The Cingular SIM manual network hack thread

[aprasad]

Hi all,

When you guys select a non-cingular network (say T-mobile), does the phone application still show the name as "Cingular"?

When I was in Vancouver/Alaska, the phone app said "Rogers" in Vancouver.
But, in each port (in US/Alaska), I got signal with the Phone saying "Cingular".

This was even though 2day was showing me to be in roaming status (a small red R on the antenna symbol in 2day).

I am using an unmodified Cingular phone.

[BrettS]

Originally Posted by jetkins

I believe you're right on the money.

Like you, I have excellent Orange and mediocre Blue coverage at home, and vice versa at work. In fact, the Orange signal at work is so weak that sometimes the Treo can't detect it at all, and switches to Blue at four-bar strength. That's great, but it really chaps my quick when the Orange signal manages to seep through the walls again and the phone immediately latches on to it even though it's only at one-bar strength at best.

LOL... that's *exactly* what happens to me. If you didn't live in TX I'd assume that we worked in the same building What's worse is that I usually call my wife when I'm on my way home from work. Once I get into the elevator until I leave the building I have no coverage on the orange network, so I assumed it was just the elevator and/or the building and just waited until I got outside to call. I installed this hack on Friday before I left work and I was absolutely shocked to discover that in the elevator and all the way out of the building I got no less than two bars on the blue network.

Brett

[duckhunter]

Thanks a ton! This works great for me also. Cingular Blue works better for me at work and at home. There have been too many times that I've had to switch to land line to finish a conversation.

Is there any reason this would not work on the new Cingular update?

[Glenn_Butler]

Folks,

This works great! Does the network setting persist until the phone is turned off or until it looses that signal? For example, if the phone goes out of service, does it revert back to the "automatic" setting, or does it wait to reaquire the chosen network?

Glenn

[taylorh]

Originally Posted by Glenn_Butler

Folks,

This works great! Does the network setting persist until the phone is turned off or until it looses that signal? For example, if the phone goes out of service, does it revert back to the "automatic" setting, or does it wait to reaquire the chosen network?

Glenn

When you make a manual network selection, that selection should persist until you go back in to that app and selelect automatic. Even if you turn the phone off/on.
What I'm not sure is if it's cleared (back to automatic) if you:
A) Reset the device
B) Travel outside the coverage area for any extended period of time. It shouldn't, but it might revert back to automatic to find another network.

[duckhunter]

My experience has shown a new network find and selection is necessary after a soft reset. My phone went from Blue to Orange tower after reset. I have not tested turning radio on/off.

Cingular (orange) branded phone

[duckhunter]

Has anyone tried updating to 1.31-1.15 and using the SIM hack? I am tempted to try the new firmware. Higher numbers must always mean improvements, right? If the hack does not work, would it be as simple as deleting the 'phoneapp' file to go back to 'normal'?
Thanks.

Currently running 1.28-1.13

[BrettS]

Originally Posted by duckhunter

Has anyone tried updating to 1.31-1.15 and using the SIM hack? I am tempted to try the new firmware. Higher numbers must always mean improvements, right? If the hack does not work, would it be as simple as deleting the 'phoneapp' file to go back to 'normal'?
Thanks.

Currently running 1.28-1.13

Yes, it works with the new firmware, but you need to get a new phoneapp file from Johnny (it's in another thread here). Don't leave the 1.28 firmware phoneapp on your phone when you upgrade, though. I did and as soon as that file got restored it put my phone in a reset loop. I had to do a hard reset and the restore my backup without the phoneapp file. Using the phoneapp intended for the new firmware works great, though

Brett

[nbkwaa1]

First, thanks to the creator(s) who developed the new phone app. I am/was one of the quiet observers watching you brilliantly develop this. I installed it yesterday morning and have been thrilled with the (re)empowerment of being able to select my own network/tower. Sometimes the simplest pleasures....

I do have one problem I was wondering if others had or solved. I am on an unlocked treo 650. It was a Cingular (orange) store bought. i had it unlocked by Mason at 4321media.com (great experience by the way, only $45). I have done the two step upgrade to get to the latest firmware. Then I added the phone app for network selection.

My problem: after finding 3 cingular choices like many in this thread, I found the second (probably a cingular blue or ATTWS) was much better than the previous automatic selection (cingular blue). Phone and gprs were instantly better reception (phone by +1 or +2 bars!). Today, though, i can get the good phone reception from that selection, but its refusing my gprs connection. Any idea why? Do they have an automated trap to stop our manual selection? I am on the ciingular unlimited data plan ($39), fyi. It worked yesterday, not today.

Would it help to change the gprs 'network apn' to ATTWS' "proxy", versus using wap@cingular.com?? Or i should is switch to isp@cingular.com for the apn, which I have seen on some postings?? Or does the setting of the network (gprs) connection not matter and it shoudl roam to orange or blue towers regardless?

