Hebrew support for the Amazfit watch

UPDATE:
New watchs comes with a locked bootloader.
If you are using CN version above 1.2.13e or abobe US 1.3.2b – your bootloader is locked.
You won’t be able to use this turorial.

If your bootloader is not locked, you might want to check the PACEfied rom:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch/other-smartwatches/rom-pacefied-amazfit-huami-amazfit-t3539431

This rom includes the Hebrew fonts and much more.
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After I found out I’m not gonna get my Pebble Time 2, I searched for an alternative.

I heard about the Amazfit Pace watch, which is manufactured by Huami.
Amazfit Pace is an affordable GPS running watch with heart rate tracking,
based on Android 5.1 (not Android Wear) with Huami’s interface.

There are two versions for this watch, one is Chinese (A1602) for the Asian market,
and on for the global market (A1612, allso called Pace).

The CN version get updates every Friday and it’s firmware is more advanced from the global version.
(The global version did not get any update yet)

I knew there is no Hebrew support for the CN version, but I hoped the global version does,
so I bought the Amazfit Pace from amazfit.com (sold at $99 with promo code ‘NOTFITBIT’ that time).

Bad news – no Hebrew support 🙁

I don’t have much experience with Android development, but the first fix I thought of is change
the watch default font to a bilingual font.
The watch’s default font is Roboto. I did a little search for a bilingual font and decided to use Heboo.

Next step is to change all the Roboto font style with the matching ones of Heeboo.. but where?

The fonts in Android system are stored in the folder ‘system/fonts’, but to make changes
in this folder you must have a root access.
Luckily, the day I received my watch, xda user ‘Neuer_User’ found a way to
convert the Chinese version to the Global version, and for that he made a recovery with a root access.

I booted this recovery with fastboot, and now I have root access from adb 🙂
Now.. the ‘system’ folder is missing! After a little googling I figured out I need to mount it,
but I did not know it’s path. More googling… and the command is:

ls -l /dev/block/platform/jzmmc_v1.2.0/by-name

Output:

lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 boot -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 cache -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p6
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 data -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p8
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 misc -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p5
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 pretest -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p3
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 recovery -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 reserved -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p4
lrwxrwxrwx root     root              2017-01-21 12:31 system -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p7

I need the ‘system’ folder then I need to mount it with the command:

mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p7 /system

Now I can replace all the Roboto with Heboo and that’s what I did. And it worked!
But it also pushed out from the display some texts:

More readings and I found there is a file called ‘fonts.xml’ in the folder ‘etc’ that contains the system fonts
and it has a fallback font for Hebrew!
There are more languages in this file, you can find it here:
https://github.com/itaysp/AmazfitPace/blob/master/fonts.xml

The Hebrew fallback fonts are ‘NotoSansHebrew-Bold.ttf’ and ‘NotoSansHebrew-Regular.ttf’.
You can find the fonts here: https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-hebr
Very stange that Huami did not include them in the watch..

So now the fix is simple! just push those two fonts to the ‘system/fonts’ folder and we have Hebrew support!
The only problem now is when the screen is locked, the notifications still can’t be displayed.
When I replaced the fonts with Heboo, I did see Hebrew even the screen was locked, but it was revered.

So here is a quick guide for pushing the Hebrew fonts:
( *** I’M NOT TAKING ANY RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU DAMAGE YOUR WATCH ***)

### Files and tools needed:
### adb, fastboot and drivers. can be found here: 
### https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2588979
###
### Neur_User Amazfit-mod-recovery.img from here:
### https://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch/other-smartwatches/tutorial-convert-xiaomi-huami-amazfit-t3532508
###
### 'fonts' folder with the fonts 'NotoSansHebrew-Bold.ttf' and 'NotoSansHebrew-Regular.ttf' 
### https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-hebr
###

# Create a folder with the file Amazfit-mod-recovery.img and the 'fonts'
# folder with the fonts and navigate there from command line.

# connect your watch to your PC
adb devices
# this should list your watch, otherwise something is wrong

# now reboot into bootloader
adb shell reboot bootloader

# when you see the fastboot logo, check that you can access fastboot
fastboot devices

# you should see your device listed, otherwise your fastboot installation is not correct on your PC
# then boot into the temporary recovery
fastboot boot Amazfit-mod-recovery.img

# when you see a triangle and/or the text "No command" on the watch, you are in recovery and can enter adb

# mount the /system partition
adb shell mount -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p7 /system

# overwrite the old fonts
adb push fonts /system/fonts/

# restart the phone
adb shell reboot

Next hack was to start translating apps to Hebrew.. but this is still unstable.

Update 27/07/2017
This watch let me down.
After about 3 months of use, the battery died..
The watch  was sitting on my desk useless until now: