Customisation of MPx220 for 3.46 ROM

[bydandie]

Acknowledgements

This guide is derived from a number of guides on the Surreal Networks. I make no pretence that I have come up with this myself, but felt that there is no end-to-end guide for the creation of a UK compatible phone. The links to the original posts by Jeb and Gangsta_Moto are here and here respectively and full credit goes to them and another SN member called Big Dooky.

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to allow you to update your MPx220 to the latest ROM at this date (3.46). It is down to debate as to what ROM is best, but 3.46 provides support for US English, Windows Media Player 10 and various other enhancements. The main reason why this guide is necessary is that the ROM is designed for a Chinese provider called GoTone, and defaults to Chinese with various GoTone brands.

If you wish to use the latest EMEA ROM version (1.47) available here, then you will need to go through the customisation phase only, as you should be able to select UK English easily enough (UK English and the absence of WMP10 are the main differences between 1.47 and 3.46 as far as I can tell).

PLEASE NOTE:

Any procedure such as this can severely damage your device. Whilst this is a proven technique, used by many people, various factors can result in the update being unsuccessful at best and can result in an unresponsive phone at worst.

Both ROMs mentioned are officially created by Motorola, but due to the nature of Motorola’s policy on ROM upgrades (ie That they should carry out this work), there is a potential to invalidate your warranty. However, unless you were to state that you upgraded the phone yourself, it would be very difficult for Motorola to know anyway.

Many of the links within this procedure come from either the surrealnetworks.com site or the Microsoft site.

To recap – I am not responsible for any damage that you cause to your device.

Preparation phase

OK, if this is the first time you have updated your MPx220, you will need the following:

smartfon.inf (From your Motorola CD-ROM)
Motorola Offline Updater
Asian 3.46 ROM or EMEA 1.47 ROM (Download and extract the ZIP file to a folder)
Mobile Registry Editor - needs .NET Framework 1.1 installed
ActiveSync
The startup and shutdown splash screens here (If you want O2 branding)

Installing the driver

If this is the first time you have upgraded your MPx220, you will need to have the file smartfon.inf available. This is because you have remove the battery and any memory cards to upgrade the Rom and Windows will see the MPx220 as a modem. The device driver that Windows automatically loads is wrong and will cause errors.

I assume that you have experience in the installing of drivers for this section.

Remove the battery and memory cards, and connect the device to your PC via the data cable.

Install the device with the smartfon.inf driver from the Motorola CD-ROM.

Updating the ROM

Remove the battery and memory cards from the device.

Start the Motorola Updating utility and follow the instructions to update the ROM.

Browse to the folder that contains the ROM file and select the .MLF file.

Your device should be unplugged until it tells you to plug it in, right after you select the ROM file.

After the updating process you should unplug the phone and turn it on. It takes several minutes to load up the main page. The volume is so loud it distorts the speaker when powering on or powering off, but the configuration section below corrects this by disabling the sounds.

Initial Device Configuration for Asian ROMs

OK, the first thing you need to do is to change the language to US English using the following steps:

From the home screen press the Left softkey, 9, 1, 9, 6, Blue Button (Be sure to pause between number to make sure it doesn't lag behind.)

Select US English by pressing the Blue Button, the press the Left Softkey.

Power your device off and on.

Select Start>More>Settings>More>Regional Settings.

Change the field Locale to your locale then press Done.

Select Date and Time and change the field Time zone to your time zone and press Done.

Select Data Connections and delete all connections currently in each area.

Set your voicemail settings by navigating to Start>Settings>Phone and changing the Voicemail setting.

Advanced Configuration for Asian ROMs, including removal of the GoTone branding

NB – You will need to be able to view hidden and system files for some of this procedure. Again, this procedure assumes that you know how to do this.

Connect your device to the computer and select File>Explore.

Double-click My Smartphone and browse to \Storage\Windows\Start Menu

Delete GoTone and Customer Service

Browse to \Storage\Application Data and delete the folder CMCC.

This will not remove the presence of an entry 112 in your contacts that will reappear with Chinese text or a GoTone entry on the standard homescreen. These are caused by read-only files within the device that I am currently looking at removing but can’t just yet.

Registry Edits for changing Shutdown/Startup Sounds, Splashscreen (Screen for Startup and Shutdown) and WAP push

Run the Mobile Registry Editor.

To turn off the Power On and Shut Down sounds do the following:

Navigate to HKEY_Current_User\ControlPanel\Sounds\PowerOnWave and change the value of the sub key On from 1 to 0

Navigate to HKEY_Current_User\ControlPanel\Sounds\Shutdown and change the value of the sub key On from 1 to 0

To change the screen shown when the phone starts up and shuts down, create two JPEG files of size 220x176, store them on the device (We’re selecting \Storage\Application Data\Home\ and calling them PowerUP.jpg and PowerDown.jpg for this example) and follow the procedure below (The reason why you’re better off using JPEG is that the quality and file size are better than either GIF or BMP files.):

Navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Splash Screen.

Change the values of the subkeys CarrierBitmap and MSBitmap to \Storage\Application\Data\Home\PowerUp.jpg

Change the value of the subkey CarrierShutdownBitmap to \Storage\Application\Data\Home\PowerDown.jpg

The security function in the Smartphone OS does not allow uncertified connections to your phone. This normally isn't a problem seeing as your provider will set this up, but if you have a sim free phone, then you have to make the following registry change to allow the device to accept WAP push (For ringtones and other things that may be sent ‘over the air’ to your device).

Navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine\Security\Policies\Policies and change value of the sub key 100D to 4095.

Configuration of the data connection, MMS etc

To configure your phone for your network, browse to this link, select the Operator settings option and get your settings.

Reboot your phone and you’re done!