This may affect others so I will make sure any answers i determine are posted here.

Nick (nbkwaa1)

[BrettS]

Originally Posted by nbkwaa1

Today, though, i can get the good phone reception from that selection, but its refusing my gprs connection. Any idea why?

I've occasionally had issues where my phone simply refuses to make a GPRS connection for no good reason. For me a soft reset usually fixes things (occasionally simply turning the radio off and on helps, but usually it needs a soft reset). If you haven't tried to reset your phone I'd try that first.

Good luck,
Brett

[nbkwaa1]

Thanks BrettS by the way, I did try your idea but got no relief.

Desperate to get back to the strong phone AND gprs signal I had selected (on a cingular blue or ATTWS tower), I restored from a backup made when it was working. The restore brought back the ability to have phone and gprs on the strong tower! I must have had a corruped communications file. A hotsync log seemed to indicate that as well. Alls well that ends well - if it sticks. So fars so good.

Sorry for the false alarm. Thanks again for the excellent improvement to my cingular-based Treo.

Nick

[taylorh]

Hey Everyone,
I'm posting a new version of the 'Select Network' Hack.
Why? Well for a few reasons:
1) The one johnnytk36 initially posted caused the menus to be center aligned instead of left aligned like the origional.
2) I wanted to figure out how to do it myself.
3) I wanted to make sure the hack I use has the cleanest and least number of edit possible to work.
4) I did it, just want to share it with anyone interested.

This file has exactly and only a 2 byte change. I would not have known how to do this myself. All I did was follow what Joynnytk36 did.
http://discuss.treocentral.com/showt...91143&p=750428

Exactly what was done:
1) Copied the PhoneEn_US.PRC from ROM to the SD card (using Teal Mover)
2) Used a Hex editor to change the value 1C8B (Item ID:7307) to 051A (Item ID: 1306). The 1C8B value exists in only 1 instance in the file, so it was easy to find. Just changed those two bytes.
3) Copied the PhoneEN_US.PRC back from the SD card to RAM (using Teal Mover).

This appears to work perfectly. The beauty of this edit is that maintains the origional menu formatting and appears to be the cleanest hack. The one Johnny posted has many edits to the menus, copying the "Select Network" option to the versions of the menus that don't have them. However, it appears that this isn't at all necessary (based on all of Johnny's work.)
Just to be clear, Johnny did awesome work here and I'm not at all dissing his version. I just think he has learned a few things since he made it and I wanted to post something new based on that information. I spent 5 hours last saturday trying to re-create Johnny's hack with no success until I learned this key piece of information, that it's all in these two bytes.

THIS IS FOR UNLOCKED (ROW) ENGLISH/US ONLY.
Firmware: 01.28, Software Treo650-1.13-ROW
If you try this in a Treo with Cingular firmware it COULD end up in a reset loop.
Cingular users follow THIS THREAD for the latest.
Alternatively I could make the same edit to a cingular ROM's version of the file if someone sends it to me, or you you now know how to make the hack yourself.

So again, I've done nothing extraordinary here. I wouldn't have even figured it out myself, all the credit goes to johnnytk36.
I simply wanted to clean up the hack and thought I'd share it with you all.
The other thing I did here which is different for better or for worse, is used the version that was in my phone's resident "ROM" rather than pull the origional file out of the base ROM 'PhoneApp_enUS.oprc'. I don't know what the difference is, but I don't think it matters. I simply did this because the one in my phone's rom was much easier to get at.
You might want to keep a copy of Johnny's just in case some day in the future mine doesn't work when it should. I don't see why that would happen, but a least you'd have a fallback.

To Install this:
1) Download this file.
2) Copy it to an SD card (using an SD card reader).
3) Use any file explorer utility (Teal Mover, Resco Explorer, Filez) to copy the file from the SD card to RAM. It may tell you you're over writing a file, say "yes." You aren't actually overwriting the actual file in ROM but the file program thinks you could be.
4) You're done.
*NO SD Card Method: Alternately, you should be able to install this file using hotsync the way you would any other PRC. I haven't tested this, but it should toatlly work. Just download the file, and use the palm quick install tool hotsync the file.
To remove the install:
1) Use a file explorer utility to delete Phone_enUS.PRC from RAM. Note: Depending on which file explorer you use, you may see two. The one in ROM you won't be able to delete (good thing, too) but this one will be in RAM and will be deletable.
2) You're done, you're back to the original.

How this patch works:
When you install a PRC to RAM, the Treo treats the copy in RAM with priority over the one in ROM. So as long as a RAM copy exists, it'll use it. Once you delete it it uses the orig. copy in ROM.
As Johnny discovered (see post link above in this post), when the 'hide manual selection' instruction is received from the SIM, the Treo hides the 7307 menu item. So by changing it to 1306 it no longer hides it.

