yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
My review summary after owning the Ideos X5 for a week is that it's a great phone for the price. I also own another Android phone and the X5 has not crashed even once whereas with my other phone I have to turn it off and then back on every few days or it won't make phone calls, though it still receives calls. The other phone has Android 2.1 wheres the X5 has 2.2 (Froyo) so THAt might be the reason why it's more crashproof.

Which brings us to the most important point. Huawei have released the source code for the kernel in the X5 so it MAY be that we have a truly open phone ("developer phone"), like the famous Google Nexus. This means that if there are eciting new features in new versions of the Android kernel (think Gingerbread and Honeycomb versions), we will at least have the chance to work as a community to include them in the X5.

THAT's whu we're all asking for our own forum here at XDA Developers so that we can get to work on making such upgrades to the Operating System.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
I don't seem to have FM radio in mine. Or maybe my OS simply lacks the apk application for it.

Most reviews of the Ideos X5 / U8800 seem to say that it has an FM radio but there is no application in mine to switch it on or tune it in. Does anyone here have FM radio in their Ideos X5?

I have another Android phone running 2.1 that has an FM radio ... any chance the tuner application in that one will "find" an FM radio chip in my X5 if I copy it across? How about the standard FM tuner app that comes with Froyo, anywhere to download that? ( I can't find it in "Market")
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
The radio would be firmware locked. Who knows why. I doubt it lacks the hardware since virtually all radio (gsm,3g,wifi,bt,radio) is controlled by a single chip. Oh and bump for this thread :D. Need more replies for more attention = new forum haha.

I have been trying to port clockworkmod but progress is slow because I can't read boot.img off the device with dump_image, as I can't find it since cat /proc/mtd just gives "MTD-Crash" but that seems to be common to all of the u8800s. I did get the boot.img and recovery.img from /cust_backup but syncing with the cyanogenod repo is taking a while so I haven't made any more progress but I'm thinking since I can't find the regular boot.img when the clockworkmod image is done I don't think I'll know where to put it :(
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
Let's put our heads together and try to get a working clockworkmod recovery port, shall we? I'm sure there would be others on here who can lend a hand as well.

Take a look at this: simply-android.wikia.com/wiki/Huawei_U8800. It suggests that recovery is on mmcblk0p5. Try dumping that and see what you get.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
Well, I pulled the recovery and boot blocks off according to that url and the file sizes do not match. Both recovery and boot should be around 9-10MB but the files I pull off are 7 and 12MB. Doesn't look likely at this stage :/. Stupid question what does loop* and dm-* mean exactly? There are loops and dm's with nearly the exact file size on there....

i488_photobucket_com/albums/rr247/Poulsen8r/screenshot_2.png
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] paarkhi:
Can anyone tell me where did you all get your Huawei U8800 from? because I was searching online and it is not yet available in UK or USA

Please someone post a link for the online purchase

Thanks
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
Most of the posters in this thread are from AUS/NZ where they can be bought from stores like **** smith and crazy johns. There are a few on ebay that post worldwide but they are quite overpriced since I can get it from crazy johns for 299 but on ebay they are ~$400...
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
Loop means loopback device and dm means LVM device. I'm not really familiar with LVM, I read up on it a little bit, seems that it's used to do things like copying and backing up a logical device without interrupting functions on the device. For now, I think we can just ignore it.

A loopback device is a filesystem that has been mounted from a file. Since there is a loopback device about the same size as our recovery.img, chances are that instead of the contents of recovery.img being in a partition, recovery.img is actually being mounted. This may make things very easy for us, as if this is the case rather than having to flash recovery.img, we just need to replace the file, and it will mount it for us.

See if it will let you rename recovery.img in /cust maybe. I think if it's the image used by the loopback device it should give an error when you try to rename it.

Wish I could devote more time to this, but I'm a very busy man at the moment. Oh and how did you go with trying to build the CM recovery? I haven't been home to try it out yet.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
Well, the whole cust_backup fs is read-only so by default you can't rename anything but mounting rw and sudoing you can pretty much do whatever you like lol. So I was able to rename it. I'm tempted to rename boot.img and reboot the phone to see what happens but I'm guessing if it does fail there's no way for me to get back so I don't think I'll try haha. No luck with the CMR image yet. I'm short on time also with exams next week...
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
Okay so I did a lot of poking around in the filesystem and got to a stage where I was confident enough that my conclusion from before was correct. Renamed recovery.bin to recovery1.bin, turned off the phone, tried to boot to recovery and.. blue screen! I was right, it mounts that recovery.img as a loopback device. So there's one hurdle down.

I'm still trying to sync up with the CM repo to try and start porting the recovery.. I left it on for two days while I wasn't home and it turns out my wireless dropped out and for some reason when I tried to sync again it started from 0%.

Just as an aside, I'm not sure if you meant to say boot.img in your previous post or recovery.img. DON'T MESS WITH BOOT.IMG, I wouldn't want to take the risk in even trying to find out, but I would say it's the bootloader.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
Yeah man I'm totally new to Android but I figured boot.img is the image loaded every time the phone starts and therefore if I renamed that, the phone would no longer boot. Didn't even cross my mind to rename recovery and reboot recovery. Glad you saw it or I'd have a damn nice paperweight now haha. Now I'm guessing the next step is as simple as create new CM recovery.img and replace the original file right? Then reboot recovery...

I'm guessing since you joined the forum in 07 you have been a lurker for quite some time and are more familiar than I am. This is heaps fun lol.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] ibnefahim:
+1 for the section,

any one succeed in custom ROM for it ?
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] panchip:
I bought mine in Hong Kong from smartone-vodafone.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
Speaking of boot.img, does anyone know whether Huawei have locked or encrypted the boot loader on the U8800?

As I understand it, the Snapdragon processor has the facility of "secure boot" and most phone makers enable that which results in an encrypted boot loader.

In turn, this means that we can't load our own rom unless we "crack" the bootloader or else hijack some other part of the boot process and piggyback our rom at that (later!) stage.

Such piggyback techniques usually preclude changing to a later version of the linux kernel so going from Froyo to Honeycomb would not be possible that way, right?

If true, that means that we may depend on Huawei to make known the decrypt key for the bootloader, if they've enabled (likely) secure boot in the Snapdragon.

I also presume that boot.img will contain the uboot bootloader file, or equivalent. If boot.img is NOT encrypted, we should be able to loop mount it and edit / mess round with individual files on a linux box right? Maybe even get it to multi boot from the massive 8gb micro SD card that is included with our Aussie version.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] markus13:
Hi folks,

+1 for the forum.

I have two additional questions: Does anybody have a compare to the Moto Defy?

I read the very rare reviews and some are saying that the battery is weak (less a day with normal usage). Can anybody say something to this issue?

Thank,

Markus
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
Had a chance to do some more exploring and reading tonight. The conclusion I made about the loopback devices was actually not correct. Turns out the way that recovery is normally used is by flashing the image to a partition on boot, so this is why my little experiment worked.

I've been trying to port cm recovery but it won't build unless the partition size and mount points are correct, so I need to work out which partition is used for boot and which is used for recovery, then work out what should be used in boardconfig.mk for these values

BOARD_BOOTIMAGE_PARTITION_SIZE

BOARD_RECOVERYIMAGE_PARTITION_SIZE

BOARD_SYSTEMIMAGE_PARTITION_SIZE

BOARD_USERDATAIMAGE_PARTITION_SIZE

BOARD_FLASH_BLOCK_SIZE

boardconfig.mk says to get the values by examining cat /proc/mtd but we don't have proper mtd support so that's a little difficult.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
I can't check against the Moto Defy but battery seems to last longer than my Xperia X8. My Ideos X5 has plenty of capacity to play MP3 music for about 6 hours continuos while hooked up to a hi-fi system at work, beeping occasionally when emails are received. I browse the web and replyt to emails with it at meal and rest breaks, and while on the bus going to and from the mine workings, a total length of day without recharging of about 12.5 hours.

The battery is quite low then by the time I get back to my "donga" in the accomodation villiage but it isn't in to the red on the indicator. So I'm quite happy with the battery life.

