Posted by Sainty
Edit 28/09/2007: New method using XS++ which is much easier and also works perfectly on the P1i! Thanks to gbrooks3!!!! http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=130758&start=240#post2115315
Edit 31/05/2007: Change CDA for free using SEUS - http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=130758&start=45#post1999020
Just thought I'd start a thread about unbranding. As soon as anyone finds out anything about doing this please update here. I for one would love to unbrand my Vodafone P990 to the lastest firmware. It'll just finish it off nicely
And with no external branding on the phone or box will make it much nicer to sell if it ever comes to that hehe 
Who else would like to unbrand their handset? Wonder if Davinciteam etc will be able to do this soon? I've sent an email to them asking, will update if/when I get a reply 
_________________
Sainty - Vodafone Sales Advisor
Nokia 402 -> Nokia 3310 -> Nokia 3510i -> Nokia 6100 -> SE V800i -> Samsung D500 -> SE K750i -> SE W900i -> SE K800i -> SE P990i -> SE P1i (as soon its released
)
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2007-05-31 16:11 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2007-05-31 16:35 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2007-05-31 16:39 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2007-09-28 01:00 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2007-09-28 01:06 ]
Posted by mykkk
I've sent an email to King Mobile Phones, so I'll let everyone know when I receive a response too.
ditto... would really love to be able to update on Seus as soon as updates are released. As I said in one of my other posts, I bet when vodafone releases the updated firmware, they will have made a real branded version!
Posted by ferg
me too. I really like my m600i. I never though it could get better than the p910i, but it is. But closing apps, and that quick program menu, would really improve the interface,
Cheers
Ferg
Posted by BobaFett
i do noticed lately in many other threads the unbarnding. just 2 thoughts, for all of u:
if u unbrand a fone, your warranty is over and afaik, if u make any upgrade or unbranding with a non-generic server ( not seus ) u wont be able to flash it later with seus
Posted by ferg
I guess the best way would be if Vodafone did some updates and improvements themselves to their own firmware.
I wonder if this is going to happen? With my previous Vodafone branded p910i, there were at least 3 such firmaware updates. Although I never noticed any major improvements, and TBH the p910i Vodafone firmware was not really that bad at all.
Cheers
Ferg
Posted by mykkk
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When you unbrand, you also change the cda number so I think you can still update on Seus as far as I know. Well worked on my P910 anyway. Not sure about the warranty tho...
Posted by Sainty
I'm not bothered about the warranty issue as I have ways and means of getting around that.. SEUS should work fine when the CDA is changed to 1 or 2
Posted by mykkk
Sainty, any news on whether the later vodafone firmwares will be branded?
Posted by Sainty
To be honest I don't have a clue. But I wouldn't have thought we will change it much for future firmware but who knows. We'll just have to wait and see
Posted by mykkk
Even though CPW don't have the phones yet, they are an SE service centre. Therefore they should have the latest firmware updates for the P990. Is that correct?
If that's the case, do you think I can blag it (like I did on my O2 branded P910) and get them to debrand it for me? Well flash the latest firmware anyway. In this way... the warranty is also kept intact because it was done by an official service centre?
Posted by Sainty
This is where its gets funny. With my old K750 I debranded it myself with Davinciteam. Then after a short time the joystick went so I sent it away via my store to get it repaired. They repaired it and didn't touch the software
How did you get CPW to debrand your o2 handset?!?
Posted by mykkk
I brought the phone into CPW and said.... I need the new firmware for 'blackberry' support. (Even though that wasn't the real intention.) Sure enough they took my phone away for a couple of days and debranded it. I think it also helped that I got the P910 quite early on and it was before everyone was popping into stores and specifically asking for a debrand.
So I might bring it in to CPW and say .... I need the new flash to fix the bugs and so I can listen to music and surf the web at the same time.
The difference now is that someone I know is a manager at CPW... so maybe he can just sort me out anyway. I'm gonna have to ask.
On a separate note; a friend of mine who also managed to catch the Voda P990i for free (on anytime 75 for 12 months) called up the V-store customer services and was told that he will indeed get the phone for free. Fingers crossed it is the same for my order too!
Posted by Sainty
Nice, well let me know how that goes. I may try it at my local CPW if you succeed
Posted by muppet
Debranding doesn't remove the warranty, at least here in New Zealand.
If the hardware blows up, it doesn't make 2 licks of difference what FW is on the phone.
Is it different in different parts of the world?
Sure, you can't expect to be given software support, but to say it invalidates your warranty isn't necessarily true either.
