Flashed my Motorola K1M to Generic Motorola firmware
Anyone who has used a Motorola K1M “KRZR” phone from Verizon Wireless probably noticed how laggy its UI was, especially when doing alot of texting. It got so bad I had to clear my SMS mailboxes and hard-reboot the phone just to keep it usable. Then, when I got my N810 and paired it with my phone over BlueTooth, I noticed the phone doesn’t expose all the BlueTooth functionality it’s supposed to, for example the FTP profile didn’t expose a complete filesystem.
It turns out Verizon has their own custom firmware for this phone, which cripples features they don’t think I should have, and slows the phone down with all their crap. After I read this post on flashing the K1M to the original, generic Motorola firmware, I started to play with the many and varied tools and steps required to successfully flash a phone.
After I scrounged around the ‘net and found stuff like the Motorola USB Drivers (M-USB), Motorola Phone Tools (MPT), Motorola Phone Support Tools (PST), Qualcomm Phone Support Tools (QPST), BitPim, P2KSEEM SD, and RadioComm, I was able to connect to my phone over USB and backup the configuration per the monster2 guide. I flashed the generic Motorola firmware, and after some fiddling and one false start, I got my phone running for voice, SMS, MMS, and Mobile Web under the generic firmware, with no Verizon branding.
While the generic firmware has a UI that feels a bit antiquated compared to the slick Verizon UI, the generic firmware is dramatically faster, with no observable lag on anything local, and no more than normal lag sending messages and operating the mobile web browser.
Yes, my Verizon warranty is voided now, but who cares? I have a phone that works now, with no crippled BlueTooth.
The thing that most surprised me about the experience is how bad the carriers’ tools are. To perform the cross-flash you use tools that are supposed to be internal tools from Motorola, QualComm, etc, and let me tell you, these tools are for SHIT. In particular, Motorola’s Phone Support Tools are very flaky, and when they don’t work it’s usually silently or in the form of a crash, and not an actual message. This bit me the first time I went to flash my phone, as it failed to read some information from the phone without saying as such, and since I didn’t know what the info was supposed to look like I didn’t notice it. It took another flash of the firmware and copying the configuration from a friend’s RAZR to get it back again. No wonder telecoms is such a fucked-up industry!
Overall, flashing a new firmware is a satisfying way to spend an evening, in a pseudo-rebellious stick-it-to-the-man sort of way, but it’s not for the faint of heart or the impatient. Despite the existence of a multitude of guides and how-tos and FAQs, there’s always something slightly different about your situation, that requires subtly different steps to get right, and the discussion boards like HowardForums are fragmented, often incoherent, and not infrequently wrong. That said, the satisfaction one gets from gloating about one’s custom firmware while one’s friends muddle along with whatever Uncle Verizon gave them makes the process well worth it.
March 8th, 2009 - 19:36
I have a K1m through Unicel, which I think Unicel uses the Verizon. I would really like Java to work on my phone instead of using Brew. Does the generic Motorola firmware enable you to use Java?
March 8th, 2009 - 20:33
No, not general-purpose J2ME apps.