Spec Ops: The Line

Just ordered Spec Ops: The Line.

If the plot is as good as they say (very "Heart of Darkness"), then it's going to be a different kind of cover-based shooter -ride.

Play Asia has it cheapest (Xbox 360), surprisingly (in UK PS3/Xbox versions are both over £32, in PA just over 20 eur, 24.85 with postage). Sadly the PS3 version costs $5 more.

Modding Androids, continued.

So, should you ever brag to your relatives about modding your phone you should be prepared to mod theirs too. Of course. :P

Today sees me having a ZTE V9 Light in front of me; a tablet with pretty modest hardware specs (600MHz single core CPU, 512MB ROM/RAM, etc).

So, modding... How to root a ZTE V9? A short Googling later I'm installing the Android SDK, Java 7 JDK, etc crap on my Ubuntu 12 laptop. Much fiddling later (remember to turn on "USB debugging" kids!) I'm pushing the so called hack on the ZTE only to see it fail time and again.

Great. What now?

Hmm... I have the SuperOneClickv2.3.3 left over from my GT-5500 rooting so I might as well...

I install the ZTE USB drivers (from the tablet itself, thankyou kindly ZTE) and hit "root".

"Your device seems to be rooted already, do you want to continue?"

Huh?

The hell it is. Carry on SOC!

A little while later I'm booting into the stock, but rooted, V9 with "OneClickRecoveryV9-4.0.0.5.apk" (read: Clockwork Recovery) copied on the SD card. Next, I install AppInstaller, and install the OCR for V9 and boot into recovery to install the latest stable CyanogenMod 7 for the V9.

Only trouble I had was with the Google Apps (gb) -package - for some reason the newest 28/08/2011 package didn't install Play store but the one before that seemed to work just fine.

Status update

Final Fantasy XIII-2 for the PS3 under work. And it feels like work at times. It's one of the age old JRPGs where you have to go grind levels for your characters so you can advance the plot at certain parts - the combat is just not scaling right.

It's 2012, why do they still make that kind of crap... :P


Oh, if you're looking for a post apocalyptic fix, Metro 2033 is on sale at PA:
Metro 2033 (Classics) (Xbox360) for $14.90 at PA

Long time, again...

I guess I've been too busy playing through Assassin's Creed: Revelations (pretty good, though you can't shake the feeling of "been there, done that" and "this used to have at least a little challenge"). And more lately; Mass Effect 3 (finally around/under 30 EUR in some places).

Somehow I forgot (?) that in my ME2 save, which I imported to ME3, Garrus, Samara, Mordin and that punk chick, Jack, were all dead. At least according to ME3 storyline. Which was funny - I could've sworn Samara and Mordin were alive - and I know Garrus was dead along with Jack (who was the only person I failed the loyalty mission for). Now guess what ruined my ME2 experience in the end?

Right, the damn loyalty missions and "guess the right order for the suicide mission" - thing. I can't be arsed to replay 50% of the game just to get the end right. If I lost all my freaking pals, I still would've told ME2 to go "suck it" rather than replay that piece of "creative storytelling" (ie. bad plot and crappy, random, guess-it-to-get-it-right -gameplay).

Oh, and while I'm venting,  P-A has Dead Rising 2: Off the Record for pretty cheap (Xbox 360) & (Playstation 3), $19,90 + P&P. If anyone's interested. ;P

Finally, it works with 7.2.

Installed CyanogenMod 7.2 with Rom Manager, rebooted.

Then installed Hotfix Chooser and chose hotfix 2 (because choosing the hotfix to go with the actual CM install just gave a "corrupted zip" error) and rebooted.

Finally have CM 7.2 working with outgoing call voice.


*Now* everything I wrote in the orinal post applies. ;)



Files on the server now include the hotfix2 (galaxy5-v2.0-hotfix2.zip) and reuploaded (just to be sure) version of CM 7.2 (update-cm-7-20120206-MADTEAM-galaxy5.zip).

And also ODIN 4.28 and the OPS file I used - flat out forgot to upload those, sorry. ;)

Galaxy 5 CM continues...

... in our continuing, five year mission to install a new and strange Android OSs today sees the renewed effort to try the 7.2 version again.

Seems like the mic problem was fixed and a 2.0 version (with hotfix 2) was released.

I'll report back later if I'm mute again or not.

You know, scratch what I said about Cyanogenmod...

Nobody can hear me talk on my phone anymore with CM installed.

That's kind of an important feature in a phone, right?

And yes, the mic works, the sound recorder is just fine - nobody just can't hear me anymore... ;P


Edit:
I did a quick downgrade to 7.1 (MADTEAM V1.7.2) version of CyanogenMod (with hotfix1) and got voice now. Some features are missing, compared to the latest release. Oh well. Maybe I'll try it again when the next release rolls in.

Installing Cyanogenmod 7.2 on Samsung Galaxy 5 (GT-I5500)

It's been a while. Been too busy to play anything except the Star Trek Online that just went free (nice game, space is good, ground missions are bad - maybe a little too easy).

