Database Users

My journey to the unconscious brick of the Flipout.

Here's how I bricked my phone, for the ones who're interested:
I think it's a pretty funny story, so keep reading if you're searching for some entertaining story.
So I Bought a flipout because I wanted a small phone. I was pretty satisfied by the phone and it's performance, althought it's kinda an effeminate phone. Anyways, before I knew it (When I booted up the phone for the first time) I was disgusted by Orange's laggy intro: it was supposed to be an explosion followed by an implosion which created the Orange logo (sort of XBOX style). The reality was less: a very laggy 2 or 3 fps intro. Bravo Orange if you were actually aiming for this rate.
When I boot up the phone it shows the menu just like any other phone, but it came with another disgusting fact: MotoBlur. Lag, lag and lag. There it was, in all it's glory:
- It's laggy (not as much as Orange's intro...)
- Uses default services (calendar, gallery) with some unfinished 3D features (that caused needless lag)
- "Happenings" which connects your twitter, facebook and other things.
Although I have to say, I did like the lil tab that shows above and tells you on which screen you were. It looks kinda like the following (excuse me my drawing skills):
.: : . |^| . : :.
resp. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Anyways, I had to get rid of this "MotoBlur" and the first thing I had to do was to root my device. I remember the days with the G1 which were a hassle to just root your phone, so I was hesitating if I really wanted to go through all this again...
But after a lil search, I found that nowadays we have superoneclick, androot, z4root, etc... etc... So I tried one of these "new" apk's which gave me a small error, so then I tried z4root which was quite easy, fast and simple. I was in. Things were going my way, hell, I even found a brand-new-looking 4GB microSD on my work. Just out of nowhere there it was, very small, laying down on the ground waiting for me to get picked up.
What goes up, must go down...
So there I was with my first steps trying to remove MotoBlur, and although I knew there were tut's about how to remove Orange and Blur, I just couldnt wait. I made backups of my system apk's with Titanium which was quite easy, and it was that precise moment when I was like "GET!", i'm sick of this MotoBlur, let's remove these "things". They are right in front of me, just get rid of them... And while continuously hitting the "remove" button I was daydreaming of a simple usefull handy phone. Bam, bam, bam, I deleted one app after the other, even Google Talk didn't had a chance. Everything was going smooth, bye Blur.Calendar.apk, bye odex, bye Blur.gallery.apk, bye Blur.happenings.apk,... ... ... about 20 apk's later, I was quite satisfied.
But you know how it goes when you just delete stuff without greater knowledge. You BRICK your phone. But people, this was just the start. I had some force close after this one man operation, but my phone was smoother. I have to admit, things were comming unexpected. First I couldnt find my gallery (removed). Then I found out I couldnt download anymore from the Android Market because I deleted Blur.calendar.apk which is connected with Calendar.apk which syncs my G-Mail account which is needed before you can download anything from the Market. Hah! Owned.
Backups.
So there I was having these problems, but the phone still works great. I have to admit I silently thought: luckely I made a backup, and was kinda proud I wasn't one of those noobs who just goes forward without a save game, right? Right? Guys...? Anyone...? . ... ...Wrong! The reality was I couldn't even "restore" with Titanium. The backups weren't real backups, but just data-backups which were stored on my sdcard in .tar format. Aaarrgh!
No problem, no problem. There has to be a way to fix this, someone did this stupidity before me. Obviously. Ofcourse. No?
When I was searching about why I couldn't fix my Titanium backups, someone answered to someone else that's because he couldn't sideload the apps. He needs to root his phone in a way so sideloading is enabled. Great! Sideloading it will be then.
Sideloading is def a great way to install .apk's without the market, because I tried a factory reset (hoping that would solve everything) and I couldn't download anymore from the market. I had to sideload ASTRO which was successful with the right ADB drivers - even though I didn't knew what ADB meant I did register on MotoDev's website (so I can download the little bastard).
Easy peasy. Now I'm back on track with ASTRO and an easy install of Flan Gallery (fixed camera) replaced my gallery. We're off to set!
