[ROM][InDev] Help Wanted Custom ROM Option for SGH-I857

[Legojr]

I am currently attempting to port Cyanogenmod as well as Clockworkmod to a device known as the Samsung DoubleTime SGH-I857. It is a very unique end of life handset that I think needs a little hacking attention. So far I have found most of the partitions names and sizes on the device, and I have pulled the boot.img and recovery.img out of a firmware file for it that I found online. I am confident in my skills but I am often running into trouble when it comes to building with Cyanogenmod source. I am currently using the Froyo branch as I believe it might be easier to build with the same version that is currently on the phone. I eventually plan to some how build gingerbread for it but i am trying to build what I can as of right now.
I am making this thread to report progress and hopefully get advice from those who are more experienced than me. Any help or advice is deeply appreciated.

 

[Legojr]

Update*
I finally got my build enviornment figured out, I chose Gingerbread because Froyo didn't like me for some reason...
I used the mkvendor.sh method as recommended on the Cyanogenmod Wikipage for porting. I looked through all of the files and everthing seems to be correct except the recovery.fstab which is saying that the system, cache, data, etc. partitions are in all sorts of diffrent file systems; and are mounted in places called the same name as them. The sdcard partition seems to be correct and I'm assuming that I need to manually put in the data. You can look at the files below and tell me if I'm on the right track. I cannot locate any recovery boot or misc partitions using shell commands. There were however there were loop and bml partitions, but they did not appear in the mount or df command.

 

[Legojr]

Update*
I got sick of getting errors regarding my device not existing and random stuff about an HTC ACE. So I plugged the recovery.img from the firmware package into builder.clockworkmod.com and gave it a go. It built sucessfully but I am afraid of the recovery.fstab not being correct.

Upon inspection of sibiling phones most followed a similar pattern or stl## partitions for cache, data and system. Though they all have boot defined as boot and recovery as recovery; both of which with a BML file system. I also noticed the sibilings said their cache, data and systems were ext4 with a 2nd file system of rfs. This is just confusing to me...

I am unsure if I should flash it. I'm confident that the recovery.fstab's recovery and boot partitions are correct but what will happen if I get one of the partitions wrong.

The CWM recovery builder output is here: http://jenkins.cyanogenmod.com/job/recovery/56329/
A sibiling phone example would be: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_device_samsung_fascinate/blob/gingerbread/recovery.fstab

Anything other files I am happy to give out.
How I feel about my progress:

 

[Legojr]

Due to my lack of experience, and fear of hardbricking my new DoubleTime, I will be postponing my developement of the Gingerbread port to the Doubletime. My priority now will be learning as much as possible about the device.

To Do List (In Order)
1. Find correct Odin version for flashing.
2. Create Froyo ROM that will maximize freespace.
3. Create working recovery.
4. Build Gingerbread kernel.
5. Port over Gingerbread.

 

[Legojr]

I've recently been looking comparitivly at custom ROMs and so far I think the best option might be stock AOSP. I have also been looking into ways to flash onto the phone but ODIN 1.85 doesn't seem to work. It can't be my antivirus as far as I know because I've added firewall exceptions to Odin.

To Do List (in order)
1. Find way to flash things to Doubletime
2. Make Froyo based AOSP
3. Build Gingerbread kernel.
4. Port Gingerbread
(Porting CWM should probably be in there somewhere)

 

[Teknodad1974]

Progress?

i've recently been looking comparitivly at custom roms and so far i think the best option might be stock aosp. I have also been looking into ways to flash onto the phone but odin 1.85 doesn't seem to work. It can't be my antivirus as far as i know because i've added firewall exceptions to odin.

To do list (in order)
1. Find way to flash things to doubletime
2. Make froyo based aosp
3. Build gingerbread kernel.
4. Port gingerbread
(porting cwm should probably be in there somewhere)

did you give up on this?

 

[Legojr]

did you give up on this?

No I haven't but my schedule has not allowed for a lot of time to be dedicated to this. I also am very new to this and I'm taking a lot of baby steps.
The number one problem right now is there doesn't seem to be any way of flashing CWM to the phone as all of the Odin versions/cables/computers I've tried have failed.

 

[Teknodad1974]

Well no better way to learn than hands on and on your own... Good luck! I have one of these worthless phones laying around to give to my youngest girl 6. It's just sucks it's stick on Froyo 2.2

Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

 

[Legojr]

I believe I may have a correct recovery.fstab now I'll run this through Clockworkmod Builder now and hopefully get Odin 1.87 to flash it. If at anytime anyone thinks I'm doing something wrong PLEASE TELL ME. I'd rather not have another hardbricked Doubletime.

 

[Legojr]

Honest to goodness I need some help here I'm trying really hard but I can't seem to get anything right... Odin doesn't seem to work, CWM Builder doesn't even identify the name of the phone, and all of the code available for the Doubletime from Samsung makes almost no sense to me. I do enjoy doing this but I've made almost no progress at all.

As of right now the primary effort needs to be on finding a way to flash CWM onto the Doubletime. The issue being if CWM builder is giving out KitKat level recoveries I doubt the Doubletime could handle it. The only way I can see a reliable CWM img getting built is if we use Cyanogenmod 6, which will require proprietary blobs, and those will be a pain to get since extract-files.sh doesn't seem to be available for the Doubletime as far as I know.

