Any interest in Dell Mini 3i or OPhone Hacking?

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I'm in China

Why is it I haven't seen much on here about the Asian variety of phones (other than HTC). We have WMx.x, Symbian, Nucleus (MTK chipset based OS), Android, Ophone (Android based not sure why it exists to be honest) and iPhone.

Market share - Nucleus is probably the largest, followed by WM, Sybian, iPhone, then Android/Ophone.

Currently I have an iPhone (ancient 2G), and have just bought a Dell Mini3i, as I donated my 3G iPhone to family back home.


The Mini3i runs an Android variant called OPhone.

The 3i is a little underwhelming software wise.

Its quite crap at the moment as its sitting on Android 1.0 (OPhone 1.0), but for all intents and purposes Android = Ophone its pretty much the same underneath.

There are a bunch of similar phones to this - the Lenovo O1, LG GW880, Motorola something or other (can't be hassled to go look) etc.

While I haven't rooted mine just yet, I have been playing around, and reading the Chinese forums.

Boot loader appears to be similar on all the devices - its made by BORQ's in Beijing, and appears to be quite basic.

Motorola and O1 seem to have the best support for now, the main problem in the Chinese forums is people bitching about being stuck on older versions.

Some are running 1.6, most on 1.5, and the unlucky few 1.0 "Ophone"
2.0 and 2.1 has yet to hit the mainstream here.

There are people with N1/G5's (Nexus 1 / HTC G5) on 2.1 though, pretty much any phone is available, although anything with wifi is essentially grey import from overseas (HK mostly)


Back to the phone -

Thankfully you can install any apps as apk's, no need to hack for that - so its fairly easy to get info on the innards.

RootExplorer is your friend

RootExplorer also allows you to remount partitions r/w, so root access is fairly easy too. There are precompiled su binaries for 1.5 out there, although I've yet to do my phone.

The Dell mini3 is running on a Marvell Tabor. Fast chip, nice touchscreen, decent resolution, just crap on 1.0.

Firmware files for most of the "ophones" (except motorola) are mff files.

The mff files appear to just be compressed images with instructions for how to write the various partitions out.

eg the O1 mff has this in the "mff" zip

2010/02/25 10:53 147,111,936 factory_CHERRY.fbf
2010/02/25 10:53 249 factory_CHERRY.mff.mlt
2010/02/25 10:53 364 JADE_EVB_RawNANDx16.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 327 magic_fbf.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 2,692 magic_fbf_inner.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 10,236,719 mfw.pac
2010/02/25 10:53 54,180 MHLV_NTDKB_h.bin
2010/02/25 10:53 176 MHLV_NTDKB_TIM.bin
2010/02/25 10:53 858 NTIM_td.ini

magic_fbf_inner.ini has the layout

[INTEL_FLASH_DEVICE_INPUT_FILE]
Number_of_Images=24

[IMAGE_HEADER_0]
Start_Address=0x240000
Image_Length=0x40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0


[IMAGE_HEADER_1]
Start_Address=0x6900000
Image_Length=0xf00000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

(etc)

Different phones have different firmware writing software, the Motorola's are using RSDLite, LG - SML_OMS, CTHall, others something homegrown called Firebolt, which is written by BORQS

Most firmware tools appear similar though functionality wise.
Haven't played around inside the phone yet to see if its easy to get jtag access, although that was mostly because i couldn't work out how to remove the top part without breaking it.

If anyone wants more info, or a firmware dump let me know.

Hopefully there is some interest out there in the English speaking world for these!

(Apologies if this is an inappropriate forum, this seemed the closest)

Lawrence.

hi, sounds like you are a pro on this. hopefully you can offer help on my issue. i have got MT710 with 1.5. could you suggest any solutions for root it? or any other useful info about this phone.

I am kind of interested in the Dell Mini 5 as leaked Dell slides show it will have a Kindle app. Unless, the Dell Mini 3 will also include this Kindle app.

rooting the MT710

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@tbaker077

The mini5 is a totally different device. The mini3[i/iw/ix] is a phone, the mini5 is a small pad sized computer. Plenty of those in China already with much better feature sets, and significantly lower prices.

@chinady

Root -

Try downloading Root Explorer.
Remount as rewritable, and copy over whatever files you need, eg a hacked su...

Can also check the instructions here -
h t t p : / / w w w . magicandroidapps . com/wiki/index.php?title=Frequently_Asked_Questions#Root_Ac cess[/url]


On a not unrelated note, what baseband / firmware are you currently running?

Current latest for the MT710 floating around is 62i

snappertd_62I_p32user_APRoff-haveboot_1ff.sbf
SNPTD_N_01.01.62I_snappertd_p32user_boot_nontrust. sbf

Downloadable here - h t t p : / / u . 1 1 5 .c o m /file/f16610f0f7

Dell Mini 3iX (Brazilian version) is easily rootable. This ophone has already more freedom than many droid phones even without root access.

Dell is launching Mini 3 in US now. it is a different image, running newer oPhone compatible with Android 2.0.

Can you be more specific how to root it? We are rookies

@ leg_br: Please help a brazilian fellow to hack his Dell Mini 3iX...
I´m a rookie... Carrier Claro did a great job destroying this phone´s OS.

sciphone i9++

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I have a sciphone i9++ i baught off ebay, and i hate the ui thats on it.. I was hopeing you could tell me if there is a way to put some sort of android on it?? also if it is just a skin for the nucleus os is there anyway to replace the phonebook and sms apps?? The ones that come with it are gross and require to many steps to do basic functions like make a call from the phone book, or send a sms or mms or email.. Basicly i would like any and all info you have on these nucleus os phones.. Thank in advance

P.S. Let's asume im NOT smarter than a 5th grader...

Originally Posted by jalowski

@ leg_br: Please help a brazilian fellow to hack his Dell Mini 3iX...
I´m a rookie... Carrier Claro did a great job destroying this phone´s OS.

Yes, incomplete feeling emerges while comparing to other droids.

This OS distro is named "ophone" and was created by borqs.com They did quite a good job working on available Android v1.5 sources... Only they took it too long! Android platform is moving fast, many releases in few months. Version 1.5 is year old, almost obsolete now.

Items such as google apps were _not_ deliberately removed: they actually were never included. Those missing apps are not freely available and depend on agreements with Google to be added to any distro. That agreement never happened, possibly were never attempted.

Claro only adds few items of their brand over ophone image, including those apps with notorious red icons.

hacked?

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Hi shanghailoz,

I downloading and install Root Explorer in my dell mini 3ix, after that I copy all files to my PC, but I need a help...
what change to release it?

tks!

Originally Posted by shanghailoz

@tbaker077

The mini5 is a totally different device. The mini3[i/iw/ix] is a phone, the mini5 is a small pad sized computer. Plenty of those in China already with much better feature sets, and significantly lower prices.

@chinady

Root -

Try downloading Root Explorer.
Remount as rewritable, and copy over whatever files you need, eg a hacked su...

Can also check the instructions here -
h t t p : / / w w w . magicandroidapps . com/wiki/index.php?title=Frequently_Asked_Questions#Root_Ac cess[/url]


On a not unrelated note, what baseband / firmware are you currently running?

Current latest for the MT710 floating around is 62i

snappertd_62I_p32user_APRoff-haveboot_1ff.sbf
SNPTD_N_01.01.62I_snappertd_p32user_boot_nontrust. sbf

Downloadable here - h t t p : / / u . 1 1 5 .c o m /file/f16610f0f7