In this page I will try to describe all customizations I've done to my own phone (SE K750i CID49 Red), but sometimes I will also mention some customizations I've not done. It will serve as a reference to myself, and maybe a guide to other people. There is no guarantee these customizations will work on other phone models.
I won't explain here how to access your phone internal filesystem, nor how to apply firmware patches. If you don't know how to do it, please read my Using Far Manager to hack Sony Ericsson K750i CID49 mobile phones tutorial, or any other tutorial. I ensure no responsibility about what you do to your phone. You're on your own. If you break or kill or phone, that's not my problem.
Remember to make backups of every modified or deleted file!
Originally written at 2007-02-20. Last change at 2008-01-11. Written by Denilson F. de Sá.
Many files (but not all) inside Sony Ericsson phone filesystem are stored in UTF-16 encoding. If you read it using an hexadecimal editor/viewer (or even a standard text viewer), you will see plain ASCII/English text with null bytes between every letter. This is also how it will look inside Far viewer.
If you prefer, you can open the file inside any editor capable of handling UTF-16 encoding. If you use Vim or Gvim, use utf-16le file encoding.
Undoubtly, this is the most annoying thing on most Sony Ericsson phones, and probably it is the most hated "feature" of all Sony Ericsson users. Fortunately, it is easy to remove it. There are two ways of doing that:
This is the easiest method, and has the (dis)advantage to completely mute the camera. Just delete all camera*.* files from /tpa/preset/system/sound/. On my phone, I have the following files: cameraburst.3gp, cameraburst.mid, camerafocus.3gp, camerashutter.3gp and cameratimer.mid.
This was the method I've used. It does not completely mute the camera, but it will be muted when you are at Silent mode (hold # key at standby screen). To do it, edit the /tpa/preset/custom/customize.xml file and change from false to true the following line:
<suppress-camera-sound>true</suppress-camera-sound>Then, whenever you turn your phone on again, you must issue a Master reset to make it reload this file. Go to Menu > Settings > Master reset > Reset settings. It will ask the phone unlock code. If you haven't changed it, then it still is 0000 (the default one). Be warned this will clear (reset) almost all settings available at Settings panels, including GPRS and Internet profiles. Fortunately, it won't touch phone's contact list, applications, games, sounds, themes...
You might be thinking: "Hey, you said there was only two ways of doing that!" Yeah, I said that. But this method is not very different from the previous one. I consider it just a variation of the previous one. While the previous one edited customize.xml file, this one will instead create a customize_upgrade.xml file. The big advantage is the phone automatically reads this file and merges it to customize.xml, without need of a Master reset.
Create a customize_upgrade.xml file inside /tpa/preset/custom/ with the following contents:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<customization>
<camera>
<suppress-camera-sound>true</suppress-camera-sound>
</camera>
</customization>Whenever you turn your phone on again, it should automatically read this file, apply the changes to customize.xml and delete the upgrade file. There should be no need for Master reset.
The phone has a hidden "battery menu" that shows some cryptic information about battery sensors and so on. To add this menu to your phone, upload this customize_upgrade.xml to /tpa/preset/custom/ (or edit customize.xml file, adding the bold line below).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<customization>
<mmi>
<shortcuts>
<shortcut>Settings_Battery_Id</shortcut>
<shortcut>BlueTooth_Settings</shortcut>
<shortcut>Menu_CalendarMain</shortcut>
<shortcut>Settings_IR_Id</shortcut>
<shortcut>Alarm_Id</shortcut>
</shortcuts>
</mmi>
</customization>After this (do a Master reset if needed), a Battery item will be available at your shortcuts menu (the key above joystick on K750i). Note this change will overwrite your previously set shortcuts. Modify the customize_upgrade.xml to your tastes, and always have a backup of your original customize.xml file.
I've not tried the customize_upgrade.xml file, but people say it works. For more info about customize.xml and customize_upgrade.xml, read instructions about how to remove camera sound.
This description is extracted from a post at SE-NSE forums.
4208 5125 2554 1420
25 28 872 96%
212 109 2501
Charge
Ch Meth CCCV
SC CallTechMode is what Nokia users call Netmonitor. It is a little built-in application that displays parameters of the base station you are using, quality of signal, distance to base station and others. No patches or hacking are required to make this work, it should work on most phones out of the box, including some other Sony Ericsson models. That said, this is not strictly a customization, even though this is placed at a Customizations page.
