BASIC KNOWLEDGE (OS, RADIO, SPL itd.) - Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo Upgrading

Due to my own problems with getting informations about issues mentioned in topic, I'm posting this thread...
Idea is simple: could anyone explain strictly, what is SPL, RADIO etc., PLEASE?? The reason is, that there is really a lot of informations about it on the forum, but as they are everywhere - they are "nowhere"...;/
In advance: sorry, that I'm not spending hours on searching for answers, but the idea is to collect all this basic informations in ONE place...
Hope you will understand and won't shout at me...x)

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I bet this page will answer all of your questions. All the basic information is in this one place: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Athena

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techntrek said:
I bet this page will answer all of your questions. All the basic information is in this one place: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Athena
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ye, I was there of course, but sorry - no informations found about WAHT particular things ARE, only HOW TO do some things (e.g. how to make them works)... Can't find anything in "Athena for beginners" (and Athena Manual), Athena FAQ's and so on... Or am I blind...??

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I have to agree with you that for noobs it can be quite overwhelming.
Here is a list of what everything stands for
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Acronyms
The radio is the part of the phone that enables communication with the cell towers and the gps satellites. Upgrades can help to improve signal strength, battery life and gps responses.
Anyone can upgrade the radio on their windows mobile phone without making any other changes to the phone (assuming that the radio was designed for your phone and not another phone- the latter is possible but requires extra work).
Upgrading the radio is quite straight forward- select a radio rom that you want and then either put it on an sd card or flash it from active sync (xp) or wmdc (vista).
This will have no impact on the operating system (o/s) and as such you will not lose anything.
Upgrading the o/s involves wiping the existing o/s- in this case you will lose all of the info on your phone- you can use 3rd party programs to backup/restore.
There are limitations on the o/s roms that you can use. Official upgrades from the supplier/maker will be straight forward- other (better/newer) roms might require you to make your phone cid unlocked so that you can install the rom.
Here is info on making your phone cid unlocked
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=315831
This will also allow you to use radio roms not initially designed for your phone
There are other considerations to take into account regarding the memory allocation in the phone. Some of the o/s roms require you to change the memory allocation- more to the o/s and less to the running programs memory. These are defined as spl1.2 or the hacked spl3.5.
To hard spl your phone
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=316846
Once the above has been done you MUST ensure that the rom SPL matches the spl on your phone- I have made the mistake of using the wrong rom for my spl and ****ed up my phone before.
Should you wish to downgrade your spl then read
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=405604
If you forget which spl you have then enter the phone bootloader by pressing the camera button and using the stylus in the reset hole at the same time.
You can find out which radio and o/s you have by going to settings/system/device info
I hope this helps- please ask if you need more help- it is ages since I last up/downgraded my phone so hopefully any errors here will be highlighted by others.
Be warned that no rom is perfect (not even the stock roms) and that upgrading is not allowed under the terms of the warranty and is not with out risk.
It is fun though...

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Wonderful!! Thank you a lot, imaginarynumber! This informations are really usefull Only two questions at the moment...
imaginarynumber said:
There are limitations on the o/s roms that you can use. Official upgrades from the supplier/maker will be straight forward- other (better/newer) roms might require you to make your phone cid unlocked so that you can install the rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, but how can I check, or is my device CID-locked or maybe not...? (I'm not the first owner, so I've got no idea...) Or maybe unlocking already unlocked device wont cause any additional problems...?
imaginarynumber said:
There are other considerations to take into account regarding the memory allocation in the phone. Some of the o/s roms require you to change the memory allocation- more to the o/s and less to the running programs memory. These are defined as spl1.2 or the hacked spl3.5.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So the only difference is a size of memory allocations?? Are this amounts constant for each SPL? And so the rule "higher (version) is better" doesn't works here...?
Thank you a lot for all this work one more time...

