31 August 2014

Porting MIUI Rom

Im a bit disappointed with the quality of the custom roms available for my son's Lenovo A766.
They are either very laggy or unstable enough to be a daily driver. As a result, he was stuck with the stock rom, which are not very responsive.

I had read numerous articles on porting miui roms. To be frank, i wasn't sure that I can accept the idea of bricking a phone. But enough is enough, I need to brave myself and take the first step forward.

I went ahead and downloaded a miui rom for the Lenovo S820. Why that one? a. Its the same manufacturer so, there must be some kind of similiarity. b. They're both have almost the same hardware specificatios, especually the chipset used.

After about 15 minutes if getting the stock rom dump and another 30 minutes or so copying file between the base and stock files, I flashed the new rom onto the phone.

After a long 5 or so minutes at the boot screen, I was greeted with the familiar welcome screen of miui V5. What a relief.
The default home screen & wallpape

With everything working good (signal detection, Wi-Fi, screen size and touch feedback), I decided that I should stop thinkering too much with the rom. There are still some minor ignorable glitches, but overall its far better than the other custom roms available out there for the A766.

 
About phone information. Need to edit the build.prop

Download link on Mega. This is a trial rom for me, so dont expect miracles. Flash it on your own risks. Normal procedures, wipe data, cache, system & dalvik. Flash rom, gapps for 4.2, UPDATE-SuperSU-vX.XX.zip and reboot.

Next, porting miui for the THL T6S.. maybe..

Graphic rendering glitch. But, I'll use it as it is.

28 August 2014

How to flash the cwm recovery and root the THL T6S

DISCLAIMER: DO this at your own risk. Using incorrect scatter file, or incorrect CWM/Carliv can brick your phone. I won’t be responsible or liable if anything bad happened to your android device.
What’s you need to have.
The SOP aka instructions
  1. Download all files above and install the drivers.
  2. Download, extract and run SP Flash Tool.
  3. Click scatter loading on right side of SP Flash Tool and browse to where the scatter file is.
  4. Uncheck all the boxes except for recovery.
  5. Click the recovery line and browse to where the downloaded CWM is stored.
  6. Click download at the top of SP Flash Tool.
  7. A warning will pop up letting you know that not all items are selected. Click OK.
  8. Remove the battery from the phone. If you attached the battery, SP Flash Tool will not be able to detect the THL T6S.
  9. Connect the THL T6S to PC via USB – At this point, you will see the preloader  at the bottom of the SP Flash Tool is communicating with the PC. The bar at the bottom of SP Flash Tool will start to move indicating that the file is being transferred. At the end of the flash process, you will see a green circle indicating that the flash process had finished successfully.
  10. Disconnect the USB cable from the phone and Put the battery back into the phone.
  11. Boot into cwm recovery by holding vol up + power button for a few seconds. 
  12. You will see a boot selection menu. Press the vol up button navigate to the Recovery Mode option.
  13. Press the vol down button to enter the newly flashed cwm recovery. Take note that the cwm will be upside down. Navigate through the options by using the vol up & vol down button.
  14. Select Install Zip From SD and then select the UPDATE-SuperSU-v1.99.zip.
  15. Confirm the installation and then reboot the phone.
* For my friends from htcmania who are having problem streaming youtube videos, i would suggest for you to go to advance wifi setting and turn off WiFi optimization. See if that will help.

Camera test - Xiomi Note

This afternoon i went to the Al-Bukhary Mosque for afternoon prayers and took this to see if the phone is capable to handle landscape photography. The images were processed by using Snapseed and instagram respectively. What do you think?

Processed in Snapseed 

Processed in Instagram 

This one was taken yesterday morning to test its bokeh quality and macro capability, and was not processed in any way.

Straight out of the camera

Update - Night shot.


27 August 2014

A New MIUI Experience.

Im an avid MIUI fan.. I had my first MIUI experience back in 2012 when I was using the TSM Merbau U4 (a china phone). It was the first custom rom that I tried to flash to replace the stock rom for an android device. Heck, I even compiled my first cwm on that TSM U4.

