I gave a whole new life to our old cheapo Huawei Ideos X5 (U8800) Android phone (it cost something like 99€ three years ago):
- I found a shop which sold new batteries suitable for it (the original battery blew up a year ago). Thank god it doesn't have integrated battery like some lesser phones (iPhone).
- Today I successfully installed the newest (unofficial) Cyanogenmod Android for the device, upgrading its Android version straight from 2.3.5 to 4.4.4. The upgrade was quite tricky with many many steps (e.g. the whole filesystem needed to be reallocated (with BlePart) because by default there was not enough room in /system for Cyanogen ROM; ClockworkMod didn't work at first (I had to replace it with TWRP Recovery, and later with a newer version of CWM) etc. But finally I nailed it, I'm a bit surprised I didn't manage to brick the phone.
Wow, this feels like a new phone now. I just need to replace the small 2GB microSD card with a 16GB one (from my old Nokia phone), and this will be my primary phone for awhile, at least until my employer gets me a new Nokia Lumia phone.
I just wish Google navigation had better offline capabilities, that's actually why I'm looking forward to the Lumia phone, as my navigator phone (HERE maps has great offline capabilities AFAIK, just like the old Nokia Ovi Maps). Fully working offline mode is a must for me when I am navigating abroad, the map caching feature of Google navigation is not enough.
Post edited September 11, 2014 by timppu