Phone and firmware manipulation guide

Different types of phones handle resources differently, thus, several programs exist for handling binary data from different phones.

Due to licensing restrictions, we are not able to provide mirrors to every program mentioned in this article.

= General file extraction = The firmware of many older cell phones is in a self-contained .bin file that contains all the graphics, sounds, and software. Resources can be extracted from .bin files using WinRipper and MultiExtractor. Most sequenced ringtones can be extracted using MTEX.

= Motorola = Note that although 64-bit Motorola P2K drivers exist, P2K software (i.e. P2Kman, P2KCommander, and P2KTools) seems to be most stable on Windows XP.

Old P2K
The code groups of "old-style" Motorola flash files are stored in a currently unknown compression format, but seem to share a common 8-byte header.

USB file transfer
The "file system" of old-style P2K phones is one single root directory with no sub-folders. P2Kman can read, upload, and download files and seems to and from the phone.

Common P2K
The majority of Motorola P2K firmware files are in Motorola .shx format. It is a type of S-record format and can be split into code groups using SHXCodec.

The firmware of some later P2K phones are in Motorola .sbf format, and can be split using SBF-Recalc.

The "flex file" (CG2.smg) is the file system of the phone and normally can be extracted using FlexParser04.

USB file transfer
Most common P2K phones support PC synchronization using Motorola's own software, but P2KCommander and P2KTools can both be used to interface with the phone directly and modify the file system, seems, and settings.

MotoMagx
MotoMagx was Motorola's mobile Linux OS. EZXRecalc is capable of splitting the code groups of these phones' firmwares.

They will usually have several different "drives" as code groups in SquashFS format. They contain the header "hsqs" and can be extracted using 7-zip.

= Samsung =

Agere platform
Firmware files downloaded from Agere-platform Samsung phones are in S-record format and can be converted to .bin with any program that converts S-record to .bin.

= Ericsson/Sony Ericsson =

Ericsson R320s OS
Ericsson phones since the R320s, up until the Sony Ericsson Z600 or so, are based on the same core OS. The main firmware and GDFS files are in .sbn format. Currently, the only tool to deal with .sbn files is wackypack's sbn2bin Python program.

USB PIM/file transfer
Most Ericsson R320s-based phones support some form of serial communication. The DCU-11 cable or DSS-25 docking station can be used to interface with the phone's serial connection over USB. Note that the DCU-11 cable cannot be used to modify the flash files of the phone, without being modified.