{"id":16,"date":"2007-10-01T14:32:19","date_gmt":"2007-10-01T13:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/10\/01\/samsung-sgh-i600-debranding-unbricking-hacking\/"},"modified":"2007-10-01T21:49:20","modified_gmt":"2007-10-01T20:49:20","slug":"samsung-sgh-i600-debranding-unbricking-hacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/10\/01\/samsung-sgh-i600-debranding-unbricking-hacking\/","title":{"rendered":"Samsung SGH-i600 debranding, unbricking &#038; hacking."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi all,<\/p>\n<p>Well as you may (or may not!) know, I am a gadget-freak! I *love* new toys, and my latest in a <em>long<\/em> line of mobile phones is the Samsung SGH-i600<\/p>\n<p>First of all, here are a few things to note about this phone:-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It runs Windows Mobile Edition 5 or 6 (but comes with WM5 in the UK under Orange PCS)<\/li>\n<li>It is <em>similar<\/em> but not <em>exactly<\/em> the same as the USA &#8220;Blackjack&#8221; version.<\/li>\n<li>It features GSM, EDGE, WiFi\u00a0and 3G (Well&#8230; the European version anyway&#8230;.)<\/li>\n<li>It is quite &#8216;hackable&#8217; if you have the time (and like me, *hate* the &#8216;Orange&#8217; branding!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The phone itself was the usual &#8220;Free&#8221; upgrade from Orange, but (like almost all phones I have got from them) was crippled with the horrible, slow, nasty (are you getting the picture yet?) &#8216;Orange&#8217; branding.<\/p>\n<p>In order to get all the sexy features like &#8220;Card Wheel&#8221; home screen, you have to flash your phone with a better version of software. This will also work for &#8216;Bricked&#8217; phones (dead because the wrong firmware applied etc&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>[photopress:Home_screen.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:home_screen_setup.jpg,thumb,pp_image]<\/p>\n<p>Now this procedure isn&#8217;t for the faint-of-heart. You <u>will<\/u> lose *all* settings, address book&#8230;.. basically like doing a &#8216;factory reset&#8217; on the phone. But in turn you will have a fully-featured phone *without* carrier placed menu restrictions or branding. It will also lose all your SMS\/WAP\/MMS settings, so make a note of them first, or refer to this excellent site that shows them all for each carrier: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filesaveas.com\/\">http:\/\/www.filesaveas.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>At this point, I will just say:-<\/p>\n<p><em><font color=\"#800000\">This information is provided as-is and without warranty. Anyone using this information does so at their own risk, and I will not be held responsible for any damage caused directly or indirectly by this information. It is produced as a &#8216;guide&#8217; for information purposes only. <strong>If you &#8216;Brick&#8217; your phone, it&#8217;s your fault! &#8211; NOTE: I have only tested this on a UK Orange Branded SGH-i600<\/strong><\/font><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Now&#8230;. due to copyrights etc, I will not post any links or files in this blog, but I will tell you what to look for. This guide is an abridged version of something I found by Volker Weber\u00a0on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/vowe.net\/archives\/008792.html\" title=\"vowe.net guide\">vowe.net<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; The instructions there were for upgrade to Version 6 of Windows Mobile, but I never went that far. Once I removed the branding, WM5 was fine and dandy for me. I will also say (and this should be taken as anecedotal) that my phone has been a lot more stable (no lock-ups) since I loaded this firmware.<\/p>\n<p>You will need:-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Samsung Data Link Cable (should have come with the phone)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Blackjack&#8221; modem driver (different from the one on the CD that came with the phone) &#8211; This is also known as the &#8220;Samsung Composite USB Driver 4.34&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A suitable &#8220;Flash&#8221; file<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now the driver and &#8220;Flash&#8221; file can be found together in a RAR file called &#8220;Firmware_i600_XXGD1.rar&#8221; the XX indicates that it is not tied to a particular country. You can get this from various places, but the one I have also has a .txt file in the RAR called <em>NO Brand.txt<\/em> &#8211; if you find that one, it worked perfectly for me.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Install the Samsung Drivers<\/li>\n<li>Disable ActiveSync (you can un-check the &#8220;Allow USB connections&#8221; in <em>Connection Settings<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Put the Phone into &#8216;special mode&#8217;\n<ol>\n<li>Turn phone off.