• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root [Hack] Replace Motorola boot logo with your own image

daikonv

Newbie
Nov 6, 2009
46
13
This is to change the motorola logo that you see when you boot your phone to a custom image. This is separate from the boot animation seen afterwards.

Tools/files you will need:
1) RSD Lite
2) droid sbf
3) SBFCodec
4) Photoshop (or paint, or whatever drawing program)
5) Hex editor (frhed is free and very easy to use)
NOTE: I do not use sbf-recalc because it complains about needing version 1.3, so I use SBFCodec instead.

Steps:
1) Run SBFCodec and open up the sbf file. This will extract all the smg files and header files.
2) Using photoshop, create an image that is 480 pixels wide and 182 pixels tall. Each color should be assigned 8 bits (1 byte), or in paint, just make a 24 bit bmp file. Mirror the image, making the left become the right, and the right becoming the left. Save as a bmp file (photoshop method).
3) Using a hex editor, open up your image and erase the first 54 bytes of data. (and possibly the last 2 bytes of data if you used photoshop. the number of bytes remaining should be exactly 262,080) With the remaining data, reverse the bytes. (using frhed, the option is in the edit menu->Reverse bytes)
4) Using a hex editor, open up the CG42.smg file created in step 1 and erase all data except the last 64 bytes of data (these 64 bytes of data should be FF's in the file). Then paste in the remaining data from step 3 to the beginning of the file and save. Your final file should be exactly 262,144 bytes large.
5) Go back to the SBFCodec window and save (this creates the sbf) the sbf file and name it whatever you want. i.e. boot.sbf
6) Using RSD Lite, flash this sbf to your phone. It may take 5-10 minutes for the flashing to complete. (after the 10 minutes, it might say "failed", just click on the show device button once that happens and you'll have succeeded)

You now have a stock phone with a custom boot image. Go ahead and root your phone and stuff. Sorry for the difficult instructions, this was the only approach I could think of to edit the boot logo.

youtube video came out looking like its fast forwarded. :):shrug::)
YouTube - Custom Boot Logo for Droid


Donations appreciated but not necessary :)



some of the necessary files can be found at the 'other' development forum.
 
I'm a noob, and was hoping for some info, prior to making the change. I just got done putting my phone back to 2.01, rooting my phone, and installing Bugless Beast 1.0 (which put my Firmmware back to 2.1). I changed my animation, got all my apps back, set all their settings up, installed GDE, and now want to attempt changing the Boot Logo.

In your instructions, it says to edit the sbf file, in SBFCodec. Which sbf file am I editing? Is it the 2.0 sbf I used to revert back, the Bugless Beast one, or some other one?

Since I cannot root at 2.1, will my reverting back to 2.0 override any logo change? What about when I re-install Bugless Beast?

Will Titanium Backup restore ALL of my settings/preferences? Do I need to do a Nandroid restore as well?

Is there a method using Terminal Emulator, like changing the animation, instead? You'de think that it was just a matter of changing the embedded file.

If someone could give me instructions, from my current starting point, I would be greatly appreciative !!!
 
Upvote 0
I'm a noob, and was hoping for some info, prior to making the change. I just got done putting my phone back to 2.01, rooting my phone, and installing Bugless Beast 1.0 (which put my Firmmware back to 2.1). I changed my animation, got all my apps back, set all their settings up, installed GDE, and now want to attempt changing the Boot Logo.

In your instructions, it says to edit the sbf file, in SBFCodec. Which sbf file am I editing? Is it the 2.0 sbf I used to revert back, the Bugless Beast one, or some other one?

Since I cannot root at 2.1, will my reverting back to 2.0 override any logo change? What about when I re-install Bugless Beast?

Will Titanium Backup restore ALL of my settings/preferences? Do I need to do a Nandroid restore as well?

Is there a method using Terminal Emulator, like changing the animation, instead? You'de think that it was just a matter of changing the embedded file.

If someone could give me instructions, from my current starting point, I would be greatly appreciative !!!


You have to grab one of the 2.0.1 SBF files that are floating around. Alldroid used to be a great place to grab it, but they are done. Try searching the "Now you can root without fear..." thread. Probably a link in there.

That is the SBF you need to edit and flash with.

Do a FULL nandroid backup of what you currently have.


Step 1) Flash your newly edited sbf (Directions found in stickies)

Step 2) Reroot (Directions found in stickies)

Step 3) Perform nandroid/spr recovery of your current ROM. (Directions found in stickies)
 
  • Like
Reactions: James101
Upvote 0
Making my pic 480 x 182 stretches badly and makes it look horrible. Is the a way around this. It started at 284 x 321.

Go to Image > Image Size, make sure the constrain proportions box is checked, and change the pixel height to 182.

Then go to Image > Canvas Size and make the overall canvas 480 x 182. Use the paint bucket tool to fill in the new white areas with black. Now you should be ready to save and move on to the next step.

It might take some tweaking to get an image that looks good. This will not take up the whole screen but just a small area in the middle of the screen so you want your image to be as close to the edges of the canvas as possible so it doesn't end up looking too tiny when you boot your phone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: istolvampire
Upvote 0
publicanimal, you lost me.lol Sorry but my photoshop skills suck. I did the first two steps and the pic comes out proportionate but now it is all the way left in the canvas sized box with a lot of white to the right. Nowhere near both edges so I guess it will come out to tiny or tiny and way left?

edit: I got the pic to the middle but still not edge to edge because that will stretch the pic. Still not sure if it is right. I really should stop. I have no idea what i am doing.lol

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I hate photoshop.lol I am much better with Bryce.lol
 
Upvote 0
publicanimal, you lost me.lol Sorry but my photoshop skills suck. I did the first two steps and the pic comes out proportionate but now it is all the way left in the canvas sized box with a lot of white to the right. Nowhere near both edges so I guess it will come out to tiny or tiny and way left?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I hate photoshop.lol

You screwed up the second step. I'm not sure what version of photoshop you're running but when I go to edit canvas size there is an "anchor" option towards the bottom that shows where you are placing the new canvas relative to the current image. You want the current image to be anchored in the center, not to the left or right.

As far as it being tiny I am just pointing out that the area on the screen that is the boot image takes up maybe the center 1/5 of the screen. So it's not going to be very big. Think about how small the M logo is compared to the rest of the screen... that's about the size you are working with height wise. With the width you have the entire width of the screen.

When I did this the first time I had to go back and do it again to make the image appear larger when I boot up. I am just telling you to make the image as large (tall) as possible within the canvas size you are working with so you don't have to go back and do it again.

This might sound confusing but once you do it you'll understand what I mean.
 
  • Like
Reactions: istolvampire
Upvote 0
I'm not sure, but my guess is that yes, you need to blacken the background. I spent a long time blackening in the area around the image I wanted to use when I did this. The nice thing is once this is done it is permanent, you can flash all the ROMs in the world and your custom boot logo will remain.

EDIT: Of course if you flash a stock SBF it would replace your boot logo with the "M" logo. But no ROM flashing or system updates will affect it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: istolvampire
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones