E680i Tutorials

[motomaniacs]

Repost from Other Forum

The best E680i in my view can be a phone with
ABP(latest firmware) + Unicode CG33 for ABP(by threesearch, I Recommend this) + CG35 by sandman + CG36 by intoxicated or threesearch(to fix contact issue)

Possible Backup/Restore of Data:
Most important thing to me, before reflashing my phone was, taking a backup of my very essential data(SMS, PhoneBook, Calendar). i searched through the forum and found this post. Please read through the mentioned post and follow it. i did the same.
To tell you in short, here is what i did
1. Telnet to phone(if you dont know how, then read through Section 3 below to get some idea) and login as root.
2. use these commands in sequence
? mkdir /mmc/mmca1/sysdb
? cp -p /ezxlocal/sysDatabase/* /mmc/mmca1/sysdb/
3. after you are done with every thing(resetting or reflashing) then again use telnet or qonsole to use this command
? cp -p /mmc/mmca1/sysdb/* /ezxlocal/sysDatabase/
4. Restart Phone(to be safe)

it is mentioned in post but i did not use any MPT or any thing else and i still was able to backup/restore these items successfully.
1. PhoneBook(with complete settings of assigned ringtones and images).
2. SMS (All Folders)
3. Calendar
4. Stored FM Channels list


Flashing to latest firmware:
The latest firmware is a ?china mobile? branded firmware. It is commonly known as ABP version of C5 firmware. You can get the firmware here and proceed with instructions below.
1. Download and install PST 7.2.3(may work with previous versions but I have not tested).
2. Patch PST
3. Check settings of USB mode in e680i setting. Set it to USB Modem.
4. Plugin your phone through USB cabel.
5. Run MultiFlashFlex from PST folder.
6. It may ask for several drivers after installing PST and connecting phone. Always use manual location pointing towards PST directory.
7. Make sure that
? Your phone appears in connected device list
? Your e680i has Full (recommended) or at least 60% battery. Its better to do a recharge for 1 or 2 hours (while downloading firmware and PST etc?) and then start for flashing.
8. Select downloaded and then unzipped shx file as firmware in top field by browsing to file location.
9. Start reflashing your phone.
10. When it says ?Erasing Memory?, you can replace any desired CG33 if you want. I recommend the Unicode Modded CG33 by ThreeSearch.
11. It will continue the process and finally it will get finished.
12. Unplug USB cable. Remove Battery. Insert battery. Start Phone?

After doing all this, you may get annoyed first when u will C the red branded screen of china mobile on boot-up. Don?t worry this all will be gone as we proceed further.

Note: Thanks to yantz, I followed his guide available here for my help. All credit goes to him if this guide works for you.

[motomaniacs]

Updating CG35, Unbranding the mobile:
We will use CG35 by sandman, all credit goes to him. He has written a very complete instruction set so I am just pasting it here.
Download his CG35 for ABP here
All below text of this step is original text by sandman (if I know correct).


About my CG35:
1. ChinaMobile Services applications removed
2. ChinaMobile startup-shutdown animation changed to default Motorola animation
3. LinLoader and MPKG pre-installed
4. All preloaded midi files removed except tmp.mid. Also included a HelloMoto ringtone (Thanx to ThreeSearch for this tone).
5. All backgrounds removed except one.
6. ThreeSearch Multi-Latin Keyboards (Thanx to ThreeSearch)

ThreeSearch's Multi-Latin Keyboards supports keying in the following languagues:
Deutsch (German)
English (UK, US)
Espanol (Spanish)
Francais (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Portuguese (Portuguese)

To use multi latin base keyboards:
1. Tap on "au" to open multi latin base keyboards
2. Tap on "ab" to go back to normal keyboards

After install multi latin base keyboards, you can install English --> Your language or Your language --> English in your phone. You can also install French --> Portuguese. Any latin base dictionaries will work fine. Download multi national dictionaries from here:

dictionarymid.sourceforge.net

Flashing this CG35:
1. Copy CG35.smg to the root of your SD/MMC card
2. Telnet to your phone (if you dont know how, then you can read next section first to get the idea -- AK)
3. Type cp /mmc/mmca1/CG35.smg /dev/tffsa and wait till it finishes
4. End the telnet session and restart your phone

[motomaniacs]

Installing Unicode CG33 by ThreeSearch (this will also tell you how to use telnet and flashkit):

Update:
As Rootfs was originally made for A4P, for our current firmware I Recommend Unicode CG33 by three search. This include almost everything that was part of rootfs for A4P by Yantz. details by Chiennk can be found here.


