Okay, I have been able to get ADB access to the I-Mobile i858; but I cannot get root. There is an SU program and Busybox pre-installed on this device. I tried changing the permissions of SU to 4755 and 6755 without success. It looked like it was trying but something is interfering with root. Maybe if we work together we can figure this out. I even modified a flash image to set the permissions when it flashed the new image. That still did not give me root.

Here is how you get ADB to connect. It is kind of a pain but at least now we can talk to the device.

1. Install the “Android Terminal Emulator” by Jack Palevich from the Android Market to your device.

2. Download the Android ADB device drivers from this link and un-rar them.
http://www.generalmobile.com/support/dstl1/DSTL1_USB_Driver.rar

3. Open Device Manager on your computer.

4. Make sure debugging is turned off on your device in Settings>Applications>Devices.

5. Open the Terminal Emulator you downloaded in step 1 and type in the following command “setprop persist.service.adb.enable 1”.

6. Go back to Settings>Applications>Development on your device and turn USB Debugging on. Click OK when prompted to confirm.

7. Plug the USB cable into your i858 and then your computer’s USB port. In my tests using a reliable hub is okay.

8. You will see a device under Universal Serial Bus Controllers that says either “USB Mass Storage Device” or “USB Composite Device.” Watch that section in Device Manager to see which one is the new one when you plugged in your device.

8. Uninstall the Mass Storage or Composite Device that was added to Device Manager when you plugged in your computer. You do this by right-clicking it and selecting “Uninstall”.

9. On Device Manager Click the Actions pull down menu and click “Scan for hardware changes”.

10. If you are lucky an unknown Android Device will no be listed in the Device Manager as not working due to no drivers installed. Go to properties of this device and update drivers browsing to the folder when you unzipped the drivers downloaded in step 2 above. The Android ADB drivers will now install.

11. If that doesn’t work keep uninstalling the Mass Storage or Composite Device and rescan until the Android Device appears in Device Manager.

12. If you unplug it you will have to go back to step 4.

13. If you reboot or turn off your device you will have go to back to step 4.

14. Unfortunately, I have to do this ritual every time I want to connect to the device by ADB; but heck it sure beats having no ADB access at all.

Now that you guys have ADB access let’s rock this device, root it and have some fun. I spent all day trying to root it without success. I did manage to make the phone do some weird things and reboot a couple of times. I was changing permissions for the pre-installed “su” program in “/system/bin” but obviously there is something else that needs to be done to root this device. At least we are one or two steps closer now.