Wow it has been a very long time since my last post. Ophthalmology residency has kept me be quite busy.
Anyways to the matter at hand, when people take a peak at my Droid one of the first things that everyone notices and asks me is how I replaced the Verizon Banner on the lock out screen and the drop down menu with my name. It’s not very difficult, so after repeated badgering, I finally agreed to post it online.
– This works on Motorola Droid. I see no reason it should not work on any other Verizon Android devise, but it is untested.
– Sprint users: Follow the same directions, but edit res\values\strings.xml and look for ‘zz_roamingText1’
– You can do this before flashing a ROM, I do this between Pete’s Bugless Beauty builds
1) You will need root access. Here is a link to one of the numerous methods of obtaining root.
2) Perform a Nandroid backup (just incase anything goes wrong)
3) Find and copy system/framework/framework-res.apk
– You can use Astro, Root Explorer, or pull from your nandroid backup
4) Associate the .apk extension with WinRar
5) Open the apk and navigate to res/xml/eri.xml
– Remove this file from the apk
6) Open eri.xml with a hex editor
– I recommend HxD (freeware)
7) Find “64…Verizon Wireless…” (Gnex user it appears as …Verizon Wireless…64)
– You can edit ‘Verizon Wireless’ to any 16 characters. If you do not need all 16, use spaces. For example ‘ DHO’ (13 spaces 3 characters)
– I recommend against shortening/lengthening the string as it will change the size of the file, and may result in unexpected errors.
– HxD will warn you if you are changing the file size.
8 ) Take your modified eri.xml and place it back into your framework-res.apk res/xml/eri.xml
– No need for re-signing the apk (remember no change in file size)
9) Place on SD card
10) Open your preferred terminal, during this step one or two programs may force close, it’s okay
su
sys -rw
busybox cp /sdcard/framework-res.apk /system/framework
sys -r0
sync
reboot
11) On reboot you will notice your accounts and wallpaper were lost. I have tried some clever work arounds, but this seems an inevitable consequence of editing the framework. So log back into your google/facebook/whatever account, fix your wallpaper, and done.
– You can use Titanium Backup to restore your system preferences
If anything goes wrong, use Nandroid to restore.
Tried this the eri.xml is confirmed changed with a different 16 character banner text but my phone still shows verizon wireless. Is it possible that on LTE phones it’s getting the text from the sim card?
As different flavors of android pop up there have been several different locations. In general AOSP builds it’s located in the eri file.
On some Samsung phone it is located in the xml files of SettingsProvider.apk.
In some custom ROMs, such as AOKP. It can be changed via the settings menu and stored in data/data/com.android.provider.settings/database/settings.db (can be edited with sqlitespy.exe).
There’s a few other tricks, if you tell me your phone and OS version I might be able to help more.