Status of Japanese Feature Phone Preservation
This page is intended to be a summary of current status and breakthroughs in feature phone game preservation. Dumpable Model List.
For a detailed explanation of how dump was made possible, please see the article below.:
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The State of Japanese Feature Phone Preservation in 2023 |
This page is out of date and needs updates!!
DoCoMo FOMA (Some Softbank)[edit | edit source]
NEC[edit | edit source]
NEC devices enter a testing mode when plugged into a PC using a debug cable (a FOMA cable with pins 8, 9, and 10 bridged together). This cable also works with Panasonic phones. Information on creating a debug cable can be found here.
Panasonic[edit | edit source]
For Panasonic phones, the debug cable triggers Panasonic IPL mode. This cable also works with NEC phones.
Some Panasonic phones have also had their firmware extracted by unsoldering the eMMC and analyzing it with a chip programmer.
LG[edit | edit source]
LG DoCoMo mobile phones had their firmware dumped at least 10 years ago, though most of these files have been lost. The firmware dumping process has not been replicated since, but should be possible to figure out with some research.
Firmware Dumped Phone Models[edit | edit source]
Motorola[edit | edit source]
The Motorola M702iG and M702iS are based upon the Motorola Razr that was released internationally. Due to the availability of information about these phones, their firmware has successfully been accessed through USB. It's possible to browse the entire file system on these phones using a RMCDA General Program, M702iS/M702iG USB Drivers, and P2K Commander.
Sharp[edit | edit source]
Sharp mobile phones have not yet been dumped, but there have been specific efforts towards breaking open the Sharp SH-10C, detailed below.
As of August 2024, it has been dumped using an exploit that is only applicable to models with SH-Mobile G2-4 CPU. (Not all)
Sharp SH-10C[edit | edit source]
The Sharp SH-10C is a DoCoMo phone released in 2011. Attempts have been made to read the NAND chip on this phone, in part because its schematics were made public by the FCC. Currently, there are no chip programmers that support its NAND chip (Toshiba TY00D0021211KC) by default, and attempts at using a chip programmer have not reached past the bootloader. For more information, we recommend reading the report below.
- Report on Extraction of Data from DoCoMo Sharp SH-10C Mobile Phone by Kraze
- Sharp SH-10C on the Legacy Portable Computer Wiki
FOMA Phone' SD Card Decryption (All Phone Models)[edit | edit source]
General Overview for cracking CPRM on SD cards
- S-box: universal and never changes. /bin/cat/ already found one, so we're set.
- Device key: comes from a phone and is used to unlock media and media unique keys. This has now been bruteforced. It's also universal.
- Media key: comes from SD card, found with device key.
- Media unique key: media key + media id (public).
- Bind ID: Combined with media unique key, it decrypts all the data. Finding this is the current.
Related Repos[edit | edit source]
- MKB Bruteforce repo on GitLab
- CPRMTool repo on GitLab
Game-Specific Preservation Projects[edit | edit source]
Appli Archives for PlayStation Mobile[edit | edit source]
The Appli Archives are a series of feature phone re-releases. The PlayStation Mobile games contain DoJa / Star files for each game, likely from original source. Game files and assets are drawn from a localhost server that runs within the PlayStation Mobile application. Because of use of localhost, these games cannot run directly in the DoJa SDK. However, some files have been made to run by hosting files on a localhost server on PC.
PlayStation Mobile game packages use PSSE encryption, which requires a game's original license key in order to perform decryption. Because of this, many of the Appli Archive files have not been decrypted, and their DoJa games have remained inaccessible.
Currently Accessible Games[edit | edit source]
Any game not on this list lacks a publicly known license key in order to be decrypted.
| Appli Archive Game | Games Included | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| アプリアーカイブス ジャレコ シティコネクション
Appli Archives: Jaleco City Connection |
2014.12.17 | |
| アプリアーカイブス 日本一ソフトウェア デュオローグ
Appli Archives: Nippon Ichi Software Duologue |
2014.12.17 | |
| アプリアーカイブス ジャレコ モモコ1200%
Appli Archives: Jaleco Momoko 1200% |
|
2014.12.24 |
| アプリアーカイブス 日本一ソフトウェア ミニゲームパック1
Appli Archives: Nippon Ichi Software Mini Game Pack 1 |
|
2015.01.14 |
| アプリアーカイブス ジャレコ アーガス＆フィールドコンバット
Appli Archives: Jaleco Argus & Field Combat |
2015.01.28 | |
| アプリアーカイブス ジー・モード バーガータイム
Appli Archives G-MODE Burger Time |
2015.03.11 | |
| アプリアーカイブス 日本一ソフトウェア ミニゲームパック2
Appli Archives Nippon Ichi Software Mini Game Pack 2 |
|
2015.04.28 |
| アプリアーカイブス チームライズ HumanFly
Appli Archives Team Rise HumanFly |
|
2015.05.27 |
Mobile Game Deployer (MGD) Games[edit | edit source]
Mobile Game Deployer was a software that could easily convert i-mode applis into Android, iOS, and Windows Phone programs. A number of prominent feature phone game publishers used this tool to bring their games to the smartphone generation.
The game Flyhight Cloudia was successfully extracted from an Android APK in a fully playable version.
So far, other games have not been converted due to the difficulty in finding original application files for early smartphone games. Not only are these games approximately 10 years old, but they were often distributed in provider-specific mobile game portals, rather than common application stores such as Google Play and the App Store.
What Remains to Be Done[edit | edit source]
- While sideloading is now possible on a small amout of models, there is still no way to play games that require SD card data.
If any corrections are needed to this page, please feel free to add them or to reach out to LNRC.
Preservation Info & Tools |
Communities |
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