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O2 XDA Orbit and new ROMs

Im interested in upgrading my Orbit ROM as its a little slow. Having scoured through these forums Ive seen some reports of successful Artemis upgrading, and some unsuccessful Orbit reports. I just want to ask:
1) Firstly before thinking of flashing, can I backup my PPC (kinda like ghosting/imaging on a PC) incase something goes drastically wrong.
2) Has anyone got definate proof of an Orbit being flashed with a good ROM (with GPS / WiFi / most apps working)
3) If so, where would one obtain this ROM
4) (probably a question worth a hounding) Where might I find step by step instrustions on how to: a) backup my PPC fully for safety net
b) flash my ROM. including links to needed software
5) After flashing ROM, I take it no info (contacts, messages, programs,etc.) are stored on the PPC and will need to be painstakingly put back on ??
Many thanks, and my apologies if this has been asked a thousand times> I have sifted the forums but cnt seem to find definitive answers.
One last thing, I just got my Orbit few weeks ago and is my first PPC and being quite techy-minded, would like to learn more about the whole process so if anyone knows of any good guides/info with explainations of acronyms and what have ye,t'would be much appreciated.

First thing you could do is put a question mark after what is a question cause my heart just cant take the excitement.
O2 XDA Orbit and new ROMs?
Secondly this is such a hot topic there are lots of threads and the reason you can not find a definitive answer is because at the moment there is none.
so answers to your question
1 At the moment there is no way to make a backup of the ROM.
2 There are people who this has worked for but do you want to be in the percentage that has a bricked Orbit...... just wait for the new O2 ROM (ETA unknown)
3 There is a PDAMobiz rom that can install on a CID Locked phone floating around but I would not recommend it to you cause its more trouble then it is worth.
4 When its ready.... arvind09 says that they are going to have something really soon.... Look, nothing is going to make it so you dont have to check the forum everyday. Welcome to the club enjoy your stay (at least it is not the club with a bricked Orbit).
5 Use Activesync and Outlook to store your contacts and everything will be automated.
Check the Wiki for information about the whole PDA scene.
P.S. PDAs can be fun but please dont rush into upgrading your ROM on this baby unless you have CIDUnlocked it from (imei-check.co.uk) or unless you have £47 to get it repaired after you have bricked it.
BTW Welcome to the wonderful world of XDAs

Head on over to www.xda-orbit.com
This site is dedicated to your new toy

yeah what he said

bdangol said:
PDAs can be fun but please dont rush into upgrading your ROM on this baby unless you have CIDUnlocked it from (imei-check.co.uk) or unless you have £47 to get it repaired after you have bricked it.
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Jeff

jamin100 said:
Head on over to www.xda-orbit.com
This site is dedicated to your new toy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Already registered, though cant seem to findanything there about working ROMs

that is cause like i said there is not one.
hold on mate just hold on.
BTW over clock your Orbit that you can do.
Use Omapclock
just search for it
that will speed it up

yeah already got that sorted. Just hopin O2 get it into gear n release a FREE WM6 upgrade. I read somewhere that HTC are releasing a FREE upgrade, justhope O2 dnt all business conscious n try to charge for any mods they make lol. Thanks for the quick responses anyhow chum

I have fixed *all* my problems with the O2 Orbit just by installing Battery Status 1.04
Now I am not normally the kind of person who will just go and install some random free software from a site that barely even mentions the software, but this is great.
Before installing, I had these problems:
1. Quite often my phone would completely lock up when I got an incoming call, but the ringer would keep ringing and I'd have to take the battery out. This was rather embarassing after I'd previously told my friends about all the things the phone could do.
2. GPS took forever to get a fix - maybe up to 10 minutes. I would often arrive at my destination before the phone knew where I was. This was despite regularly updating QuickGPS
3. The phone would randomly lock up and/or stall for no apparent reason, and then catch up with itself after a couple of minutes and run all the things I'd launched because I pressed all the buttons while it was locked up.
4. I tried playing an mp3 once. It took about 45 seconds of stuttering and bad playback as if I was streaming a HD video on a 9600 baud modem. When it finally started playing smoothly, nothing else would work.
I had tried uninstalling the o2 software, and I run spb mobile shell and pocket plus but I'd tried removing them too but it was useless. What was really annoying was that I switched to an 18 month contract on o2 for this, but the phone ran more slowly and with more bugs than my old SPV m500!
This one little utility has fixed it all. Now I can use GPS while playing mp3 files and surfing the internet over wifi all at the same time as being on activesync. It's great. It's almost as though the phone is supposed to use the xscale function but o2 have disabled it...
Anyway, download the software from the link - no need to upgrade ROMs or anything. Just make sure you take a backup of your phone before you install it
Now to find a way to get it to default to letter recogniser after a soft reset. I'm sure I saw a post about this somewhere!
Mit

