GPS working on Huawei U8185 on CyanogenMod 9

Thanks to the awesome work from CyanogenMod developers, bringing up Qualcomm hardware on AOSP is extremely easy; it took me all of two minutes to get GPS working on the Huawei U8185 on CyanogenMod 9.

Here are the changes I had to make to get GPS working on this little handset:

BoardConfig.mk

# GPS
BOARD_USES_QCOM_GPS := true
BOARD_VENDOR_QCOM_GPS_LOC_API_AMSS_VERSION := 50000
BOARD_VENDOR_QCOM_GPS_LOC_API_HARDWARE := u8185

u8185.mk

# gps
PRODUCT_PACKAGES += \
    gps.u8185

Recompile your bacon and you’re done. If I can do it, so can you (no really, here’s the source, and here are CM9 compile instructions). 🙂

Heavy lifting

The fact that I could bring up this device on CyanogenMod so quickly is a testament to the skill of the CyanogenMod developers and several other key players. As AOSP only supports Google’s “Nexus” devices, it’s not a trivial task to get new devices (possibly with new SoCs) running on vanilla Android.

AOSP support for new chipsets comes from organizations like the CodeAurora Forum (CAF), OmapZoom, and Linaro, who do lots of upstream enablement and documentation work for the Linux kernel, Android, and their related subsystems. CAF in particular has a great track record of publishing source code and documentation for the Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC (the Huawei U8185 uses an msm7225a Qualcomm chipset).

Without the time and money of the full-time developers from CAF, Linaro, et al, CyanogenMod would have a lot more low-level work do to (and wouldn’t be able to support as many devices). CyanogenMod’s loosely-knit group of volunteer developers benefits greatly by the existence of these industry organizations, and as a result tech-savvy n00bs like me can get our feet wet in Android “development” relatively easily.

Related posts (automagically generated):

  1. Compiling CyanogenMod 9 for the Huawei U8185
  2. Calls partially working on U8185 on CyanogenMod 9
  3. Building CyanogenMod 7 for the Huawei U8150
  4. Custom kernel booting on CM7 on the Huawei U8150
  5. Building CyanogenMod 7.1 for the Huawei U8150

19 thoughts on “GPS working on Huawei U8185 on CyanogenMod 9”

  1. TITLE: Help me Root my HTC Maggic/Sapphire (T-Mobile MyTouch3G)

    Have this HTC – the ~T-mobile My Touch3G~ phone and want to root it. the problem is the info am getting from XDA is now just becoming confusing and complex. i have in the past acquired great and worthy info from you concerning the Ideos U850 so i just wanted to ask if you could help acquire precise but easy way to root this phone without ending up with a brick. if you could give me any info or good web links that i can understand i would highly appreciate it.

    If in the process you could tel me how i can revert back to factory firmware using the (HTC RUU software) i would highly appreciate it.

    The Phone Specifics include:

    the motherboad is a (after holding down back key while switching on device);

    SAPPHIRE PVT 32B SHIP S-ON G
    HBOOT – 1.33.0013 (SAPP30000)
    RADIO – 2.22.28.25
    Oct 21 2009, 22:33:27

    1. It’s true, the HTC displays are very beautiful. 🙂 After trying several times to buy the Nexus 4 and getting denied by Google’s Play Store I am seriously tempted to buy an “old” HTC like the One X or One X+. I should read up on their bootloaders, can’t remember if they’re locked.

      1. Yea, i actually Love The One X, Yea, Please get a HTC phone so that you can develop and post reviews on them,it was very easy to understand your posts on the Ideos model but i don’t have it anymore, and i think their bootloaders are locked (S-ON), atleast mine is[WAS], coz i had to get [S-OFF] by installing an Engineered SPL and and thus rooting it as per the cyanogenmod guide, now am just looking for good custom roms to flash.

        still loving your posts on Ideos and i really learn alot from then, soon (in the near future) i will be compiling and building my custom roms 🙂 thanks to your guidelines…

  4. I agree, great work so far. Have had a shot at getting wifi going but no joy
    Does it need something from the data partition?
    Last time I wiped data it killed the wifi.

    1. Nah, I think we just need to port the upstream ath6kl driver to our device… I got it to compile and load, but I can’t get wlan0 to come up; I think it’s a firmware issue, like the firmware isn’t loading or something. I’m not sure.

      Are you working on this? We could collaborate… it’s boring by myself.

  5. Would like to help, i currently need to reflash stock rom as acore keeps failing even after
    restoring a near stock backup. Found stock .img online but it has failed twice. What is our
    hardware, AR6003? If so it is the same as my GIO and working on 4.2.1

    1. Yeah, the hardware on the U8185 is AR6003. I think we could back port the mainstream Linux driver (ath6kl) maybe…

      1. Hope so, maybe also try the lower DPI phone.apk talked of too as memory or lack of is decidedly an issue. Any thoughts on bluetooth?

  6. Yep, its running on my phone at the moment. No ram left but at least I can make calls on it. Will build a couple
    of variations and try to make it work without that huge vm heap.

    1. Ah, good! So you actually managed to build it. You and I should team up and hack this shit together. So far I’ve just been trail blazing by myself, swapping between other projects :(. I’m usually on #cyanogenmod-dev on Freenode in the evenings…

      Regarding the Phone app and the large VM heap, maybe you saw, but it came from the LG e400 CM9 device tree (which was done by Ricardo Cerqueira, who is kinda a badass). Regarding the memory, I find that ramzswap helps, but I still see OOM kills often; there’s really not much we can do hehe. I can’t remember if I enabled ramzswap by default…

      1. Got it working on 32m heap by borrowing vm settings from the u8150 cm9 build. Still no RAM left but I also changed ldpi small to ldpi normal.

  7. hello alan you may post the zip of cyano?
    Unfortunately I can not build it because I have a PC not adequate
    PS: sorry for my inslese but German

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