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Forum > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Software, Firmware and Drivers > What exactly are patches ?

Author What exactly are patches ?
lampligher
T68 gold
Joined: Dec 03, 2006
Posts: 20
From: New Zealand
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Posted: 2009-01-26 13:10
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Hello all- I have been having a great time modding my W910i, removing op. logo, change fonts, menus/icons, etc.. but I see lots of posts about patches which for me anyway would seem to be the next level.
I don't however find any tutorials on patches.
Can anyone tell me exactly what they are and how are they installed ?
Or even point me towards a tutorial they have seen posted somewhere !!

Cheers all, LL-

[ This Message was edited by: lampligher on 2009-01-26 12:12 ]
tranced
LG Nexus 4
Joined: Jan 19, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Santo Domingo, wonDeRland
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Posted: 2009-01-26 13:15
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Patches
Patches allow for some extreme changes in how the phone works. They can change the UI, and security restrictions and a lot more things. Patches work by changing values in the firmware, though they are some patches that do write values outside of firmware, and these are the dangerous ones. Some CAN write to EROM but it's usually mentioned in the patch. This is why it is recommended to unpatch all your patches before flashing a new MAIN. Patches are firmware and model dependent. Strictly. Misused patches have been known to completely destroy a MAIN.


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Boysie
K800 Black
Joined: Jan 17, 2008
Posts: > 500
From: Southampton, England
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Posted: 2009-01-26 13:27
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Patching ur phone is a little different to patching DB2020 phones and requires A2Runtime patcher (JJPatcher). See here...

http://forums.se-nse.net/index.php?showtopic=37153

Patches...

http://forums.se-nse.net/index.php?showtopic=37177

altemyr
X1 Silver
Joined: Jan 21, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: Stockholm, Sweden
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Posted: 2009-01-26 15:24
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Originally, a patch was a change of the binary code of a computer program in the target machine. Like if you mend a hole on your trousers with a piece of cloth sewn over the hole, i.e. patched them, the programmers mended a mis-behaving program by altering the ones and zeroes in the binary executable code at the apropriate locations. Need I mention that someone doing this REALLY needs to know exactly what he's doing, telling the computer to read data from an address that is only a little incorrect, or jumping to another location only one step different from the desired location would probably cause a program crash. The reason for doing this kind of patching was that compiling a program was a rather expensive and time-consuming thing to do.

Later, the "patch" definition also could mean that the programmer went back to the program source code and made a change, re-compiled it and put it on a distribution server. This is normally what a Microsoft Windows patch is.

When it comes to patches in mobile phone, I would rather consider this being the first kind of definition, since the people who do the patches seldomly have access to the original source code of the program, and therefore, there is a certain risk that other things than what was expected may occur if the patch is applied.
lampligher
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Joined: Dec 03, 2006
Posts: 20
From: New Zealand
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Posted: 2009-01-27 01:21
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Cheers for the information everyone. I have found a bit more information and was going to try it but have not actually found anything so far that would be of a major benefit to my phone.
I also read that some have had problems with their mobiles after installing JJ Flasher.
Has anyone here had any problems ?

Cheers, LL-
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