HelloOX: new very simple Symbian hack that works on (almost) every Nokia

There's a new, improved version of HelloOX. Click here for the new version.

A few days ago Symbian was hacked (again) with the Y-Drive/Modo method. That was a big breakthrough after four long months of hack-resistant phones and firmware versions.

Unfortunately the Y Drive/Modo method is very complicated and takes many difficult steps. And it doesn't work on Feature Pack 2 phones with new firmware.

But bugb at the Symbian Freak forum came to the rescue. He posted the new HelloOX hacking method, which is so simple that almost everyone can make it work on their phones.

HelloOX? Yes, Hello Ox. This is the Year of the Ox on the chinese calendar.

HelloOX is made of two .sis files which you need to sign with a "17 capability" certificate such as the certificates that you can get from OPDA. Sign 'em, install 'em, run 'em, done.

If your phone has older firmware you may still use the old HelloCarbide method. That takes more steps and is therefore a little more difficult, but you don't need to sign HelloCarbide with a certificate so it can still be useful for some people.

HelloOX is a great new development. It won't switch of capability checking on phones with the latest firmware, so don't expect all your ROMPatcher to work. But HelloOX allows you to use the Leftup root certificate, which means that you can install anything you like without having to beg Symbian Signed for the keys to your own phone. HelloOX was successfully used on phones with phones like the Nokia N85 and N96, which couldn't be hacked before.

• HelloOX 1.01 on Symbian Freak (login/signup required)
• HelloOX 1.01 copied to Mobile Castle (no need to log in,no need to sign up)
• HelloOx for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (at Symbian Freak, login/signup required)
• List of phones firmware versions that can be hacked fully or partially
• All Symbian hacks indexed

There's a new, improved version of HelloOX. Click here for the new version.

Access to your Symbian system folders: the Open4All patch for phones hacked with the Y-Drive/Modo method

Note: the Open4All patch also works with HelloOX, HelloCarbide, and all other hacking methods as long as you install ROMPatcher on your phone.

The Y-Drive/Modo hack opens Nokia phones with firmware versions that resisted the old AppTRK and HelloCarbide hacks.

There's a problem, though. On many phones hacked with the new Y-Drive/Modo method, you can't simply switch caps off to give file managers like X-plore and ActiveFile access to system folders like c:\sys\bin. You had to use the Modo file manager instead, which has rather limited features.

This ROMPatcher patch takes care of that. When you let ROMPatcher run the Open4All patch, all your file managers can view, read from, and write to the system folders.

Of course your phone has to be hacked and ROMPatcher has to be installed on your phone to make this patch work.

This patch was posted on the Symbian Freak forum by wadowice.

Note: the Open4All patch also works with HelloOX, HelloCarbide, and all other hacking methods as long as you install ROMPatcher on your phone.

• Open4All patch for ROMPatcher on Mobile Castle
• Open4All patch discussion on Symbian Freak (signup/login required)
• Y-Drive/Modo hack to set Symbian free
• All Symbian hacks

August 19, 2009 update:
HelloOX2 hacks your phone and automatically installs ROMPatcher with Open4All

Fring got last.fm, Nimbuzz got more options and eats less battery

fring

Instant messenger, GMail notifier, VoIP application, Skype client, and Facebook tool fring is updated. It's the most versatile of all the Symbian chat and VoIP programs

It connects with Skype and standard SIP VoIP, GoogleTalk, MSN (Windows Live), ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, Twitter, chat of social networking sites Facebook and orkut, and more.

Update: fring is no longer a multi-network messenger. They kicked 'em all out, fring now only works on it's own fring network. My advice: don't use fring.

And now it has a built-in last.fm player too.

It's a rather limited last.fm player, and the user interface is far from ready. For example, you can play and view lots of stuff directly through the buttons on the screen, but you have to go to the Options menu to play your own last.fm library. The last.fm feature itself shows rather counterintuitively as a contact in your contacts list, and if you hit the "close" button last.fm keeps playing instead of closing. The fring last.fm player doesn't have an equaliser, and it won't scrobble tracks from Symbian's own music player like Mobbler does.

Mobbler is still the best Symbian last.fm application currently available. It would be nice if fring would improve its VoIP and chat funtions before spending time on other things, because VoIP (and especially Skype) works a lot better on Nimbuzz now.