New to the whole scene, getting started

I have just aquired an xda ii from a friend and am very eager to get started but I have no clu eon what exactly I need to do.
First off I have read the FAQ's and what not and understand what everything seems to do.
However I beleive my xda is locked as when I try to put in my 3 sim card, it just says invalid sim or not recognized. Searching around the forums I have located the various unlocking tools but am not sure which one to go for. Also is there even any chance of it working with my 3 sim card?
Secondly, do I need to upgrade anything with it? Ideally what I want is to run tom tom navigation on it aswell as all the others features of the xda. (Im still searching around on how I check my version exactly >.<)
Thirdly, there appears to be a problem with the sound. Sometimes it beeps and such as normal, other times it dosent. Is there anywhere that can repair these sort of faults?
Thank you in advance for the time!
EDIT:
After playing around I found the information
ROM Version - 1.72.00WWE
ROM date - 03.15.04
Radio version 1.17.00
Protocol version 1337.28
ExtROM version 1.72.181
Is there anything I can upgrade it too? Or worth doing?

"However I beleive my xda is locked as when I try to put in my 3 sim card"
recall 3 blocking their very simcards to be able to work in no 3g phones
so it's likely that it's not your phone which is locked
you can upgrade it to wm5 if you like
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Windows_Mobile_5

Ah I see now, thank you.
I will just get another sim no problem.
I am interested in going up to wm5 but have a few more questions.
I see there are many different ROM versions, any particular one to go for? Will I still be able to use the camera & phone part? And also is there anyway to keep the ROM I have now and restore if anything nasty happens?

Hi there!
Izzy180 said:
Ah I see now, thank you.
I will just get another sim no problem.
I am interested in going up to wm5 but have a few more questions.
I see there are many different ROM versions, any particular one to go for? Will I still be able to use the camera & phone part? And also is there anyway to keep the ROM I have now and restore if anything nasty happens?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a himalaya just like yours, I've upgrade to a lot of ROMs here in the forum, and currently, I decided to go to helmi AKU3.5 SP2. But this ROM lacks of software you will be needing most. But as helmi said, you can install softwares as you like, and i bet this is really fast. You can also try C_Shekhar's Rom, it has softwares built on it. But helmi's ROM is faster. you can also adjust your 15mb storage to 30mb storage so you can install more software you like. Unlike WM2003, it uses RAMdisk for the installation of your softwares and it uses 128mb. At first you will be having hard time to understand the flow, but you of course you can learn from it.
Nweiz, what country are you from?

Okay so all I got to do is install this rom, and go searching for the software to pwoer the phone, camera, etc?
Is there anyway to backup / restore my current ROM and all the other parts I should need incase the worst happens?
I only just got this and I really dont want to break it because I have wanted one for ages

"phone, camera"
is a part of the rom

Brilliant! Looks like things should be alot easier than I thought.
Still playing around, I found my bootloader version is 1.03, does this matter much?
And I have found some backup tools by searching through the wiki pages, but they dont seem to work for my smart phone?

http://en.pdamobiz.com/en/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=62

Big help! Thanks!
Okay looks like im all set, back this up. Download the rom, install.
Hopefully all should go as planned.
Just one small little off topic thing, I noticed the problem with my sound is that when its in the cradle, all sounds work. However when it is out the cradle, sounds are intermittant. Software or hardware fault would anyone say?

Okay upgrade went without a problem and its now running fine.
However the only problem I noticed is that it does not detect the backup battery, im guessing this means the battery needs replacing?
I literally just noticed a problem with the charge socket too, looks like the pins on the right are slightly bent yet it still fits and charges.
Could this explain the sound issues? As when its in the cradle and on charge it works fine.