I assume here that our phone does nto have rootfs yet for any of these possible reasons.
1. We forgot to replace cg33.
2. We were not sure if that was right time for that
3. We really did not know about rootfs by then
4. We were afraid of that worthless error message that appears at the end of flash
5. Or most importantly something bad happened and we had to reflash with original firmware without any modification of CG33 because we did not want to take risk anymore.

Cyph did an excellent job on flashkit to provide us the best tool for modification of a very trivial area of firmware. Original instructions of cyph on usage of flashkit can be found in the Readme document of flashkit download or on the thread of previous link.

Now all we have is a working phone with sandman?s CG35 but without rootfs(Unicode modded CG33).
Connect your phone as usb mass storage device to computer and copy flashkit folder into it.
Copy cg33.smg(i shortened the name) into flashkit folder.
Unplug usb cabel, go to setup on e680i and select modem as usb mode for next time.

As mentioned in above section, our CG35 has preinstalled LinLoader. So we do not need to re-install it.

If we do not have CG35 of sandman yet, then use the manual installation package of linloader from e680i_essentials.zip and follow the enclosed instructions to install it.

After that, All we need is

USBLan:
[Quote:]
Find the usblan driver installation for windows in e680i_essentials.zip
Click the installer to install drivers
I do not know about any other version but this version does not work on XP without modification.
Find the modified .inf file in the usblanpatch.zip
Replace the original file on installed location with this patched one
You are done.[/Quote]

Acmattach.lin:
[Quote:]
Find in e680i_essentials.zip
Place anywhere (preferably on root of SD Card)
Connect USB Cabel(be sure that you have shanged usb mode to use device as modem)
Click + hold on the file, popup menu will appear
Select ?Open with?
Select ?App Name? with a green arrow icon. This is linloader
Select ?Always use this?? to make it sure that in future any *.lin file opens with linloader.
U?ll get a new device found prompt on XP
Select location for driver and point it to installation directory of usblan
Wait? your device is installed. Click finish[/Quote]

Test the telnet.
[Quote:]
Now we have usblan connected. Press ?Win + R?, and type cmd in run dialog.
In XP command prompt, type ?telnet 169.254.142.2? without quotes and press enter
Type root on telnet login prompt, press enter
You are on root of your phone.
Our test is ok, type exit and press enter
Close command prompt
Unplug the usb cabel.[/Quote]

Below are original instructions by Cyph. My ?required modifications? are written as bold.
**** Instructions by Cyph ****

[Quote:]
1. Run rwflash.lin. This will load rwflash.o
2. Leave the phone alone and wait. When the screen blanks out wait 30secs longer, there's a good chance the phone entered low power mode.
3. Telnet to the phone (by connecting usb cabel --> clicking acmattach.lin --> open command prompt --> telnet to 169.154.142.2 --> login as root)
4. Type cat /proc/rwflash_status and press enter. If it shows "unlocked", your flash is writable!! If not, unplug phone and go to step 2
5. continue command below in sequence
6. cd /mmc/mmca1/flashkit
7. ./start.sh
8. The script will start killing the phone's apps and mount the miniroot. After which, your telnet connection will be terminated.
9. Telnet back to the phone at port 10000 using 169.254.142.2 10000 and login as root. You are now in the miniroot. All phone applications should be killed by now (Except for mmcsdapp, for some reason, it is stuck in an uninterruptible sleep. This means we can't unmount the original root. Well, too bad.)
10. cat /proc/mtd to see what partitions you have. You should be able to flash the "R/W" partitions:
mtd4: 000e0000 00020000 "R/W Kernel"
mtd5: 018e0000 00020000 "R/W RootFS"
mtd6: 00020000 00020000 "R/W Setup"
mtd7: 00020000 00020000 "R/W Logo"
11. CD to the directory where we have placed our rootfs (in this case we placed it at /mmc/mmca1/flashkit) and then give following command:
flashcp -v cg33.smg /dev/mtd5
12. sync
13. Pull out battery. Reboot.
14. Don?t worry if flashcp gives an error at end. It does. But your work is done.[/Quote]

ThreeSearch did a great job by providing us Unicode modded CG33. this is CG33 mod of firmware that contains a lot of helpful utilities (nano, bash2, dircolors) to really enhance the usage of qonsole or telnet(u can see many differences on colorful command prompt now). This CG33 also contains editable gaintable, startup folder, auto acmattach, auto backup of native db and supports Unicode to support maximum possible languages. A very detailed thread is available here if you want to explore about this CG33.

