Last christmas i got an Optimus Boston. They are nice little critters: reasonably cheap for an android, decently sturdy, plays angry birds, lets you take phonecalls and send SMS, what more could you ask of a phone?

Unfortunately, i bought it at the wrong period in time. A few months before, it was being sold for the same price unlocked to all networks, and in a few months ahead, legislation will force all Portuguese operators to unlock all their phones for free. But instead, i got this one on a new operators promotion, offering limited free gsm data packages per week for a few months. Although this might have sounded reasonable at the time, being that a) i didn’t have nor wanted to, another sim card in another operator, and b) i was buying an android, which meant data traffic seemed somewhat unavoidable expense for the foreseable future. But i quickly came to realize that i didn’t actually need to really use the data traffic by gsm, since i had wifi at home, wifi at work, wifi at xDA and wifi at the bar we usually attended.

Then i realized i was moving to Finland. And Finland has plenty of free wifi spots aswell, but it does also seem to tell your operator that they should charge you roaming for any calls you take. So i guess it’s time to get a local pre-paid card. Oh wait, my phone is network locked! Ain’t that awesome? -_-

I grew into a bit of a pickle with options.

Option a) buy a Nokia – which i currently dismissed since i like my android and am currently unemployed.
Option b) unlock my Optimus Boston – which seemed to require either travelling to Portugal or void my warranty.

So being naturally of a curious nature i decided for the later and have a healthy go at trying not to brick my Android! ^_^

And thus our adventure begins! There are 5 places you need to know about if you’re into bricking your android Optimus Boston:
a) xda-developers
b) boston-mania
c) cyanogenmod
d) androidpt
e) htc-mania

I actually started with roaming the forums at androidpt, since the android boston is a portuguese android phone and all. Sadly they were quite chaotic, beats me why those people dont make a wiki out of their knowledge but whatever rocks their boat. I quickly realized from within loads of chaos that most solutions pointed to other forums. And off i followed them in seek of deeper knowledge on how to brick and restore my phone.

One of the things i initially learned was that the Optimus Boston isn’t really made by Optimus, it’s actually just a clone of a model made originally by foxconn i believe Gigabyte, apparently it’s called Gigabyte GSmart G1305, but most people seem to refer it as the z71. This phone was repurposed to several countries like China, Spain, Slovakia, all with a slightly altered firmware and local language. Which was somewhat disappointing to tell you the truth. Apparently it’s one of the phone models with more clones and different names out there. Hooray! I think?!..

In all those places people were discussing what was the best rom, and apparently most of everyone was agreeing to be the cyanogenmod. So my plan for world domination was quickly sketched up:
1) get root
2) get cyanogen
3) get network unlocked

Which wasn’t such a smart step decision if you know what you’re doing. You should actually do:
1) backup everything
2) get root
3) backup everything
4) get network unlocked
5) backup everything
6) fix imei if broken
7) backup everything
8) confirm imei is correct and network unlocked
9) get cyanogenmod
10) pimp my phone
11) backup everything

but who has time for backups anyways? :p

btw, did i mention the mandatory blabla of “don’t blame me if you void your warranty and brick-implode your phone to death and end up looking like an idiot sobbing snot in front of your operator vendor who will refuse to fix it for you later” part? i guess i should: do things at your own risk. or just keep wondering how to remove the simcity demo from your apps list for the rest of your life. i like simcity. just not an unremovable demo of it on my phone.

So, where things went wrong, part 1:
a) never forget to do a full nand backup before flashing, you will need to restore something eventually
b) never forget to wipe all user data, cache, dalvik cache and battery stats before a new rom flash
c) never forget to wipe all user data, cache, dalvik cache and battery stats after a new rom flash

If you fail to ignore a) you’ll soon regret your idiocy. And if you ignore b) and c) you can easily get into all sorts of strange problems, like for example being stuck in a booting loop, which will need you to fastboot flash A88.img to your phone using android sdk tools btw.

So, where things went wrong, part 2:
a) to unlock your network you should supposedly flash apanda 1.6 rom (the awesome chinese variant) and it should remain unlocked afterwards
b) to flash apanda 1.6 without breaking your IMEI you need to RUT flash the nb0 rom on the phone in recovery mode
c) if you already have cyanogen installed, drivers will not recognize your phone in recovery mode, so you wont be able to flash with RUT, but you will be able to flash with SUT in download mode
d) when SUT flashing the nb0 rom works on emergency flash download mode, guess what it does if you already had cyanogen installed? that’s right, it b0rks your IMEI.

