22 replies to this topic

[!V!]

Hi, I bought a Xolo X900 recently and was pestering the guys at Xolo/Lava to give some official information about the possibility of a Jellybean upgrade and/or unlocking the bootloader.

However the reply which I received from an engineering manager at Lava was quite grim (if anyone wants to have a look at the full conversation PM me).

To summarize what he said:

1) Apparently it is Intel which is not allowing a bootloader unlock because of security vulnarabilities in the Medfiled and Lexington platforms. Starting with clovertail, they are planning to make the bootloader unlockable.
I find this strange because the Motorola Razr I and ZTE Grand X In (which are both Medfield phones) have unlockable bootloaders.

2) After reminding him of Xolo's obligation to provide sources, he agreed to make them accessible by next week. But according to him, this won't be of any help as Xolo doesn't have any build instructions or flashing tools (ridiculous).

3) Xolo has no plans for Jelly Bean for the X900.

I personally find the whole thing fishy as he seems to be shifting all the blame onto Intel. I have mailed Intel as well but haven't recieved any reply from them.
Will keep updated if I get to know anything.

In the meanwhile, it will be great if folks here could suggest some more ways to get Xolo and Intel to provide some solid information.

BTW great work till now guys! This is an amazing phone, especially when rooted :-)

[i am not a hacker]

Apparently, from and unreliable source (declan loh), there is a 256 Mb update which is jelly bean. I've asked him to prove it and he will but if anyone could check if they have the update, that would be great.
Particularly people who have done the 27mb update please

[!V!]

Might be, I also felt the guy to be quite unconvincing.
But the only update I see is the 27 mb and I am not installing it because I need root.

But it wouldn't make sense for the guy to claim that they have no plan for jb if there was an ota upgrade already.

Edited by !V!, 05 March 2013 - 07:51 PM.

[i am not a hacker]

Yep he admitted that he lied, the ****

[BlueMoonRising]

i am not a hacker, on 05 March 2013 - 08:34 PM, said:

Yep he admitted that he lied, the ****

You're surprised? lol

[i am not a hacker]

No I wasn't surprised, he's just an immature 13 year old. He said it's funny to make people get their hopes up and then lose them straight away.

[!V!]

Atleast the xolo engineer is talking. Better than those **** xolocare customer service guys.
I am trying to get as much help as I can from him and will keep updated.

However the thing which surprises me the most is according to him it is intel which has placed the restrictions on this device, and all xolo does is repackage their rom with xolo customizations and push it onto ota.
Xolo's role here seems more like that of a distributor than a manufacturer (although I am not sure how much accurate this is). If that is indeed the case, then there is very little hope xolo can do about it.
According to him, Xolo has no problems with rooting/bootloader unlock either.

And intel isn't providing any responses either. If we can find a person in intel who is ready to talk with us, then it might be more fruitful.
Does anyone have any ideas on this ?

On an unrelated note, coming from Sony Ericsson land, I was really troubled by the keyboard. Sony's keyboard is the best android keyboard I've seen (definitely better than Swype/Swiftkey/Stock)
I put the Xperia S keyboard (https://www.dropbox....CS_Keyboard.zip) onto my x900 and it works like a charm (so much that I removed all other keyboards). If anyone is interested they can try it.
You need to copy the files manually and set permissions as the zip cannot be flashed. Also the /system/lib/* needs to be extracted to /system/lib/arm/ as the libraries are arm (very snappy on the x900 though).

[BlueMoonRising]

Cheers for the Xperia S keyboard link. I'm trying it now and it seems promising. Here's a link for anyone else on installing it(rooted only) :-
http://androidpure.c...any-ics-device/ , the only difference being as said to copy \system\lib\libXT9Engine.so to /system/lib/arm/

[Zhiming Zhou]

I just really care about unlocking bootloader,
because I really need to flash custom kernel on XOLO X900

as Razr i and Grand X In is bootloader unlocked, there should be no reason XOLO still lock the bootloader

[#XouOnlyLiveOnce]

some new high end xolo is coming in 5 days and lets see if assumptions of jelly bean coming to x900 this month is going to be true or not.

[xgt001]

If they release jelly bean for x500 they will naturally release it to our phone too... Let's wait and watch

[!V!]

@Zhiming Zhou

BTW you were working on kexec right ? did you get it running ? are you sure kernel supports kexec ?
I built kexec but haven't been able to execute even the stock kernel.

I am using the kernel cmdline from proc. So surely I am not passing something wrong to kexec. But it still doesn't execute.

Does anyone know how the boot/recovery partitions are laid out ? the output from /proc/partitions has nothing which could be the boot or recovery partitions. I am guessing these partitions are compressed somehow ?

