Hello, I recently purchased a Kin TwoM from Verizon. After about two weeks of owning the phone I became very curious of how to add/delete, and change stuff on the phone. After quickly realizing that this is either impossible or extremely hard, I decided to investigate like I'm sure most of you did. I'm very familiar with hacking and developing. I stumbled across this forum today while investigating for stuff i didn't know. So as a noob, I was hoping there would be some kind members willing to give some information, on whats been so far released and discovered. I've found a couple things that appear to be already known (like the key combos to downgrade/ secret menu) but so far that's about all I know about this phone. So is anyone willing to fill me in?
Thanks..
Hi Aaron,
Take no offense at this, but all the information you are looking for is already in the other posts in this forum subcategory. Please be willing to take the time to read all the posts in this KIN Two Software Development section, as there are only a few pages of them. You'll find the button combinations and details and findings on the secret menu.
Also, JohnKussack put a lot of work into developing a cross-platform file manager for the Kin, called KinO. It works pretty well and even lets you back up and restore your contacts, with limitations.
Aside from these, that's about as far as anyone has gotten. I know for myself, I've spent a lot of time trying to gain access to the file system, but Microsoft finally outdid itself on securing a device from any hacks or exploits. The irony is that I happen to own it and want that access.
Related
Hey everyone.
My post count may not be high, but I've been here a long time. In fact, the first rom upgrade I did was on my "T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition". If anyone here knows what that is, raise your hand.
My point is this...
Why can't it be like it used to be. When I first started considering upgrading my ROM on a PPC, I was scared as **** to do it. I read and read and read to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing. even then I was still scared.
The support by the authors was limited just like it is now, for the same reason. they would rather be cooking than supporting. Thats the way it should be. Users who are ballsy enough to want to Flash their rom to something that is not supported by their OEM/Service provider should be on their own.
Giving feedback on beta or early release builds of roms is certainally different. Unfortunately, I just saw the same thing happen over in the Wizards upgrade (WM6) area where the Rom Cooks got fed up with all of the people who needed hand-holding and were not using the resources available to them (Search, Google, Wiki...) and were asking dumb questions that were answered 100 times over. I know that what the Cooks are going is out of love. there is no money (other than donations) in what they do.
My point (again) is this...
Don't drive away the people who keep my hobby going. I love using my PPC and enjoy loading new ROMs onto it and I feel like that is being ruined. I propose that the WM6 or other upgrade forums be closed off to users until they have been registered for 30 days and emphasize the usefulness of the wiki.
I can't agree more!!
I am in a similar situation and like you I have grown with this forum and appreciate the value added by the gurus of our devices.
There is no way to measure the time and effort spent by these few individuals who have assisted in adding significant value to our "half" working devices.
Without this forum all my current and previous HTC devices would only be half functional.
I recommend a read only account and an initiation process for anyone who wants to post. This should include a multiple question exam based on best practice and our specific forum rules. Violators of the rules should recieve one warning and then be permenantly banned.
my 2c.
P.S. Thanks to all the gurus, to many to name!!!
then make the point in the current thread that counts... check the sticky for wm7 photo build this is where these issues are being discussed...
i just got a 8525 through work. i basically have full reign of what i can do with the thing, so i'm looking for things to do with it. i'm running mobile 6, and basically have a clean slate right now.
** note, i still have to have access to exchange sync, and have a 2gb microsd card in it.
any ideas on what to do...?
--eric
Welcome to xda! Here's lot's & lot's of good stuff & reading to get some ideas:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=325748
Personally, I'd recommend leaving it alone for a week or two to see what it does, learn how to use it, and become friends with it.
After that, I'd make a list of the things you'd LIKE to see it do that it cannot, out-of-the-box. Some of this will more than likely be software you'll either buy, or find "free" versions of.
As you get the "bought" software, I'd make a list (a text file) on the device, to store the names, version numbers, and software keys for ... you'll be needing these as you reinstall the software after hard-resets, ROM flashes (if that's in your future), and other possible things (you might experiment with alternative software, for example, and wnat to revert back).
