Soft Case Mod For T6S

It's been a while since I had posted on the T6S. Not that I had any problems with it but I was busy with work for the past  week.

Last Sunday, while I was in town, I went to a local phone accessories shop and pick up a soft case for the T6S. Well,  the case was meant for the Sony Xperia Z1 but it does loosely fit the T6S.

Below are the pictures of what I did in about 5 minutes. With proper planning, you could come up with a better looking ones.

The case for Sony Xperia Z1 will loosely fit the T6S

The opening for the volume buttons

I didn't sliced open the opening for both the audio jack and
USB port thus creating kind of concealed hole 

The opening for the power button

I drew a reference line for the camera hole

The outline of the camera hole. You could do better with proper planning

Finished project. Good enough for me

It's finally arrived

After being stuck in Custom for a week or so,  the white T6S was delivered to my house this afternoon. I haven't root it yet since I'm thinking of making a video of the whole process.

Do you think it's necessary to have a video of the process? Let me know. I'll do it if there is enough request.

Update : My mother in law had snatched the phone so.. the video will most probably feature the black T6S.

My 4 years old son peeking at the white T6S

Approval Permit for the THL T6S

This evening, I had obtained the approval needed for my T6S which is currently being held by the Malaysian Custom.  Below is the e-permit which I received from the SIRIM officer via email.

The e-permit for the T6S

So, I can now expect the T6S to arrive at my doorsteps tomorrow or the day after that.

Problem with stock THL T6S ROM

I had read many users at the various forum such as the 4pda.ru, myphone.gr, androidforum.cz and htcmania.com complain about the T6S's stock rom being unstable and unable to sync with Google servers. From my previous experience, I found this is not the fault of the stock rom in general.

Google's Play Store

The stock rom that came with my T6S was not having any of these problems. Well, a 4 yrs old doesn't complain much about his contacts or gmail account doesn't sync right?

Two possible cause to this problem.

1. The google server was busy at that particular moment. Give it some time to sync properly. I found that the play store tends to be the hog when you add a Google account to be sync. Also, check if the picasa account is also setup be be in sync. If you have a lot of photo residing in your picasaweb account, it will also cause problems in syncing your contacts and mails.

2. The gapps that was installed is not the best one. Downloading either this modular mini gapps (150MB) or this modular micro gapps (98MB) and flash it in the cwm or carliv recovery. Be sure to create a nandroid backup before anything. After you had flash the gapps, clear the cache and dalvik cache.

Hope this will helps.

Stuck in customs - Part 2

I had inform Lazada about the T6S being stuck at customs. Below is the reply that I had received from them via email.

And below are the courier tracking activity.

It's good to know that Lazada or the company that is actually selling me the T6S is taking care about the problem for me. Now, all I have to do is wait for it to show up in the next few days.

Tempered glass from the Xiomi 1S

Oh.. and I had install a used tempered glass screen protector from the Xiomi 1S onto the T6S. Well, it'll do for the time being. Still searching for a suitable armour case for it as well.

*Miui Lite (MIUI 6) express launcher is used as the default launcher.

Stuck in customs

Literally, my 2nd unit of the THL T6S is now stuck in customs due to regulation/import duty clearance.

I was contacted by the forwarding company asking me to contact a person in charge of goods clearance and taxes. Well, this was unexpected since the first unit that I ordered was delivered without any fuss.

This will mean that I would need to pay some money for getting it through to me. Luckily, I learn that the fees are not that expensive but still, money is money.

THL T6S and OTG Support

This post might spark some debate but I had tried various methods and apps to get the OTG to work on the T6S but in the end - no joy.

I had even tried by pushing the required xml file (copied from the other phones) into the /system/etc/permission but it simply will not work. From my understanding, we need both OS and hardware to support OTG for it to work. The T6S seems to lack the required hardware.

Below is the screen capture from the T6S to conclude this post. Again, we cant get everything from such a cheap device. For me, its worth every Ringgit/Dollar/Euro we had paid for it.

 

MIUI for the THL T6S

I have a MIUI rom baking in the oven for the T6S. Its 90% completed. Lets just hope that everything will turn out alright.

Photoshopped.. :P

Don't put too much hope on this build as there are a few required files missing from the T6S source that I/we have. I borrowed those missing files from somewhere and kind of cheat on a file.

Cross your fingers guys. I will update the result in around 5 or 6 hours due to work commitment.

Update.

Well, not everything will work out the way we wanted. The whole installation was fine but it just stuck at a garbage looking screen.

Anyway, I had learned a 2 important things.

1. The wiping of data on the T6S is about 5 whole minutes.

2. The Carliv recovery works. It can create and restore backup succesfully. With that in mind, I will try again.

The loading/boot image of miui (in a non successful port)

Update : I had tried 5 different ports and none works. Until a kitkat MIUI is released on a similiar device, a port is impossible. Until then, download and install MIUI express launcher for a taste of MIUI on this device.. 

Xiaomi / Redmi 1S

Yup.. another phone to play with. Behold, the Xiaomi / Redmi 1S.

Xiaomi / Redmi 1S

Specification wise, it's almost the same as the THL T6S. In the next few days (If I can resist myself not to do it sooner than that), I'll be comparing it with the T6S.

My early observation are the Redmi wins in terms of screen quality & after sales support. In terms of stock OS performance & value for money, the T6S wins.

Image of Masjid Zahir, Alor Setar taken with the 1S

How to flash the cwm recovery and root the THL T6S

DISCLAIMER: DO this at your own risk. Using incorrect scatter file, or incorrect CWM/Carliv can brick your phone. I won’t be responsible or liable if anything bad happened to your android device.

