EM7455 Control Center is a software for monitoring and configuring Sierra Wireless EM7455 / MC7455 4G device installed in many modern laptops and tablets. It works with generic Sierra Wireless EM7455, MC7455, Lenovo branded EM7455, Dell branded DW5811e devices.

It provides functions absent in standard Windows settings, such as:

• Signal strength indication in bars and in dBm
• Signal quality indication for 3G and LTE in bars and in dBm
• Cellular radio power off and on to save battery
• Connect and disconnect from the Internet
• Access technology indication (LTE, 3G, 2G)
• Frequency band indication
• Access technology and frequency bands selection
• Current temperature and voltage
• Reboot device
• …and more

EM7345 Control Center is a software for monitoring and configuring Sierra Wireless EM7345 4G device installed in many Lenovo laptops and tablets.

It provides functions absent in standard Windows settings, such as:

• Signal strength indication in bars and in dBm
• Signal quality indication for 3G and LTE in bars and in dBm
• Cellular radio power off and on to save battery
• Connect and disconnect from the Internet
• Access technology indication (LTE, 3G, 2G)
• Frequency band indication
• Access technology and frequency bands selection
• Reboot device
• …and more

Lenovo and other manufacturers, namely Dell are starting to use the newest Quallcomm 9×30 based cellular modems. The only modem manufacturer so far is Sierra Wireless and the model is XX7455, where XX is the form factor code. We’ll be using an m.2 modem, so our model number is EM7455. For the older generation laptops that only have a mini-PCI slot there’s the MC7455 model. Currently, the EM7455 is available as Sierra Wireless generic version (the model is EM7455), Lenovo version (the model is EM7455 as well), and Dell version (the model is DW5811e). All three versions are the same hardware, the only difference is the firmware and there are no restrictions for cross-flashing too.

Various EM7455 devices coming from different brands and sale channels are often configured differently. They come with different firmware versions installed, different settings, and some ports can be switched on or off. Sometimes COM ports are off when you get the device, but it is useful to have a COM port enabled in order to do extended diagnostics and alter some settings that are normally not possible.

So what do you need to enable the COM ports for your EM7455?

The instructions below are for Windows users. If you can easily find your way in Linux, just skip it and note that you only basically need to run ./swi_setusbcomp.pl –-usbcomp=8 to enable COM ports. Follow this link for more info: https://www.mork.no/~bjorn/MC7455-fix-orig.txt

In one of my previous posts I’ve showed that Sierra Wireless EM7345 firmware contained spyware called Carrier IQ that made a lot of controversy when it was first discovered in some Android phones.

Recently updated driver package for EM7345 on Lenovo website contains the new firmware version FIH7160_V1.2_WW_01.1612.00. I’ve taken my time and checked it out.

The first thing I’ve noticed about this version of firmware is that it doesn’t contain Carrier IQ modules no more. For example, the previous firmware version FIH7160_V1.2_WW_01.1548.00 contained the following strings: metrics_client_ciq.lib. That means the Carrier IQ module was compiled into firmware.