Mar
9

notes

Lawrence Sheed // 9 Mar 2010 // 10 Comments

Currently I have an iPhone (ancient 2G), and have just bought a Dell Mini3i (600RMB with an 18month contract @ China Telecom), as I donated my 3G iPhone to one of the extended 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 (yes, thats you in Beijing Tom!), 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 Lenovo 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=0×240000
Image_Length=0×40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_1]
Start_Address=0×6900000
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. I have all the firmware tools already, despite the Ophone8 forums lack of courtesy in sharing, grrr.

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!

March 9, 2010 // China Related, Technical Mumbo Jumbo // 10 Comments // Tags: dell mini3i, firmware, mini3i, ophone

10 Comments to “Dell Mini 3i / OPhone Hacking thoughts / notes”

chineselio says:

May 7, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Could you send me a copy firmware tools,thanks
its mymail: chineselio@126.com

Reply
Siliano says:

June 3, 2010 at 1:41 am

Lawrence, I am from Brazil and I have also purchased a Dell Mini 3ix with oPhone 1.0.

I would like to have some clues on how can I root this phone to change its OS for oPhone 1.5 or some newer Android versions.

Could you help me?

My email is silianosiliano@yahoo.com.

Many thanks in advance!!

Reply
- Lawrence Sheed says:
  
  June 3, 2010 at 1:59 am
  
  So far I’ve been unlucky in locating the firmware online.
  
  I’ve even sent the phone to Dell to “upgrade”, but they claim they don’t have updates. However, the local BBS forums show people with newer firmware, and photo proof thereof.
  That said, essentially Dell has abandoned this model, as is plain to see. Every single other oPhone available has updates available online to upgrade. Some to 2.x even.
  The Dell is still stuck in 1.0
  
  I’m thankful I got mine for 600rmb, and didn’t pay the 3000 or so that they sell for without contract.
  There are a lot of pissed of Chinese users unhappy with Dell about this…
  
  Reply
Siliano says:

June 3, 2010 at 2:09 am

Thanks for the reply….

I got mine for something like US$390 (with 12mo. contract) – which I consider expensive for what this phone offers with this OS…

But it is so good hardware-wise… Could there be a way to “force” a new OS in it?… That would involve opening it to access jtag? If I knew what to look for, I would definitely try to open it…

Reply
Siliano says:

June 22, 2010 at 10:31 pm

Borq’s is working on an OPhone version 2.0 (based on Android 2.0 or 2.1), which will be installed on the Dell Aero (the Mini 3i on US Market). And, by the way, in US the OPhone OS is called Android+.

I wonder if we will be able to upgrade our phone with this OS.

How could this be done? Any ideas, infos or links to enlighten me?

Reply
Daniel says:

January 29, 2011 at 2:06 pm

well i just got this Dell cellphone today i bought it cuz they claim it’s an android, but they don’t say it’s a variant of it, anyways i don’t know how to hack or so, but i could help if u need to do sum firmware tests.

i would love to see my cell with a new version of android like evryone else that have one

so i just wanna say thanks for those that are working on it!
please let me know if u have any new

Reply
arthur lopes says:

March 12, 2011 at 7:28 am

Please, could you send me a copy firmware tools and the firmware?
e-mail: arthur_bsb@hotmail.com

Reply
- Lawrence Sheed says:
  
  March 12, 2011 at 9:20 am
  
  Sorry people, but I’m not going to be sending tools for this out, or firmware.
  
  Its a crappy phone and my touch screen has now failed despite the phone literally sitting on my desk unused for the most part.
  I’ve pretty much abandoned mine to the 3rd tier of use only if I’ve lost one of my primary or backup phones.
  
  I have posted links to where you can find things on my own thread at xda:
  http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=643868
  
  Reply
Alan Sarante Bitung says:

September 1, 2011 at 4:59 am

I was read your thread on xda is usefull to get some information like Borqs.com it is out of my mind so I have search through Google and I found some reference and I hope it’s usefully I found some Firmware flashing tools it is recognize to Dell Aero when Flash mode.

Honestly I want to post in your thread but there is out of topic for Dell Aero I was post some reference in this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=785548

I’m interesting for your concept for hacking this device, really cool

Reply
- Alan Sarante Bitung says:
  
  September 1, 2011 at 5:03 am
  
  I hope there is everyone to share upgrade this device Dell Aero, this is my email goog04@gmail.com
  
  Regards
  
  Reply