Use Razr M on ATT/T-mobile

Note, this does not unlock nor root the phone, it only flashes the radio to Aussie (so that you can use ATT/T-mobile in US). You need a windows computer and a zip software (such as winrar), and I've only tested following steps on Razr M that's already on Jelly Bean 4.1.1.

1. Get past the initial Verizon setup screen, which attempts to prevent you from proceeding unless there's a Verizon SIM already in the device. You do this by touching four corners of the screen. I did it with the phone in portrait mode (top left -> top right -> bottom right -> bottom left), and here is an idea how to do it in landscape mode.
2. Skip through all the setup wizards and enable USB Debugging.
3. Download and install the Motorola usb driver on windows machine, reboot windows
4. Download and install RSDLite6.1.4 on the windows machine.
5. Download VZW_XT907_4.1.1-9.8.1Q-27-2-4_1FF.xml.zip (close to 600M)
6. Download NON-HLOS.bin from the Aussie Razr M (dropbox link). This file is 102.4K, which is twice the size of the corresponding NON-HLOS.bin file from the above xml.zip file.
7. Replace the 49K NON-HLOS.bin in your above xml.zip with the 102.4K file, and keep it in the zip format. If you have WinRar, just open the zip file with WinRar, navigate to the folder that contains the original NON-HLOS.bin, drag the new NON-HLOS.bin and choose replace and save.
8. Open RSDLite6.1.4, choose your updated xml.zip file, and unpack it within RSDLite6.1.4.
9. Power off Razr M, and boot it in fastboot mode. To do this, hold three keys (power, volume up, volume down) together, until you see a menu; then use volume down to navigate to fastboot, and use volume up (not power) to select. Do this fast, otherwise the phone will boot itself into normal mode.
10. Now connect the phone with the original usb cable to your windows machine, and RSDLite should detect the phone, click start, then wait about 15 minutes (yes, it's slow, but at least RSDLite will tell you it's working on it). If RSDLite couldn't detect the phone, make sure you installed moto usb driver, and turned on USB debugging. The phone will reboot itself into normal mode, and RSDLite will tell you the status of the flash.
11. Power off the phone, and insert your micro-sim card (this is the middle size sim card that's used in iPhone4 or Nexus4, not the smaller nano-sim in iPhone5, nor the larger mini-sim in Galaxy Nexus or Nexus S). If you have a regular mini-sim, it's relatively easy to cut it with a micro-sim card cutter like this. You can still use your new micro-sim card as a regular mini-sim card, by just putting it into the remaining piece when you cut the card (warning, keep your original frame from the cut, and do not use so-called sim-card converter frames, which are usually thicker and couldn't be put back in the phone without damaging it).
12. When you power up the phone, it may still complain about the sim card, and you need to dismiss the message that sim is not recognized, but it should just work now.

I only tested T-mobile, which worked fine with phone call and edge data (3G is not supported now, until T-mobile switches to the rumored 3.5G that uses 1700 mhz). ATT is also supposed to work, but I don't have ATT sim card for testing.

After this step, the phone will be useful for T-mobile/ATT in US. However, the phone still has the same old verizon/motorola crap-wares. If you want to flash the OS, you could consider root it, install safestrap, and try CM10. Note, CM10.1 is still buggy (such as camera not working) at the time of this writing. An alternative way is to install an unlocked bootloader using RSDLite, then simply do fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin

References: 

1. T-Mobile/AT&T with Aussie NON-HLOS on JB Verizon XT907 confirmed
2. Jeffery Posnick's g+ post

First Verizon Droid Commertial

Love it!

Éclair is out

Now I know why android is so fat/round.

Android中文输入法

千呼万唤始出来，不过居然没有人post安装方法，害得我研究了一个早上的BUS时间才弄出来，以此为记。

1. 先去Market搜索Google Pinyin，我试的时候就一个结果，那个Logo和windows机器上的Google Pinyin一致，很好认。下载之后会自动安装。
2. 安装之后不要去点那个Open，没有用，点的话会给你error信息，其实没有任何关系。正解是去Setting里Locale&Text将Google Pinyin Enable，然后重启系统。
3. 重启之后随便找个文本框，比如search的框框，同时按住shift和空格，第一次要长按，之后会Pop出来一个输入法选项，选好，恭喜你成功了！
4. 之后的使用就是用shift加空格切换中英文。在用物理键盘的时候屏幕右上角会显示你当前的输入法状态。和台式机一样，在中文输入法的时候输英文回车可以直接出英文单词，不用切换；另外联想功能非常好用。
   

整机杂感

近日折腾电脑，发现mac和windows用起来还是差别太大，这年头还是不能彻底弃其一而忠实地用一个操作系统啊。

不得不承认xp pro是最好的windows系统，即使现在vista出来这么久了还是远不及xp的性能和稳定性。因为新买的lenovo u330配的是vista home premium，微软的垄断弄得downgrade太麻烦，所以就凑活着用了。首先是改成中文系统，mul包官方只有ultimate版本才支持，所以就只能用Vistalizator凑活装上mul包，居然能用，赞一个。不过vista的开始菜单里面右边那个文档，图片，音乐，游戏菜单真的是笨，居然不能customize。譬如，不能添加一个“下载”或者“视频”的文件夹，只能把现有的disable。有个很复杂的改注册表的方法可以将“游戏”那个文件夹变成别的，太不直观了；想想mac下面只要鼠标一拖就可以把任何一个文件夹加到finder左边的栏里面，真是痛苦啊。

说到速度，其实机器还可以的话跑起来还是比较顺的。而且似乎sp1解决了之前拷贝文件超慢的问题，所以性能上没有太多的抱怨。当然从休眠到能正常工作的时间是远大于mac，这个似乎是一直存在没法解决的windows诟病。不过不知道为什么我插上电视机，然后让vista一直开着，平时也就用用chrome和qqqtv，居一个礼拜之内莫名其妙蓝屏了两次，晕倒。看来vista还是需要经常关机的说。

说个优点，那个window照片管理的软件不错，很快，而且做些基本的图片修改很方便。我用得比较多的是crop一个图片到某个固定的比例（譬如找itunes专辑封皮），这个照片管理工具比之前的paint好用多了。当然mac下面直接用previe的crop也很方便，不过leopard之后crop不显示几乘几（之前tiger是有的）弄得我一直不知道crop的是不是正方形，sigh。

mac的问题也多，不过不知道是不是只是我目前这个笔记本的问题，总是firefox转彩球（之前那个ppc都比这个intel的run firefox快），希望chrome早点出来可以解决这个问题。iphoto似乎不能handle太大的图片库，速度慢；而mac下的picasa似乎总不如windows的好用，有时候我都想弄台window机器存我所有的图片音乐等文件了，但是实在是对vista不敢恭维。没有试过win7，希望微软能干点好事；不过要是snow leopard可以把现在的性能再提高一下也很有吸引力的。突然发现mac下用itunes只要按option启动可以选择别的音乐库，用老ppc本本加移动硬盘当服务器似乎也不错。经济不景气，节约最重要。

最近netbook比较火，其实最吸引人的就是电池长，那样坐东西海岸的飞机都不需要充电了。可惜性能太弱，似乎不怎么能播720p，作为娱乐机的价值就小了很多。rumor说好些netbook看好android，显然路漫漫其修远兮，android太年轻了……