yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Shield Tablet General] ajis90:
Baseband query

With the new lollipop 5.0.1 update, can anyone confirm with the LTE RoW baseband?

I like to flash my US variant tablet with RoW cause I live in Malaysia.:confused:

I believed RoW is more suitable than US baseband.
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
Unfortunately, it seems that it still doesn't change the baseband. Still not getting 4G all the time.

I think we might be seeing this wrongly, as I read that nvidia shield tablet is using its own radio chip, with different update method than the more common Quallcomm devices.
[Shield Tablet General] xonix240719mu:
I thought Malaysia Telco used the same LTE bands as Singapore ? Are you not getting Bands 7 ( 2600 mhz ) in your area ?

Anyway here is a screen shot of baseband 5.0.1 on my tablet flashed with RoW factory image.
[Shield Tablet General] Nintonito:
Main reason why companies restrict LTE bands is actually purely bureaucratic. Basically, many countries (including the U.S.) charge a licensing free for each cellular band used. For Nvidia it's not economic to put all the bands in one model, because not all the bands are used in a given region. For a company like apple, it is because less models means less production lines, and apple needs to keep the model #'s as low as possible, so they shove as many bands in one device as possible. It's just different methods of being cost effective.
[Shield Tablet General] WarRaven:
This is a smashing idea.

I've a US LTE model an live in Canada, but also suffer from that AT&T crap.

This is better then rooting an removing for that purpose.

Still a guy needs his root.

WR
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
I did some research on the modem in our tablets and it should be i500 from icera (bought by nvidia) which is software modem capable of pretty much all lte band.

Today I was looking inzo some system files and found nice xml file productConfig.bin in firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729 there is also version with nala suffix which seems like us version. In this file is section with enabled bands:

lteBand3 lteBand7 fddBandI fddBandVIII bandGSM900 bandDCS1800 lteBand20 fddBandII fddBandV bandPCS1900 bandGSM850

And sarBackoff section probably defining band priorities.

I dont have rooted shield now nor unlocked bootloader so I can't modify these files. Is anyone willing to give it a shot and change bands in this file?

Btw there is some binary trash at the end of this file I hope it's not some signature/checksum.
[Shield Tablet General] perky nerky:
That is exactly the same baseband version in my US LTE.

Flashing the RoW factory image does not update the baseband unfortunately.

What we really need is the RoW baseband file..........
[Shield Tablet General] zarish:
I got my Shield Tablet on Monday.

Did the initial checking, etc. Playing around, making sure I was happy with everything. Noticed the AT&T stuff (expected).

Today, bootloader unlocked, flashed CWM recovery, flashed the RoW 1.2.1 OTA (wanted to stay on KitKat a bit longer)(no more AT&T items {not that there was a lot}).

Checked OTA for an upgrade, confirmed it wants to follow up with the RoW OTA (did not install, just downloaded and confirmed the file was the RoW and not the NA).

I'm holding off on upgrading to Lollipop for a bit more but I must say this has been a nice upgrade from my Nexus 7 (2012). Definitely glad I didn't go N7 (2013) or N9 (2014).

Oh, and the baseband on mine still says NA, just like others have stated, the radio baseband doesn't seem to be included in the updates yet.
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
Based on your finding, I think we won't have any update containing the traditional baseband update like the Qualcomm or similar devices. In the folder, both the US and RoW baseband drivers exist, but the system automatically decides which one to use, so basically the system image is largely similar apart from some bundled apps. Whenever there is an update, both gets updated. My guess is that there is a marker somewhere in other partition that indicate the version of the device.

Hence, we can only switch baseband if someone figures out where is the baseband marker is and switch it. I'm not very familiar with *nix mounting, maybe some of the pros might be able to help? Maybe someone can start a Q&A thread with more devs?
[Shield Tablet General] dwaynel:
OK so the latest OTA has updated my baseband to e1729-nala.4.05_0.6.4 [MENTION=2496508]815[/MENTION]584. According to inscythe's post though, this won't really help, as we need to find what is causing the baseband selection.
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
My modem died today. Guess it was because I eas messing with firmware folders. Luckily I just had to flash original firmware.