Posted by mkouk
debranding does not cancel the warranty if you "upgrade" the firmware in an official SE repair centre. I've had my P900 debranded when i went into an authorised repair centre and claimed that my phone crashes frequently and a new firmware would do it good! hehe
The only problem was that with P900 the CDA did not change, which meant that updating to a non-Orange firmware from home using the SEUS was not possible as SEUS was checking the CDA and was defaulting to an Orange firmware! So everytime there was a new and better firmware out i had to visit the SE centre again for a new upgrade.
Does anybody know if the same issue will happen with the P990? I certainly don't want to have the orange branding (especially that Orange Home Screen is absolutely rubbish).
Posted by mykkk
strange, debranding my P910 changed my CDA.. hope l can change the CDA on the P990!
Posted by vivid white
i was just thinking on the voda P990 the start up and shut down screens are voda branded is there no way of getting into the file where these are kept and change them for SE ones from a debranded P990?
Posted by mkouk
that was possible with the P800 as all the start-up screens and sounds were stored in C:\
this changed with the P900/P910 as all these files were stored in the rom drive that is read-only.
Now with the P990 you don't even have read access to the ROM drives due to the extra security measures in Symbian 9.1
[ This Message was edited by: mkouk on 2006-09-16 22:28 ]
Posted by vivid white
dam it
Posted by gbrooks3
I guess debranding will be possible, just need someone so write a "dummy" flash dll to fake an unbranded phone then, when it is time to flash the "dummy" driver releases control back to the connected phone. That is for SEUS.
Will 3rd party soft arrive? Maybe, there were 2 or 3 complete solutions for the last SEMC smartphones, however the developers responsible seem, er, quiet now....New developers have to learn how to program the smartphone flash
Posted by gbrooks3
It would help very much if someone could get a "sniff" of USB data transfer when they attempt to update
Thanks
Posted by mykkk
Would be nice to debrand...the voda branded ones aren't really bothering me that much at the moment tbh. The start up screens don't bother me. yes, we can't update as soon as they come out, but the phone's bugs aren't bothering me that much at the moment. I can't be bothered to go to CPW and drop the phone off for a couple of days for a debrand. If something comes up on davinci/TMS or from Kingmobile then great.
Posted by gbrooks3
Hi,
To make this work i need a valid M600i IMEI number (mine is a prototype, so i need to fake it with a good one. Dont worry, nothin can happen
PLease PM me one, thanks )
Also, i need an unbranded CDA.
I sniffed the SEUS communication with SEUS and its very interesting, on my PC at least, SEUS restarts the M600 and then resumes "normal" SEMC boot commands.
BaseBand Chip is typical DB2000 Marita:
0x71 0x00
EMP Protocal:
0x03 0x01
The M600 is also CID49 (0x31)
Mine is Brown however (0x62)
best,
gbrooks3
Posted by mykkk
So SEUS reads what version of firmware should be flashed from the IMEI number rather than the CDA now?
Posted by gbrooks3
Both IMEI + CDA is used,
My IMEI begins 0046 (proto) and so is automatically rejected, i need a good imei for the phone to be authorized. Then then and unbranded CDA must be given...SEUS checks the CDA from GDFS strings i guess.
Both can be fooled, then we can unbrand via SEUS
However, my M600i is BROWN and so i cannot update anyway, becuase it needs to be converted to RED first
Best,
gbrooks3
p.s. M600i IMEI + CDA still needed also P990 if you want to unbrand that too...
Posted by gbrooks3
Anyone?
Surely there is someone here with an M600 and the time to write it's IMEI and CDA into a pm...
This is the problem with esato, everyone is, "i want, i want, i want" not many are willing to learn. Off to se-nse, hopefully they will be interested in this project.
Posted by mykkk
come on! someone with an M600i!!
Posted by Sainty
@gbrooks3, wow thats some interesting stuff! I don't have an M600 unfortunatly else I'd help! Hope someone can
Anyone with an M600 please help!! masseur maybe?
Posted by mykkk
Sainty...any luck with your mate from CPW?
I haven't been able to meet up with the guy I know yet...
Posted by Guy H
why would you bother unbranding now? wouldn't it make sense for them to issue what looks like a final firmware then do it?
Posted by mykkk
unbrand it now so you can flash with seus whenever..?
that's what I did with my P910
Posted by Guy H
It will work like that? I thought it checked your IMEI number as well which would show your phone not to be a OEM spec?
Posted by mykkk
No idea.. but when my p910 was unbranded, it changed the CDA number too and I could update as soon as they were released.
The p910 was a lightly branded O2 version with the startup and shutdown screens... much like the voda branded ones now.
