[Milestone XT720 General] appagom:
well, not exactly a FAQ...

I write this as a user of a Korean Motoroi XT720, in Korea. I do not know or care much about using this phone elsewhere, but some things here may still be useful for people in that situation.

First the Korean version Motoroi XT720 is not exactly identical to the international Milestone XT720 and certainly not identical to the original Milestone A853 (Thanks to Mioze7Ae for pointing out about the original.. also see his comments in next post about more detail on the subject.)

For one it has DMB, the internal storage apparently varies on other versions (I think), radio frequencies and APN settings are not compatible if using ROMS from the wrong device.

It may be possible to make a ROM from another version work, but that's not my thing.

Roms from for the non-Korean versions probably will not work without some changes

And therefore, custom ROMs from English sites probably don't work. There are android developers in Korea, but I don't know if any develop for this phone.

Updating

repeating:

Roms from for the non-Korean Milestone XT720 probably will not work without some changes

And therefore, custom ROMs from English sites probably don't work. There are developers in Korea, but I don't know about this phone.

Froyo (android 2.2) gives you apps 2 sd.. which you need if you have many apps.

Froyo update linked from first post of this thread:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=881801

Don't worry about the bugs reported there if you are using the Korean model. The bugs (except for maybe the mediaserver issue, more later) are related to the fact that people are using the rom on non-Korean phones.

The rom there is the same rom as available officially on the Korean update site. It's just much easier to get it from the above link.

To flash it

,

1)get any version of RSD-lite (I used 4.9 and it worked). I used windows xp to run it. Mileage may vary with windows 7.

2) Run it. Load the sbf file.

3) Check that the file stats get filled in (otherwise you got a bad download which happened to me once).

4) Put your device in download mode (keep reading for instructions).

5) Connect the USB.. use a good heavy gauge cable like the stock cable, and plug into a rear connection on the computer. This really can matter.

6) Hit start, and wait a long time, this phone's flash process is REALLY slow. (compared to Samsung)

Within a couple of minutes though it should be clear that something is flashing and progress indicators should be incrementing. Don't wait hours.

There's a good youtube video somewhere for the milestone.

**Official Update

Unlike the manual suggests, OTA does nothing.

The latest official ROM version seems to be reported here:

http://www.mymotorola.co.kr/product/PrdRsdPhoneList.aspx

So in the unlikely(?) event there's another significant update, we should see it there.

Official updates are flashed by a web app from here:

http://www.mymotorola.co.kr/product/PrdRsdMain.aspx

A thread discussion roughly how to traverse that complicated Korean web page process to do the update is here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=908314

Notice the non-Koreans failed, but that's because they had the wrong phone. Your phone should be connected by USB when you start the web process. It took me two tries and a computer reboot to get it to work, but it worked. It probably helped that I can read most computer terms in Korean writing.

**Download and Recover Modes

Download mode allows ROM flashing. Recovery allows wiping data cache, and applying update.zip files (which can modify your rom).

Download and recovery modes keys

Recovery (mostly quoted from someone else):

Turn off phone

Press Power key + Camera Mode Key to power on the phone and bring up the recovery screen

(Trianlge with exclamation mark shows after motorola logo)

Press Volume Up + Camera Key to show the recovery menu.

Use Volume Up/Down Key to highlight and Camera Mode Key to select

Be careful.. selecting wipe data, will obviously delete most of your apps.

Download Mode:

Turn off phone

Press Power key + Volume Down + Camera key

Camera mode key is the little one next to the cammera key.

Volume up means the one toward the top of the phone.

If the battery is out of the phone and if it turns on when you put it in... then replace "power button" above with "insert battery". You don't have to contort to do both as some people say. Either way, the power key or battery should be the last part of the combination.

**Rooting

Super one click is said to work, and certainly it should. I used the rageagainstthecage exploit with adb (the same exploit as super one click). There's a similar hack described elsewhere here. I can try to improve this section if needed later.

**Market Games etc

Many applications are blocked to Koreans in the market. This includes all games. Use the Market Enabler app from the market to fix this. I use it to set my provider to [us]T-mobile. If you get the pro version it can be made permanent on boot up. The free version isn't.