Anyway there is icera-loader script in /vendor/bin which calls download -d /dev/ACM0 -f semicolon_separated_filelist. Download binary is in the same folder. Filelist contains files from /vendor/firmware/icera... Not sure which but they all seems to pass check and gets flashed

This loader is somehow called by ril service, I found logcat of my modem misflashed where I found that device firmware is selected by quering the modem itself by AT%IGETFWID command. It might by possible to switch between us and row just by flashing the other firmware.
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
Well, if the switching can be done simply by flashing the RoW ROM, we won't be having this discussion... As several of us already mentioned, simply flashing doesn't change the LTE modes.

Moreover, I think your case of losing LTE probably only due to the corrupted modem files; some people in other threads had the issue after applying the wrong OTA over. So, reflashing will definitely fix your issue.

But, your finding made me look into different parts of the system. I noticed that there is a set of symlinks created in the location /data/rfs/data/debug/fw_update. It is currently set to the US version files in the /system/vendor/firmware/icera. So, my theory is that if we try to change the symlinked files here to the RoW version (and possibly the update_ind file in /data/rfs/data/debug, we might need to get it from someone with the original RoW unit), then somehow trigger a firmware update (like flashing through fastboot), it might actually switch the radio.
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
Sorry I probably wasn't clear. I'm not talking about flashing rom, it wont help because both roms contains both modem firmware and selection is done by asking modem which version is currently flashed. The simlink you found is created during update process.

I was flashing just the modem, not rom, using the download utility in /vendor/bin

---------- Post added at 06:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 PM ----------

The modem update looks like (substituted version of code in icera-loader):

SetUsbSuspend "on"
stop agps-daemon
stop icera-switcher
stop ril-daemon
sleep 2
DEV_NAME=/dev/ttyACM0
FILE_LIST="/vendor/firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729/audioConfig.bin;/vendor/firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729/loader.wrapped;/vendor/firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729/modem.wrapped;/vendor/firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729/productConfig.bin;/vendor/firmware/icera/nvidia-e1729/secondary_boot.wrapped"
/vendor/bin/downloader -d $DEV_NAME -v 2 -f "$FILE_LIST"
SetUsbSuspend "auto"
start icera-switcher
start agps-daemon

I'm not totally sure about order or content of FILE_LIST, it's just guess, I havent seen it in logcat.

---------- Post added at 06:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:43 PM ----------

You probably dont need RoW files since I'm pretty sure you have these files in icera/nvidia-e1729/ . If the folder doesn't exists in us version I can upload it. Symlink are created during update process, so relinking won't do any good. But simple renaming folders (adding -nala suffix) might do the trick. But I didn't find out how to trigger modem update manualy. Last time it flashed out of blue after ota was release (not flashed, I didn't flashed it yet, still on 2.1)
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
You missed a small point from my post: the one file I need from the RoW device (note: not the ROM), is the update_ind file in /data/rfs/data/debug. This one file is the one I suspected used as the FILE_LIST, as it contains the list of the files included in the driver folder. However, the one that bugs me is that the files listed there is preceded by a long string of alphanumeric that doesn't seem to be MD5 (might be SHA1, but I haven't tried yet).

So, just to be safe, we need the update_ind file from the RoW device to compare.

I suspect we can trigger the modem update by simply running a clean flash... Perhaps the initial first boot sequence will run this script. Still, I think the first step might include changing the symlinks first.
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
Thats weird, there is no update_ind in debug folder, only logs from previous updates and fw_update folder with symlinks. Would, you post yours?
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
This is my screenshot:

Attached is the zip file of the update_ind

EDIT: While I was copying over the files to the PC, I might as well copy the other folders as well.... The update_ind indeed contains the SHA1 hashes of each of the files. So, basically, I can recreate the RoW update_ind file. Also, interesting fact, the only difference between the US and RoW is only one file: the productConfig.bin file... So, if we can do simple symlink substitution and somehow trigger the update script, we might hit a jackpot here...

