Blue Motorola RAZR V3
Earlier this week I broke down and ordered a Motorola RAZR V3 (Blue) to replace my old Samsumg phone. Laura’s had one (the Pink one) for a few months now and it’s been fantastic. It’s got alot of advantages over the Samsung, including:
- Faster Response on menus
- Voice Recognition Dialing
- Better Signal Strength (My Samsung was unusable in the hospital, but her RAZR worked flawlessly)
- And alot of other stuff I didn’t really care about (Java, MP3 Ringtones, Camera, etc)
Unfortunately, I’m somewhat disappointed in the Cingular loadout of the phone. It comes with absolutely 0 games (It has a 1-level Demo of Bejeweled, that’s it), only 3 real ringtones (none of which are a phone ring), and very minimal other options. Cingular has done a great job of stripping down the phone to it’s bare essentials, forcing you to fork over $1.99 for every ringtone and $5.99 for every game.
So I ordered using Cingular’s Online Store and had it delivered. When it arrived they were kind enough to pop in a SmartChip for me, and provide instructions for activating it via phone (Call their office, register the new SmartChip, etc). Laura said it took them about 10 minutes to activate hers when she bought it. Seemed a bit fishy to me since our existing Samsung phones used smartchips, and shouldn’t you be able to just move the chip and viola? They told laura it would “confuse” things and not work. Well, I’m here to tell you that it does work. I simply pulled the smartchip out of my Samsung and popped it in my RAZR, and viola it worked. I did have to rebuild most of my address book since almost none of it was on the SmartChip, but that’s easy enough to do.
So after playing with it for a few days and using the “Cingular MediaMall” to download Bejeweled, I decided it was time to figure out how to connect it to the computer and get free games (Like these, nothing illegal) installed. I had noticed when Laura first got her phone that the charger is simply a Mini-USB connector, but the computer was unable to recognize and automatically install any drivers for it. So the search began…It didn’t take long with Google to find tools and drivers scattered all around the net. The drivers and tools themselves seem to mostly be Open-Source, but cumbersome to use and (I think) they’re somewhat pursued by Motorola to take them down. I finally settled on the “Xeef Mobile Forum” which seems to have alot of information and downloads. But that started the process.
When the phone was connected, sure enough the USB stuff detected it and Windows prompted for a driver, no problem. It installed it initially as a Modem, which I suppose kinda makes sense. I couldn’t really do much with it from that point, so I dug around for more software. If you look into how to install Games you’ll see reference to the “Java App Loader” and a program called “Midway”. After alot of digging I finally found Midway in a package called modderztoolkit (Without PST), which comes with alot of other nice tools (and drivers, although I haven’t tried them). With this loaded, the phone autodetected a bunch of other devices when plugged in (Data loggers, USB hubs, etc) which seemed to flesh out the funcitonality of the phone. The phone seems to operate in 2 modes: The “AT” mode which is basically a modem, and the “P2K” mode which is much faster and flexible. So that left the “Java App Loader” to figure out.
The Java App Loader is, by default from Cingular, disabled. To get it you have to hack the firmware on the phone to reveal it, or revert to an “Unlocked” phone. I’m not adventurous enough to attempt unlocking, but the other option seemed not too bad, especially given the good instructions on the afterdawn forums. The XVI32 program and P2K are included in the modderztoolkit, and the whole process only took about a minute to complete (Of course, I am somewhat familiar with Binary & Hex Editing.. less experienced people may take up to 5 minutes 
). Quick reboot of the phone and viola, the Java App Loader was there. So that left Installation of the game.
I chose Chess by Cellufun for my installation, as my Samsung’s chess game was a favorite pasttime of mine. It took a few tries, but I finally figured out how to get it all to work. I found some instructions online that went something like this:
- With the phone unplugged from the computer, Start the Java App Loader. It will say “Insert Cable now”, but wait.
- Fire up Midway, make sure the Settings are correct (Check your Device Manager and see which COM port the “Motorola USB Modem” is on)
- In Midway, open the JAD File.
- This is the tricky part. Connect the phone to the computer via the USB cable.
- On Midway click “Send”
- Midway should show about 4 complete steps and stop.. Check your phone and it should show an incoming file and it’ll be asking you if you want to “DOWNLD” or “CANCEL”. Click Download.
- Midway should take off again, transferring the file.
- Once the file is finished, the phone should install it and you’re good to go.
It took me 2 or 3 tries to get it right because Midway kept telling me the COM port was already in use. Turns out he P2K Commander & Autostart stuff was hosing it up, I had to shut all that down to do this.
And with that, I have Chess on my phone now with no trouble. The only other thing was possibly Graphics & Ringtones. Well, using the P2K tools you can see where the graphics and ringtones are stores, and they’re just GIF/JPG’s and MP3’s respectively. All you have to do to get new ones is simply upload them to the correct location on the phone. Using the instructions at WikiHow, you’ll see how to use Audacity (An open-souce free sound editing program) to create the MP3’s for ringtones, and images just need to be resized down to 176 X 220 (The phone will resize for you automatically, but does a poor job of it).
So I’m happy with it. The software is a bit klunky, but functional. Will I unlock the phone? Maybe, but not until I’ve found a feature that I really need/want and am lacking. Until then, I’ll be leaving it as is
[tag:motorola][tag:Razr][tag:hardware][tag:cellphone]