I would definitely recommend NOT paying for any software until after you've played with it a while, and seen if it's compatible with other software you wish to use. Most apps come with a trial period, so this is totally legal and ethical.
After you've seen what you can do with the device, and add-on apps, you might wish to start tweaking the other things ... the ROM, for instance, to see if you can find one that gives better performance, more storage space (if you think you need it), etc.
I wouldn't dive into this unless you know what you're doing. That's what this forum is for. I also suggest not to do it unless you have a real need to. No sense in possibly breaking something that isn't already "broken". I believe you'll find the device can already do quite a bit, all by itself.
If you DO decide to experiment with the more intricate workings, be sure to read up on everything before you mess with it. Read, read, READ. A lot of folks here have been using these devices for several years. Search for the answers to any questions before posting new ones here. Chances are GREAT that it's already been answered several times before.
I guess that's about all the advice I can offer. Good luck, and have a great time with your new toy.
-pvs
ps: Be sure you really have that "free reign". I am pretty sure there would be repurcussions if you go back to work needing a new device in a couple of weeks, and the warranty is quashed because you did something that invalidated it.
Hi
I'm pretty sure this hasn't been covered off already - well - not to the level of detail I need anyway.
I came to the xda forums after a friend of mine suggested that there were hacks available.
It's clear that 'something' is available, but what I am not finding is:
A) A SIMPLE guide that shows us people totally new to phone 'hacking' how to do it, from start to finish, with minimal lingo and acronyms.
B) An clear and simple explanation on the different 'hacking' options available
C) The reason you would want to do it? From what I can see, the only benefit seems to be a few pointless homebrew apps that you can download - and for the risk involved...why would you chance it?
Don't get me wrong, tinkering in itself is the reason you would want to do it - it's fun - but I can't help thinking that the WP7 side of 'hacking' doesn't offer much reward.
Would really appreciate any advice/help/links with my questions.
Thanks
Did not know whether to bother answering or not but okay. First welcome to XDA, uhhh in easy laymens terms hacking is not for the inexperienced and it is not totally idiot proof so you should have some fair knowledge of the systems and what they do. Don't hack if you need a kindergarten book to explain it all out for ya simple as that. WP is closer too iOS than Android main point being it is the most secure as far as I personally care of the 3, and the system is just as smooth and fluid as iOS. No there are not alot of Homebrew available at the moment, but if you happen to have a phone able to be fully unlocked then you have the option to use many functions that were not available before.
Device specific is where you should such that search block is your best friend, nobody here is going to write a full guide to the whole forum section for every single new hack and crack that comes out. If you want to you are more than welcome.
Thanks pal
I'm ok with the concepts of hacking, just not specifically this OS.
I'm technically minded and do a lot of similar stuff elsewhere, but when it comes to the phone that I use daily, and comntracted for another 12 months with and have no experience with tinkering WP7 - Im slightly more nervous.
I guess my main issue was the d&h forum for WP7. Every sticky/thread is far too long and they all contain a lot of acryonyms that a new WP7 hacker wouldn't understand. So my forum instinct is to look for the sticky that says "start here - everything explained" - but there isn't one?!
It's almost like "where do people start if there is no starting point"?
As far as covering a good amount of info, this post is a good one:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1299134
Don't really think there is a way to avoid all the jargon though, if there is something that isn't explained well it should be simple to find information to fill in the gaps. The terms used are very specific to the environment, so anything returned in a search would probably be relevant.
The most common homebrew option is Interop Unlock, Samsung models of phone are the easiest to unlock. This allows you to use native code that has not been wrapped in a tidy c# class.
The benefit of all this is that your phone is a full fledged computer that by default is locked down like an appliance. Developing additional homebrew apps allow you to get further phone customization out of your device, and therefore the most value out of your purchase.
