Android developer extraordinaire, Doomlord from the XDA-Developers forums has managed to successfully root the Sony Xperia Z before most customers have even bought theirs yet!

The fast turn around was a team effort by Doomlord modifying the code of a Nexus 4 root, while Teamviewer remotely tested the code on read-world devices. The effort managed to be a success, with other forum members offering that the root has worked for them also.

If you’re looking to pick up a Sony Xperia Z and hope to root it as soon as you get home, be sure you are fully confident with what you are doing, as their isn’t a recovery tool available just yet. You have been warned.

[ Source ]

The post Sony Xperia Z Already Rooted appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

So, how did estimates arrive at this number? The endeavoring enthusiasts on the XDA Dev forums have worked to crack the meaning of the serial numbers of their Android smartphones. Just as you can figure out what each position in the VIN of a car can mean–in terms of chassis code, country of origin, and so on–the same can be said about the smartphone.

For instance, the first digit of the serial number on an LG-produced Nexus 4 reveals the year of manufacture. A “2″ indicates 2012. The next two digits are the month, so “211″ would mean November 2012 as the manufacturing date. This is followed by a letter, with K indicating Korea and C indicating China; that’s for where the phone is made. A little further down the serial number is a three digit code indicating the unit’s position in that month’s batch.

The XDA people put all this information together and they’re estimating that 70k units were made in October, 90k in November and 210k in December. That adds up to about 370k. It’s noteworthy that some people found their phone was manufactured after they ordered it too. TechCrunch has a little more of a breakdown of the serial number too, if you’re curious about your Nexus 4.

[ Source ]

The post Decoding Serial Numbers Reveals 370,000 Nexus 4 Smartphones Sold appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Motorola was not the first and it probably won’t be the last company that struggles with their customers over the issue. What seems to making users particularly angry with Motorola is that in early 2011 Motorola had promised to unlock the bootloaders of its smartphones and while it did unlock a few, a majority of Motorola phones remain locked.

The usual reasoning behind decisions for locking bootloaders from many manufacturers and carriers don’t really hold water in the eyes of customers. They want more freedom in trying alternative firmware for their phones; the respect and protection of DRM for the content saved on these phones has generally nothing to do with the decision to lock a bootloader on a given device, or just leaving it unlocked all together from the beginning. Many exploits on devices aimed at gaining root access to them are successful for both locked and unlocked bootloaders. Then, root access to the file system of a given device makes any protection scheme very questionable.

The Android community has a history of fighting against locked bootloaders in many phones from different manufacturers and carriers. The latest outcry originates in XDA-Developers community for the Motorola Droid RAZR. It was named ‘Movement of #OPMOSH (Operation: Make Ourselves Heard)’, and it has turned in to a rather heated discussion here.

We informed you already that ASUS will be unlocking the bootloader on its Transformer Prime with a special, proprietary unlocking tool of their own. This approach looks like an attempt of good compromise. While this step from ASUS is squarely directed at pleasing their customers, it might be not considered as a good precedent to influence Motorola decisions about their bootloader. Or HTC decisions. Or Acer’s decisions.

The post Motorola RAZR Owners Upset, Wanting Unlock appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Whatever the hiccups the dedicated cloud-supported Web browser for Amazon’s Kindle Fire had been experienced in the past is irrelevant now. Hacker TyHi from XDA-Developers has built a Silk package that can be ported to CyanogenMod 7 ROM for the same Kindle Fire, then to many other rooted devices running CyanogenMod 7, or devices running some MIUI custom ROMs. “Many” here means not all devices, but the spread of Silk widens, so to speak, by the supporting efforts of hacker named puneet_champ who corrected permissions and repackaged the Silk app. Procedure to get you Silk on your non-Amazon rooted device is pretty simple:

1. Download the pack here or here.
2. Use Root Explorer to copy the lib files to /system/lib set permissions the same as the others.
3. Install all of the .apks like you would side load.
4. Copy the com.amazon.cloud9-1.apk from /data/app to /system/app
5. Reboot and enjoy

However, there are still plenty of reports on force closures, or mess-ups with Amazon accounts and syncing.  So if your device is not mentioned as a successful port in this database, you might wait a little bit longer. Owners of Nexuses and other devices running ICS may also want to wait a tidbit longer: adjusting Silk into a compliance with the Ice Cream Sandwich Android framework continues.

When success stories are reported, results are dubious still. First, just a simple porting of the Silk browser to other than Kindle Fire devices are nowhere in the position to cure inherent problems with the overall Amazon cloud support for Web browsing. Moreover, an influx of many devices running Silk without Amazon’s permission might worsen the workload for that cloud even more. Second, many devices where Silk was ported to were just Android phones with their smallish screens. Navigating controls of Silk just don’t scale down gracefully for these, as Silk is technically a browser for tablets with their bigger screens.

Me, I didn’t put Silk on my Nook Color just yet.