But fring does instant messaging quite well. And when you're on Wi-Fi, fring manages to connect through firewalls where Nimbuzz can't, probably because fring doesn't need to accept unsollicited incoming connections (i.e. act like a server) to work.

A few version numbers ago fring added advertisements to its program to keep it free. That sucks. But the good news is that fring's advertising doesn't seem to work as planned. I've never seen an ad in fring yet. Maybe you'll be just as lucky as me.

• fring site with all info and download details
• straight to the fring download page (tip: you don't need to enter a real email address in the "get fring via PC" box)


Nimbuzz

Nimbuzz sticks to its core business: instant messaging and VoIP. It does Skype, standard SIP VoIP, GoogleTalk, Jabber, MSN (Windows Live), Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Twitter, Gadu-Gadu, and chat of social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, orkut, and Hyves.

It's Skype and other VoIP connectivity and sound quality is very good.

New in the latest version of Nimbuzz: set your avatar from within Nimbuzz. You can tell it to make a new display picture straight with your phone camera. And you can hide by appearing offline on all networks if you want.

But the new stuff is not just eye candy. The new Nimbuzz also consumes less battery power. I didn't compare its battery consumption to fring, so I don't know who wins on this very important issue.

• Nimbuzz


Tip: imvocal for fring and Nimbuzz users

If you sign up with imvocal, you get a phone number that leads straight to the voice chat feature of your instant messenger accounts. The service is free, but incoming calls are limited to ten minutes a piece.

• imvocal


if you don't like fring or Nimbuzz, there's Talkonaut for VoIP and IM, but Talkonaut doesn't do Skype

Hackers vs. Nokia 3-2: Y-Drive/Modo method breaks the locks of Symbian Signed

UPDATE: There's a new version of this hack which is a lot easier to use, and which also works on Feature Pack 2 phones and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

First there was the AppTRK hack to set your Symbian phone free. When Nokia plugged the hole, it didn't take long before the hackers striked back with the HelloCarbide method.

But when Nokia fixed the HelloCarbide method back in September 2008, the new Nokia firmware versions resisted hacking for a long time: four entire months.

But now there's a new way into the system folders of your phone. The new trick from Deltafox uses the ability to assign drive letters to folders with MapDrives, which makes Symbian believe that a folder with a modified copy of installserver.exe is a system drive. This allows you to install the file manager Modo, which is progammed in a peculiar way that allows it to write to system folders before your phone is hacked. When you finish all the steps, you'll end up with the SIS Installer Mod on drive C:\ of your phone, which enables you to install any .sis file, even if it's not signed by Symbian Signed. You'll also get write access to system folders like C:\sys\bin.

This method is new, experimental, and complicated, and even the tiniest mistake will make it fail. It may not work on your phone, but if you can get it to work you can install any program you like (including programs like rotateMe) without Symbian Signed getting in your way. You won't be able to turn Symbian capability checking off with this method yet, but you'll get read/write access to the Symbian system folders.

If you have not hacked a Symbian phone with the old AppTRK or ROMPatcher methods before, it may be better to wait until an easier method becomes available. If you want to try it anyway, go to symbianhack.site666.info and click on "The Y-drive/Modo method."

There's a video of the hacking process on YouTube. It comes with horrible music, so switch the sound off.

Confirmed to work on these phones and firmware versions:

Nokia N81-3 firmware version 21.0.008
Nokia N82 firmware version 30.0.019 and 31.0.016
Nokia N95 firmware version 31.0.017
Nokia N95 8GB firmware version 31.0.015
Nokia E51 firmware version 300.34.56
Nokia E66 firmware version 200.21.118
Nokia E71 firmware versions 110.07.127 and 200.21.188
Nokia E90 Communicator version 300.34.84
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic firmware version 3.26 (but not 4.13)
Nokia 6120 Classic firmware version 6.01

It may or may not work with other phones and firmware versions. More info in this discussion on the Symbian Freak forum (login/signup required).

UPDATE: There's a new version of this hack which is a lot easier to use, and which also works on Feature Pack 2 phones and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

• get your own developer certificate
• the Y-Drive/Modo package at Mobile Castle
• index of all Symbian hacking methods
• discussion of the Y-Drive/Modo hacking method in the modding section of the Symbian Freak forum (login/signup required)