Sony Vaio Battery Replacement (VGN-CR-313H)

It has been three years since I have bought my Sony Vaio, Long back my battery has gone and I wasn't getting much of battery life (approx 10 mins). So mostly it was always plugged in when working, but because of the battery it was getting heated up too much, and it was never on Lap Top!!

Recently it crashed because of a RAM issue, and I took it to my friend if he could open it up and remove a RAM and check with other RAM, I did not had the right equipment to open it up. I am going to order one from EBAY and hope I would be able to do it next time. It was finally up when the faulty RAM was removed. Now that he also had cleaned the cooling fans the only thing that was causing heating was my old battery. He suggested to order a battery on Ebay from Hong-Kong which you would get at 1/5th of the price you pay when you buy it from Sony. An order was placed. It arrived in about 2-3 weeks time. 

Only when I opened up the pack, there was a small CD saying that you may have to update the BIOS to use this intelligent battery. I am not sure how a battery can be intelligent, so I just plugged in the new battery and it wasn't booting the laptop. When I checked it with my friend I came to know that the SONY BIOS reads the serial number of battery from its EEPROM and hence it would not allow non-oem battery to work with a VAIO. Now I understood why they have asked to patch bios for working with INTELLIGENT battery. 

But since I had windows 7, 64 bit OS, the software tool they have provided to update bios did not work because of USER access permission error as below.

Phoenix Secure WinFlash "Cannot load driver C:\....phlashnt.sys. This driver has been blocked from loading. Error code:1275.”

Now I had to fall back to windows xp to run this tool to update bios and then install windows 7 back. Now that flash is updated the battery is working fine, and I am getting about 2+ hours of backup. I am happy finally. I just updated this in blog, so that for anyone who bought non-oem battery on ebay, don't assume that your battery is FAKE, but it is intelligent, and you need to patch your bios. Keep in mind that any failure while updating bios would brick your laptop, and it would be rendered useless. Make sure you back up bios before updating and you know the right procedure and tools.

For any help, do leave a comment, I would try to help out.

Configuring CSipSimple SIP client on Galaxy SL for Nymgo

Here is the configuration to be done. These is carefully written to cover most of the points and a hastle free experience when you do the setup. You can refer to nymgo.com site, they have given some basic info, it would serve as reference.

First when adding account, you need to select the Basic Wizard.

Menu Key -> Accounts  -> Add Account  -> Generic Wizards -> Basic

• Account Name: Nymgo
• User: Nymgo User Name
• Server: ata.nymgo.com (no need to give port number even though we knows its 80, it would be taken care by wizard, and if you give, it seems to be not working for me)
• Password: Nymgo Password.

You are almost done !! 

Next thing is that, we should be using UDP for communication, so 

Menu Key (Left Soft Key in Galaxy S) -> Settings -> Network

Do the following settings -> UDP port number set as 5060

Stun should be on -> set it to stun.nymgo.com:80

Set Networks for All outgoing calls.

Settings -> Media

* You need to disable all codecs except below ones

   G729 8Khz (Wideband)

   G729 HKhz (Narrowband)

* Use Samsung Galaxy Hack [ checked ]

* Micro / Speaker amplification can be used if audio is very low, I have used mirco to 5 and audio as it is.

Settings -> Call options

Caller id -> Set to your own number, if you have used caller id feature in Nymgo.

Settings -> Filters 

These can be used when you have enabled the Android integration, and can be used to make sure all numbers starting with +91 (India) can be made to go through phone dialer and International calls through Nymgo, I have enabled it, but its optional, let me know if you have any questions here.

Once the configuration is done, dial 111 from your SIP dialer and wait for Nymgo test service, and you would be able to test if you configuration is working fine, if you could hear your own voice back after recording, then you are ready to use nymgo, feel free to drop your comments and queries, I would be glad to help you.

Some of the useful info when working with ADB on phone

For remounting the system partition as RW on Galaxy SL, (need to be super user)

# mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

For mounting back to RO

# mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

Basic ADB commands

# adb push <local_path> <remote_path>

# adb pull <remote_path> <local_path>

# adb install <path_to_apk>

If you have not installed the cp command may not work, the work around would be 

# cat [source_file] > [destination_file]

The command binaries would be located at this location, /system/bin/ And if you had installed busybox, in /system/xbin/ then first the above path is looked for command, and later the below path.

The /system partition has limited memory, so if you try installing too many applications here, then you may run out of space, and its a better idea to delete many of the unwanted bloat applications from there. I have deleted the following apps and they do not be of much use for me. May be if its not useful for you, you can delete them as well. And you can also delete any other apps which are of no use for you.

1. Samsung Apps [They are meant for Bada, and of no use in Android! wonder why its added here!]
2. BuddiesNow.apk/odex
3. thinkdroid.apk/odex [ThinkFree Office - I have installed Polaris Office instead of this, which is much better]
4. Day.apk/odex
5. DualClock.apk/odex
6. SamsungWidget_Calenderclock.apk/odex
7. SamsungWidget_Feedandupdate.apk/odex
8. SamsungWidget_stockclock.apk/odex
9. SamsungWidget_Weatherclock.apk/odex

All the best, and keep a backup of the file before altering or deleting any file inside /system partition, so that you can restore if something goes wrong, and I am not responsible for any thing if at all it goes wrong :)
Some useful tips and tricks about galaxy S/SL can be found here, its quite long, but when free go through.

Install Polaris Office of Galaxy S2 on Galaxy SL i9003

Polaris office is one of the office suite for mobile, similar to the many available for mobile phones. Galaxy SL comes with think free office, which is also good, but formatting, editing are much better in Polaris office. 

You need to have root for installing this application, as it needs to be installed in system folders. I have referred to this post of xda for installation and also downloaded from the link provided there.

Here is the procedure to follow to install the same

1. Extract the files from compressed file

2. Copy apk from app to /system/app

3. Copy files from lib folder to /system/lib

You may have to free some space in /system folder as that partition is of limited size, and you may need to delete unwanted applications and may be you can delete the think free application.

Update i9003 with Galaxy S-II Dock Icons

Bored of the same dock bar at the home screen, and you think the Galaxy S-II one looks much better. Its not difficult to update it to that. All that you need it root permissions.

I could not get this full information in one place on net, so if you are reading my blog you are lucky to have all the information in one place. You do not need to install a custom TouchWiz, you can modify what you have right now. I am running TouchWiz 4.0 for your information. (Galaxy SL - Gingerbread 2.3.4 XXKPH) 

First have copy Contact.apk, Email.apk, Mms.apk and TouchWiz30Launcher.apk & DialerTabActivity from system/app to PC, then Open it with any tools such as Winrar or 7Zip, do not extract.

check the icons in the path - res/drawable-hdbi.

-Contakt.apk: ic_launcher_contacts.png

-DialerTabActivity - ic_launcher_phone.png

-Mms.apk: ic_launcher_smsmms.png

-Email.apk: icon.png

-TouchWiz30Launcher.apk: mainmenu_icon_application.png and mainmenu_icon_home.png.

Replace all these icons with new Icons and drag and drop into the 7Zip explorer.

Copy the .apk fils back to system/app and restart the launcher or the phone.

It should look something like this, after you have updated everything that is mentioned here.

That goes with many stock apps. I hope its useful.

The Samsung Galaxy S-II icons can be downloaded from here.

http://www.multiupload.com/M37PRRW18J. More info can be found here