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hi mrkazor
If the phone is not cid unlocked then you would not be able to use any rom other than the maker's/supplier's rom, so for example if you had a cid lock tmobile then when trying to flash it would check the signature of the rom and if it found that it was not a t-mobile rom it would not allow you to flash it.
I believe that you can check the cid status with mtty using the info 2 command (its a telnet program).
I think that it is ok to cid unlock a phone that is already cid locked (but it would be safer to check/ask in the cid unlock post).
Re the spl, there are two allocation sets, spl1.2 and 3.5 with the latter taking up more memory for the o/s. In general the higher spl version roms have more bells and whistles but there is also the risk of more incompatibility crashes/problems with the extra clever new programs. Newer windows mobile versions will require increasingly higher spl/memory allocations.
To date I have never found a perfect rom- some are better than others depending on your requirements.
I went as far as wm6.1 from wm5 and played with many different wm6.1 roms.
At the time of writing MichyPrima has a wm6.5 that looks quite impressive.
The key thing to remember with any roms is that they are based on the buggy windows ce platform.
Good luck

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You were right - dont't know about CID-lock, but I had't had SIM-lock on my device before for sure, and now I have already passed all 3 steps (Sim-unlock, CID-unlock) of Olipro's Athena Unlocker, having no additional problems And what could be more interesting: succeed even despite Windows 7 on my PC I've also updated radio to 1.57, but still having SPL 1.2... In the future will be needed 3.5 (e.g. for WM6.5 by Michy ), but I have no idea how to upgrade it Is the SPL avaliable as a file (like radio) to inclose it to RUU...?

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hi mrkaczor
Sorry an ommission on my behalf.
There is no single spl upgrade per se. You need to do the ap4 upgrade which will move you to spl3.5 at the same time.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=387409
After that you can then try any of the other spl3.5 roms or if you ever want to go back to an earlier stock rom you will need the spl downgrader, found here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=405604
These forums are the best single source of info for htc owners but the info is not always as easy to find as perhaps it could be. I guess that there are very good reasons for this but that is cold comfort to a newbie. That said many of the memebers (much wiser than me!!!) are willing to devote a lot of time to helping others. I think that some of the more experienced and established members like to pretend to be grumpy sods... yet they still help those in dire needs.
Welcome to the "club".
Hope this helps

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Hope I didn't come across as a "grumpy sod". I thought the wiki was fairly thorough and covered the OP's questions.
One thing I can tell you from experience - if you have 3G available in your area, you want to upgrade to radio 1.58. It has a large network speed improvement over 1.57 and all earlier radio roms.

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imaginarynumber, yes - this DO helps...xD Thanks one more time
techntrek said:
One thing I can tell you from experience - if you have 3G available in your area, you want to upgrade to radio 1.58. It has a large network speed improvement over 1.57 and all earlier radio roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But does it works correctly?? Couse author of the thread about Radio v1.58 writes:
lakeman said:
** adition October 2008 **
Unfortunately Video call is not playing nicely with this radio
I have had to revert to Radio 1.57 to get it working again
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So does 3G works on your device?? Because I have it available in my town, so I'd rather have efficient video calls...
BTW. And how it is about GPS signal? How long is your device waiting for it? Cause I've had radio v1.45 before, and it took ages for my x7500 to connect with satelites:/ And no chance for that inside the building (and for example my father's Mio p560 connects even from the building, of course not too far from some windows... Could Mio have better radio than HTC??)

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Hi Techntrek
My slight wasn't aimed at you, honestly. I recently revisited the wiki after not having played with my ameo for ages and found that although it is comprehensive it is not "easy" to follow.
My grumpy sod reference was aimed more at the SuperGods such as Olipro- I have seen how much hard work he puts in so I assume that it is some kinda elder statesman bravado
I think the main problem is that there are too many assumptions re the experience of the reader. As a first timer it is difficult to follow.
Some of the threads in this forum become outrageously long, for example,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=477235
The above is a thread for the touch pro- it is hoped that users will post problems there rather than starting a new thread- there are over 2000 posts- how helpful is that.
I hope that I am not coming across as ungrateful but who has the time to go through such long posts- not even knowing if their problem is covered there or not.
I am unable to provide a better solution and thus respect people such as mrkaczor who have the guts to ask basic questions in-spite of the fear of being shot down. By the same token I also respect people like you (techntrek) who are happy to help others- keep it up
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Mrkaczor
With regard to the radio options- we have little choice with regard to radios compared to some other handsets- I never noticed any real improvement in GPS- others have. I never make video calls so issues here have never been a concern.
It seems that one radio might suit one mobile subscriber more than others. It might be helpful to mention in the radio thread which provider you are with and ask others on the same network which radio worked best for them.
Good luck