36 replies to this topic

[PaulOBrien]

Extra large bowl of Shredded Wheat - CHECK!
Extra large cup of tea - CHECK!

Alright, let's get started!

This topic is for me to post my progress on my Commtiva N700 hackday... it's locked so only I can post in it, please discuss in the original topic!

P

[PaulOBrien]

Alrighty, step one, getting the thing out of the (pretty nicely presented) box!

The box lists the specs as:

• Qualcomm MSM7227 @ 600MHz
  
• Android 2.2
  
• 512MB ROM / 512MB RAM
  
• 179.4mm / 110mm / 11.5mm
  
• 375g
  
• 7" WVGA (Capacitive) touchscreen
  
• 2G 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 900/1900/2100, HSPA 7.2Mbps
  
• GPS / AGPS
  
• 802.11b/g
  
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
  
• 3MP AF cam + VGA front cam
  
• 3240mAh Li Polymer battery
  
• miniUSB
  
• 3.5mm audio jack
  
• microSD slot
  
• SIM slot
  
• G Sensor / eCompass / Ambient Light Sensor

[PaulOBrien]

Device is out of the box!

Not much in the box, device, protective case (nice that it's included?), miniUSB cable + power adaptor and cheapo 3.5mm headphones.

Device has protective film front and back.

Size is very similar to my Galaxy Tab, just slightly thicker.

Nice to see a miniUSB port on here instead of proprietary!

Capacitive back / search / home / menu buttons on the front, volume buttons and power button are the physical buttosn on the side.

Reset pin is present (handy as you can't take the battery out).

Looks to have stereo speakers, one each side.

Let's power it on!

[PaulOBrien]

Booting up, pretty generic 'Welcome' splash screen before it boots into Froyo.

Screen looks pretty decent, reasonable viewing angles. Not as sharp / crisp as the Tab (by nature of it's 800x480 resolution), but not bad.

Gonna get into the OS proper, then start tearing this thing down.

P

[PaulOBrien]

4GB microSD supplied and preinstalled in the device.

Nothing on there aside from preinstalled maps for the CoPilot live trial version...

[PaulOBrien]

Alrighty, we're in!

Pretty stock Froyo build, aside from 'Antix Games', CoPilot demo, Documents To Go (Lite version), eReader, File Browser, GoSpoken Bookstore, Note Pad, RSS Reader and Voice note.

Responsiveness is average, the device has a custom Launcher with shortcuts on the left, which also forces landscape view. That's gotta go.

Time to connect in via ADB and look at the guts of this thing.

[PaulOBrien]

ADB connected without drama (OSX), predictably there's no pre-root and the boot image is secure.

Pushed VISIONary APK, temproot done. We're root!

[PaulOBrien]

MTD partitions:

# cat /proc/mtd
dev:	size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 00500000 00020000 "boot"
mtd1: 00200000 00020000 "misc"
mtd2: 00080000 00020000 "splash"
mtd3: 00500000 00020000 "recovery"
mtd4: 00500000 00020000 "ftm"
mtd5: 01a00000 00020000 "hidden"
mtd6: 00060000 00020000 "dbgmsk"
mtd7: 0a000000 00020000 "system"
mtd8: 00200000 00020000 "misc2"
mtd9: 05800000 00020000 "cache"
mtd10: 0ab80000 00020000 "userdata"

Partition usage:

/dev: 207524K total, 12K used, 207512K available (block size 4096)
/system: 163840K total, 152556K used, 11284K available (block size 4096)
/data: 175616K total, 31928K used, 143688K available (block size 4096)
/mnt/asec: 207524K total, 0K used, 207524K available (block size 4096)
/misc: 2048K total, 1176K used, 872K available (block size 4096)
/hidden: 26624K total, 10164K used, 16460K available (block size 4096)
/cache: 90112K total, 2784K used, 87328K available (block size 4096)
/misc2: 2048K total, 1172K used, 876K available (block size 4096)
/mnt/sdcard: 3830784K total, 2347936K used, 1482848K available (block size 32768)
/mnt/secure/asec: 3830784K total, 2347936K used, 1482848K available (block size 32768)
/system/xbin: 207524K total, 1864K used, 205660K available (block size 4096)

Memory statistics:

			  total		 used		 free	   shared	  buffers
  Mem:	   415048	   201928	   213120			0		 5108
 Swap:			0			0			0
Total:	   415048	   201928	   213120

[PaulOBrien]

First things first, dumping the stock mtd partitions to images on the SD card, which i'll zip and upload 'just in case'!

