The Samsung i8910 HD gets HX7 'Black Pearl' and complete customisation

Published by Steve Litchfield at 19:17 UTC, July 13th 2010

For those following the HX firmware saga on the otherwise neglected Samsung i8910 HD (aka 'Omnia HD'), note that the much-anticipated HX7 firmware, codenamed 'Black Pearl', just went live (video demo below). Among many other little fixes and tying up loose ends, HX7 offers a custom utility to le t you adjust a mountain of interface settings on the fly, right down to microphone sensitivity and kinetic scrolling mechanics, without having to mess around with patch files and extra SISx installs. There's also a new 'tsunami' homescreen...

I'm flashing the editorial i8910 HD and will report back in due course. Note that, as always with i8910 HD firmware updates, there's no user data preservation, the mass memory ALSO gets wiped and you can't even restore the whole of your old backup (though user data should be OK). So definitely one for the geeks (like me!).....

From the original notes (in original English!):

• This time Camera saves really images and videos in DATE and yyy.mm.dd
• wlan power back to normal (you can change it if you want in settings)
• Threaded sms still there, sorry mates, but the icon can´t be removed by “hand” so i removed the original icon
• pocket data back to normal, (to much delay)
• kastor effects, the same, but removed “OPTIONS” effect, it had to much delay and the symbian icon was buggy
• Added wow effect to 3D-taskswitcher NEW
• After pnht(.org) autoinstallation finished you have the tsunami homescreen with some shortcuts added
• widget-homescreen gadget.swf NOW on e:\ ! You can change/mod yourself and can add live wallpaper without enable c2z ! thanks goes to liliantungary for his widget-mod !
• new jpeg-encoder from i8510 figured out by Lukas_ita, Colmar85 and all the staff of forum.hdblog.it
• musicplayer only search on e:\music f:\music (it was buggy before)

New battery-managment: Battery-life will increase for about 20 % ones you flashed this firmware, it will remain forever, even if you flash to a different firmware. (this mod will work on about 90 % of all phones

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by mCrem I'm still on HX2, apart from the last 3 bullet points and the forced 600mhz speed, I really don't see the need to update, especially after what I saw on that video, it seems to have made the phone worse in terms of UI speed, everything is lagging..

Nice thing about the i8910 roms is that (unlike other Symbian devices...) if you don't like the newer firmware, you can go back to another version you like.

Perhaps you should at least try it first. I've had HX5 for a while and really like it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iFanboy Wow that's seriously impressive! Samsung need to hire this man and ASAP! Shame Symbian phones don't have these features as standard, and that it isn't easy to do as my friend with an i8910Hd doesn't know what he's missing because "It's too complicated and time consuming" to change the firmware, he hasn't even updated it from when he first bought it, gallery duplication bug n all :-/ If only it was made as easy as jailbreaking/rooting...

Samsung doesn't give a sh*t about any of the phones they sold. They couldn't care less about what this guy's doing. If I were Nokia I'd hire this guy NOW!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Samsung doesn't give a sh*t about any of the phones they sold. They couldn't care less about what this guy's doing. If I were Nokia I'd hire this guy NOW!!!

You're right, Samsung really doesn't give a crap about the post sales support for phones they sell. To them, it's like selling one of their lines of toasters or blenders, which is why although I like my i8910, it'll be my last Samsung smartphone.

They do make great HDTVs though, even better than Sony. I'll give them that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fbloise wish this could be available in n97 mini or 5800... just a thought.

The "tsunami" HS has been available on the 5800 and N97m for many months. The Samsung widget HS has been ported to the 5800 as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by InZain The "tsunami" HS has been available on the 5800 and N97m for many months. The Samsung widget HS has been ported to the 5800 as well.

And as I've just found, the 5230 as well.

Whilst the i8910 had the lead in patching, it seems as though the rest of the symbian community is starting to catch up. Although with lesser hardware to play with, the results won't be quite as nice'n'shiny.

Quote:

Originally Posted by overthereinabox I can't find the dialler - how can I make a call if I don't have a contact saved? Is this an embarassing oversight, or am I making a schoolboy error??

Go into Menu, then press the call button. Happened to me too.

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