Spflashtool.com

[Queila Neubecker]

Youcan download the executable from the spflashtools.com. WARNING: The site is not officially managed by MediaTek, many other sites exist offering the same download (e.g. spflashtool.com), but none seems to be the official one.

The normal workflow with SP Flash Tool is to initiate the required operation (Download or Readback) with the USB cable disconnected. Then you will connect the USB port and SP Flash Tool will detect the device, performing the operation.

To perform upload (flashing) and readback (backup) of partitions using SP Flash Tool, you need a scatter file specifically written for your device. See this paragrah for more info: Android paritions - The scatter file.

It seems that the program runs over the ADB (Android Debug Bridge), so it requires that the phone is started and running the operating system, and that it has the USB debugging enabled. Using the ADB bridge, it should do not require the MTK VCOM drivers, but it requires the ADB Windows Drivers. It seems also that MTK Droid Tool requires root access on the phone to achieve all its functions.

It seems that the preferred tool to read/write firmware on moderm smartphones is the Miracle Box. It is a combination of hardware and software, but it seems that there is also a software-only solution, at least accordingly to this post: Miracle Box / Thunder setup latest versions and drivers. Look at this post to get an idea on how to backup a firmware using the Miracle Box: How to use Miracle Box to backup Mediatek (MTK) firmware.

Another approach to obtain the scatter file for your Android device, is to search the internet for a stock ROM or a custom ROM for your exact model. These ROMs are generally shared as archives containing the various images files and the scatter file, usable to flash the images back to the phone (using SP Flash Tool). However, you should be very careful before using a scatter file to flash your device; you should check at least that the output of cat /proc/partitions to verify that starting address and size does match. Read this page: Inspecting partitions on the command line.

Download is the operation of flashing the memory of the device with the content of a file that you have on the PC. You must provide the scatter file and the program looks in the same directory for all the image files it refers.

You may experience a problem on GNU/Linux: attempting a Download or Readback operation, you see the a red bar on the bottom of the screen, but the operation does not actually start. The blue progress bar does not start at all, or it hangs after a few seconds. On the console where you started the program you can read the following messages:

Check if you have the modemmanager package installed; in that case it may be interfering with the /dev/ttyACM0 device, preventing SP Flash Tool to operate correctly. The interfering process is spawned by D-Bus, so the quickest fix is to remove the package alltogether. On a Debian distribution you can just execute:

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