Both the Xperia X8 and the Ideos X5 seem to flatten their battery in about 2 hours of GPS, voice assisted, turn by turn navigation driving. Likely this is the combination of powering the GPS circuits, hunting for mobile phone towers while moving at speed, accessing the web for map and guidance updates through the mobile network and amplifying the voice instructions to playback through the speaker. Solution, get a car charger! :)

I've tried using the OsmAnd application which uses OpenStreetMap files that I download on to the SD card before leaving home (essential for most mines in the West Australian outback where network coverage usually doesn't exisit) instead of google maps. THAT improves battery life a little (network data turned off) but I still have a USB charger in the vehicle.

This isn't an Android thing, I had the same issues with my Nokia 6110 Navigator. Summary, if I'm going to use GPS navigation on a phone for more than a couple of hours, I'd better be carrying an auxilliary power source!

For walking, I bought one of those little adaptor kits that use a single AA battery with voltage converter built in to the battery casing. And I even have a hand generator with phone adaptor plugs to charge the phone when all else fails. Happily, I've not had to use either of these for more than brief testing purposes yet, but both systems work.

After all the natural disasters around the world already this year, it seems wise to have an emergency supply of phone power because experience shows that mobile networks can be got back up after things like floods and earthquakes much quicker than than fixed phone lines.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] droiduser:
I have to say i'm quite happy with this Ideos X5

Sure the battery will run down fully by the end of the day, but thats with me having wifi on at home and at work (with wifi set to be on all the time, not just when the screen is on)

So wifi on and bluetooth on and gps turned on (with latitude running) so by the end of the night i'll have to plug it in for charging (love how quickly it charges!)

It wouldnt surprise me if i turned off wifi/bluetooth/gps/turned down brightness and only used it for phone calls a couple of times a day it would last much longer than just one day but thats not real life for most of us.

Would love the option of some manufacturer making an extra capacity battery with bigger back cover to give it a couple of days of using everything though, i wouldnt mind a couple of millimeters thicker back as the phones pretty thin already.

But for the price this phone rocks, i can buy almost four of these phones for the price of one iphone4 and can configure it the way i want it.

Still waiting for the cyanogen mod rom though, then it will totally rule.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] markus13:
Hi Trevh,

thanks for your reply.

One more question: When you use the X5 for walking. How good is the display readable in the sunlight.

Another point: There are some peaple, woho complain about speech quality of the phone. Have you noticed anything about this.

Markus
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] AlexxxR:
CM ROM porting

From what I've read, the Ideos X5 and the HTC Desire Z have the same chipset, and are the same bar the look etc so shouldn't it be easy to port over the HTC desire z CM?

BTW I'm a noob, this is my first Android phone and I'm keen to help with Dev :)
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
UPDATE available via download from huaweidevice.com

An UPDATE for the U8800 / Ideos X5 seems to be available from Huaweidevice dot com! (In the downloads area file list, top of the list at the moment)

I've successfully downloaded the file (its size is about 153 meg) and extracted the instructions document. From that, below is a list of device build numbers that can be updated.

It seems to me that if this update process goes well, we'll be able to keep the file(s) and repeat the update process when we want to change back to the stock firmware if something goes wrong with a CM upgrade or while testing CM rom beta versions.

VERY briefly, the update process is to create a "dload" directory on a {blank?} micro SD card, copy files "UPDATE.APP” and "UPDATE_CUST.APP" into it, put the micro SD card into the U8800 and hold the vulume up/down key while pressing the power on\off button to get it to action the "dload" directory files as it powers up.

Here's the list of upgradeable build numbers (mine is on the list, YAY!) :)

