[HTC Sensation] stempox:
[INFO] RADIO and RIL info

big props to glitzbd for starting this thread and then allowing me to pick it up after he got busy with school and then sold his Sensation.

To briefly explain with a somewhat-less-than-accurate analogy for the purist, the radio you can flash is like a firmware package in Windows terms, and the RIL is like a driver. It is important to match them for best results, or else poor or no reception is likely, as well as high battery drain.

If a ROM has a recommended radio, that means the ROM is already

matched

to that radio by having the matching RIL files included in it by the ROM chef. The reason for this may be that the ROM chef or the testers had good experience with it, it may be the latest radio available, or something different. However, You can try different radio/RIL matched pairs since your phone may not get the same results as someone else's in the same area. The newest radio/RIL is not always the best for your phone in your area of the world.

Be careful when mixing GB and ICS based ROMs and radios and RILs.

My experiments so far have been less than successful, had to reflash to recover mobile network connectivity. :(

If you are having problems getting a GB-based radio/RIL pair working on an ICS-based ROM, then you could try deleting /system/libreference-ril.so and libril.so from the RIL zip file before flashing as these files are not needed on ICS-based ROMs. h/t Omar302. If you are able to get a good working combination, please report it.

Do some testing, coverage and transfer speeds may vary. Give it a day. YMMV. If you find a good combination for your ROM and area of the world, please post it.

To check the current radio version, go to Settings, About Phone, Software Information, More, and check the Baseband version listed there. That is the correct current version. It is a known issue that Bootloader may report a different version; it is incorrectly reporting it, don't worry about it.

To check what RIL you have to run getprop "gsm.version.ril-impl" (with the quotes) in Terminal Emulator or run this from a command prompt on your PC when connected with the USB cable.

[/B] Code:

adb shell getprop "gsm.version.ril-impl"

and it will print out the RIL version. Or use the RILInfos app h/t cb1100r

Instructions

Radio

Before doing any of the steps below, the HTC Sensation needs to be S-OFF. If you aren't S-OFF or you aren't sure, Go to this thread first and follow the instructions there.

UPDATE: Apparently the newer Sensations are being shipped with an HBOOT which cannot be set to S-OFF at this time unless you use the Juopunutbear method. You do have to follow the HTC Unlock method first. If you do attain S-OFF using Juopunutbear, then feel free to proceed.

If you have a newer Sensation, the HTC Unlock method *may* allow radio flashing. Before proceeding any further however, I strongly encourage reading this thread by trkaaa.

Flashing the radio with a corrupt file or interrupting the flash, can brick the device, so please proceed with caution. Always check the MD5 checksum before flashing a radio.

There are two ways to flash a radio. The first way is proffered and preferred by setzer715 and I agree with his logic but it may not be possible for you depending on your bootloader and whether it is locked for extended fastboot commands or not. The second method should work fine however so no worries.

First method:

Download the your choice of radio for the HTC Sensation.

Open the PG58IMG.zip and copy the radio.img file to the folder on your PC where you have the adb.exe and fastboot.exe files. If you don't have those utilities click here to download them. If you S-OFFed your phone according to the link above you should already have them however.

Note: If you right click on the file and choose "Extract All", then the folder "\phonetools" will be added to the path you target to extract the files to. So if you choose C:\ for the target, the files will be unzipped to a folder named c:\phonetools.

1. Check the MD5 checksum of the radio.img file against the RADIO.IMG MD5 checksum below. Download whatever utility you like to do it with, one is included in the phonetools.zip package, but please check it first to lower the potential risk of bricking your phone.

2. Connect your phone to a PC, and make sure that USB Debugging is enabled on the phone.

3. Open a command prompt on the PC. Change to the directory where your phone tools with adb.exe are located.

4. Type:

Code:

cd \phonetools adb reboot bootloader

5. Once your phone is in bootloader and you see a white screen with text and FASTBOOT USB near the top of the screen, type:

Code:

fastboot flash radio radio.img

You should see something like this:

Code:

C:\phonetools>fastboot flash radio radio.img sending 'radio' (22205 KB)... OKAY [ 3.915s] writing 'radio'... OKAY [ 12.437s] finished. total time: 16.353s C:\phonetools>

Note: If you get "Remote not allowed" then your bootloader is locked for extended commands. Not to worry, just scroll down a few lines and proceed with the second method.

6. When the flashing completes, type

Code:

fastboot reboot

7. Done. Enjoy!

Second method:

1. Make sure the filename is PG58IMG.zip exactly or it will not work.

2. Copy it to the same folder as adb.exe. If you don't have adb.exe on your computer click here to download it. Note: If you right click on the file and choose "Extract All", then the folder "\phonetools" will be added to the path you target to extract the files to. So if you choose C:\ for the target, the files will be unzipped to a folder named c:\phonetools.

3. Copy the PG58IMG.zip file to the C:\phonetools folder.

4. Connect the HTC Sensation to the computer via USB and make sure that USB Debugging is enabled on the phone.

5. On the computer, open a command prompt. Change to the directory where your phone tools with adb.exe are located, such as c:\phonetools.

6. Run the following commands:

Code:

cd \phonetools adb push PG58IMG.zip /sdcard/PG58IMG.zip adb shell md5sum /sdcard/PG58IMG.zip

NOTE: The MD5 you get should match up with the PG58IMG MD5 below. If not, re-download & try again.

7. Run this command.

Code:

adb reboot bootloader

8. The HTC Sensation will reboot into fastboot mode. Pressing the Power button will put the device into the bootloader mode.

9. The bootloader will scan for the radio update. Once it finds the update, select Volume-Up for Yes.

10. Allow the bootloader to finish flashing the updated radio, and press Power when prompted to reboot the HTC Sensation normally.

11. Use ES file Explorer of File Expert or something to delete the PG58IMG.zip from your SD card or else it can be more difficult to boot to recovery.

12. Done. Enjoy!

Note: If you get a message about "incorrect CID", then you will either need to set supercid using step 4, or you can edit the file to add your CID. It is not that hard to do.

1. Get your CID using CID Getter or something like that.

2. Open the PG58IMG.zip file using 7-Zip or Windows Explorer and copy the android-info.txt file out to a folder. Leave the PG58IMG.zip file opened.

3. Use Notepad++ to edit the android-info.txt file. Do NOT use Notepad or Wordpad, it will destroy the Unix formatting.

4. Add your CID using the same "cidnum:" format, or you can simply edit one of the existing lines to replace that CID with your own.

5. Make very sure you have EIGHT (8) characters in your CID, like "T-MOB010".

6. Save the file after editing it. Close Notepad++.

7. Drag the android-info.txt file into the opened PG58IMG.zip file. Choose to overwrite the existing one.

8. Copy to your SD card and proceed to flash normally in bootloader.

RIL

For the RIL, the steps are easier.

First make sure you download the matching RIL for the radio, then you just need to copy the .zip file to the root of your SD card using the adb push method above or whatever method you choose.

Then boot into recovery and flash the .zip file. The updater script will automatically wipe dalvik so no need to wipe anything else.

Reboot and enjoy!

I don't bother with the MD5 checksum since a RIL flash failure won't brick the phone, unlike a failed radio flash.

Big Thanks to Omar302 and Hawke84, thanks to them we have new RIL packages which have been edited to automatically mount /system before flashing. Please give them some thanks if you have an extra one for the day.

If this thread helped you, please rate it up with the Rate button at the top!! Thank you!!