I've started manually finding the blobs by finding files that are similar to those found in the device-vendor-blob.mk of some other Samsung Froyo devices. The link to it is here

If I'm going in the right direction someone please tell me...:crying:

 

[Legojr]

​

Well it finally feels nice to know what your doing! While going file by file through the phones system directory might do it, I can't deny that I may have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So with that lovely feeling in my heart I will be finding each of the parts inside of the DoubleTime and will looking at other phones that have those same parts and copy the blobs specific for them over to the github page I made. Anything that's on the DoubleTime but not in the blobs that I copied I'll put in a miscellaneous section in the vendor-blobs.mk file. So far here is what I know we'll need part wise, and what I know part wise.

List o' part we might need (totally could be wrong):
Bluetooth: ???
Wi-Fi: ???
Camera: ???
Sensors: ???
Audio: ???
Graphics: Qualcomm Aderno 205
GSM: ???
GPS: ???
Media: ???
DRM: ???
DSP: ???
USB: ???

​

The chipset is a Qualcomm MSM7230, looking at apps that gather information about the device I've come to the conclusion that the phone is running on an extremely generic Android build and is not even really optimized for the devices hardware. The phone seems to think that it has an ARMv6 processor while in fact it has a v7.

​

That adds to my other phone binary preference. Add anything you thing might be helpful! I'm a total noob at this and I need all the help I can get. :|

 

[migui0401]

​

Well it finally feels nice to know what your doing! While going file by file through the phones system directory might do it, I can't deny that I may have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So with that lovely feeling in my heart I will be finding each of the parts inside of the DoubleTime and will looking at other phones that have those same parts and copy the blobs specific for them over to the github page I made. Anything that's on the DoubleTime but not in the blobs that I copied I'll put in a miscellaneous section in the vendor-blobs.mk file. So far here is what I know we'll need part wise, and what I know part wise.

List o' part we might need (totally could be wrong):
Bluetooth: ???
Wi-Fi: ???
Camera: ???
Sensors: ???
Audio: ???
Graphics: Qualcomm Aderno 205
GSM: ???
GPS: ???
Media: ???
DRM: ???
DSP: ???
USB: ???

​

The chipset is a Qualcomm MSM7230, looking at apps that gather information about the device I've come to the conclusion that the phone is running on an extremely generic Android build and is not even really optimized for the devices hardware. The phone seems to think that it has an ARMv6 processor while in fact it has a v7.

​

That adds to my other phone binary preference. Add anything you thing might be helpful! I'm a total noob at this and I need all the help I can get. :|

I have this phone and would like a little of hacking on it. Have you gotten anything?

 

[Legojr]

I have this phone and would like a little of hacking on it. Have you gotten anything?

So far all I got is a plan. Although I do have a recovery.img of CWM 6 from the Clockworkmod builder but the issue is it might not even work. Also as of right now I haven't found a way to flash anything to the DoubleTime. Although I have a theory that Odin on Windows XP might work. If you know anyways of flashing that are universal or something I'm all ears.

 

[migui0401]

So far all I got is a plan. Although I do have a recovery.img of CWM 6 from the Clockworkmod builder but the issue is it might not even work. Also as of right now I haven't found a way to flash anything to the DoubleTime. Although I have a theory that Odin on Windows XP might work. If you know anyways of flashing that are universal or something I'm all ears.

Can you create a flashable zip file for flashing via stock recovery, i mean a recovery which just opens flashing it everytime you need it, there some like this.

 

[Legojr]

Can you create a flashable zip file for flashing via stock recovery, i mean a recovery which just opens flashing it everytime you need it, there some like this.

I've heard about that but I'm not sure if a stock recovery can flash a recovery on itself.
Besides a recovery.img that we know will work is needed for that and well... we don't really have one.

Being a noob I'm not sure how much is testable before flashing but I believe that those binary files are going to be needed. Do we just need the vendor-blobs.mk file to copy everything in system/lib, system/bin and system/etc directories?

 

[migui0401]

I've heard about that but I'm not sure if a stock recovery can flash a recovery on itself.
Besides a recovery.img that we know will work is needed for that and well... we don't really have one.

Being a noob I'm not sure how much is testable before flashing but I believe that those binary files are going to be needed. Do we just need the vendor-blobs.mk file to copy everything in system/lib, system/bin and system/etc directories?

Search for guide for creating the flashable zip, this is the better way to get a fast recovery working in any device, about the vendor-blobs.mk, i have not tried to create a recovery, so i can't help.

 

[Legojr]

Search for guide for creating the flashable zip, this is the better way to get a fast recovery working in any device, about the vendor-blobs.mk, i have not tried to create a recovery, so i can't help.

How much experience at Android hacking do you have?

 

[migui0401]

How much experience at Android hacking do you have?

I'm not a great here just like the contributors or reconigzed, but I can do something, do you need help?

 

[Legojr]

I'm not a great here just like the contributors or reconigzed, but I can do something, do you need help?

Well I'm no expert but we're eventually going to need to find a way to build Gingerbread for the DoubleTime. If you know the basics of a Cyanogenmod build enviornment that would be cool! If you could maybe look for any source code for the DoubleTime that would also be the best! Those are the only things I can think of. I don't really know much...

 

[migui0401]

Well I'm no expert but we're eventually going to need to find a way to build Gingerbread for the DoubleTime. If you know the basics of a Cyanogenmod build enviornment that would be cool! If you could maybe look for any source code for the DoubleTime that would also be the best! Those are the only things I can think of. I don't really know much...

I have the stock firmware extracted, the boot.img and recovery.img.