K750 W800 Tips and Tricks

Hacking the File System of the K750

File System Hacking:
With access to the file system, you can change many system settings, delete predefined content, change menu icons and layout, silence the camera, remove operator logo, and many other cool things.

The techniques below assume you have some understanding of how to access the internal file system of your phone.

1. Remove SMS storage limitation
You can remove the storage limitation so that you can store more than 500 sms�s. This trick works by changing the sms message store to the tpa folder, where the message limitation is not in force

Copy the file /ifs/settings/messaging/pref_store.txt from the phone to the computer, make a backup, then edit it to read /tpa instead of /smsdata, then delete the file from the phone then copy in the new version.

Now you need to create the message store in the /tpa folder. Create the following folder structure in the /tpa folder:

/tpa/messaging
/tpa/messaging/sms
/tpa/messaging/sms/msg
/tpa/messaging/sms/FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
/tpa/messaging/sms/FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF/pending
/tpa/messaging/sms/FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF/sm
/tpa/messaging/sms/FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF/sr
/tpa/system/messaging/sms

Restart the phone. You can now stored as many messages as you like ;-)

HOWEVER, in practice you can only store about 1000 messages, beyond and the inbox access becomes painfully slow. In theory you can store 40000 or more.

2. Camera Sounds - Change
The camera sounds depend on the files camerashutter.3gp and camerafocus.3gp. You can change the camera sounds by replacing these files with your own versions. The new sound files must have the same names as the old ones, and be in 3gp format, preferably audio only.

Delete the existing files from /tpa/preset/system/sound and then copy in the new versions.

3. Camera Sounds - Silence

Method 1: Disable Camera Sound completely

The camera sounds come from the files camerashutter.3gp and camerafocus.3gp. If these files don�t exist, the camera is silenced. This means the camera makes no sound even if the phone is not in Silent Mode. You could also delete only camerafocus.3gp for example, if you only want the shutter sound to be heard.
The camera sound files can be deleted from /tpa/preset/system/sound

Method 2: Enable Silent Mode for camera sounds

This method will enable you to disable the camera sounds by turning on Silent Mode. When not in silent mode, camera sounds will operate as normal.
Copy the customize.xml file in /tpa/preset/custom to the computer and make a backup. Open customize.xml in an editor and change the following setting from false to true:
true Save the file then delete the existing customize.xml on the phone and copy in the new version.

Important: You will have to do either a settings or master reset before this trick will take effect. Once you do, you will be able to silence the camera on demand, simply by putting the phone into silent mode.

4. Backup Games and Java Apps

All Java midlets can be backed up by copying the jar and jad files from the phone to your computer.

The jar and jad files at can be found here: /tpa/preset/system/ams

To backup your games, simply copy the jar and jad files in this folder to your computer.
The games will need to be reinstalled if you delete them from the phone and then later want to reinstall. You can�t just copy the old files back into the ams folder. But you can use the old jar and jad files you copied from the phone to reinstall the game (the same way you would install a game normally)

5. Deleting Pre-Installed Content and Games

You cannot delete the pre-installed content from the handset itself, but with access to the internal file system you can delete ANY pre-installed content you want. Simply browse to the folder where the preset content is stored and delete it.

Here are the folder locations for the various pre-installed content:

Games: /tpa/preset/system/ams.
Games: /tpa/preset/default/java
Sounds: /tpa/user/audio
Sounds: /tpa/preset/default/audio
Images: /tpa/user/image
Images: /tpa/preset/default/image
Themes: /tpa/user/theme
Themes: /tpa/preset/default/theme
Video: /tpa/user/video
Frames: /tpa/preset/system/multimedia/pe/frames
Frames: /tpa/preset/system/multimedia/pe/funlayer
Clipart: /tpa/preset/system/multimedia/pe/clipart

Notes on Pre-installed content: Sometimes pre-installed content has a shortcut in the user folder pointing to the actual image which is stored in the /tpa/preset/default folder. For example, the shortcut file �El Trumpet.mp3.@� in /tpa/user/audio points to the actual image �El Trumpet.mp3� which is in /tpa/preset/default/audio. Delete both the shortcut and the actual image.

6. Change System sounds

The various system sounds are stored at /tpa/preset/system/sound. If you replace them with your own versions you can change the sound the phone makes for a given system sound. For example you can replace the noisy lowbattery.mid with something more subtle.

Replacement sounds should have the same name and audio format (mid, mp3, amr) as the original, and be about the same length.

To replace a system sound, delete the existing sound from /tpa/preset/system/sound and copy in your own version.

7. Change Startup and Shutdown sounds and Images

Startup and shutdown images and sounds are located in various locations. To change, simple delete the existing file, and copy in your file with the same name. Here are the various names, file sizes, formats and locations:

Boot image: SPLASH in /tpa/preset/system/settings/
This is the 176x220 pixel image displayed at boot up, called the Splash Screen. Can be in gif, bmp or png format. Animation not supported.

Startup Image: STARTUP_IMAGE_SEMC in /tpa/preset/system/settings/
This is the 176x220 pixel image shown after the Splash screen. This image can be chosen by the user in settings/display/start-up screen so you don�t need internal file system access to change this image.

Shutdown Image: SHUTDOWN_IMAGE_SEMC in /tpa/preset/system/settings/
This is the 176x220 pixel image that is shown when the phone is shutting down. Can be in gif, bmp or png format. Animation is supported, but total number of frames should be kept low, and gif should not be set to repeat animation, as this will slow down the shutdown.

Startup Sound: STARTUP_SOUND_SEMC.mid or STARTUP_SOUND_SEMC.mp3 in /tpa/preset/system/settings/
This is the sound that plays when the phone starts up.

Shutdown Sound: SHUTDOWN_SOUND_SEMC.mid or SHUTDOWN_SOUND_SEMC.mp3 in /tpa/preset/system/settings/
This is the sound that plays when the phone is shutting down.

8. Delete SE Web links in user folders

Sony Ericsson or your operator install links at the top of every folder in your phone�s file system to websites with their content. These are pretty useless to most of us, and serve only to clutter up access to our files. The links are stored in two locations within the file system.
Firstly, as xml files in folders within /tpa/preset/system/custmenu. For example the folder GAMES_HOOK_1 might contain an xml file pointing to the operator�s game download page, as well as an image used as the icon.
Secondly, the links are cached in the files cust_menu_data.dat and cust_menu_done_unpacking.dat that sit in /tpa/preset/system/custmenu.

To get rid of an operator link, you need to delete the folder in custmenu for the relevant link, then delete the files cust_menu_data.dat and cust_menu_done_unpacking.dat.