EDIT2: Okay, after reading the icera-loader script on my PC with proper highlighting, I kind of getting a gist of it... From the looks of it, we can go to a rooted terminal and just run icera-loader, which accepts two parameters: the DEV_NAME and the FILE_LIST (second param is optional). If the FILE_LIST is not specified, it will look for this file /data/rfs/data/debug/update_list (it is mentioned that it will do this when it is run as part of "service", which I think the initial boot up after an update or something). So, now we just need to find out how is the /data/rfs/data/debug/update_list file is being formatted, and I think we can just run this off adb su. The update_ind is probably the byproduct of the flashing as it contains the hashes of the files... Not sure why you didn't have it. Btw, how did you get the DEV_NAME value from?
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
Really nothing here, anyway it really looks like sha1, but the checksum doesnt match my nala files.

Adding update logs and my fw files
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
Yup, I figured it out as well as mentioned in my post edits... But it is definitely SHA1, I've matched it. Probably this is just an additional log or something.

I think we are on the right track still... I'll poke around some more when I have time.
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
Okay, I just found some time to try things out....

First of all, I did try changing the symlink targets at /data/rfs/data/debug/fw_update, which turns out to be useless. The symlinks are re-created from scratch with every boot.

Secondly, I went to check out the .rc files in the system root, which where I found out that the services are being called. The icera-loader service is started from init.icera.tablet.rc. So, we know that icera-loader is being called at every boot.

Now, we just need to find where is the radio ID is being set. Back to zero again.

EDIT:

Found something in the init.icera.rc:

setprop ro.ril.devicename /dev/ttyACM0

And this line in the init.icera.tablet.rc:

service icera-loader /vendor/bin/icera-loader /dev/ttyACM0

From what I know, this is the part that shows up in the Settings>About Tablet>Baseband Version... So basically, I believe this is where the baseband version is being stored.

So, if that's the case, whatever the ROM that we flash on the device, it won't matter since the baseband setting is actually saved at ttyACM0 mount point and either version of the ROMs actually contains both versions' drivers.

Now, we need to find how to get in to this location and change the version string there.

Any ideas?
[Shield Tablet General] JuStAdsor:
Hi!

Just found this: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu/?q=Using+Motorola+phones+in+Ubuntu,+moto4lin,+and+P2k+Commander

and this:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/411108/how-to-write-characters-to-serial-port

So maybe you can try:

cat /dev/ttyACM0

on US version baseband and WW and compare the 2

Then probably it might be posible to make the comand you mention read the data from a file?
[Shield Tablet General] andnej:
EDITED: sorry misinformation, the user has not get any success in updating the modem as well

http://jaredmorgs.github.io/2015/01/15/Turning-a-Shield-Tablet-US-Version-into-a-Rest-of-World-Version.html
[Shield Tablet General] inscythe:
ttyACM0 is a mount point, so you can't get it opened with cat or any simple text viewer.

We need help from the people who are more familiar with Unix-based filesystem to get into this. If we can just grab an .img file out of this mount point from an ROW device and then flash it, we might hit gold here.
[Shield Tablet General] Ficik:
Of course you can cat and echo into device file, it's how you talk to hardware in unix. But you're right that it wont give you anything useful. But you're wrong with img. The /dev is not in image, there is no point in having it there since it doesnt exist until you have the hardware.

What we need is bypassing firmware check which from my testing seems to by on modem itself and without special instruction which should be in some nvidia testing build in unlock file in firmware dir.

Yes sounds like bad news.

I've tried to flash modified RoW and US firmware with download tool. Modified version fails on checksum (predictible) but US version fails on version check. If we bypass any of these two checks: either change name of firmware or skip check of currently flashed version then we're golden.
[Shield Tablet General] jaredmorgs:
Yep this is mondo frustrating. I got a comment from an XDA member about both modem files being loaded onto the device but some firmware check preventing the RoW files being loaded.