To enable TechMode, type *585*0000 and press Call, or type *585*0000# and press Send. To disable it, type #585#0000 and press Call, or type #585#0000# and press Send.
Once enabled, you can access TechMode at My Shortcuts menu (by pressing the shortcuts button), or at Settings -> Connectivity -> Mobile networks -> TechMode.
The application consists of three pages: GSM Channel, GSM AMR, and GSM GPRS. You can switch between them by pressing the right key (but, surprisingly, not the left key). Each of them will display a bunch of cryptic numbers and letters related to the service.
To quit the application, keep Back key pressed. This won't, however, disable the TechMode; you need to use one of above codes to disable it.
This description is extracted from a post at SE-NSE forums. Refer to it for a few more details.
GSM Channel
A BBB CC -DD EEEEF GG
HHHH I JJJ K LL MM
NNN OO PP QQQ RR SSSS
TTT TT UUU UU VVV VV
WWW WW XXX XX ZZZ ZZBy default, there are Sony Ericsson links at almost every directory of "user-visible" filesystem. You can find it at Games, Applications, Pictures, Videos, Sounds and Themes folders (you can access all of them using built-in File manager). Maybe your mobile operator could have customized these links. Anyway, most users will never use them, and they just clutter up the interface. You can't delete them using built-in File manager. If you look at /tpa/user/*, you will find out the links are not there, so they must be somewhere else...
You will find these links as XML files inside subdirectories of /tpa/preset/system/custmenu/ directory. Many tutorials ask you to delete all files here. However, I discovered these links were re-created after I deleted them. Searching a bit more, I found another place where they are: /tpa/preset/custom/. Here they are stored as ITM files, which are just TAR files with another extension. Inside each TAR file there is a XML file.
So, to delete these links forever, you must delete the following files:
Remember to view the file contents before deleting, just to make sure you won't delete anything you don't want to. Also remember to make a backup of any file.
Note: Do not delete CONTENT_DOWNLOAD_HOOK.itm and CONTENT_DOWNLOAD_HOOK files. They would remove the Play Now! main menu item, which will be replaced by a standard Sony Ericsson link (or maybe some operator link). However, we can later replace PlayNow! with something more useful, by editing menu.ml.
People from Unix (and Linux, of course) systems might be used to symbolic links, which are (special) files that point to another files. Windows users might think them as shortcuts.
The filesystem in SE K750i does support symbolic links (from now on will be called shortcuts). The good news is that we can make our own shortcuts to some "internal" files which we may want to change often. This is handy because we can make the shortcut point to a directory which is available through built-in File manager, and then we would be able to change an "internal" file without using SEFP.
If you plan to edit/make a shortcut using Vim or Gvim, remember to :set noeol bin
Someone has created a little tool to create a shortcut file for you. It is se_shortcut.exe (downloaded from a SE-NSE forums post). To use it, open a command prompt and type se_shortcut /tpa/user/other/icons/menu.ml. This will make a file called menu.ml.@ in current directory.
There is a file called layout.xml which is responsible for many "layout" settings of the phone, including the font used by each widget and the position/size of some interface elements. Many people used this file to remove operator name and change all (or most) interface fonts. This file is located at /tpa/system/layout/layout.xml.
Using layout.xml file, you can change the font which will be used to draw some texts, but you cannot add new fonts. You can't also modify the look of current fonts.
Font names look like this: FontE_20R, where...
Someone has posted a list of all availble fonts:
Someone else has posted some photos of different fonts.
You can make a shortcut at /tpa/system/layout/layout.xml.@ pointing to /tpa/user/other/layout.xml, copy your desired file to that location, and then delete (always keep a backup!) the /tpa/system/layout/layout.xml file. This way, whenever you want to change the layout.xml, just copy it to Other folder inside phone memory (and not the memory stick) and restart the phone.
Be careful, you might not be able to use your phone (but should be able to access it using SEFP) if it can't find the layout.xml.
Some people have reported[1][2] that layout.xml is deleted when you do a Master reset, unless that file is marked as read-only (and by default it is).
So, just mark it as read-only inside Far Manager, or just remember to never do a Master reset (and, whenever you need to do it, have a backup nearby).
I have R1CA021 firmware on my K750i CID49 phone. All patches here were made for this firmware, and most (if not all) of them were downloaded from Top Sony and mobilefree.ru. And no, I don't know Russian language, I just used Google Language Tools to translate that page.
Note that some of the following posts are old, and may contain outdated information.