I for myself thought about unlocking my device considering the risks involve. but I weighed the consequences. Thus, I end up now, having a fully unlocked HTC 7 Mozart with a custom rom. I am happier with my device now, I can do BT transfers, explore the folders within my device, install more applications than the usual apps/games from the marketplace, and tweak my device. One more thing, when my device was still running on stock rom, battery life is shorter, now I have 1.5x the battery life.
MY CONCLUSION: unlock your device's potential
as for the guides, yes it is not really like spoon feeding, but contents of the guides/tutorials are somehow progressive. one can learn from them, so that on the next development, we can do the "hacking" easier since we understood how the process goes. This is why it is called development. Cheers!
before i can give you advice on what hack that you can use, what is the name your device that way there are more specific hacks that we can talk about.
Hi
Thanks for the helpful replies.
I have a HTC Trophy. I'm doing the SD card upgrade next week to start with, so I can finally put all my music on it, so thought i'd look at hacking it at the same time.
Cheers
Sent from my 7 Trophy using Board Express
look at the HTC part of this guide, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1271963
lovenokia said:
look at the HTC part of this guide, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1271963
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Looks like a good guide but how am I meant to know if I have a first or second gen phone....there's no definitive list?! And I can't remember what updates I have.
This is a nightmare - I'll give it a miss
check your processor, as far as i know, if your phone has 1.5GHz then it's a gen2, otherwise, it's just gen1
Let me at least give the "legitimate" talk about unlocking your phone:
For $99/year, sign up for a developers account with Microsoft (create.msdn.com). You can unlock up to 3 separate devices officially for app development. Then you can build and deploy all kinds of .xaps to your phone. To top it off, you can get the betas and early OS upgrades (had Mango almost 6 months before my friend got it from his vendor). Ultimately, you can even release your own apps to the marketplace for sale or for free.
sounds like, since this is a phone you use every day, this might be an investment worth considering. Its an easy and legitimate way for someone not too experienced with the phone's innards to get it unlocked and get exposed to how things work. Plus if you back up your phone vefore you unlock it, and something goes wrong, you haven't done anything thats voided a warranty. If the OS crashes, try returning to the "pre-unlocked" backup and bring it back to the store saying it crashed. They'll replace it. Nice deal, considering most Windows phones run around $500 to replace.
Now as for unlocking it via other means: maybe you dont want to sell apps. Maybe you dont really want to give microsoft a credit card for $100 every year. Maybe you want to just do more than a developer unlock will get you - like load a whole new aspect of the operating system. Or maybe you just dont want to pay to unlock your phone. Understandable, i suppose (though for MOST people, a developer unlock is more than sufficient). There are options, but they will require a lot of time and investigation (maybe even translation) to get it right, because the WP7 is new. The devices are many - its not like having a single hardware baseline to crack - like the iPhone. And to throw another monkey in the wrench, they did a full-fledged update to the OS not 6 months ago. So - no - not a a lot of "beginners" guides out there. Even for experienced people, an unofficial unlock is still a tricky feat. Take a look at the number of posts that have to do with phones randomly "re-locking" themsleves. Hell, I'm a legit developer and my phone "re-locked" itself last night. (turns out MS has a "lease" on deve unlocks that you need to physically update every year by un-registering and re-registering the device)
hope this was informative and helps.
I found exactly the same problem. Today I saw this post in the HTC Titan forum which helped me understand all the different unlocks that you hear mentioned on the web.
Hope this helped
Hey guys,
I know Verizon, Sharp, and Microsoft want us to think Kin Two is dead. I've been browsing these forums for a while. Remarkable efforts on your parts..
I'm an electronics guy by hobby. Nothing serious. My Kin ONE(m) suffered the rebooting modem problem and never recovered. I tore it apart. I accidently killed the power supply section...boohoo, but I'm wondering what exactly the hardware limitation was that we couldn't get much to happen between Kin and PC. I heard someone said there was some sort of chip that blocked any 3rd party communication.
