The device itself, including the developer license or the research license is a bit expensive, but wouldn´t be great to develop some software using this device?? I think possibilities are endless…

I can see a couple of problems that are making me having second thoughts about the project… I can assume that the headset itself is not a toy, and measures correctly all the stuff it is supposed to measure. The real value however relies in the software API bundled with it. Emotiv seems to have translated successfully all the indicators associated with thoughts like “up”, “down”, or “push” into something detectable by their model.

However, let´s imagine for a minute that it just does not work. How do you prove it? How do you tell apart a software failure and a wrong “way of thinking”. It´s a delicate matter.

I´ll definitely keep an eye on it though!

GM750

My iPhone recently died due to a sudden deceleration against the floor.

Needing another phone while I decide which will be my next acquisition, I borrowed from my girlfriend a LG GM750 phone that she had lying around. This is a Windows Mobile 6.5 terminal and comes with the (sometimes annoying) S-Class interface from LG. It is not a super modern, super advance terminal, but it has the features I need: 3G which means web and mail, GPS and a nice battery. Add to this a couple of useful apps, and a GPS offline navigator and now you’re talking.And the best part, it was free!!.

Unfortunately there are not stable alternative roms for this model yet, so I had to change manually a couple of things that were making me unconfortable.

The idea behind the S-Class is nice: Use your finger (even with resistive screens) instead of the stylus (for which windows mobile is designed). The implementation however, is not so good. It refuses to blend seamlessly with the rest of the windows mobile OS. Click on the wrong option, and you will find yourself in the true Windows Mobile screen where either you have pen-point sized nails, or you will need to take the stylus out.

So after play with the S-Class interface a little bit, my first attempt was to completely disable the S-Class layer, and rely on the Windows Mobile interface, even if that meant use the stylus everywhere. However that’s not easy, as some events, notifications, and applications  are handled by default by the S-Class layer, and there’s no setting to get rid of it.

Eliminate the S-Class almost completely.

Here are the necessary steps :

1. Of course, Go to Start->Config->Personal->Boot Screen and disable LG-Smart Boot Screen. That one is pretty obvious.
2. Now you would like to disable the Message (SMS & MMS) and email notification system, which by default triggers the LG S-Class one. To do so first go to Start->LG S-Class->Messaging->Settings->Notifications and here select for “New Text Message” and “New MMS Message” MS Notification instead LG Notification.
3. No you’ll realize that when a message arrives the S-Class interface is not fired up, but it starts when you’re composing a message. To disable the S-Class message composer, you’ll need a registry editor. You can try PHM registry Editor, Alex’s Software Simple Regedit or any other. DO A REGISTRY BACKUP BEFORE!!!
   
   Navigate to:
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Inbox\MsgTypes\IPMAnd change the following keys:

   Change SMStext\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change LGESMS\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change SI\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll
Change MMS\Dll  from LGEUMS.dll to htmlnote.dll

4. Now delete the following key so the notifier itself isn’t launched as a service:HKLM\Software\LGE\Apps\InitApp\Launch\Launch01  (It will contain the value LGNoti.exe)
5. Disable the LG Skin changing the key value from 1 to 0HKLM\Security\Phone\Skin\Enabled

Now of course disabling completely the S-Class has its drawbacks. You loose the widgets, you loose the horizontal keyboard autorotation in the SMS and email composer, the cute alarm that the S-Class has, and well, you will end up wanting to kill someone with the damn stylus.

To solve the auto rotation feature, which I think is the only real loss, you can install AE Button Plus. This small application will allow you to assign a button double click to the rotate function, so you can see *almost* any application in landscape mode. Simple, neat, fast.

At this point I decided, that maybe I could just ignore the things I didn’t like about the S-Class, and cope with it. However, what I could’t stand was the crap that vodafone (this terminal was vodafone exclusive where my girlfriend bought it) installs in the phone. Having unlocked the phone, it triggered errors about non-existent websites being accessed, non available applications and other sort of misbehaviour.

You can eliminate the Vodafone things even if you decide to have disabled the S-Class. It is not so annoying with the default windows mobile interface though (you do not have the Vodafone shortcuts in the main screen).

Getting rid of Vodafone Stuff

First thing you want to do is to install Total Commander for Windows Mobile. This will allow us to overwrite some files that otherwise would be impossible either from the pocket explorer or ActiveSync.

