How To: Find a proper firmware variant for the HTC device

This guide is related to the previously published article - How To: Flash firmware package on the HTC device. The goal of this guide is to expose the problem of a matching firmware version for the particular HTC device. Please read it carefully and in case of any questions leave a proper comment in the comments section at the end of this article.

Every firmware.zip has 2 main attributes: modelid (MID) and cidnum (CID).

• MID contains a codename of your device. For example the "0P6B1000" is the international version of the HTC One M8, while the "0P6B13000" is the T-Mobile U.S. version of the HTC One M8.
• CID is the carrier software codename. For example the "HTC__J15" code represents the unbranded international version of the HTC One M8, while the "T-MOB010" code represents the T-Mobile U.S. software. Different CID numbers are usually used for mobile operators to include different regional settings, languages or to include some extra software (Wi-Fi Calling, Visual Voice Mail etc.).

Both MID and CID can be found in the android-info.txt inside each firmware.zip. This is how android-info.txt looks like (as an example I used firmware.zip from the international version of the HTC One M8):

Once you know the version of the firmware you have, you need to check if your device can be safely flashed with that particular firmware.zip. To check that:

1. Download this mini-sdk package and extract it to c:\mini-sdk
2. Connect your device to the PC
3. Boot your device in fastboot mode (vol down + power ===> fastboot)
4. Open a command prompt on the PC (cmd.exe), type and confirm each command with ENTER:
5. cd /d c:\mini-sdk
6. fastboot getvar all

This is an example output from the international version of the HTC One M8:

What you are looking for is the "modelid" and "cidnum".

• If your device is S-ON then both modelid and cidnum must match.
• If your device is S-OFF then modelid is critical to match, but cidnum can be changed either by changing CID of your device or by editing android-info.txt.
• Edited firmware.zip can't be flashed on the S-ON device.
• If your device is S-ON then you can't downgrade your current firmware version.

If both CID and MID numbers match you can safely flash the firmware.zip package - How To: Flash firmware package on the HTC device.

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