OS now? Good. PROCEED.

15. Go back to your homescreen and tap on the newly created APNs shortcut.

16. Open up the Sprint APN and match up the settings to the following below as EXACTLY as it's shown. Don't type in Not Set into the fields, just tap on a field, and empty it. Then press OK.

Name: metropcs
APN: internet
Proxy: Not set
Port: Not set
Username: Not set
Password: Not set
Server: Not set
MMSC: http://mms.metropcs.net:3128/mmsc
MMS Proxy: wap.metropcs.net
MMS port: 3128
MCC: Don't touch.
MNC: 120
Authentication type: None
APN type: mms
===ICS users may have the settings below==
APN protocol: IPv4
APN roaming protocol: IPv4
APN enable/disable: Its greyed out. If its not, check it.
Bearer: Unspecified

You're done with APNs, press MENU, and SAVE.

17. When you save your APN, the MetroPCS APN should be missing. That's great, we're making some nice progress. c:

18. Go back to your home screen, and open up ES File Manager.

THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU NEED SUPERUSER PERMISSIONS! (ROOT!)

19. When ES File Manager has fully loaded, press the menu key, and tap on Settings.

20. Scroll to the very bottom. Check ROOT EXPLORER, when you get the warning message, press yes. You MUST grant ES File Manager superuser permissions. Next, check Mount File System, and also check Backup System App.

21. Press the back key once.

22. At the top, press the Favorites button, and choose /

23. Open up the "system" folder.

24. Find build.prop, and open it by taping it and then tapping on ES Note Editor on the following popup.

25. Scroll down the file until you locate "ro.cdma.home.operator.numeric="

26. There should be a 5 or 6 digit number after the = symbol, change that number to 310120. Do NOT make any spaces after the = symbol.

27. When you're done, press menu, and tap Save.

28. When you saved the build.prop file, reboot your phone.

(KEEP IN MIND, MMS cannot be recieved or sent while Wi-Fi is on. Sending MMS while your Wi-Fi is on will break your MMS until you reboot your phone.)
===
Congratulations! You are DONE! You should now have working Talk, Text, Web, and MMS! (Depending on your plan.) If there's any problems, you can PM me, or attempt to post it here. I don't browse the forums that often but, its worth a try. To really get my attention, go to my website. http://HaxConnect24.com, and use the Contact Us form on my site.

michael.ahdett · 5th May 2012, 04:44 PM

I may wind up doing this after my Sprint contract ends, metroPCS is so incredibly cheap.

Thanks for a fantastic post, great detail and you even included screens!

mercado79 · 5th May 2012, 09:30 PM

i found qpst over in the ppcgeeks forums. someone posted several versions, some much newer than build 323 listed in the instructions above. i wonder if that is a good thing to use or not. no luck on finding cdma workshop 3.5+ though

msr4 · 5th May 2012, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mercado79

i found qpst over in the ppcgeeks forums. someone posted several versions, some much newer than build 323 listed in the instructions above. i wonder if that is a good thing to use or not. no luck on finding cdma workshop 3.5+ though

It's a specific build that needs to be used, and you also don't have to just use CDMA Workshop 3.5. You can also use 2.7. I used 2.7 to get my Nexus up and going.

savalasurge · 6th May 2012, 01:45 PM

wow

Much respect bro thanks for your time and effort writing this ....

bongrun · 8th May 2012, 07:23 PM

do you need a metro phone that already has services???

msr4 · 8th May 2012, 10:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bongrun

do you need a metro phone that already has services???

Not really. You can still flash your Nexus over to MetroPCS by following this tutorial, having your ESN added into the MetroPCS database, and changing the phone on your account.