Posted by Guy H
Ok. going on the info posted though the P990 checks both. Maybe that wasn't the case with the P910i hence why you were Ok. I wouldn't risk it personally. If I do look to get it flashed to generic from the voda firmware I'll wait until a pretty much final firmware is released which I don't think we're at now.
Posted by mykkk
True, that might be the case now.
To make things easier, I'm thinking that I might just sell the free Voda P990's I now have... then get the unbranded handset from Expansys.
If I sell both voda P990's I should still have some money there to pay off the 12 x £20 contract I just got.
Posted by Guy H
you could do that I guess but is there any point a tthe mo until you know there is a major difference between the Voda and the OEM versions?
Posted by mykkk
nope...but I can update as soon as new firmware is available
Posted by Guy H
fair point. I always wait anyway and let people find out the new bugs problems before updating.... better the devil you know and all that. I remember the P910i going from R4 to R5 firmware and then everybody who had wishing they'd kept R4
Posted by bodgeruk
I recently spoke to CPW and they said they hadn't been trained on the P990. The guy I spoke to said he could try anyway which suggests to me that they have some kind of software on a PC. I think that to be safe, the best thing to do would be to wait until the official UK release then take it to CPW (at which point they should have been trained).
Posted by mykkk
Well...after thinking for the whole weekend. I'm selling the Voda branded P990's and am gonna get myself a generic one. (already sold one.. haha)
It's a bit stupid of me to do this, but opera kept crashing on me today so I really want one where I can update as soon as new updates come out.
Posted by Sainty
Been reading on other forums and such that the generic p990's are NOT as great quality as the Vodafone ones. Strange but kinda nice to know
_________________
Sainty - Vodafone Sales Advisor
Nokia 402 -> Nokia 3310 -> Nokia 3510i -> Nokia 6100 -> Sony Ericsson V800 -> Samsung D500 -> Sony Ericsson K750i -> Sony Ericsson W900i -> Sony Ericsson K800i -> Sony Ericsson P990
[ This Message was edited by: Sainty on 2006-10-07 11:32 ]
Posted by aboveconnection
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we did 1000s of P900/P910 unbranding for many of you folk on here,
i have NEVER had anyone come back to us with issues about insurance.
this will NOT be the case.
Expect the debranding service to be around soon, although dates are TBC.
Hope you enjoy the wait
Posted by Slider758
Been lurking on these boards for a while and thought I'd finally contribute. Received my P990 a few days ago and of course my experience is the same as many others that got their phones from Vodafone. Annoyingly the bugs I've encountered have mostly been solved with the latest SE firmware (R7), but the Vodafone handsets are stuck with R5, so I decided to contact Vodafone about this.
The short of it is that Vodafone are aware of the problem, but will not promise any firmware updates at all, it could be a few weeks, months or never. Under no circumstances would they debrand the phone (not surprising). The conversation basically left me with two choices: keep the phone or return it - great!
I also contacted SE and they didn't want anything to do with it - as far as they're concerned they're releasing firmware updates. Vodafone have crippled their handsets and so its up to them to release updates to branded firmware.
I think the P990 is an excellent piece of hardware which has been severely let down in part by the SE software developers must and outright crippled by Vodafone - for no good reason!
As a final note, SE told me that unbranding would void my warranty with Vodafone.
I'm now eagerly waiting for a debranding solution.
Posted by ekkelon
I have updated my M600i EN version by ZEUS .... and this the screen shot of my M600 ... http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/1227/capture0xz7.gif
After that I have lost the Italian language.
This is the capture screen of an ITA/SWISS version of M600i http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2708/fwm600kl7.png
I need now the .sis file with italian language pack for this news FW version .... Someone know where find it?
Thank you very much.
[ This Message was edited by: ekkelon on 2006-10-09 13:42 ]
Posted by doublecheese
I experienced this :
if you goto those local phone shops they will flash your phone so good no traces of Vodaphone, O2 etc will remain. However your guarantee will be void.
A friend who lived in UK was visiting us abroad for holidays. He was using a Vodaphone P910i phone, while playing a game on the phone the phone crashed so badly, he had to take the battery out. When he put back on the battery, the phone did not start anymore. So we tried to fix it with SEUS, (until recently SEUS had a REPAIR option which you could fix, but SE removed it later on somehow) because the REPAIR option was cancelled by SE we could not manage to update the phone. So we called SE Istanbul and they said that this phone is Vodaphone branded and they can not help us.
There was two options for us. 1) Wait for him to go back to UK 2) or have the phone flashed at a local second hand phone shop.
