Hacking your LG VX4400/VX4400B

NOTE: I did not write the sections in italics, credit goes to all original sources.

 

Things Needed:

1) LG VX4400/VX4400B2) USB to Serial Data Cable (Can be found at Radioshack or I got mine off Ebay for $1 + $7 shipping)

NOTE: Do NOT get the straight-through cable. Your cable should have a lump in

the middle that looks something like this.

3) Phone Drivers (Found Here if your cable doesn't come with a driver CD)

4) PC w/ Bitpim 0.7.34 installed.

1) Connecting Your Phone To Your PC:

First thing you need to do is install the drivers and Bitpim. On Bitpim installation, select phone as LG VX4400 and the Com port as auto. Then connect the phone, open Bitpim, go to “dataâ€� dropdown box and select “get phone dataâ€�, and check all the boxes and hit ok. If you have any problems you may need to change some settings on your phone, hit Menu – 8 – 6 – 2 and select port RS-232C (Com Port). This setting will sometimes reset itself when your restart your phone so you may need to check it every time. You should now see your phone data in bitpim where it can easily be manipulated. After you make any changes, go back to “dataâ€� and select “send phone dataâ€� and choose which items you want to send, and if you want to replace the data on your phone with what is in BitPim or just add to it.

2) Making custom ring tones out of mp3’s: 

The LG VX4400 phone I have currently, I'm a pretty big fan of, thanks to its configurability. With the correct USB phone cable, BitPim and the free audio editor WavePad, I think I finally conquered getting mp3s to work as a ringtone. The hardest part was, by far, editing the mp3 down into a format that the VX4400 can use, so I will use this post to give some hints on how I did it. Once I got it working, it’s surprisingly simple.

First, start WavePad and open the MP3 file you wish to use. You should probably immediately save the mp3 as a backup somewhere on the system. I've lost mp3s forgetting about my edits and saving the cuts and trims I made.

Second, using WavePad, find the parts of the mp3 you want to use as a ringtone. The biggest the final size of the mp3 can be is 64 kb, which essentially means you can’t use more than 20-30 seconds or so of music. Use the Cut or Trim commands to cut the mp3 down to the part you want to use.

Now you need to convert the mp3 to a format readable by the phone. Using File / Convert Sample Rate, convert the mp3 to a 16000 khz sample rate. Use File / Convert Channel to select Mono. Now go to File / Save As, and save the file as an mp3. You’ll want to use the standard 8.3 notation here (e.g. em_ly.mp3) as that filename will be what appears on the phone. The Select MP3 Bitrate window appears now and select 16 and click Ok.

3) Using custom wallpapers:

The phone will accept any .bmp or .png file that is 120 x 98 pixels. BitPim will allow you to resize the image when you load it into the program. To add a picture to your phone, open BitPim, go to the wallpaper tab, click add, open your picture, and select if you want it either fullscreen, wallpaper, or caller ID and crop it how you want it. Send to phone by going to the “data� dropdown box and selecting “send phone data� and checking the wallpaper box and hitting ok. To select the wallpaper go Menu – 8 – 2 – 3 – 1 – More – Downloaded.

4) Removing Verizon Wireless banner:

Open up BitPim with phone attached, select view, filesystem. A new tab should appear that says files system. There is a good reason the filesystem tab is disabled by default, be careful that you don’t just start messing with files without knowing what you are doing. Go to the filesystem tab, and browse to the /eri directory and right click on the eri.bin file and select save and save it to your pc. Before you attempt any changes, make a backup. Now open the eri.bin with your favorite hex editor program. You should see VerizonWirelessA and VerizonWirelessB. Overwrite the VerizonWireless with spaces in both the VerizonWirelessA and VerizonWirelessB sections. Leave the A and B there, so it would be “ A� and “ B�. Save your changes. Go back to BitPim and locate the eri.bin file. Right click on it and select overwrite, and browse to your new eri.bin file and hit ok. You will need to reboot your phone for the changes to take effect.

5) Free Web Browsing:

Can I browse for free?

Yes. You will lose some functionality (see what you get if you do pay Verizon). You also need to reconfigure your phone. You'll need access to a WAP proxy, and you will need a home page. The browser can support 3 different WAP proxies, with easy switching between them. The phone as delivered only has the first one configured to access the main Verizon servers. The instructions below show you how to add a second, and to switch to it.