U8800V100R001C00B123SP01

U8800V100R001C00B124

U8800V100R001C00B124SP01

U8800V100R001C00B125

U8800V100R001C00B125SP01

U8800V100R001C00B126

U8800V100R001C00B126SP01

U8800V100R001C00B127

U8800V100R001C00B128

U8800V100R001C00B129

U8800V100R001C00B129SP01

U8800V100R001C00B130

U8800V100R001C00B130SP01

U8800V100R001C00B130SP02

U8800V100R001C00B131

U8800V100R001C00B132

U8800V100R001C00B132SP01

U8800V100R001C00B132SP02

U8800V100R001C00B132SP03

U8800V100R001C00B132SP05

U8800V100R001C00B132SP06

U8800V100R001C00B133

U8800 V100R001C00133SP01

U8800 V100R001C00133SP02

U8800V100R001C00B133SP03

U8800V100R001C00B133SP05

U8800V100R001C00B133SP06

U8800V100R001C00B133SP07

U8800V100R001C00B133SP08

U8800V100R001C00B133SP09

U8800V100R001C00B133SP10

U8800V100R001C00B133SP11

U8800V100R001C00B133SP12

U8800V100R001C00B133SP13

U8800V100R001C00B133SP14

U8800V100R001C00B133SP15

U8800V100R001C00B133SP16

U8800V100R001C00B135

upgrades to:-

U8800V100R001C00B135SP01
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
I walked for a while back and forth under shady trees then brilliant sun, holding both my Xperia X8 and Ideos X5 and readability of both seemed the same. Funny, I had expected the Ideos X5 to be more readable than the Xperia X8 because of its bigger screen but no, they seemed the same ... I needed to take of my sunglasses to be able to read much! :)

Voice quality is good, and I've used the X5 in marginal signal areas where I found the voice would drop in and out with no loss in quality .... either the signal was strong enough to get through in full quality or I got nothing, which is what I'm used to with all of my past mobile phones.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] AlexxxR:
Root Tools?

I updated to latest build from huaweidevice dot com :)

but now root tools from Jrummy16 isnt compatible :/

updated fine, means we'll have the files to go back to if poritng CM doesn't work
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
Thanks for jumping right in and doing that, AlexxxR. I'm about to fly back to the mine and didn't want to risk breaking my phone. In fact I'll leave the update until I get back, even though you had a good experience just in case ... I really can't be without my u8800 out in the bush.

Did you notice whether you have wifi tethering now? Anything else in the update, apart from breaking root tools? :)
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
For those on the Australian firmware it's not worth upgrading, it really does nothing. If you've got the New Zealand firmware (2below I think?) I would suggest it though, as I have tried this rom and found it to have some troubles with wifi, though it's possible the version I tried is not the release version. I've been reading some reports on a chinese forum (hiapk) where users are saying that the china unicom rom seems to be faster than the generic rom. I'm not sure about this though, the unicom rom has a heap of extra apps and **** preinstalled (it's about 50mb bigger than the generic rom) so I went back to generic pretty quickly.

Anyhoo, when I applied the generic firmware I lost swype. I don't know if this is common but it can be fixed easily. You'll need to have root access and then using something like root explorer go into cust_backup/image/cust_data/hw/ideos_x5 and first install the swype app from the app directory, then copy libSwypeCore.so from the lib directory to /system/lib

As far as a custom recovery goes, I'm making progress :) This phone is quite unique but in a very good way. I wish someone with some real experience could get his hands on one to start doing some great things.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] altwho:
Some information

@stockwell

Here is some information I hope is useful to you:

You can install a custom recovery by pressing both volume buttons on startup.

A violet screen will appear and the u8800 will reveal a mass storage device to the computer connected. (a very reliable recovery mode if you screw up your device)

On this mass storage device lie the boot.img and recovery.img, also carrier customizations. The boot.img is actually fairly harmless if you back it up, the actual bootloader is probably the EMMCBOOT file on the disk.

The boot.img is just the base ramdisk loaded into memory when android starts, and can be used to get root from adb. I would recommend a specific tutorial except that i am NOT allowed to post outside links.

By replacing the recovery.img I have adb and the clockworkmod command line tools working on a custom recovery image, but the recovery service will not start. I don't think the partition size parameters really matter, except for the RECOVERY_PARTITION_SIZE which i have set to a big value so the build script for clockworkmod wont error out.

Here are the command-line options to create a working recovery.img for u8800:

mkbootfs clockwork | minigzip > ramdisk-recovery.img
mkbootimg --kernel /root/makefroyo/out/target/product/huawei/recovery_kernel --ramdisk ramdisk-recovery.img --cmdline "console=ttyDCC0 androidboot.hardware=huawei" --base 0x00200000 --pagesize 0x00001000 --output recoveryfinal.img

For some absurd reason the recovery executable extracted from the 1.4 cyanogen recovery image (for the htc g1, search google) will work, with graphics bugs like the recovery on a huawei tablet, the ideos s7.