If you do a hard factory-reset, you'll have to re-install this.
_UPDATE_
All versions of this hack can now be downloaded here:
http://www.gadgetech.info/treo/hacks/selectnetwork/

[lazieboss]

hey taylorh:

i was hoping to get that center alignment thing fixed with the hack. great work. only thing im not sure about is you said that this is for unlocked (ROW) english/us only. then you post firmware 1.28-ROW, Software Treo650-1.12-ROW. I believe you mean Treo650-1.13-ROW? was this a typo/mistake? I am willing to try this hack out to "clean" up the hack

[taylorh]

Originally Posted by lazieboss

hey taylorh:

i was hoping to get that center alignment thing fixed with the hack. great work. only thing im not sure about is you said that this is for unlocked (ROW) english/us only. then you post firmware 1.28-ROW, Software Treo650-1.12-ROW. I believe you mean Treo650-1.13-ROW? was this a typo/mistake? I am willing to try this hack out to "clean" up the hack

Yes, you're correct. That was a typo mistake. I'll fix that in my post. Thank you.
Taylor

[johnnytk36]

Good job with the hack. Im glad to see that my hack can be made even more simple. I covered all the bases with the original hack to make sure. Now that i see that it can be done without so much editing going on i'll make one for the new 1.15/1.31 cingular update and post it in a litttle bit.

[lazieboss]

im so glad we got this hack working!! thanks again to everyone that helped...

shadowmite, mcdan333, johnnytk36 (who ultimately figured out this puzzle!!), and now taylorh!

great work team!

[taylorh]

Originally Posted by johnnytk36

Good job with the hack. Im glad to see that my hack can be made even more simple. I covered all the bases with the original hack to make sure. Now that i see that it can be done without so much editing going on i'll make one for the new 1.15/1.31 cingular update and post it in a litttle bit.

Yes, it all appears to be in those two little bytes, you uncovered the key. I was actually a little excited to learn it was so simple.
I spent like 5 hours last Sat trying to re-create your hack with no success. It wasn't until I read your post on the other thread when it clicked, it must be that ID.
I did an experiment where I renamed the menu items with the MBAR ID numbers an played with it to see which was coming up on the screen. With the Cingular and TMobile sims, it was always using the 7000's menu items. Even when the Cingular SIM was hiding the "Select Network" it was not using 7001. In fact all of the menu items were from 7000. I was stumped.
So I knew it had to be something in there. Once you figured out that changing the ID made it work, I knew this had to be it. Somehow I must have missed it in your version.

Perhaps there are other instances where it uses others, but so far we've only seen what' in the 7000.

So this is what teamwork gets you.

[taylorh]

Originally Posted by johnnytk36

Good job with the hack. Im glad to see that my hack can be made even more simple. I covered all the bases with the original hack to make sure. Now that i see that it can be done without so much editing going on i'll make one for the new 1.15/1.31 cingular update and post it in a litttle bit.

Johnny,
I did your method changing 7307 to 1306 for my version. However I've been giving it more thought. All of the items in the 7000 group are in the 7000 range (7005, 7006, 7007, etc.) So we've proven your theory that it's hiding 7307. I've done some tests, and it appears that re-numberting this to just about -anything- works as a hack.
Do you think renumering it to 1306 is the best method? Shouldn't these menu items have unique numbers?
I'm thinking that re-numbering it to something unique might be a better method.
I changed it to 7313. The highest existing menu item is 7312, so I just incremented to the next free number, 7313. This way it's a unique number and it's at least in the 7000 range for it's grouping.
If figure this way there is less chance for a chance conflict somewhere down the line.

Play with the idea and let me know what you think. I'm thinking this might be a better way to go than using 1306 which is an existing menu item in another group. I don't really know how the software uses these resource numbers but I would think using the same one twice might not be the best if it's not necessary.
I'm going to re-do mine with 7313 and test it for a while.
I would appreciate your thoughts.

-Taylor

PS: 7313 doesn't work for some reason. Either the number is out of range or it's blocking anything over a certain value etc etc.
I used 7302 (which doesn't already exist, 7302 was skipped or removed) and it seem to work with 7302.
PPS: Scratch that. 7302 makes the menu item appear in the menu, but when you select it nothing happens. Clearly it understands what 1306 is.
I'm back to thinking 1306 is still the best method.

[johnnytk36]

For people running the cingular 1.15 update,

Here is the new Phone_enUs.prc for the cingular 1.15 update. I used a hex editor instead of Prcedit as taylorh did, it seems when you use prcedit it screws up the alignment of the menu.

Have fun.

EDIT:

I am Taking this File off for right now while I test something. I just had my phone program crash my palm twice in a row. I don't know if it is this file but I am taking it down untill I know. Sorry about the inconvience. If you have downloaded this file I suggest you go back to my original hacked file for this update.

[aprasad]

To recap:

This should be installed via SD card+Filez

Should this be deleted using Filez as well?

Any soft or warm resets advised in either process?