Public/Free WAP Proxies
IP 207.232.99.109 Port 9201	WAPTunnel.com. They also have a Yahoo Group.
Your own server	The Kannel project has a WAP proxy that you can compile and install on your own servers.
Public/Free WML Home Pages
http://www.wildrice.com/wap	Chuck Rice's list of links. Has major news and entertainment sites, as well as Google. Needless to say, Google has some cool stuff.
http://tagtag.com	TagTag lets you create your own WML home page
http://www.winksite.com	WINKsite lets you create your own WML home page, and remembers your links etc.
Google WAP Portal Directory	Various other WAP portals

Reconfiguring the phone

Enter service settings (please read the disclaimers there). - - Wap Setting.

We will add WAP Proxy #2 for our new service. Enter IP Setting - Link2-IP1. Enter the IP address of the WAP proxy. To enter the . (dots) press to change mode from "123" to "Symbols". Press when done.

You know need to enter the port number. Now enter Port Setting - Link2-Port1 and enter the port number. Press when done. Press to return the main menu.

Configuring the browser

Start the browser. It will fail in some way since you don't have Verizon service. Hold down to enter the browser main menu. Choose Advanced - Homepage and write the value of your current homepage. Go back to the Advanced menu and choose Set WAP Proxy and switch to proxy #2.

You may now be prompted for a home page, or be sent to the default OpenWave. Reenter the Advanced menu and change your homepage.

Source: http://www.rogerbinns.com/vx4400/#Web

6) Using Your Phone As a Modem

Modem

You can use your phone as a modem. You need to get a USB data cable.

Note that you will only be able to use it as a modem in digital reception. (The actual modem is in Verizon's network, not your phone). You will be charged as according to your plan. For US Cellular customers, the rollout of data services is expected soon.

If you have Verizon Mobile web, then you can also use the Venturi Accelerator. This is reported to speed up the connection significantly (it does this by removing redundant information, reducing image quality and many other tweaks)

USB to Serial Cable

These instructions apply if you are using a data cable for the VX-1/VX-10. Once you have installed the data cable, install the drivers for the cable. They should cause the cable to show up as a com/serial port in your device list. Note that even though you are using a USB cable, the actual connection inside the phone is serial.

Windows XP users should download lgvx4400modemserial.zip (5kb) and follow the instructions in the README included in that file. Ignore the entire rest of this whole section.

For other users, add a modem to your system, saying it is on that com port. Add the modem as a generic 19200bps modem, with no flow control. You should set the com port speed and the modem connection speed to 19200 bps. Note that the actual speed over the air is 14400 bps, which with compression tops out around 19200bps. You can also use 115200bps if you configure everything (phone, com port) at that speed, although the over the air transmissions are still at 14400.

You also need to change the phone to use its internal serial interface. - Settings - Data Settings - Select Port - RS-232C.

Connecting

Create a dialup connection with the following settings:

Verizon 3G/1X Data/Express Network

• Select the modem. Ideally you want the serial connection to the phone to operate at 230400 otherwise you will suffer lower throughput
• The phone number is #777 (be sure to include the pound sign)
• The username is yourphonenumber@vzw3g.com (For example 5551234567@vzw3g.com)
• The password is vzw

The over the air speed is a maximum of about 115kbps and degrades depending on demand from other users in the same area.

You should check how you wil be charged for this usage. It uses around 3-7 times the amount of the cell provider's network as making a voice call does).

The phone should connect instantly and will display 3G1xData while connected.

Verizon Quick To Net/QNC

• Select the modem. There are no performance gains for the serial connection to the phone being faster than 19200
• You should ensure there is a modem initialisation string of AT$QCMDR=2 in the modem configuration. (In Windows you place this by going to the modem in the Control Panel and then Advanced, Extra Settings. Leave off the AT bit - ie you should put $QCMDR=2 in the text box)
• Phone number is #777 (be sure to include the pound sign)
• Username is qnc
• Password is qnc

The over the air speed is 14.4kbps. With compression, the maximum throughput you will get is 19.2kbps.

You should check how you get charged for using this. Typically it is exactly the same as if you made a voice call at the same time, as it uses the same amount of a provider's network as a voice call.

The call should connect instantly and the phone display should say PPP[QNC] CALL,

Your own ISP

Follow the steps above for QNC, except put in your ISP's dialup number and your username and password details.

Connection will take around 30 seconds, but the other details are the same.

Source: http://www.rogerbinns.com/vx4400/#Modem

Big thanks to Roger Binns for letting me copy parts of his FAQ and to Rob at http://www.mycatharsis.com for letting me use his tut. I feel they explained it better than I could have.