The post Amazon Kindle Fire Silk Browser Ported to Other Android Devices appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The fine folks at XDA-Developers report that ASUS has chosen to lock a bootloader on its flagship tablet, the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. This is extremely sad news for all the tinkerers who were hoping to get Ice Cream Sandwich on this powerful tablet currently running a lightly customized stock ASUS Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). First reports of this discovery looks like this:

Asus has Encrypted the bootloader on the prime with a 128 bit Encryption (basically impossible to crack!) like HTC did awhile back…. This makes it impossible to flash ROMs and kernels which can really unlock the devices full potential, that is overclocking, flashing Linux distros, customizing, undervolting, denying installation of Windows 8, etc. The sky is the limit but it depends on YOU!

After weeks of demanding they allowed us to do what we want with the devices we purchased from HTC, and HTC finally caved and unlocked it!

Protests to this ASUS decision multiply in social networks, at the ASUS official Facebook and Twitter pages, even all around the globe. It’s worth to mention that the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (not Prime) was launched with a locked bootloader, too, but XDA member named 9600pro87 found a secure key to unlock the bootloader for this previous ASUS Transformer tablet. Now, there’s no obstacles in developing alternative firmwares for it.

All in all, purchases of Transformer Primes may dwindle if the decision to unlock its bootloader, or a leak of the key won’t be made  soon enough. A good example of such a reaction is the Nook Tablet with its bootloader also locked: if it could be launched and unlocked it might fare a better situation than its direct competition, the Kindle Fire.

The post ASUS Transformer Prime: Locked Bootloader Causes Uproar appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

In the past we covered an XDA Developer forum member’s semi-successful attempt to get the CM7 ROM running on the Kindle Fire. Now it seems that yet another person has gotten CM7 running, this time with more success. Jeff Benjamin has taken things a step further and has even posted a detailed tutorial and video for installation of the CyanogenMod 7 (custom ROM) on Amazon Kindle Fire.

Kindle Fire has just one hardware button, and this fact makes it extremely difficult and challenging to run ClockworkMod (CWM) recovery on the device. Nevertheless, with the concerted effort of the finest XDA developers CWM for Fire has got its unique “one-button” version and fully capable of installing CyanogenMod 7 on Fire now.

CWM is a must when dealing with early development ROMs because these highly experimental ROMs might melt your tablet in no time: I wonder why they chose to call their e-reader “Fire” in the first place? If you are good with running ADB commands from the host PC, the tutorial is quite sufficient in bringing about a desired result, its steps are illustrated by TWRP, for example) which is still under development, but the whole routine works.

What doesn’t work is sound, and probably some other regular (for CM7, at least) features. A similar “soundless” ICS port we wrote about recently may have the same reason for being mute: stock Kindle Fire ALSA sound drivers might have got some undocumented and misunderstood tweak when entered the AOSP/CM7 repositories.

With the Ice Cream Sandwich advent to the scene, there might be little interest in running CM7, a customization of Gingerbread on Kindle Fire. Still, from a developer’s point of view the CM7 on Fire experiment is a good training school and a virtual lab to test many new components that are needed to be implemented when porting ICS. So far, CM7 for Kindle Fire runs on stock Kindle Fire’s kernel which is quite insufficient to run ICS.

We’ve included the video tutorial below, but we highly recommend you checking out the site for yourself if you plan on installing this ROM:

The post Amazon Kindle Fire Runs CyanogenMod 7 (Video Tutorial) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Just as you can root your Android device and jailbreak your iPhone, you can also unlock your Windows Phone 7 device. However, every time that you sync it back up with Zune, you might find yourself with a locked device again. How can you get around this?

Thankfully, the Internet community is once again coming to the rescue. The kind hackers at XDA have devised a way to prevent any Windows Phone 7 device from losing its unlocked status after synchronizing with Zune. For now, the fix will only work on HTC handsets, but I imagine they’ll be porting it over to Samsung, Dell, LG, and other manufacturers soon.

In addition to the ChevronWP7 unlock procedure, you’ll then need to download the TouchXplorer ZIP file, extract it, install it on your WP7 device, download HTC Connection Setup for Windows Phone 7, install that, launch TouchXplorer, copy the CustClear.provxml file to the root Windows folder, and launch the HTC Connection Setup app and tap on the check button to let it provision.

Sound complicated? Don’t worry. The XDA community is always there to help. Or, you know, you could just not unlock your WP7 device and use it the way Microsoft intended you to use it. Just don’t complain when your unlocked buddies are enjoying functions, features, and apps that you can’t.

[Aliwaqas via XDA, ChevronWP7]

The post ChevronWP7 prevents Windows Phone 7 from re-locking after Zune sync appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The guys and gals over at XDA Developers have managed to take that 1GHz Hummingbird processor and boost it up to 1.3GHz. That extra 300MHz of juice may not be all that noticeable to the average user, but it can give you even more street cred among your other Android-fueled compatriots. The price? You lose Bluetooth functionality.

If you have any intention of using a headset or streaming your media to some kind of speaker system, this hack probably isn’t for you. If you can do without Bluetooth and don’t care about the potential degradation of battery life, though, an extra 300MHz might be nice. All you have to do is “flash from recovery, reboot, [and] enjoy,” assuming that you’re running the Bionix NS1 ROM.

Don’t know what that is? Not particularly experienced in smartphone hackery? It may be best to leave this overclock alone, then, because you don’t want to end up with a $500+ paper weight.

[IntoMobile via XDA]

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