Tag Archives: vodafone

Vodafone 945 – thoughts, rooting and installing sinhala

So finally I ditched my beloved Nokia E63 to an android, Vodafone 945. It isn’t a high-end device, but it’s as far as I can reach to an android right now.

Vodafone 945
Talking about the cons, the resolution (240×400) of the 3.2 inch screen is rather low, but one can live with that. Perhaps that’s the only major problem with this phone. The response time of the capacitative touch screen is quite satisfactory and it’s fast for a 600MHz device. There’s nothing to whine about the battery life too. The OS is Android 2.1 (Eclair). I’m still trying hard to get used to the touch keyboard. Badly miss the physical QWERTY keyboard of my E63.

The 5 megapixel camera works great. Here’s a snap I took this morning. (Click on the photo to view the original size)

Snap taken from the Vodafone 945 camera

Rooting
You can simply install the app z4root and root the device. I wasn’t able to do a permanent root, only the temporary one (which lasts till the next restart) worked. But it’s enough for the needs.

Installing Sinhala and the Ubuntu font
After rooting, install the app Root Explorer and copy these three fonts to the /system/fonts directory. You’ll have to enable R/W permissions for the directory. You won’t get complex scripting support for Sinhala unicode, but the outcome is readable.
Sinhala in Vodafone 945 (Android)
It’s also advisable to use Root App Remover to remove the stupid trial-ware that come pre-installed with the device.

Many thanks to Akila for walking me through rooting and installing Sinhala.