This will also allow me to extract the stock boot and recovery images.

[PaulOBrien]

Looking at the build.prop... the device is based on a Qualcomm reference board and is indeed very similar internally to the Orange San Francisco / ZTE Blade.

Build information...

ro.build.id=FRF91
ro.build.display.id=FRF91
ro.build.version.incremental=0009_3_16I
ro.build.version.sdk=8
ro.build.version.codename=REL
ro.build.version.release=2.2
ro.build.date=Thu Oct 14 01:09:46 CST 2010
ro.build.date.utc=1286989786
ro.build.type=user
ro.build.user=user
ro.build.host=cmcsservice
ro.build.tags=release-keys
ro.product.model=Commtiva-N700
ro.product.brand=Commtiva
ro.product.name=N700
ro.product.device=n700
ro.product.board=N700
ro.product.cpu.abi=armeabi
ro.product.manufacturer=FIH
ro.product.locale.language=en
ro.product.locale.region=GB
ro.wifi.channels=
ro.board.platform=msm7k
# ro.build.product is obsolete; use ro.product.device
ro.build.product=N700
# Do not try to parse ro.build.description or .fingerprint
ro.build.description=msm7627_surf-user 2.2 FRF91 0009_3_16I release-keys
ro.build.fingerprint=Commtiva/N700/n700/N700:2.2/FRF91/0009_3_16I:user/release-keys

[PaulOBrien]

Wow, this is interesting in the build.prop!

As with the San Fran and Dell Streak, it looks like the board supports hardware acceleration but it's disabled out of the box!

debug.sf.hw=0

Nice and easy to enable!

[PaulOBrien]

Unpackaged the stock boot and recovery images for a look around.

Unsurprisingly, boot image is ro.secure=1, but handily the recovery image has ro.secure=0 and ro.debuggable=1!

For building custom boot images, there is no command line and the base address is 0x13000000.

[PaulOBrien]

Rebooted into recovery... it's a standard Android recovery.

Weirdly it's not being seen by ADB though.

Recovery can be reached by 'adb reboot recovery' or by powering the device on with both volume buttons held. Doesn't seem to be a conventional 'fastboot' compatible mode (altho there is a bootloader and download mode it seems).

Hmmm, let's reboot back into the OS and run those benchmarks.

[PaulOBrien]

Hmmm, device has booted up and still isn't being seen by ADB.

I also have a sneaking suspicion the USB ID has changed - which suggests a 'usb modeswitch' type USB configuration. I'd read elsewhere that other devices that are the same hardware as the N700 have a custom version of ADB, I assume these are doing the modeswitch before connecting. No custom ADB included with the N700. :/

Workaround: ADB wireless widget.

[PaulOBrien]

Now running Linpack and Quadrant before and after enabling hardware acceleration.

Interestingly, 'fastboot reboot bootloader' does give us a fastboot compatible mode, which is UNLOCKED (I just reflashed the stock recovery using it!).

Now to find the appropriate key combination to enter this mode (if it exists)...

[PaulOBrien]

Reset pin with volume down = FTM mode
Reset pin with volume up = Incoming Download Mode
Reset pin with volume down and up = Recovery mode

[PaulOBrien]

Stock image files uploaded - helpful, as i've now confirmed these are flashable via fastboot.

[PaulOBrien]

Benchmarks without hardware acceleration (stock):

[PaulOBrien]

Benchmarks WITH hardware acceleration (modified):

[PaulOBrien]

I've extracted the system image, and i'm not running optimising that in the background with my MCR optimisation scripts.

Now to build a clockwork recovery image...