**Some Tweaks and tips

Launcher

The stock launcher is a little jerky on this thing, or was in eclair, (update.. I think froyo and/or the mediaserver fix solved this)

Anyway.. you can try ADW launcher or launcher pro or something else if you have problems. These sometimes pause to reload though when you hit the home key.

mediaserver bugginess

A few people using the Korean froyo on the Milestone report that there is a

mediaserver issue

where mediaserver consumes battery and slows the phone. I may have detected this on the Korean phone too, but not sure yet (not pateint enough). The solution offered around here is to replace the media server binary. Here's the link I found for a new one:

http://dateno1.egloos.com/28452

It is a Korean page, so it probably is an issue for the korean phone. I installed the mediaserver_d file, and the phone still works and yes, maybe better, but if you do the fix incorrectly, you can boot loop your phone and need a reflash. I don't know the difference between the two files offered there.

so the way to do this (assumes basic knowledge of adb use)

1)root the phone

2) cd to the directory with the mediasver_d file

4) do all this...(this has not been cut and paste tested, but it's what I did by hand, check for typos).

adb pull /system/bin/mediaserver mediaserver.original
adb push mediaserver_d /data/local/tmp/mediaserver
adb shell
$ su
# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/yomama /system
# mount -o remount,rw -t roots / /
(the mount type and device name actually don't matter for a remount command)
# rm /system/bin/mediaserver
# cat /data/local/tmp/mediaserver > /system/bin/mediaserver
# chmod 755 /system/bin/mediaserver
# reboot

Keyboards:

If you want Korean and English entry, and want spell checking in English and an overall much better keyboard, I highly recommend Smart keyboard Pro, and download the English and Korean language packs for it. I've tried many keyboards. Keep in mind though, I don't like swipe. Don't forget to configure the spell checking stuff. You must enable it in settings and you must select it as your input method... long press on an input box.

Lockscreen

If you don't use pattern lock, skip this. If you use pattern locks you probably see no need to 1) press power 2) do a slide lock 3) do a pattern lock. On many phones the pattern lock disables the slide lock. On some, including this one, it sadly doesn't. The only unlocker toggle I found that fixes this is Anti Lock from the market. It uses a little battery and it flashes between screens real fast in an un-appealing way for half a second when you press power, but it gets it done. I like having it better than not having it.

Tethering

There's a 3G hotspot app included for this.

**Overclocking:

This device is potentially very overclockable/underspecced. (but don't take my word for it, I only know rumors and such.. do this AT YOUR OWN RISK This may damage your phone (if you overdo it) and you may be denied warranty repair.. real examples of this exist I think(questionable source)

First root the phone.

Get Milestone Over-clock.

You must find version 1.4.2

. On the web site you must click show all versions or something like that on the download page. Newer versions don't work on the Korean device.

Run it. Slide the slider all the way to the right to get custom mode (you really should use custom mode) Hit menu key. GO to settings. Do *NOT* check apply on reboot until you've tested your setting. There's a thread around here, I'll link too soon, with people's experiences. On my particular device I cannot get as a high a speed with as low a "vsel" (chip voltage I think). I run about 4 vsel higher or more to stay stable for long times during angry birds. ;)

I found that 1 Ghz, at 60 vsel (most people run 1Ghz at 56 I think) rebooted my phone after half an hour of heavy use, and became pretty warm. I backed off to 900 Mhz at 58. I think this is ok for me. I may just be unlucky.. chip variation does exist, or maybe the Korean models are a little different (see Mioze7Ae useful comments in next post).

**A

little

about ROM file manipulation

This is just here to point the curious in the right directions. I have not explored this stuff much yet and some info may even be wrong.

Anyway, this is just a FAQ not a development thread.

Again custom ROMs from English sites made for Milestone devices won't work without some changes.

Kernels are locked by the boot loader (at least that's true for the Milestone), so no custom kernels exist (well not in a very practical sense).

Official Rom files are SBF files. SBF files are packed together smg files.

SMG files are apparently yaffs2 image files and can be mounted with loop mounts on a linux system or the phone.

update:

So actually you need yaffs2 support and you need to create a nandsim device on a ramdisk, so that's a bit involved:

http://www.aleph1.co.uk/pipermail/yaffs/2005q3/001356.html

and it seems you can probably dd the image file onto the ramdisk then, or unyaffs it.

but in the end that should allow actually editing the image, and possibly even producing modified flashable images.

but unyaffs works to extract the contents of CG39 (/system) and CG33 (/cdrom.. whatever that's for).:

http://code.google.com/p/unyaffs/downloads/list

You can google a windows version too.

MotoAndroidDepacker or sbf-recalc are two tools that can unpack sbf files to smg files and repack them again (possibly even making modified flashable ROMs). sbf recalc has a linux version but I only found a binary which dynamically links to the wrong versions of libstdc++ for my system.

It seems more popular around here to create "nandroid" images (which I think are also just filesystem images, but I haven't really played with it).

Open-recovery seems to be the tool of choice for making and flashing nandroid backups, but I haven't looked into this at all yet.