I have no actual electronics education but I've been teaching myself for a couple of years. None of these devices are really "locked" I don't think. I don't think a USB programming interface will do the trick. I don't think they were programmed via USB in the factory. I'm looking at the iFixit Kin TWO teardown photos and I'm trying to find an ICSP header. I see two places on the board where there are 4 contacts in a row. These potentially could be SPI or JTAG headers. I'm not a programmer by nature, though I can do some, but I think using those headers would give you direct access to processor/memory. I'm not sure what is the restricting agent right now, but that's as hardwired as you can get.
Again, I'm no professional....BUT, if you do want some people that do have electrical engineering degrees and that are reeally helpful with all things hardware/software/electronics I'd stop over the EEVBlog Forums. eevblog.com/forum/. Go in General Chat or in Microcontrollers. The people in Microcontrollers will have a better programming background but everyone goes in the General Chat so either one.
I think they will really be able to help. They aren't really hackers, but a hell of a lot of knowledge there. The forum owner is an electrical engineer. There is atleast 5 other EEs that frequently post of the forums and they don't treat anyone bad. Tons of really smart people and it's a very active forum. Just sell it to them and you'll have 20 posts on your thread in one evening.
If you guys are still interested, I am still interested in doing something with this phone.
On another note, there's no way to get Kin Two(m) software onto a Kin Two phone is there? I don't think so, but it gets rather annoying having to skip the setup everytime I turn it on etc.
Thanks and good luck.
By the way these are the HARDEST captchas I have ever had in my life. A
FenderBender11 said:
Hey guys,
I know Verizon, Sharp, and Microsoft want us to think Kin Two is dead. I've been browsing these forums for a while. Remarkable efforts on your parts..
I'm an electronics guy by hobby. Nothing serious. My Kin ONE(m) suffered the rebooting modem problem and never recovered. I tore it apart. I accidently killed the power supply section...boohoo, but I'm wondering what exactly the hardware limitation was that we couldn't get much to happen between Kin and PC. I heard someone said there was some sort of chip that blocked any 3rd party communication.
I have no actual electronics education but I've been teaching myself for a couple of years. None of these devices are really "locked" I don't think. I don't think a USB programming interface will do the trick. I don't think they were programmed via USB in the factory. I'm looking at the iFixit Kin TWO teardown photos and I'm trying to find an ICSP header. I see two places on the board where there are 4 contacts in a row. These potentially could be SPI or JTAG headers. I'm not a programmer by nature, though I can do some, but I think using those headers would give you direct access to processor/memory. I'm not sure what is the restricting agent right now, but that's as hardwired as you can get.
Again, I'm no professional....BUT, if you do want some people that do have electrical engineering degrees and that are reeally helpful with all things hardware/software/electronics I'd stop over the EEVBlog Forums. eevblog.com/forum/. Go in General Chat or in Microcontrollers. The people in Microcontrollers will have a better programming background but everyone goes in the General Chat so either one.
I think they will really be able to help. They aren't really hackers, but a hell of a lot of knowledge there. The forum owner is an electrical engineer. There is atleast 5 other EEs that frequently post of the forums and they don't treat anyone bad. Tons of really smart people and it's a very active forum. Just sell it to them and you'll have 20 posts on your thread in one evening.
If you guys are still interested, I am still interested in doing something with this phone.
On another note, there's no way to get Kin Two(m) software onto a Kin Two phone is there? I don't think so, but it gets rather annoying having to skip the setup everytime I turn it on etc.
Thanks and good luck.
By the way these are the HARDEST captchas I have ever had in my life. A
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I dont think this can help us very much considering were having problems with software hacking not hardware. I dont think they can help us, but mabye we should have Johnkussack look into this. Hes kinda our lead if you will.
WEM97 said:
I dont think this can help us very much considering were having problems with software hacking not hardware. I dont think they can help us, but mabye we should have Johnkussack look into this. Hes kinda our lead if you will.