For now, I'm going to update this post and clarify that this is not a solution at this stage, and link to this thread.
[Shield Tablet General] dwaynel:
I'm wondering if we got a dialer onto the tablet, whether something like this would help, or whether we would still be restricted by the bands:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=59729294&postcount=25848
[Shield Tablet General] jaredmorgs:
From what I could tell from that post, this service code would still be activating the 3G/4G bands that the modem hardware stack knows about. It couldn't turn on or off bands that weren't configured in the modem config files which appears to be the root cause of the issue here.

I actually tried that code using Hangouts Dialer (easiest dialer I know of to install), and all it tried to do is make a call. I'd say that Hangouts Dialer is not a system dialer therefore doesn't have the required permissions to access this part of the GSM service.
[Shield Tablet General] dwaynel:
I think you're spot on with the modem hardware stack comment, thought I'd give it a try anyway.

I just went through the effort of installing the Google Dialler (from KitKat, couldnt find Lollipop). No go. Didn't recognise the Code, and trying to dial just resulted in a FC error. <SIGH>

Please NVIDIA, if you read this, any chance of just releasing the modem into the wild ??
[Shield Tablet General] bullghost:
maybe this post are usefull

nvidia modem using Icera 410

nvidias-icera-modem-hooks-up-into-voice-over-lte-volte-and-gaming/

[GUIDE] UNLOCK ADITIONAL BANDS FOR QUALCOMM DEVICES <OnePlus One EDITION>
[Shield Tablet General] JuStAdsor:
any news?
[Shield Tablet General] Bryandu13:
Hi, what about flashing wifi model firmware on LTE RoW model for someone who don't care about simcard ?
[Shield Tablet General] jaredmorgs:
That works just fine. I've already done that for my LTE US tablet.
[Shield Tablet General] Bryandu13:
Oh thanks !

You tried for Android 7.0 ?
[Shield Tablet General] jaredmorgs:
I did it on an earlier version of the OS, and the OTA upgrades continued to be delivered with the WiFi build on my LTE device.

The hardware on the shield tablets is identical except for the GSM stack on the LTE, so flashing non LTE firmware in this case is low risk.
[Shield Tablet General] Bryandu13:
I finally did it and it's working perfectly !

Thank you man.
[Shield Tablet General] sinichi21:
Hi how did you flash the wifi variant on the LTE? Did you flash it through recovery or fastboot adb? Is it reading the correct partition like the 32gb and not 16gb? Thanks in advance
[Shield Tablet General] jaredmorgs:
I used ADB to mount the tablet.

Then I ran the flash-all.sh script found in the developer image zip and it did the rest.

This was a good year ago now, so the flashing method may have changed.
[Shield Tablet General] gruiz3:
I've got the US lte version. Just got the 7.0 update using row lte firmware. So far so good. Ota was 740ish megabytes.
[Shield Tablet General] will3k14:
Does your LTE still work? also have you encountered any problems?
[Shield Tablet General] gruiz3:
I'm on h+ due to the modems in row vs us. Software wise no issues.
[Shield Tablet General] will3k14:
Thanks for the update. I may go row then
[Shield Tablet General] gruiz3:
O forgot to mention, I no longer get the sleep of death and I'm us tmobile. I set airplane mode and my stand by time is fantastic.
[Shield Tablet General] will3k14:
Finished flashing today and couldn't be happier. No extra bloatware and everything works great. Thanks for the help
[Shield Tablet General] SX86:
Do you guys know if it possible to flash the RoW firmware, but keep the US LTE radio? I know such thing was possible back in the Galaxy Nexus days...Where some radio firmwares would work better for some.
[Shield Tablet General] ashleyglassel:
Yes it is possible. The radio firmware does not get modified. Would be great if it did, because I want the RoW radio bands on my US LTE.
[Shield Tablet General] SX86:
Thanks!

I just flashed the RoW 5.0 firmware and it did keep the US bands. That's exactly what I wanted! I'm now running shield experience 5.1, and most likely will be getting future OTAs on day one.
[Shield Tablet General] w0rtez:
Steps by steps on what you did?
[Shield Tablet General] SX86:
Backup any data that you may want to keep from the tablet.