Anyways, I finally got off my behind and installed Cyanogenmod 7.2, ie. Android 2.3.7 on my Samsung I5500 which was previously a 2.2 Froyo phone.

CM basic apps, with extra "Egg Timer"
and Opera installed.

I really got bored of the slowness of the original Samsung firmware - sometimes it took 5-10 seconds before I could place a call. And the phone's memory was really starting to limit me even with everything possible installed on the 8BG SD card.

Why it took so long was mostly because previous versions of CM had some "features" (read bugs or incompabilities) and all the instructions on the net really use the Rom Manager, an Android app that costs 4,95 eur (the free version isn't up to snuff when it comes to installing stuff on the Galaxy5).

So, how to do it? Let's see...

All the files I used can be found here (for now, if the traffic gets too large I'll reserve the right to remove them :P ).

Oh, and absolutely no support and all questions will go unanswered (this is mostly for my own memoirs :P ).


Preparation:

• Export your contact data to your SD card (phone / contacts then hit menu button and choose import/export). Make sure you save all your contacts in the VCF file.
• If you want to save your SMS messages, install "SMS Backup & Restore" from the Android Market, it's free. Use it.
• Make sure there's nothing on the phone you cannot afford to lose, apart from the gallery, pretty much everything will be lost.

Rooting your Galaxy:

• Connect your Galaxy5 to your PC via USB and let it install the drivers, make sure it's in the "USB debugging mode" (in Finnish it's a "little" misleading "USB-vianetsintä" under the "Sovellusasetukset / Kehittäminen" menu)
• Unpack "SuperOneClickv2.3.3-ShortFuse.zip" to your PC and run it.
• When it sees your phone, hit the "Root"-button to root your phone and if it asks to install busybox, let it do it, it's really that simple.
• Now you have a rooted phone and a new app "superuser" installed in the apps screen.

Moving the neccessary files into your phone:

• Mount your phone on your PC as mass media with your USB cable and copy the "update-cm-7-20120206-MADTEAM-galaxy5.zip" (or newer if you have it) and "gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip" (Google apps, 28.11.2011 version) to the SD card, you can use a sub directory if you want.

Installing the recovery partition / mod installer - ClockworkMod:

• First, copy ODIN (the firmware flasher, from the "odin v4.28 and ops file" directory) on your PC and make sure your phone is in "USB debug mode"(from the settings menu).
• Put your phone into "recovery mode" by shutting it down and booting with "VOLUME DOWN" + "SELECT BUTTON" + "POWER OFF / HANG CALL BUTTON" pressed down simultaneously (select is the middle button surrounded by the silver cursor "ring")
• Connect the phone and let windows install the drivers for it.
• Run ODIN in administrator mode ("run as") and make sure ODIN can see the phone and then select option "One package" (options "auto reboot" and "protect OPS" should be selected by default).
• As the "OPS" file, select the "EUROPA_I5508_v1.0.ops" that came with ODIN (it's in the same directory)
• As the "One Package" file select "ClockworkMod-Galaxy5-v0.7.tar"
• Hit "Start" and wait until it has installed ClockworkMod
• Optional "to-do" in ClockworkMod: if you want to install another version, you can copy it on the SD card and install it via the "zip" option on the main menu (you can also mount the SD card for your PC on the main menu)

Installing the CyanogenMod:

• If you want to install CM later, and rather boot now back to your old system, you need a way to reboot in to ClockworkMod later on. There are several ways to do this later, like installing a "rom manager" -type software (the actual Rom Manager, free version, from the app store didn't work well with Galaxy5, so I used ROM Toolbox instead) or you can always re-flash with ODIN and let it boot into ClockworkMod.
• Anyway, when you are in ClockworkMod and before you start flashing (for the first time), wipe the caches, etc by selecting:
  "wipe data/factory reset" and "wipe cache partition" and then advanced/wipe both "dalvik cache" and "battery stats"
• After that choose "install zip from sd card" and navigate to where you saved "update-cm-7-20120206-MADTEAM-galaxy5.zip" and let it flash.
• Then do the same with "gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip"
• If everything went OK, reboot and you now have CyanogenMod installed (the first boot will take considerably longer than the normal boots after that).

CyanogenMod performance menu
in the settings (in Finnish)

Why CyanogenMod?

• Samsung doesn't really support their phones for long. The latest Android version is 2.2 and it seems to be the last. CM for Android 4.0 is already under development, and hopefully will be released as fully working "final" later on this year
• CM is faster, you can over clock your cheap 600MHz phone easily for 10-20% speed gains (and battery loss :D ), you can also get rid of excess baggage like the Samsung apps and even some Google apps that have been installed into the phone memory and are hogging the precious little RAM we have in the Galaxy5 - with CM you can install Google Maps on the SD card, etc.
• CM works pretty well now; WLAN & WLAN APs work OK, telephony and GPS work, etc. You're no longer trading usability and features for a OS update.
• You don't need to be a Yarrr!-Pirate to get mileage from a rooted phone.