Izzy180 said:
However the only problem I noticed is that it does not detect the backup battery, im guessing this means the battery needs replacing?
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man, i think its bcoz wm5 is designed for not using the back up battery. Bcoz wm5 uses storage for installation of your application (default), and even if the battery drains, it will not hard reset. i guess.

Complete Hermes NEWBIE, need urgent advice!

If you all will excuse my ignorance, I just purchased a Hermes with Windows Mobile 5 with practically no applications on it.
I'm leaving the country in a couple days and may not have internet access so I don't have time to look through all the threads to get all this info (my apologies!) but I'd like to know the best for the following:
What ROM for WM6 should I get? I heard some people put the WM6 from the 'Touch' on the 8525 to get the scrolling feature of the iPhone?
What programs are essential for a student? I'm going to China and would like to be able to write and read Chinese characters on the device if it has the ability to do that.
What is the best carrying case? What does everyone feel is the best way to carry the device?
What are better alternatives to the crummy native earbud/microphone accessory that came in the box? I am not much for the Motorola S9, I'd prefer something wired to the phone.
There's definitely some questions that I'm leaving out but basically I'm asking for a crash-course in the Hermes. Hermes for a dummy if you will.
Thank you and your tolerance is much appreciated!

You will need more than a couple days to get into this!

Well, first off, WPBear is right, you will need more than a couple of days to get into this.
The one urgent piece of info you need is that you can not put a Touch ROM on a Hermes . The truth is significantly more complicated - there is a patched application from the Touch loaded onto a Hermes ROM to enable some of teh TouchFLO features.
Regarding WM6 ROMs, may are good - Black Satin, VP3G, Sleuth, Dutty - I am sure there are others. However, if you have a total of 2 days and are starting from basically zero knowledge, I would not try it. There is much to learn and there is a good chance that you could do it and have no problems. However, if you do have problems, there is a good chance it could take more time than you have to recover.
Regarding the other stuff - I am sure that a search of the Hermes Accessories forum will get you good info on cases and headsets.

Echo all of the above mate - if you've got to go away in a day or two I wouldn't start messing with your OS or you'll very likely find yourself panicking over fixing the thing instead of preparing for your trip.
It's not hard at all to flash etc if you follow instructions, but if it goes wrong you won't have time to learn how to fix it. Just install the apps you want and get into upgrading OS when you're back.
By the way, you didn't mention what kind of Hermes you've got. There are a number of WM6 ROMs out there already so your variant of Hermes might be catered for with WM6 already (though you'll doubtless want to upgrade later to a 'cooked' ROM anyway for even better usage.)
Leave it till after your trip mate.

Depend how many days you have. For best with chinese. go for Dopod 838Pro WM6 chinese rom.

If you want to keep the English ROM and still want Chinese input and display, then give CE-Star a try.
http://www.mobem.com/products/cestarwm5.php
I've found that it works quite well. It has character recognition as well as pinyin input.
But to also reiterate what was said above, a couple of days to experiment is definately not enough haha
Anyway, have fun in China

I just got myself a hermes (AT&T 8525)

Now, it's being shipped to me.
When I turn the phone on, should I soft reset it when it attempts to install the at&t customization crap? Or does it not matter?
I remember when I had my 8125, it did that the first time I got the phone, and I let it go. Which made me end up with some annoying pointless programs. (Although I ended up putting a new ROM wm6.0 and eventually wm6.1)
Also, which roms do yall like the best?
I'm looking for something that's clean, and quick. Without a bunch of useless applications.
Thanks

Since you're familiar with installing ROMS on the 8125,8525 should be a piece of cake.... Definitely read up on the Hermes wiki and load up a WM6 ROM.... check my signature for my current flavor of the month.
Enjoy your 8525
stuff said:
Now, it's being shipped to me.
When I turn the phone on, should I soft reset it when it attempts to install the at&t customization crap? Or does it not matter?
I remember when I had my 8125, it did that the first time I got the phone, and I let it go. Which made me end up with some annoying pointless programs. (Although I ended up putting a new ROM wm6.0 and eventually wm6.1)
Also, which roms do yall like the best?
I'm looking for something that's clean, and quick. Without a bunch of useless applications.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Even though I had a g4 8125, installing roms became quite easy.
I've been reading up on installing the roms. So do I have to HardSPL my 8525?
P.s. I like that WM6 Shamanix Ultimate 2.1. =]