And you may ask yourself, oh why do i need a correct IMEI anyway? Well, let me tell you why: because if an operator anywhere notices your IMEI is in conflict with another it will cancel your access, so you will only be able to make a call for like, the first 20 seconds you turn on the phone, with that IMEI. Apparently there was a big problem in Russia selling counterfeit phones with bad IMEI’s. And if you search the web you can still find shitloads of places trying to sell you a way out of a broken IMEI – i didn’t try my luck but i bet they’re all scams.

Are you confused with all the RUT and SUT and modes yet? Because you should Apparently the only way to _not_ b0rk your IMEI during a SUT flash is to have your original stock version ROM flashed in. Ah! Good to now. Too bad i already had it b0rked by now. :p

Fortunately there is a process found on the internet describing step by step how you can get your IMEI back. Involving abusing PSAS and QSAP (which seem like great tools for professional users btw) to reprogram something in your phone by modem usb com port connection. I really have no clue what the process actually did and i’m a programmer – a nice little humbling lesson is always good to have now and again. But i followed it blindly and the phone rebooted and then the mighty spaghetti monstead showed his mercy upon us, light shone down from the heavens, i had just turned on the night lamp, and my android glistened and sparkled as it was absolved of all it’s sins and restored of it’s rightful IMEI. And i was able to receive phone calls again (damn). This was all fine and dandy except the process only seems to work on Apanda! And if i tried flashing cyanogen now, it would also b0rk the IMEI.

So, where things went wrong, part 3:
a) So if you flash the cyanogen first like i did, and then try to flash Apanda to try and get the unlock you b0rk your IMEI. Which you can fix.
b) So if you then flash back, reverting to cyanogen, you’ll realize the IMEI is again b0rked, and that you can’t fix it, so you have to go back into the Chinese pit of doom for one last bout in IMEI restoring hell.
c) i was stuck in a broken IMEI loop for all eternity! Obligated to use Apanda reversed screen with Chinese characters. Or install the Apanda 2.1 version, much better, also allowed you to fix your IMEI, but not rumoured to unlock any network lock outs.

Did i mention the screen on the Apanda 1.6 ROM is upside down?!? The touch positions are correct, as like the boston, but the entire screen is inverted vertically and horizontally. So if, for example, you wish to press something in the bottom right you need to aim at the top left and hope you hit the right place. Great thing is the first screen it shows you is where you can choose the language!! “Oh, awesome!” i thought to myself the first time i noticed it. I can have english on this thing instead of guessing what all the Chinese characters and funny pictures are! And guess what happens when you try to click English? Yes, it selects Chinese!!! I can’t truly express how awesomely silly and frustrating it is to try and enter your gmail or wifi 10 digits hexadecimal code in an inverted touch screen ^_^

To add insult to injury: after good 15 minutes of stomach butterfly from all the reverse thinking going on in my brain the application installed won’t work couz the phone wasn’t rooted yet Yes, if you do flash a rom you do need to re-root your phone. z4root and universalandroot seem to work fine on all models though. You just need to copy it to the sdcard and launch one of them using a File Manager, most ROMs had one of those installed by default. But at this point i was so sick of Chinese upside down that i just decided to re-flash another ROM and try new things from there.

Digging deeper into the internets’ many forums i was soon educated about z71 IMEI b0rking secrets: seemingly the IMEI does not b0rk if you flash back to your stock version of Android before changing to another ROM again. “Hmmm… Now there is some odd food for thought” i thought to myself, but if the internet says so it must be true, so let’s give it a go. So now i only needed to flash the Optimus Boston original ROM. Which i didn’t have anymore. “Always remember to always remember to make backups.” Remember? I didn’t. But luckily the site at Optimus had an update for version 2.1 which also seemed to do the trick. Actually, their installer wouldn’t work, probably because there was an alien ROM in the phone and they didn’t like it, but you could hang the installer script halfway, and somewhere amongst the files of their customized 1.0 version of SUT find the .nb0 file they were trying to flash, copy that elsewhere, cancel the installation and then use the 1.7 version of SUT to flash it in emergency download mode for greater justice, and a working phone, praised be the spaghetti Deity.

So, long story short, 6 hours worth of internet investigation and 8 hours of re-flashing hazards later, i finally have my Optimus Boston working with my original IMEI again and cyanogenmod installed, a much more preferable ROM to that horribly bloated “thing” that they inject on the stocked Optimus Boston as an excuse for a firmware if you ask me. No network unlock though. Guess i’ll have to buy a nokia after all. Or just stop using the phone network altogether, skype from wifi access points and such things.