Downloaded the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet LTE RoW Recovery OS Image 5.0.0 and SHIELD Family Windows USB Driver from https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload

Extracted them.

Plugged in the tablet to my Windows PC.

Rebooted tablet in fastboot mode

Ran the following command in command prompt on my PC, from where I had extracted the image files.

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

fastboot flash boot boot.img

fastboot flash system system.img

fastboot flash userdata userdata.img

fastboot flash staging blob

Rebooted the tablet.

Skipped the initial setup

Downloaded latest 5.1.0 OTA from Android settings, about tablet.

Rebooted and installed.

Factory reset.

I then went through the initial setup like I normally would (sign in to Google account, restore apps from Google backup, etc...)

Eh voilà!
[Shield Tablet General] Frankenscript:
And what about root / TWRP in this scenario?
[Shield Tablet General] ofsinreno:
I copied the process and am now stuck in a bootloop.

Any ideas?

edit: Never Mind, problem solved.
[Shield Tablet General] SX86:
I guess you would just replace the recovery portion with

fastboot flash recovery TWRP.img

Then once everything else is done, Boot in TWRP and flash SuperSU.zip
[Shield Tablet General] stefilie:
Hey fellows. I have recently flashed the 5.1 row lte on my US lte pyrotablet and found a little trick here. If you change in build.prop lanes ro.product.flavor and ro.product.name with wx_un_do to wx_na_do and reboot you will see 4G signal instead of H+. I think it switches to US bands after reboot.
[Shield Tablet General] Frankenscript:
Hi guys... See my recent thread over in troubleshooting. After flashing ROW 5.0 on my US LTE tablet, and letting it OTA to 5.1, I can only connect to WCDMA signal.

Flashing prior US LTE images and letting them OTA hasnt worked to restore proper GSM & LTE. Not getting GSM at all. Since I'm an ATT customer this really sucks...

Any hints how to recover?
[Shield Tablet General] Frankenscript:
Interestingly my baseband shows e1729-nala.4.05_0.6.5 @858654

If I understand this correctly, the -NAla. part means north America... so maybe my baseband isn't accidentally the ROW one. I'm going nuts trying to figure out why I can't connect via GSM given what appears to be the correct baseband, and I'm using the same SIM that was connecting to AT&T's network 4G/LTE just fine a week ago.
[Shield Tablet General] sinichi21:
If I am correct there is something you need to edit on the build.prop in order to get the 4g lte icon.
[Shield Tablet General] Frankenscript:
Right, if using the ROW ROM in the US, it normally shows H+ (because it's connected to an HSPA network here, since the LTE bands it is looking for aren't available, and it drops back to HSPA). In the US they usually consider HSPA+ to be 4G. If you edit two buildprop keys (see here), the H+ becomes 4G. Not LTE, just 4G.

But that's not the problem I'm having. I've gone back to the US ROM, and I'm still unable to connect to the LTE network. Just the WCDMA network that is much slower and is actually an HSPA/+ network. The GSM/LTE towers aren't even showing in diagnostics. I did something that messed up my radio, apparently.

If anybody has suggestions, please let me know. I'll try anything, at this point.
[Shield Tablet General] JusticeAA:
I have the 32gb LTE US version and currently only use Wifi (no sim card). Can I just flash the "NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet LTE RoW Recovery OS Image 5.1.0" from nvidia onto it to get the Android M update?
[Shield Tablet General] stefilie:
yes it will be fine.. just make sure you flash "nomoreOTA.zip" right after if you have a pyrotablet.
[Shield Tablet General] TylerSell:
Help do not try this

I attempted the SAME thing on my tablet and it completely destroyed it! I don't know if it's fixable at all!??????
[Shield Tablet General] caseyatbt:
Did you ever fix this? Do you still have the tablet?
[Shield Tablet General] gqukyo:
It works fine, that person probably did something wrong. Tons of people here, including me, swap back and forth between the US and RoW LTE firmware versions depending on which one is available first.