PS: A 2.3 firmware has been spotted on the chinese cousin of the u8800, the c8800. We will probably be getting a 2.3 update soon and if not, somebody who owns the device can dump the firmware. Link:

gfan.com/market/product/201103178544.html
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] trevh:
This is really excellent stuff, altwho & Stockwell, and very helpful, at least for me.

Sorry if this is proving my ignorance but is it possible that the Recovery Service won't start because the on board nand storage is not write enabled as part of the "secure boot" system that I mentioned in an earlier post?

I may be hyper focused on this aspect because I'm in the middle of writing a blog article called "SmartPhones with Unlocked Bootloaders - Why They Matter". Your previous post where you mentioned that the U8800 (and C8800?) is "quite unique" got my attention. ... I'm hoping that you'll say that you believe that the boot process is not locked down on this phone. If I'm able to verify that the Ideos X5 / U8800 / C8800 has an open boot environment then I'll certainly feature my phone in the blog post.

Or in what way(s) Stockwell, do you think the phone is unique, if not the boot environment?
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] AlexxxR:
It sure does :) I'll test it now and then put up the speed results.

Nothing else as far as I'm aware has changed but I got a (slightly) higher Quadrant score...
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] stockwell:
Yeah I've learnt quite a bit since that post. I've been able to compile CM recovery but my image doesn't work.. it sits on the huawei logo for a little while then reboots normally into android.

What does your recovery.fstab look like? I just have entries for /cache, /data and /system (fstype ext3 and /dev/block/mmcblk0p6, p13, and p12 respectively).

I believe someone on hiapk has done something similar to your experiment with the 1.4 recovery from the g1 to make an AMON-RA recovery. It also has weird graphics, and can only scroll up/down. I can upload it if you like but I think it's useless. I started looking in to building it from source but decided to keep trying clockwork mod for now.

That's pretty cool about the official 2.3 rom. I sorta thought maybe the tethering update would be 2.3 (or maybe hoped more-so than thought). Would be great to see CM7 on the u8800 at some stage.

This phone does not allow access to recovery and boot partitions by mtd or emmc devices, and there is no fastboot. Normally this would ring alarm bells, but put the phone in bootloader mode and connect it to your linux box and you have access to almost the entire nand, including cust_backup which is where the recovery and boot images are loaded from, via mass storage devices. I don't believe any other phone allows for this kind of access.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Poulsen8r:
Ahh that's the dream... You guys are doing great. I have been trying bits here and there to get a recovery going but no luck yet. I gave up on the 'build from source' (long story ubuntu 11.04 and my laptop don't always agree...) and instead tried recovery images from the other IDEOS phone, the Ascend and the Pulse, all of which just left it hanging at the Huawei splash. I also tried the Desire Z/G2 recovery but same thing. I don't think there are many other phones out there that use this style of boot loader/partition scheme and that's why I'm having no luck.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] Taajuus:
Firmware update for native wifi tethering would be nice...

Why not root and use some of markets tetherings? Because they can only create ad-hoc hotspot and other Android devices wont connect to that (like my tablet). Native wifi tethering seems to be doing something else, since no problems connecting to that (tested with ZTE Blade 2.2 custom rom SwedishSpring RLS4b). I'd love to tether like that with Huawei also...

EDIT: Should have read more - does the update from Huawei pages give wifi tethering? My build is on list, so definitely updating if it gives tethering!
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] altwho:
Your fstab sounds about right, try copying the original init scripts from huawei to the clockworkmod image. This will make the recovery stay on the huawei/carrier logo and you can access the phone trough adb.

This is as far as i got, outside of copying the g1 recovery executable which is of no use to us right now. I tried to build AmonRA recovery from source but failed due to dependencies.
[Huawei Ideos X5 U8800] altwho:
Touchscreen

One more thing, about the touchscreen controller:

It is probably an mXT224 (qt602240) from Atmel. The same one used in the galaxy s.

It supports up to ten concurrent touches, but the driver shipping with the device supports only two touches.