Installing CG36 to fix contact issue of ABP.:
There was a strange issue faced by some people that instead of contact name, the number appeared when a call or sms recieved.
this issue could be resolved by editing ezx_flexbit.cfg(if i know correctly), but optionally you can use a CG36 to handle the problem(as i did).
You can download the CG36 from Here
1. This CG36 fixes the contact issue.
2. Makes the MPKG installed with sandman's CG35 work perfectly(mine did not work without it).
Installation: is very easy and is mentioned on download page. Just follow the comment of Sandman and there is nothing more to do.


If you followed this section
1. you know how to use telnet
2. you know how to use flashkit
3. you know how to update some sections of firmware without reflashing

[motomaniacs]

Most important apps to have(there can be many, but these are what I recommend):

Please download and unzip e680i_essentials.zip and just have a look on what it has. You must find
1. Neo Installer
2. LinLoader Neo Packaged
3. bins
4. GainTable
5. eplayer_b7
6. Qonsole
7. Screenshot
8. samba
9. Midnight Commander
10. usblan
11. usblanpatch(notes included in directory, needed for working driver on xp)
12. startup.lin (for those who do love to C a new theme on each boot)
13. acmattach.lin (for those who do not have rootfs or even after having it, they don?t want to get their phone in usblan automatically(as I don?t want), notes included with file)
14. links.txt (this file has all links that I find useful, mostly are from same forum)
15. same guide in doc format but without any inline links (to be used only as a offline reference)

NeoInstaller:

click on mtf
wait for success message.
Click OK.

Or
If you don?t have rootfs/startup folder, then follow the notes available in alternative package.

Startup.lin:

Place in your startup directory and u?ll get a new theme each time u boot.
What I do is, I use Alien and I?Robot themes. And I like them both switching at startup.
If it does not work, I am not sure what to do coz it works for me.

LinLoader:

Click on the neo based jar file for linloader
It asks you about install, do not worry about untrusted message.
Install it
U?ll have it in applications but don?t run it. It just loads the scripts.
Click+hold on any lin file and select ?open with?
Select linloader from apps and select check box to always use the same
Keep in mind that you don?t need to install it if u have sandman?s CG35.

Bins:

These are binaries useful with rootfs(things I was talking about nano?etc.)
Click on mtf and wait for success message.

GainTable:

Just click the mtf to install
Restarting the phone is a good idea.

Qonsole:

This is a very usefull application. This saves u from hustle of telnet all the time. You can do every thing from here instead of telnet.
Click on neo packaged jar and install.
Run Qonsole from applications
Type login root and press enter
Now you are logged in as root just like you did from telnet
If u ever want to edit some text based file like gaintable or some lin script,
just type nano <filename> and you file will be opened in nano for editing.
Yes, this is that easy.

USBLAN and acmattach:

Described in above section. However you can let you phone auto connect on usblan if you put acmattach in startup folder

Samba:

Follow notes in directry to put files on appropriate places
Connect phone as usblan
Open Qonsole or telnet to phone
Type smbmount.sh and your folder will be shared from windows.
Please read the detailed notes provided in directory.

Midnight Commander:

Follow notes available in directory.
Just be sure that it is not an exact Midnight commander.
You can run it through telnet but u will nto be able to use it
You can use it better on qonsole but display will not be clear due to mini screen.

Clocker(not in my collection, download from here):

Follow notes available with download.
It is a great app but there is a chance that it may clightly effect the battery life.
Detailed description available on download page.

ezxlocal Editor(a wonder full app by Intoxicated, Details are here):

Its an easy to use app.
shows list of config and other setup files from ezxlocal.
Double click a file, edit it, save it. Done.

Note: it is an mpkg version you need mpkg working to install it.

[motomaniacs]

E680I_ESSENTIAL
download HERE

[andrei]

Nice Tuto 

[Bedy6]

Great....
This guide really help me...     

[imamlab]

please help, what can i do..
after step one  or after reflash, replace batery, then
my e680 only see the red branded screen of china mobile on boot-up
then power off /shutdown,

[motomaniacs]

maybe you didnt flash the right firmware for your phone

[imamlab]

thanks for your tutor, man,
problem solved,,
i must replace cg33 then flashing done though apper "flashing failed" but now my e680 live again

[motomaniacs]

bravo man
whoa nice number of post
lucky 777 

[amiray]

thanks boss for tutorial, i hope it usefull

[anyfones]

I've flashed E680 become E680i with china firmware. New problem happen, when i try to open main menu there's nothing happen. Main menu can't open but other menu like, Control Panel, Galery Folder works....

How can i resolve this

Thanks

[kokoronotomo]

I was tried all n i have a "cool" e680i