Motelona 158x - Moddable?

[fmstereo883]

Follow up:

The charger that plugs directly into the wall, as opposed with a wall-wart puts out 4.2 V at the terminals. This seems to be the correct voltage for the battery.

Charge time appears to be about 10 to 12 hours. I made the mistake of not letting the phone charge completely, thus resulting in the 2 to 3 day run time.

You'll know it's charged when the red light turns off and the green light turns on.

Charged the phone up on Saturday, still showing a full battery today (Tuesday).

The eBay seller user ID for the YF718 units is tpdventures. Matter of fact, there's one of these phones up for bids right now (2/12/2008).

[daddysupreme]

I'm sans camera right now, or else I'd be showing you pictures of the inside.

whoever wired these things up did a horrific job. I don't know enough about the parts to tell you what's dangling from what, but it's crazy. and...

I had my first phone mishap about two days ago.

I was attempting to put my phone into my coat's inner breast pocket and somehow missed the hole.

The phone fell about 4 feet to a tiled floor.

I thought, "ok, this is the true test. let's see how bad I f***ed it up."

Sure enough the phone didn't have a scratch and worked fine. at least I thought it worked fine. It wasn't until later that evening when I went to text message that I noticed that I had no use of my Pound (#) or Zero (0).

What the...????

So I took it home and opened it up and sure enough, two wires had come loose. As I looked over the way it's wired (haphazardly) I noticed that a lot of the wiring needs some serious reinforcing.

I whipped out my soldering iron and carefully tried my best to attach the wires again.

It lets me know I need a better soldering iron, as mine is old and clunky. (hard to maneuver)

I need more of a precision hot iron. (I'll have to look it up online) and a magnifying glass with light.

But, hey, my phone's back to working order for the moment. When I get a real bug up my *** I'll go back in and rewire the whole thing. Would be a fun project.

[mosquito_R]

Update: I tried soldering my two wires back but it turned out that the earpiece, ringers and the menu "beeps" did not work at all. Tried to place a call and I can't hear a thing either. Any suggestions, anyone?

In some ways, I do regret purchasing this thing... should have spent my money on something else...

[pace1960]

Well, I have received the FY718 and seems to be working fine. Except, I can't figure how to adjust speaker volume, hands free volume and key tone volume up or down, (missing the bottom row of keys as opposed to the Motelona) As for GPRS, I just called T-Mobile and had them send me a "browser message" and give me the password needed to do the web sessions update, then select T-Mobile as default and launch the browser! It's kind of tricky trying to set it up manually with numerical IP addresses and such. It is indeed smaller than the Motelona and is the exact size of a genuine Motorola Ultra Classic! Sure wish I could find out about volume adjustments though....and ideas?

-Pace

[okoeono]

i bought one of these a few months agoand gave up on it since that battery wouldn't hold a charge for more thatn 10 hours ... from what i've read the the crappy charger seems to be frying the batteries, any ideas on how to get a replacement battery .... the ebay seller refuses to contact me back haha!

[pace1960]

i bought one of these a few months ago and gave up on it since that battery wouldn't hold a charge for more thatn 10 hours ... from what i've read the crappy charger seems to be frying the batteries, any ideas on how to get a replacement battery .... the ebay seller refuses to contact me back haha!

Did you buy the smaller YF718, or the larger Motelona with the rubberized housing? I bought the 718 and added an extra $20 for a 2nd battery. Both 718 batteries seem to do OK despite a 08/2006 date code and the wall wart charger is 5.5V 400mAh instead of the off the scale 6v+ at 1000mAh!

Lithium Ion batteries MUST be charged "low and slow". Not like older Ni-Cads, 3hr rapid charge and HOT when done. I still recommend the MAHA MH-C777PlusII charger analyzer for just about any battery, especially Li-on.

If you have the Motelona unit, you can get extra batteries from the sellers in China that are trying to sell the phones for a fixed price of $59. If you have the YF718, you probably got it from the seller that says, "this is the LAST unit I have" ...etc!

Anyhow, I haven't cut open any of these batteries, but if I did, I bet they can be refitted with Prismatic Cells from http://www.molienergy.com/products.htm

Nonetheless, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) will be a better way to go as time progresses.

Best wishes,
-Pace

[skwirl]

I just picked up a GE918 but can't for the life of me figure out how to change the phone language to English. I only have a Chinese manual, any help?

[pace1960]

I just picked up a GE918 but can't for the life of me figure out how to change the phone language to English. I only have a Chinese manual, any help?

If it's the same as the rest of these phones, press the center menu key, then arrow right 2 times, then arrow down 2 times then press the select key (green envelope). now press the down arrow 4 times and press select. then press the down arrow 5 times then press select again. Scroll down to highlight English then press select and you should be done!

[Skysports]

Hello all,

I just received a brand new XY968 from an ebay seller. I was scared stiff reading all the messages on this thread. By the way, the XY968 is the larger Motelona version that needs the bigger 8000 case.

Anyway, I have done a little initial testing, and it seems that EVERYTHING is working. I was carefull to let the battery charge until the red light went off. Hmmmm... only 5 hours? Maybe I made a mistake, but it seems to be holding a good charge at least the whole day.

Now the good news: Vibrate motor: working, all sounds ringtones: working, antenna gain: better than reported......

