ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500: Difference between revisions
m I'm guessing this wasn't supposed to be in the Infobox |
Konradybcio (talk | contribs) m typo fix |
||
Line 115: | Line 115: | ||
=== Building === | === Building === | ||
'''Requirements:''' ARM cross compiler (e.g. <code>arm- | '''Requirements:''' ARM cross compiler (e.g. <code>arm-none-eabi-gcc</code>) | ||
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- | export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- |
Revision as of 16:42, 22 March 2021
![]() Phosh running on the ST-Ericsson U8500 HREF (Hardware Reference Design) | |
Manufacturer | ST-Ericsson |
---|---|
Name | NovaThor U8500 |
Architecture | armv7 |
CPU | 2x 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 |
GPU | ARM Mali-400 MP |
Year | 2011 |
Process | 40nm |
Mainline | yes |
Components | |
CPU |
Works |
UART |
Works |
Storage |
Works |
USB |
Works |
Display |
Works |
GPU |
Works |
Pinctrl |
Works |
I²C |
Works |
SPI |
No data |
Audio |
No data |
Video |
No data |
Thermal |
Works |
Modem |
No data |
Camera |
No data |
NPU |
No data |
Suspend |
No data |
Ethernet |
No data |
SATA |
No data |
Devices with this chipset
This chipset is used similarly in the following devices:
Device | Codename | Mainline |
---|---|---|
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 GT-I8160 | samsung-codina | Y |
Samsung Galaxy Amp (SGH-I407) | samsung-kyle | Y |
Samsung Galaxy Beam | samsung-gavini | Y |
Samsung Galaxy Exhibit (SGH-T599) | samsung-codina-tmo | Y |
Samsung Galaxy S Advance | samsung-janice | Y |
Samsung Galaxy S III Mini | samsung-golden | Y |
Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 GT-S7710 | samsung-skomer | Y |
Sony Xperia Go | sony-lotus | |
Sony Xperia P | sony-nypon | |
Sony Xperia U | sony-kumquat |
Other devices using this chipset but not yet ported to postmarketOS (remove once they are ported):
- Samsung Galaxy Beam GT-I8530 codename samsung-gavini (wikipedia)
- Sony Xperia Go (sony-lotus) (wikipedia)
- Sony Xperia Sola (sony-pepper) (wikipedia)
- Motorola XT760
- HTC Desire 400 dual SIM
Charging

The U8500 has a companion power management IC (PMIC, also known as analog baseband, AB) ASIC called AB8500/AB8505 that takes care of the charging. In difference from many other charging ICs this chip is not autonoumous and will not charge the phone without the right software to instruct it, respond to interrupts etc. So in short: the phone will not charge unless the kernel has started and provides the right driver for the charger portions of the AB8500.
The mainline kernel for the U8500 does not as of now (2021-03-20) yet support charging. To work with these phones an external battery charger is recommended, or you have to regularly revert to the original firmware just to charge, and if your battery depletes completely before you do that you have a problem.
This type of charger at Wish can charge all of these batteries. It is a noname product simply named "Multi-connector USB Battery charger" that originates in China and often found in webstores such as Aliexpress or Wish. The charger comes with a US plug, so you may additionally need a US-to-european power converter to use it.
Flash and SDcard Layout on Samsung NovaThor U8500 Devices
When working with these devices, we install U-Boot, the kernel (zImage
) and a small initial ramdisk (initrd
) in the internal flash of the phone. The installation is done in three steps:
- U-Boot is installed on the Samsung U8500 devices using the Samsung open source flashing tool Heimdall. This is the open source reimplementation of Samsungs Odin tool. This has to be done manually before you can use
pmbootstrap
. - The kernel and inital ramdisk is then installed using U-Boot. After installing U-Boot, any time we want to reflash the phone internal eMMC kernel image and initial ramdisk, we do this using U-Boot's fastboot implementation, and on the host side we use the Android fastboot command-line tool to do the reflashing of new kernels.
pmbootstrap flash
will hide these details, but it's good to know. - The root filesystem for PostmarketOS will be stored on the external SDcard, so you will need to set up an SDcard using
pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/nnnn
.