Welcome! hardspl is a must! here's the flashing bible: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=299462

stuff said:
Now, it's being shipped to me.
When I turn the phone on, should I soft reset it when it attempts to install the at&t customization crap? Or does it not matter?
I remember when I had my 8125, it did that the first time I got the phone, and I let it go. Which made me end up with some annoying pointless programs. (Although I ended up putting a new ROM wm6.0 and eventually wm6.1)
Also, which roms do yall like the best?
I'm looking for something that's clean, and quick. Without a bunch of useless applications.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just got one as well for $30 from att (refurb). Its working great! It is a bit on the larger side of phones and the damn stylus is a pain in the ass to push in and take out sometimes.

Hey

Hi guys i wasnt quite sure where to put this thread but finnaly decided this forum was fine. I am sorta a newbie but have been reading loads. I think this website is awesome and i will probably donate!! Anyways i have been having a problem with my phone . It is a T mobile MDA Vario Uk IPL 1.06 and SPL 1.06 and WM5, OS 5.1.70 (if that matters)it died, i went to the tmobile shop they sent it to thier place but it came back unfixed. Anyway to make a long story short i turned out to be the charger but now a week back i have got it up and running again!! But when it freezes as it does everynow and then i have no choice but to take the battery out. When i turn it back on the date and time has gone back to November 2005! It does not do this when i turn it off by holding down the power switch. It also loses some tasks i have made . But wierdly not all the tasks. For example i had 4 tasks i took the battery out , when i restarted it the date went back to 2005 and only 1 task remained!. Is there some other way to put it of that i dont know about when it is frozen? Or am i just doomed to keep changing the date!
Thnak you very much for your replies and your time in advance.

Are you trying to soft reset the phone first? Are you trying to turn the phone all the way off? Removing the battery should be a last resort approach.
Here's the deal...
You can stave off a lot of these kind of memory/freezing problems in the future by loading some kind of RAM indicator (QuickMenu has a built-in one, can manage running programs, and gives you a Windows desktop-style start menu for programs instead of the dumb folder avalanche) to let you know you have too many programs running, and you need to do a soft reset every once in a while, or at least hibernate it periodically (you can do this from QuickMenu), just to jog it clean. It would also be wise for you to load a temporary file cleaner to clear out your temp files every once in a while...you'd be shocked how much crap piles up under the OS when you're not looking.
Lastly, since you might end up really losing some important data, I'd recommend getting DotFred's PIM backup tool and loading it on an SD card in your phone, and configure it to back up your phone regularly (like once a day at 2 am, for example). As long as the phone's left on, it'll do that for you, and if your phone really craps the bed, at least you'll have your contacts, meetings, and other info safe and sound.
Also, in the future, please add the info on your phone to your sig, so you don't have to repeat yourself 8,000 times, and you might want to try more descriptive titles for your topics than "Hey," unless you like being ignored...

Thank you Myrddin Wyllt but what did you mean by hibernating it ? do you mean just pushing the on/off button quickly so the screen goes of? oh yeah and thank you for all the advice on this forum i shal procede to do that now! Thnak you again

Yep i have done that now

upgrade your OS to at least WM6.
When I got my phone it had WM5 on it, and it used to lock up or spontaneously soft reset at least once a day, even though I soft reset it regularly. Since I upgraded to WM6 I no longer have these lockup problems.

thank you i was thinking about upgrading but wasnt sure! About the battery thing i just found out about the little hole on the side. I think this solves the problem . But about upgrading will it make my phone slower or take up precious memory or something? And the big question which one?? Also some apps i would like to have require .net framework 2.0. I tried installing it on my phone on the storage card , i had about 50mb free but it still said there is not enough space and told me to clear up space and start again! will upgrading my rom also solve this problem? Is WM6 just like WM5 what are the differences i am a beit of a newbie here! You might have to treat me like a child on this one!
Also i was wondering out of the 47.4mb internal memory of the MDA Vario how much is used by the system and how much crap have i got on? Also if i use "clear storage" then will it also get rid of programs i have installed on my memory card and i have unlocked my phone. Will it re-lock it and return the old crappy t-mobile themes?? (i have spb moble shell atm)
Thank you in advance!