My wife has a Motorola U6, and I compared signal strength on both phones. I guess testing with a V180 would have perfect, but this is what I have to work with. By the way, we are both on the T-mobile service -> 1900mhz.
When the Pebl U6 has a 4 bar signal, the XY968 has either a 3 or 2.

Since signal strength is my only issue, I am now hesitating to open the phone and mod. I have yet to read ANY positive result from people modding on the thread here.

Is it possible that on the other side of this incorrect soldier point, there is a piece of wire at 900mhz resonance (since this is most common band in Asia/Europe)?

Question: After connecting to the old fashioned 800mhz rubber ducky, do you get better signal readings? RFI not withstanding of course..... I can deal with RFI later, maybe by soldering the coax for speaker wire. But perhaps, the V180 VCO for auto antenna gain matches whatever is behind the solder point better than the Big external antenna.

So I was thinking, maybe the thing to do is check the other side, and cut the antenna they are currently using to 1900mhz length for proper resonance.

But like I said, I am now scared to open phone... don't want to ruin a bad thing.

My phone was shipped in a bubble mailer (all ebayers in China are doing this now because letter rate is 1/3 the postage, and customs officials in europe let the letters pass without taxes) so I think the actual poor packing is causing most of everyones problems here. I bet this phone is rock solid before leaving China, and everything turns to spagetti wire after shipping and jarring the phone.

Oh yes, one problem!!! My charger has a rattling noise when shaken, loose parts. But the charger seems to charge fine nonetheless... red light comes on and off during charging... green light is always on?

Tom
N5PUG

[m34jlp]

I just received my Motelona 158x and I cant delete text messages. I know it sounds dumb but I cant find any delete option! Does anyone have this problem?

Also,
I see alot of people upgrading and so on...Is there anyone in Miami that knows how to do this I have no clue but would love to mod this phone.

Thanks!

[AndrewGS]

Wow, looks like there's been some activity since I left.

I still have mine, but I haven't used it in months. I never went back in to re-do the speaker wiring to try and get rid of the RFI, nor have I bought a real charger yet. I got sidetracked from the phone hobby for a while.

I'd say the easiest way to get this thing to be a respectable phone would be to find out what firmware version you have, see if there's a Monster Pack available for that model phone and flash it. This way you'll have everything in English with either OEM or carrier standard menus, web sessions, ringtones, etc. With some reading on the aforementioned sites you can learn how to connect the phone, flash and SEEM edit.

When I found out mine was a V180 variant (which I'm betting all of these are) I did some reading on modmymoto.com (guides) and motox.info and figured out that any R365 Monster Pack will work so I used one for a stock Cingular V220.

The signal will suck until you hook up the external antenna's wire or get a stock wire internal antenna and solder it to the antenna pad.

Any persisting questions, please ask. I'll be around again.

[Elektracell]

Hi there !
I've tryed to flash my motelona with RDSlite and a proper R364 file.
My trouble : the program doesn't complete the operation and stops very quickly saying "interface missing blah blah..."
I suppose the reason is the firmware inside the phone isn't a official release of a Moto Cell.
How can I override this and force flash the unit to have an acceptable GUI and NO MORE exotic babes+psychedelic chineses songs in my brick ?

Mobile Phone Tools doesn't recognize the unit BUT my pc installs all the drivers ( that's why RDSlite sees the phone in it's list)
Any clues ?

73-51 !

Bruno.

[AndrewGS]

Hi there !
I've tryed to flash my motelona with RDSlite and a proper R364 file.
My trouble : the program doesn't complete the operation and stops very quickly saying "interface missing blah blah..."
I suppose the reason is the firmware inside the phone isn't a official release of a Moto Cell.
How can I override this and force flash the unit to have an acceptable GUI and NO MORE exotic babes+psychedelic chineses songs in my brick ?

Mobile Phone Tools doesn't recognize the unit BUT my pc installs all the drivers ( that's why RDSlite sees the phone in it's list)
Any clues ?

73-51 !

Bruno.

You might try using Flash & Backup as that's the only program I've used for MPs and it works great. I've used RSD Lite for single files before.

Andrew

[Elektracell]

You might try using Flash & Backup as that's the only program I've used for MPs and it works great. I've used RSD Lite for single files before.

Many thanks for this excellent software !

I've had a real problem when flashing the brick with a branded/locked cingular R365 file... no subsidiary code, then.... locked phone !

I've fixed the thing and now, it works flawlessly !!!

V220 keypad issue when arrows + volume keypad doesn't work anymore :

Go here : http://www.forumweb.com.br/foruns/in...0&#entry241430
download the GMIV220011AA106 flex file for V220
Flex the phone using P2k easy tool 5.3
flash again your phone with a clean R365 file
example : I'm using this file with my brick : http://www.esnips.com/doc/b8078230-a...09BXXU1113_1FF

If your phone doesn't restart after a flash, try repairing the PDS file using repstudio...
select your phone, then push "repair"

All these things saved my Motelona from death...

Kewl, a V220 Brick in the street !!!

Thx to Howard Forum !!!

73 !!!

B.

P.s. : flash/flex your phone at your own risk !!! It is not a simple affair !!!

[scamdata]

hi all i am a newbie to oward forums so you do not know me... but i am hopeing someone could help me. i just got myself a motelona XY968. after removeing from the box from ebay seller i discovered that the phone would not turn on... i have charged it for hours and still nothing... how do i tell if its the battery or the phone without putting my toung on the battery!!