U-Boot on Samsung NovaThor U8500 Devices
There is a port of (mainline) U-Boot for U8500 currently maintained at: https://github.com/novathor-mainline/u-boot
It contains a board called stemmy
, which is intended for all Samsung devices using U8500 (see above). It provides a simple Android fastboot interface as replacement for Samsung's proprietary flashing procedure. As a device tree compatible bootloader, it can be also used to boot mainline without any hacks in the Linux kernel.
Note: In this case, U-Boot does not replace the Samsung bootloader. Instead, it is packaged into an Android boot image (if necessary), and flashed to the Android boot partition replacing the Linux kernel. The kernel will be loaded from an offset into the boot partition. |
Installation
Heimdall can be found here but is packaged into most major Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora.
Pre-built images are available from: https://github.com/novathor-mainline/u-boot/releases. Alternatively, you can build it from source. See #Building below.
Choose the Android boot image (u-boot.img
) or the raw binary (u-boot.bin
), depending on your device. Most newer devices (e.g. samsung-golden
and samsung-skomer
) use the Android boot image format, but some older (e.g. samsung-janice
) use the raw binary.
Product name | Model | Codename | U-Boot |
---|---|---|---|
Galaxy S Advance | GT-I9070 | Janice | u-boot.bin
|
Galaxy Ace 2 | GT-I8160 | Codina | ? |
Galaxy S III mini | GT-I8190N | Golden | u-boot.img
|
Xcover 2 | GT-S7710 | Skomer | u-boot.img
|
Galaxy Beam | GT-I8530 | Gavini | ? |
Install it normally to the boot partition replacing the default Kernel (notice capital K on Kernel):
heimdall flash --Kernel u-boot.[bin|img]
Usage
U-Boot will try to boot an Android boot image from the boot
partition by default. Pressing one of the volume keys during boot allows to change that behavior:
Volume Down
: Enter Fastboot modeVolume Up
: Boot into recovery (recovery
partition)
Note: Since the boot partition is already used for U-Boot itself, U-Boot reads the Android boot image with 1 MB offset from the boot partition. This offset is applied automatically when using fastboot flash boot boot.img . |
In Fastboot mode, kernels can be directly booted from RAM using fastboot boot ...
. Alternatively, partitions can be flashed using fastboot flash <partition> ...
.
U-Boot itself can be also flashed from U-Boot using fastboot flash u-boot u-boot.img
(in this case, it will not apply the offset for the boot
partition).
Building
Requirements: ARM cross compiler (e.g. arm-none-eabi-gcc
)
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- make stemmy_defconfig make
If your device uses Android boot images, package it into an Android boot image:
mkbootimg --kernel u-boot.bin --base=0x00000000 --kernel_offset=0x00100000 --ramdisk_offset=0x02000000 --tags_offset=0x00000100 --output=u-boot.img
Kernel Hacking on NovaThor U8500
These sections detail some tricks needed when working on kernel development.
Some details can be found at the external page for [Ux500 mainline work].
Assembling a Custom boot.img
When used with PostmarketOS the boot.img
that you flash into the phone should come out of the pmbootstrap utility, but if you for some reason want to assemble the boot.img
using some prefabricated kernel, ramdisk and device tree, the process is like this this:
mkbootimg --kernel zImage --ramdisk initrd --second foo.dtb --base=0x00000000 --kernel_offset=0x00008000 --ramdisk_offset=0x02000000 --second_offset=0x00f00000 --tags_offset=0x00000100 --output=boot.img
Or using abootimg
:
abootimg --create boot.img -k zImage -r initrd -s foo.dtb -c "pagesize=0x800" -c "kerneladdr=0x8000" -c "ramdiskaddr=0x02000000" -c "secondaddr=0x00f00000" -c "tagsaddr=0x100"
Notice how this puts the device tree binary foo.dtb
into the "second bootloader firmware".
If you are booting PostmarkeOS with a custom kernel, the initrd
you pass must better be a PostmarkeOS initramfs. This can be found in a path like .local/var/pmbootstrap/chroot_native/mnt/rootfs_samsung-skomer/boot/initramfs-postmarketos-stericsson
. The initrd is used to set up, detect and load the rest of the rootfs from the SDcard volume so it is pretty vital.
Flashing a Custom Kernel
You install a custom kernel into the device by booting into U-Boot as described above, go to fastboot mode by holding down
+ or by holding while you insert the serial cable. Then you can flash a new kernel image like this:fastboot flash boot boot.img
After this reboot the phone and your new kernel should start.
See also
- This chipset has a [wikipedia page]