Let’s start:

1. With the pocket explorer (or the Total Commander) navigate to My Device\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and delete the folder Services. This folder is absolutely useless if you’re not of vodafone.
2. Now the other annoying thing about Vodafone is the “My Web” icon that will start Internet Explorer with the default vodafone site, and can’t be changed anywhere. So the best solution is get rid of the icons and every shortcut to it.With Total Commander, navigate to My Device\Windows and delete the Vodafone_Live application.
3. Here’s a tricky part: S-Class comes with 2 main screens. The Idle, and the HelloUI. The Idle is the S-Class Cube itself and it has a launcher on the Today screen. The HelloUI is the 4 rows icon menu that appears when you touch the menu icon in the above mentioned launcher.To get rid of the vodafone icons in the TopMenu (communications in the HelloUI) you need to navigate to  the following registry key:HKCU\Software\LGE\TopMenuHere you can edit which icons will appear in each menu. Each number represents an icon. The order represents the order that you have in you mobile phone. The vodafone ones are the m151 and the m153. If you delete them, they will not appear in the communications row. I couldn’t find where are those images to avoid test and try in further customizations but they should be anywhere of course.
4. The only thing that remains is the main screen (today) launcher icons. Here you have several options. At first, I just created the Services folder where I deleted it in the first step, and put some shortcuts to some useful applications. This way You have everything at hand… with the vodafone icon though.If you want to remove it, you have to get your hands dirty. Every S-Class screen is a *.swf file. The file corresponding to the launcher My Device\Windows\launcher.swf.I decompiled it using Sothink SWF Quicker and took a look to the action script code on it. You’ll find the following line:var arIcon = [id_contacts, id_message, id_vodafoneSuite, id_myweb, id_topmenu, id_dialer, id_email, id_calendar, id_alarm, id_music];As you can see this is the array that organizes the launcher icons. You just need to remove from there id_vodafoneSuite and id_myweb and you’re good to go. I reordered as well my icons to a more logical position. Once you have finished, you just need to republish the swf file. Adjust the jpg quality to 100  to make it look the same as the original.Take into account that the Sothink SWF decompiler is not free. It adds a watermark to the resulting published swf that will appear on the phone later. Here you can download my version, so you won’t need to decompile and modify it yourself. Jusr rename it to launcher.swf and copy it to your SD card, and then to your My Device\Windows directory using Total Commander.

   To take a look at the code, maybe the Trillix Flash Decompiler is more user friendly, but I couldn’t recompile the swf with it, so I used it only to read code.

   Remember to copy the  launcher.swf file again to the My Device\Windows directory with the Total Commander. Explorer or active Sync wouldn’t let you overwrite this file.

5. Last but not least, you can get rid of your operator’s picture when you turn on and off your phone. The shutdown animation would be this one:HKLM\System\Startup\1\StartUpAni.dllRemoving this entry will suffice.The Log-in picture is referred by this registry entry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Splash Screen\MSBitmapBy default it points to the picture \Windows\StartUpImg_DMDO_000.bmp. You can either remove the registry entry or change the picture itself.
6. If you plan to use the GPRS connection as a USB modem, you should change the default APN for the DUN connecion. Of course, I assume you would have changed by now the normal connection settings to fit your operator. The default DUN APN can be found here:
   HKLM\Software\LGE\Data\APNforDUN
   Just change this value to fit your operator’s APN and you should be ready to go.

And that’s it. The S-Class interface can be modded much more. Flash design is not among my skills, but I bet that I designer would take all the *.swf files in the Windows directory and would be able to modify a bunch of things without needing to recompile a custom ROM.

Every information I’ve found about cracking the S-Class speaks about extracting the firmware, and then cook a custom ROM with the S-Class modified. I guess there must be a reason why nobody is just modifying (maybe I didn’t find it) the *.swf files and making a installer, but hey, it worked for what I needed. And at the end, it is seems to me as the safest option, as if you break something, you just hard reset and everything would revert to a safe state.

Proof of concept: In my opinion, the third and fifth (and probably the fourth) screens of the S-Class interface present an absolutely lack of usability. It would be great that anyone with more actionscript knowledge would disable them in a more stylish way, changing the images of the white dots that mark the cube face index somehow. Here I have two tests. I just modify a couple of lines in the action script code in the file idle_manager.swf.

At the beggining of the action script frame, you’ll find:
var MAIN_STATE_NONE = -1;
var MAIN_STATE_TODAY = 0;
var MAIN_STATE_WIDGET = 1;
var MAIN_STATE_MMIDLE = 2;
var MAIN_STATE_HELLO = 3;
var MAIN_STATE_SHORTCUT = 4;
var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 5;

To enable only the two first screens, would be enough to modify the total screen counter (which later in the code is used with a module operator (%) to change from state to state)  this way:

var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 2;

Enable 3 screens selectively is easy just reordering the indexes of each state, and modifying the total counter. For example, if we want to enable only the first, second, and fourth screens (today, widgets, and favourite contacts) we could modify the code this way:

var MAIN_STATE_NONE = -1;
var MAIN_STATE_TODAY = 0;
var MAIN_STATE_WIDGET = 1;
var MAIN_STATE_MMIDLE = 3;
var MAIN_STATE_HELLO = 2;
var MAIN_STATE_SHORTCUT = 4;
var TOTAL_CNT_IDLE = 3;

The two modified files are here and here. Just rename them to idle_manager.swf and copy it to your Sd card, and from there to the My Device\Windows directory using Total Comander.

Both files are  just tests. Maybe someone finds interesting to play with those files and make a more usable S-Class interface.

Some information extracted from clublgmobile and xda-devs.

Here the first and second parts of the article.