<\/li>\n<li>Turn phone on whilst holding the Right Soft-key and the Back\/Cancel key on the side#<\/li>\n<li>If you have done this correctly, the phone will show something like &#8220;* USB Downloader Open 1.1&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Install the update &#8211; Warning: Takes a <strong><u>very<\/u><\/strong> long time. Be patient.<\/li>\n<li>If doesn&#8217;t appear to work. Retry from Step 2.<\/li>\n<li>Re-enable ActiveSync (after the phone has rebooted)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Hurrah &#8211; you should\u00a0have a de-branded Windows Mobile 5 working on your Samsung i600 now, and should see some nice home-screen themes etc.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Of course, the next thing you need to do is make it a bit more useful.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Mobile Office<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This version of office is available for Windows Mobile 6 only. However&#8230; A few clever souls de-packaged it, and re-packaged it for WM5. Search the usual torrent locations for <em>Office.WM6.WCE.BY<\/em> &#8211; nuff said?<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Instant Messaging<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ok &#8211; tried lots of them, the best of the best are:-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fring &#8211; Free application<\/li>\n<li>Agile Messenger &#8211; Commercial<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><u>Gmail<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gmail is <em>so<\/em> easy to set up on your Samsung.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Enable POP3 in your Gmail account settings.<\/li>\n<li>Go into Messaging on the Samsung and add a new account.<\/li>\n<li>Set up the screens as shown here<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>[photopress:gmail_1.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:gmail_2.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:gmail_3.jpg,thumb,pp_image]<\/p>\n<p>[photopress:gmail_4.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:gmail_5.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:gmail_6.jpg,thumb,pp_image]<\/p>\n<p>Note: If you retrieve your mail from another PC, it magically disappears off your phone next time you sync. It is also advisabled NOT to use the auto-download unless you are on an unlimited data plan, or connected via WiFi all the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Other useful tools<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>WiFiFoFum2 &#8211; This allows to to &#8216;Scan&#8217; for local WiFi networks (a bit like NetStumbler, but works!)<\/p>\n<p>zaTelnetSP5 &#8211; Allows you to &#8216;Telnet&#8217; into a host (pretty good actually!)<\/p>\n<p>BTCrawler &#8211; Lets you BlueJack (to a certain degree anyway&#8230;.)<\/p>\n<p>SKTools &#8211; Excellent app for &#8216;cleaning&#8217; your Mobile Windows OS and Registry. Commercial App.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Tips and Tricks<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>T9 Dictionary<\/em> &#8211; Press the &#8220;*&#8221; key in SMS mode, and you can select T9 in the list.\u00a0More useful on this with a full QWERTY keyboard than any other phone I&#8217;ve used bizarrely&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Task Manager<\/em> &#8211; Press and hold either the &#8220;Home&#8221; key.<\/p>\n<p><em>Shortcut Menu<\/em> &#8211; Press and hold the navi-wheel in, you can select an existing shortcut, or &#8220;edit&#8221; to add\/delete them.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Hidden Codes<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>I take no responsibility for the use of these codes. They are provided for information only.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>*#1546792*#\u00a0 &#8211; Service Menu<\/p>\n<p>From here you can check software \/ hardware \/ firmware versions, get the MAC address for your WiFi adapter etc.<\/p>\n<p>*#81230*# &#8211; Passcode for &#8220;Pre-configuration&#8221; (apparently you can change country\/carrier here &#8211; <strong><u>DOES A FACTORY RESET AND WIPES ALL INFO!<\/u><\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>*#06# &#8211; Show IMEI Number (works on almost any phone)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi all, Well as you may (or may not!) know, I am a gadget-freak! I *love* new toys, and my latest in a long line of mobile phones is the Samsung SGH-i600 First of all, here are a few things to note about this phone:- It runs Windows Mobile Edition 5 or 6 (but comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hacking","category-modding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}