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Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem.

Added by P. Kasita over 9 years ago

What do you think of the newly released Samsung Galaxy S5 mini?
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5_mini-6252.php

Seems to be a a good candidate.

Modern hardware, Samsung CPU. Multi-band LTE.

Intel XMM 7160 LTE modem. So it should be isolated.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/04/intels-lte-modem-wins-the-samsung-galaxy-s5-mini.aspx

IP67 watertight. I own Sony Xperia Z tablet and absolutely love ability to for the tablet to be used near open water. My tablet even survived 5 minutes of 2.5m sea water once as an experiment.

If it is a decent target, I will buy one when the price hits ~$400 for EU model and port Replicant to it.


Replies (11)

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by E3V3A XDA over 9 years ago

Yes, that would seem like a great build target, but you can never be sure what's under the hood until you actually have that device in your hand. This is especially true for Samsungs, who have a dirty history of making dozens of HW variations under the same product name.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by P. Kasita over 9 years ago

iFixit provided a tear down of S5 mini labeled as SM-G800F.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+S5+Mini+Teardown/27579

No sign of Intel modem on the photos.
Is it possible that Intel modem could be integrated into some other chip or labeled as non-Intel?
Are there any tools to confirm that the modem is from Intel?
A friend of mine has access to one of the phones and can run some tools on it to determine the hardware.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by E3V3A XDA over 9 years ago

Yes, the iFixit picture at: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/6VkxB3cCeLRCotVh.huge
and accompanying text tell you they think its one of the first fully integrated AP/CP from Exynos 3.
I.e. baseband processor is part of the PoP/SoC. There are several ways to check:
  • Open a shell and type: "getprop |grep ril"
  • Find out how to access the ServiceMode menu (via secret code) and then navigate to the HW/SW info menu.
  • Connect phone via uUSB cable to PC and look for an enumerated modem device. Then use Putty or RealTerm to connect to it and issue the AT command "ATI".
  • Open a shell and type "ls /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/" or "ls /dev/block/"

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by P. Kasita over 9 years ago

It seems that there are/would be the following variants

SM-G800A    (North American AT&T version) SM-G800A
SM-G800F    (European version Currently sold in Russia as shown in iFixit tear down) https://www.zauba.com/import-sm-g800f-hs-code.html
SM-G800H    (CIS version; already available in Russia)  https://www.zauba.com/import-sm-g800h-hs-code.html
SM-G800H/DS (CIS version; dual SIM version) https://www.zauba.com/import-sm-g800h-ds-hs-code.html
SM-G800M    (South/Latin America version)
SM-G800Y
SM-G800X
SM-G800R4

Intel modem info
http://ark.intel.com/products/66646/Intel-XMM-7160-Slim-Modem
iFixit teardown indicates that there are no chips with Intel markings.
Baseband and transceiver chips have sizes 7.5x9.5 mm and 7.0x7.5mm and should be clearly visible on the photos. The only hope is that they are labeled as non-Intel. I will check the ril strings from getprop command.

FCC certification

SM-G800A     no fcc id yet
SM-G800F     A3LSMG800F http://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=A3LSMG800F&id=335512 (with a separate NFC testing report)
SM-G800H     A3LSMG800H http://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=A3LSMG800H&id=913606
SM-G800H/DS  A3LSMG800H same as SM-G800H (they are tested as a single model)
SM-G800M     A3LSMG800M http://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=A3LSMG800M&id=321406 (with a separate NFC testing report)
SM-G800Y     A3LSMG800Y http://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=A3LSMG800Y&id=632935
SM-G800X     no fcc id yet
SM-G800R4    no fcc id yet

Bluetooth certification info
SM-G800A
https://www.bluetooth.org/tpg/QLI_viewQDL.cfm?qid=22971

SM-G800F, SM-G800M, SM-G800Y, , SM-G800X
https://www.bluetooth.org/tpg/QLI_viewQDL.cfm?qid=22712

SM-G800H, SM-G800H/DS
https://www.bluetooth.org/tpg/QLI_viewQDL.cfm?qid=22971

No Bluetooth certification for SM-G800R4

Wi-Fi certification
SM-G800A
http://www.wi-fi.org/certified-products-results?cid=SM-G800A
SM-G800F
http://www.wi-fi.org/certified-products-results?cid=SM-G800H
SM-G800H,SM-G800H/DS
http://www.wi-fi.org/certified-products-results?cid=SM-G800H

Other models not searched.