So we went to the phone shop, we told the guy at the counter that P910 no longer worked, he told us it would be no problems but since they didn't have any Vodafone Software, they would update the phone with latest Sim Free version and if we did the update that my friend would loose his Voda guarantee blah blah blah... so we agreed and he uploaded the software and P910 started working as unbranded. There was no Voda logo or nothing remaining on the phone....
And he could use the SEUS easily afterwards
This means prpbably the same things will apply to P990's unbranding,
_________________
GH337, GH388, GH 688, SH 888, P800, P900, P910 and now P990i
[ This Message was edited by: doublecheese on 2006-10-09 14:47 ]
Posted by cellcorner
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There are probably ways for a SE technician to notice that the phone has been flashed with non original firmware. Some servers offer original firmware the only purpose of which as I see it is to flash before returning the phone into a service center.
As for the other part of your questions (statement), many tools including remote servers now can change CDA number which is responsible for the SEUS
Posted by bodgeruk
From my experience with Voda when my p800 was stolen, all those years ago... (And I had to switch back to my beautiful Sony z7 as i'd sold my t68)
Handset insurance works as so:
You call Voda and say your handset was stolen.
They check the last IMEI number registered on your sim card. If it isn't the handset yu bought/upgraded to with voda, no insurance. This is because I used my dad's upgrade to get the p800 then put in my sim.
It cost me £50 to get the p800, mwahahahaaaa. After getting back from hols in China my P990 was similarly cheap. Mwahahahahaaaaa
My P990 is Voda and so I cannot upgrade the firmware withut sending it to a voda service centre. Booohooooo.
I think it would be worth investigating further how Operators use IMEI and CDA numbers.
From my experience and from what I have heard:
IMEI : This is a GUID Globally Unique Identifier to your handset.
Posted by bodgeruk
From my experience with Voda when my p800 was stolen, all those years ago... (And I had to switch back to my beautiful Sony z7 as i'd sold my t68)
Handset insurance works as so:
You call Voda and say your handset was stolen.
They check the last IMEI number registered on your sim card. If it isn't the handset yu bought/upgraded to with voda, no insurance. This is because I used my dad's upgrade to get the p800 then put in my sim.
It cost me £50 to get the p800, mwahahahaaaa. After getting back from hols in China my P990 was similarly cheap. Mwahahahahaaaaa
My P990 is Voda and so I cannot upgrade the firmware withut sending it to a voda service centre. Booohooooo.
I think it would be worth investigating further how Operators use IMEI and CDA numbers.
From my experience and from what I have heard:
IMEI : This is a GUID Globally Unique Identifier to your handset.
- Used by operators to track handsets throughout the network.
- Cross referenced to sim for insurance claims.
- Used by Police and operators to permanently block stolen handsets on all networks in the UK.
CDA : I know little abut this. I believe this identifies the branding status of handsets to SE fr SEUS
- Used by SEUS to identify what F/W needs to be uploaded to a specific Handset.
From this, I can conclude with some certainty that debranding a phne will in no way affect insurance claims for the loss, damage or theft of handsets.
Posted by kingmobilephone
it's kind of interesting post and I spent quite a bit time on this CDA issue..
funny enough for all DB2020 series SE such as K800i, K610i....even I change the CDA number in the debranding, I still couldn't manage to update my firmware.. so I guess they might somehow combine both CDA and IMEI to confirm which network are u with
But for DB2000 series PDA SE phone such as W950i, P990i or M600i, I have no problem in updating the firmware after I debranded it and change the CDA..
btw, for the warranty, I can assure all that it won't affect it after the warranty, if your phone does have some hardward fault ..., contact the se service centre called ACR logistic .. they won't bother if your phone is BRANDED / debranded orginially, what they are if the hardware fault is human fault...such as water damaged / fall which they don't responsible...if it's not your fault, I can assure they will fix your phone FREE if it's within 12months warranty....I deal with them for the last 3 yrs and they are all reasonable person
http://www.kingmobilephone.co[....]sony-ericsson/m600-debrand.php
_________________
KING Mobile Phone - Phone unlock / Debrand specialist in london
www.kingmobilephone.com
[ This Message was edited by: kingmobilephone on 2007-02-08 20:04 ]
Posted by seunlock-uk
I would like to interject that I can confirm that SE DEFINATELY use a combination of IMEI and CDA with SEUS, fo DB2020.
So even changing the CDA on a DB2020 makes no difference if you want to upgrade via SEUS it will either kick up an error or rebrand the handset.
This is a new thing that they brought in for the DB2020 models, and is not what happens with any of the rst of the models ie. PDA's.
ALL handsets are updateable through SEUS through debranding, to debranded FW, EXCEPT DB2020.