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You have clearly never used a USB jug to un brick a phone, got s off on a HTC vivid or used a factory data cable on a Droid RAZR. They all use hardware too access our bypass software. So this good work out couldn't but there may be something here. Obviously plugging it into the computer and doing the same thing over and over isn't though.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda app-developers app
Greetings everyone!
Well, this being my first post here I suppose it's most apt to begin with a general hello and that XDA came with a golden recommendation as being perhaps the safest place online to ask questions of the nature of which mine are. It's unfortunate that I don't have much to give back to the community, but I'm hoping to be surprised. In either case I suppose it comes down to the questions now...
Having searched extensively following up reports of the assorted programs that apparently allow Root without the loss of data however research turned most of these miracle apps into hidden landmines of spyware. My history with phones, tablets, and the like involve the technical expertise of having followed a step-by-step guide to jailbreak an apple tablet. I have a vested interest in rooting both of my devices, I would rather not lose any data in rooting my phone. I'd also enjoy if someone could explain what the negatives of rooting really are. Am I able to update? Use the android store fine? So many unknown elements.
I was hoping that there might be a method to change the default install / save location over to my SD card because my phone memory is garbage small. I can manually move apps over, but it takes forever and I'm a bit of a pack-rat so I've a fair amount of apps so keeping up with updates involves updating a few, moving them back to the SD, moving more, moving to SD. It's a nightmare. I am hoping that there is some kind of work around. I'd tried one in the past recently, and unfortunately it failed in such a glorious fashion that I had to look up another guide on how to undo the damage. lol
I suppose I only have the two different directions. Sadly I've memory issues, both short and long term. Ideally, I wouldn't mind making friends with someone who knows this stuff better than myself. Oh well. At least I've discovered a community I can trust amidst so many scams and things like that. I'm a pretty quick study though, so I'm hoping a bit of direction and the like will help.
If you've read all the way down here, you're awesome and I want to thank you for your interest and time. Here's hoping I can figure these issues out. Anyway, cheers for now!
Critta Kill said:
Greetings everyone!
Well, this being my first post here I suppose it's most apt to begin with a general hello and that XDA came with a golden recommendation as being perhaps the safest place online to ask questions of the nature of which mine are. It's unfortunate that I don't have much to give back to the community, but I'm hoping to be surprised. In either case I suppose it comes down to the questions now...
Having searched extensively following up reports of the assorted programs that apparently allow Root without the loss of data however research turned most of these miracle apps into hidden landmines of spyware. My history with phones, tablets, and the like involve the technical expertise of having followed a step-by-step guide to jailbreak an apple tablet. I have a vested interest in rooting both of my devices, I would rather not lose any data in rooting my phone. I'd also enjoy if someone could explain what the negatives of rooting really are. Am I able to update? Use the android store fine? So many unknown elements.
I was hoping that there might be a method to change the default install / save location over to my SD card because my phone memory is garbage small. I can manually move apps over, but it takes forever and I'm a bit of a pack-rat so I've a fair amount of apps so keeping up with updates involves updating a few, moving them back to the SD, moving more, moving to SD. It's a nightmare. I am hoping that there is some kind of work around. I'd tried one in the past recently, and unfortunately it failed in such a glorious fashion that I had to look up another guide on how to undo the damage. lol
I suppose I only have the two different directions. Sadly I've memory issues, both short and long term. Ideally, I wouldn't mind making friends with someone who knows this stuff better than myself. Oh well. At least I've discovered a community I can trust amidst so many scams and things like that. I'm a pretty quick study though, so I'm hoping a bit of direction and the like will help.
If you've read all the way down here, you're awesome and I want to thank you for your interest and time. Here's hoping I can figure these issues out. Anyway, cheers for now!
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Click to collapse
For rooting. I am not sure if there is a technique available. However to move apps to sdcard try this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buak.Link2SD
Or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a0soft.gphone.app2sd
I used it a long time ago. It may or may not require root permission.