LTE certification
SM-G800F
http://www.globalcertificationforum.org/certification/lte/lte-devices/4496.html?view=lte
No other models found on globalcertificationforum.org.

Graphics benchmarks
SM-G800 (unknown variant, assumed to be SM-G800F) (Exynos CPU + Mali GPU)
https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx30&os=Android&api=gl&D=Samsung+SM-G800+Galaxy+S5+Mini&testgroup=info

SM-G800H (Snapdragon CPU + Adreno GPU)
https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx30&os=Android&api=gl&D=Samsung+SM-G800H+Galaxy+S5+Mini&testgroup=info

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by Paul Kocialkowski over 9 years ago

Seems to be a a good candidate.

Please read the requirements for a new target. I don't see CyanogenMod support here, which is a show-stopper.
In addition, the modem appears to be in the SoC, which is a major flaw.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by E3V3A XDA over 9 years ago

Hi Paul, what do you mean with "I don't see CyanogenMod support here" ?
and what is "flawed" with having modem in SoC, apart from not being
able to easily distinguish the AP/CP connections? If the modem
is indeed a XMM 7160, I don't see any problem.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by Paul Kocialkowski over 9 years ago

Hi Paul, what do you mean with "I don't see CyanogenMod support here" ?

CyanogenMod support is required to port Replicant to the device, unless you want to do it from the ground up, which is more time consuming and potentially harder.

what is "flawed" with having modem in SoC, apart from not being able to easily distinguish the AP/CP connections?

Exactly that. Having the modem in the SoC makes it even more likely that it'll be able to spy on the RAM, storage, GPS, etc, since everything is connected to the same chip. We try to avoid such all-in-one SoCs.
It's not a fatal flaw to port Replicant to the device, but it won't make a good candidate for privacy/security.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by Daniel Kulesz over 9 years ago

Does it make sense to distinguish whether the modem is on a separate chip or on the same chip but "only" logically separated? As long as the modem is not part of the SoC and (i.e. like in this case) comes from a different vendor, this seems to be much better isolation than in one of the "all-in-one-SoCs". It would be great if there would be a way to find out what the modem can access instead of "wild guessing" from looking at the specs or the layout of the board. Any ideas for developing a testbed for this?

Regarding the G800F, unfortunately, lack of Cyanogenmod-Support is still the case. Did one of you spot a first port of CM for this device? A quick research on the web provided me with no results and I still wonder why nobody seems to be targeting this quite popular device for a CM port.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by P. Kasita over 9 years ago

All the models above now have been shown to be based on a SoC with built-in modem. Either a Snapdragon SoC or Exynos "ModAP". The latest models released in September of 2014 happened to be LTE-A models with 150 Mbps download speeds. Intel XMM 7160 is not capable of that, official specs cite only 100 Mbps. So, no luck with this family of devices.

RE: Samsung Galaxy S5 mini: Samsung Exynos SoC, Intel modem. - Added by Paul Kocialkowski over 9 years ago

Does it make sense to distinguish whether the modem is on a separate chip or on the same chip but "only" logically separated? As long as the modem is not part of the SoC and (i.e. like in this case) comes from a different vendor, this seems to be much better isolation than in one of the "all-in-one-SoCs".

As usual, that's just a guess. If you trust it is better, then good for you.

It would be great if there would be a way to find out what the modem can access instead of "wild guessing" from looking at the specs or the layout of the board. Any ideas for developing a testbed for this?

Well, we cannot trust the schematics to match the actual board (even if those were released by Samsung). Only source code can tell for sure whether some component is shared between the AP and SoC, in which case it is bad. In addition, when schematics indicate it is bad, we like to believe that's true. So we usually say that we're not sure about good isolation but can know for sure about bad isolation.

Tracing the PCB seems like too much of an effort to be a real possibility.

    (1-11/11)