I got the dumps using flashtool (from AIO) but iis poorly documented. Is this a leaked tool and is any additional documentation available ?

Also what is this OSIP (I think it is some proprietary intel way of storing bootable partitions) ?

what are the osip entries that flashtool can read/write
the OSIP table dump shows four entries.
but i managed to extract five
boot, uefi (these are same, does it mean the copies are stored or both refer to the same block)
fastboot, recovery (these are same, does it mean the copies are stored or both refer to the same block)
logo

what is the fourth one ?

Zhiming Zhou, on 09 March 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

I just really care about unlocking bootloader,
because I really need to flash custom kernel on XOLO X900

as Razr i and Grand X In is bootloader unlocked, there should be no reason XOLO still lock the bootloader

[!V!]

Now that Xolo are launching some new intel flagship based on clovertail (http://www.xolo.in/) , the chances that X900 will ever receive JB are bleak.
Anyway the Xolo engineer had told me intel plans to make the bootloader unlockable for clovertail phones but not for medfield.
WTF is this...they won't release updates and they wont allow us to unlock the bootloader :-(

Can't we try talking with intel somehow ? I have asked the Xolo engineer many times but he continues to claim that it is intel which has locked the bootloader.
Intel however doen't even respond to my mails

[intheblue]

!V!, on 10 March 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

Now that Xolo are launching some new intel flagship based on clovertail (http://www.xolo.in/) , the chances that X900 will ever receive JB are bleak.
Anyway the Xolo engineer had told me intel plans to make the bootloader unlockable for clovertail phones but not for medfield.
WTF is this...they won't release updates and they wont allow us to unlock the bootloader :-(

Can't we try talking with intel somehow ? I have asked the Xolo engineer many times but he continues to claim that it is intel which has locked the bootloader.
Intel however doen't even respond to my mails

Do you think they will launch a skinned version of this:

The clover Trail+ FFRD

[i am not a hacker]

I doubt it. The silver on the sides only goes with black

[Zhiming Zhou]

!V!, on 10 March 2013 - 05:28 AM, said:

@Zhiming Zhou

BTW you were working on kexec right ? did you get it running ? are you sure kernel supports kexec ?
I built kexec but haven't been able to execute even the stock kernel.

I am using the kernel cmdline from proc. So surely I am not passing something wrong to kexec. But it still doesn't execute.

Does anyone know how the boot/recovery partitions are laid out ? the output from /proc/partitions has nothing which could be the boot or recovery partitions. I am guessing these partitions are compressed somehow ?

I got the dumps using flashtool (from AIO) but iis poorly documented. Is this a leaked tool and is any additional documentation available ?

Also what is this OSIP (I think it is some proprietary intel way of storing bootable partitions) ?

what are the osip entries that flashtool can read/write
the OSIP table dump shows four entries.
but i managed to extract five
boot, uefi (these are same, does it mean the copies are stored or both refer to the same block)
fastboot, recovery (these are same, does it mean the copies are stored or both refer to the same block)
logo

what is the fourth one ?

yep, kernel does support kexec
I've also tried to kexec stock kernel, just brick the phone and auto-reboot
I think some mods need to be done to current kernel to make kexec really works

and the boot/recovery is not in any partitions, it's integrated before the first partition (about 256MB in total)

current problem is we don't know the key to pack boot image, and unsigned boot image can't be booted

[#XouOnlyLiveOnce]

intheblue, on 10 March 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Do you think they will launch a skinned version of this:

The clover Trail+ FFRD

[utternoob]

Can't get Xperia keyboard to work. Any ideas why? Set permissions, copied apps and libs to right place. Really confused

[BlueMoonRising]

utternoob, on 14 March 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Can't get Xperia keyboard to work. Any ideas why? Set permissions, copied apps and libs to right place. Really confused

Did you reboot? That said it's decided to stop inserting spaces in between words for some reason, I'm going to uninstall and try again.

Edit:- Just before I uninstalled I checked again and it's Modaco s mobile site only(As far as I can see) that refuses to put in spaces. Texting, Chrome address bar and Google search are fine, very peculiar.

Actually Google search wont allow any swype at all, just tippy tap.

Edited by BlueMoonRising, 14 March 2013 - 05:22 PM.

[!V!]

utternoob, on 14 March 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Can't get Xperia keyboard to work. Any ideas why? Set permissions, copied apps and libs to right place. Really confused

Hi make sure you copy the lib folder to /system/lib/arm.
And set the permissions for everything you copy correctly (chmod 644 and chown 0:0)
You may need to enable the input method after rebooting in android settings
If it still doesn't work, I've no idea.