What’s you need to have.

• USB Cable & PC
• SP Flash Tool software ver 3.1304
• ADB VCOM Drivers
• Scatter file for the THL T6S
• CWM recovery img for the THL T6S (rename it to recovery.img after you had download it)
• UPDATE-SuperSU-v1.99.zip or newer version of it (copy it to the phone's internal memory)

The SOP aka instructions

1. Download all files above and install the drivers.
2. Download, extract and run SP Flash Tool.
3. Click scatter loading on right side of SP Flash Tool and browse to where the scatter file is.
4. Uncheck all the boxes except for recovery.
5. Click the recovery line and browse to where the downloaded CWM is stored.
6. Click download at the top of SP Flash Tool.
7. A warning will pop up letting you know that not all items are selected. Click OK.
8. Remove the battery from the phone. If you attached the battery, SP Flash Tool will not be able to detect the THL T6S.
9. Connect the THL T6S to PC via USB – At this point, you will see the preloader  at the bottom of the SP Flash Tool is communicating with the PC. The bar at the bottom of SP Flash Tool will start to move indicating that the file is being transferred. At the end of the flash process, you will see a green circle indicating that the flash process had finished successfully.
10. Disconnect the USB cable from the phone and Put the battery back into the phone.
11. Boot into cwm recovery by holding vol up + power button for a few seconds. 
12. You will see a boot selection menu. Press the vol up button navigate to the Recovery Mode option.
13. Press the vol down button to enter the newly flashed cwm recovery. Take note that the cwm will be upside down. Navigate through the options by using the vol up & vol down button.
14. Select Install Zip From SD and then select the UPDATE-SuperSU-v1.99.zip.
15. Confirm the installation and then reboot the phone.

* For my friends from htcmania who are having problem streaming youtube videos, i would suggest for you to go to advance wifi setting and turn off WiFi optimization. See if that will help.

Carliv Recovery for the THL T6S

I was a bit worried with the cwm recovery that I had created a few days ago. Its because the recovery is a cwm v5+. As far as I know, kitkat doesnt work with v5+. I need  cwm v6+.

And I stumble to Carliv's thread on the XDA (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2759981). So, I did as the instructions there and walla.. a cwm 6+ recovery. You can grab it here.

As you can see, it's still upside down.. :). Well, does it work? Creating backup - yes. Restoring a backup - not tested yet.

To finish off, some shots of the 2 touch (good enough for a 4 yrs old) ips screen.

Good night.

Cwm recovery image for the THS T6S

Just a quick update at this early morning (almost 3am to be exact).

To my russian comrades, sorry that I had forgotten to mention about the red charging LED. And about the 2 touch thing and 10fps video shooting, I'll find a way to test those tomorrow or on Sunday. :)

Antutu score (on stock unrooted rom).Good enough for a 4 years old I guess.

I had created an entry on how to root and install the cwm here.

Im out of here. Leave a comment if u have anything to inquire.

Unboxing and Initial review of the THL T6S

I was looking for a budget phone for my 4 years old son. Yes, for a 4 years old kid who still cant talk straight. Some might say that Im spoiling him but, thats for another discussion.

I logged in to a local merchant's website, here in Malaysia, last Saturday (16 Aug 2014) and was expecting to spend around RM400 ($126) at least for a phone of around 4.5"-5" screen, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.

To my surprise, a phone which suite my required needs was advertised for almost half of my budget - the THL T6S. A quick search on the google didnt return much informative review, just the specifications and images. To cut the story short, I went ahead and ordered the phone.

This morning, I received a call from the courier delivery guy asking if I would be in the office at around 11am to receive a package. I smiled. In fact, I grinned.

The phone came in a properly packed bag.

The phone's box was encapsulated in a bubbled wrapped plastic. I'd give 10/10 on shipping efford.

The back of the box - the phone's main specification was printed.

The box''s content. 1 x phone without battery. 2 x 1900mAh battery (slim, like 4mm's slim). 1 x charging plug (with a mere 0.5A output). 1 x USB cable. 1 x screen protector. 1 x earphone cum handsfree device. 1 x plastic transparent hard back case. Not bad, especially for including the extra battery and the case.

The dual sim slot (stacked, to be inserted horizontally with sim 1 using the micro sim size and sim 2 using the normal sim size. I would prefer a separate slot for both sims but again, this is an ultra budget phone.

Without any further ado, I slap the battery in and turn the phone on. The power button is on the right hand side and .. clickable. So are the volume up/down buttons which was located on the left hand side. I like this configuration than putting the power button on the top or on the same side as the volume buttons.

The boot image was nothing more than glowing THL logo and some simple logo dissolving animation(I didnt pay much attention to the boot process, which didnt take too long).

The default launcher is the Launcher3. I noticed that icons are themed. Also included was a few chinese pre-installed apps such as the Baidu Browser, App Market and DU Speed Booster. I would say that the screen is beyond expectation. The contrast and saturation are on par with my Galaxy S3. Even my colleagues are impressed with the quality of the screen.

So, being a MIUI fan, I went ahead and installed the Mi Launcher, just to have a taste of it. God, I love the screen.

Well, thats all I can share with you right now. If you are curious about the gaming capabilities, I'd say that Minion Rush is playable and Samurai Rush II ran smoothly. Connectivity wise, both wifi and bluetooth are working fine.

I'll do a benchmark tonight and post it tomorrow. Till then.

*UPDATE : Rooting guide here

Both Sim card slot are working properly.