Thursday, December 2, 2010

Rooting and Updating / Upgrading Videocon Zeus V7500

Videocon Zeus V7500 Evolve is re branded Commtiva Z51  being sold in India by Videocon . In India there is also other Commtiva re branded Android phone from Spice, known as MI-300. It is clone of Commtiva Z71 though. Only difference between Z51 and Z71 is that Z71 has a trackball whereas there is none on Z51.

Now bad part for Zeus users is that Z51 is virtually unknown phone globally, but the good part is Z71 is pretty well known and has many clones across the world and all its roms are easily applied to z51.
Since the underlying electronics has been manufactured by Foxconn it seems as if in Z51 they simply did not provide the trackball rest of the thing being same.

Now about rooting the phone.

The phone comes with android 1.6 (from late November it will come with android 2.1). The 1.6 version is easily rooted by downloading and installing Universal Androot application.
Since last week of November official 2.1 update is available from Authorised Service Centre (ASC). This version is easily rooted by downloading and installing z4root application.
Also you will need to install this version if you want to upgrade your phone with the method mentioned here.

Why upgrade ?
 Firstly 1.6 is downright lousy if you want to surf the web.
The official 2.1 update limits the processor speed to 480 Mhz to save the battery.

What happens when I upgrade?
You will have Froyo 2.2.1, browser in this version is really fast. You will be able to run your processor at its stipulated speed of 600Mhz. Also you can move/install the programs on sdcard.
You wont be able to run Adobe Flash though. Flash requires ARM7 processor whereas all models mentioned here have ARM6 processors.