Fast forward a few (quite a handful actually) android based smartphone later and now I own an actual Xiomi device running the official MIUI - the Xiomi/Redmi Note, an 8 cores beauty.

I just own the device for a few hours and I already spflashing and stuff. God I love tinkering with roms. Learn quite a few tricks today.

I leave you with an image of the Redmi Note captured earlier today.


One more thing, Im trying to port the MIUI to the THL T6S. From what I learned from the MIUI porting team, since the T6S comes with KitKat, I need to find similiar devices which already has a MIUI ported (KitKat or not).

Good night.

25 August 2014

Carliv Recovery for the THL T6S

I was a bit worried with the cwm recovery that I had created a few days ago. Its because the recovery is a cwm v5+. As far as I know, kitkat doesnt work with v5+. I need  cwm v6+.



And I stumble to Carliv's thread on the XDA (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2759981). So, I did as the instructions there and walla.. a cwm 6+ recovery. You can grab it here.



As you can see, it's still upside down.. :). Well, does it work? Creating backup - yes. Restoring a backup - not tested yet.

To finish off, some shots of the 2 touch (good enough for a 4 yrs old) ips screen.





Good night.

23 August 2014

Cwm recovery image for the THS T6S

Just a quick update at this early morning (almost 3am to be exact).

To my russian comrades, sorry that I had forgotten to mention about the red charging LED. And about the 2 touch thing and 10fps video shooting, I'll find a way to test those tomorrow or on Sunday. :)


Antutu score (on stock unrooted rom).Good enough for a 4 years old I guess.

I had created an entry on how to root and install the cwm here.

Im out of here. Leave a comment if u have anything to inquire.

22 August 2014

Unboxing and Initial review of the THL T6S

I was looking for a budget phone for my 4 years old son. Yes, for a 4 years old kid who still cant talk straight. Some might say that Im spoiling him but, thats for another discussion.

I logged in to a local merchant's website, here in Malaysia, last Saturday (16 Aug 2014) and was expecting to spend around RM400 ($126) at least for a phone of around 4.5"-5" screen, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.

To my surprise, a phone which suite my required needs was advertised for almost half of my budget - the THL T6S. A quick search on the google didnt return much informative review, just the specifications and images. To cut the story short, I went ahead and ordered the phone.

This morning, I received a call from the courier delivery guy asking if I would be in the office at around 11am to receive a package. I smiled. In fact, I grinned.


The phone came in a properly packed bag.


The phone's box was encapsulated in a bubbled wrapped plastic. I'd give 10/10 on shipping efford.


The back of the box - the phone's main specification was printed.


The box''s content. 1 x phone without battery. 2 x 1900mAh battery (slim, like 4mm's slim). 1 x charging plug (with a mere 0.5A output). 1 x USB cable. 1 x screen protector. 1 x earphone cum handsfree device. 1 x plastic transparent hard back case. Not bad, especially for including the extra battery and the case.



The dual sim slot (stacked, to be inserted horizontally with sim 1 using the micro sim size and sim 2 using the normal sim size. I would prefer a separate slot for both sims but again, this is an ultra budget phone.


Without any further ado, I slap the battery in and turn the phone on. The power button is on the right hand side and .. clickable. So are the volume up/down buttons which was located on the left hand side. I like this configuration than putting the power button on the top or on the same side as the volume buttons.

The boot image was nothing more than glowing THL logo and some simple logo dissolving animation(I didnt pay much attention to the boot process, which didnt take too long).




The default launcher is the Launcher3. I noticed that icons are themed. Also included was a few chinese pre-installed apps such as the Baidu Browser, App Market and DU Speed Booster. I would say that the screen is beyond expectation. The contrast and saturation are on par with my Galaxy S3. Even my colleagues are impressed with the quality of the screen.


So, being a MIUI fan, I went ahead and installed the Mi Launcher, just to have a taste of it. God, I love the screen.

Well, thats all I can share with you right now. If you are curious about the gaming capabilities, I'd say that Minion Rush is playable and Samurai Rush II ran smoothly. Connectivity wise, both wifi and bluetooth are working fine.

I'll do a benchmark tonight and post it tomorrow. Till then.

*UPDATE : Rooting guide here

Both Sim card slot are working properly.