Despite this minor victory I was aware I'm still not were I wanted to be. Factory reset doesn't get me were I want to be and I'm still having issues. But no problem no problem. This time I'll turn my questions to the community, not google. That's eventually why there is a community? That's why we are open source? Yes. Score. Win.
So maybe some knowledgeable people will reply because they can help the ones who are trying to learn. I think I'll start with how to fix the calendar-issue and then I'll try to make a ROM-backup, so I can install a new ROM or whatever. That's probably a better idea then before. Cool, I even got a quick reply by someone who told me to go to this-and-this site, which is better for noobs. Allrighty then...
Trying my own way.
Since things weren't going were I wanted to, I thought now it's time to give it a real last try by searching about this mystery "ADB" and eventually to push some apps into system/app/ so I could fix all this misery. I found what I was searching for, however the tut about how to push apps sounded like someone was holding a gun against the writer's head. It really sounded like he wrote it against his will.
Desperate attempts.
I started today (15 april) around 5pm local time with this whole pushing-thing because I thought I had the knowledge that I needed and even surprised myself by actually successfuly pushing some apk's using a quick and nice XDA how-to, but then things went from worse to worser. I pushed Blur.calendar.apk, Blur.service.apk, Blur.email.apk, Blur, Blur, Blur... Ironically thát what I wanted to remove at the start came voluntary back in my system/app/ of my phone.
That's quite funny especially when I rebooted my phone and I kept getting force close com.motorola.blur.service.main and I couldn't get around this except by using voice-commands (double tap home button). "Find ASTRO" I said. Finding ASTRO... Opening ASTRO... Ingenious! It was quite amazing that this feature actually works without any bugs or misunderstandings. So I started root manager, rebooted the system with r/w settings so I can try a final attempt by trying to remove blur-service.apk from the system/app/ which actually didn't had any impact. Nothing really happened.
The end.
And there I was having these problems, and the phone doesn't work. A friend of me adviced me on Steam-chat to hard-reset the phone. I could care less, but we had a little discussion about what has more effect hard-reset or factory-reset? Btw... Holding down the power button and the camera button...?! The phone doesn't even has a camera button! Hilarious.
I eventually did the hard-reset with another tut and now the phone is... ehm... kinda... pretty... bricked. It just boots up and then gives 1 continously looping force close of the blur service (which I allready had), and another force close when I finish setting up the blur account wizard. At the end of the wizard it just force close and shows the wizard again,... and again... and again...
Mathematical summon:
+1 noob
+1 bricked phone
- $$$
- (a lot of) time
+ frustrations/stress
+1 story
Equals a possitive outcome?

i've not rooted my Flipout as it seems there's not much you can do with a rooted one anyway
but I've done bad flashes before...many times
and i've always been able to rescue those phones by flashing the original rom. just wondering if this might be an option for you..

See if you can flash that device using RSDLite, I can see some tuts in this board that features this, likely that debranding guide. Hold up+power when it's off and boot into flash mode, not camera+power

A brick = a dead phone, no boot, no flicker, nothing. If it acts like a brick it's a brick, otherwise it's just a messed up phone. I'm sure you'll be able to recover yours...
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA Premium App

Moto phone + rsdlite + flipout sbf= fixed phone. Just find those two things and you can restore your phone back to fresh out of the box state again. Promise.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk

Yeap i just did it first try hold "up" button on the keyboard + power for 4 sec then plug usb. in flex options i checked everything and it all went god then

Galaxy Tab IO boot loop - source of issue

I've had to restore my Galaxy Tab 10.1 IO twice in the past six weeks due to the infamous boot loop issue. Each time, the boot loop problem occurred when I had to reboot the tablet after it hung on a video. I saw another thread where someone mentioned essentially the same thing. Could there be some bug in the video player that is linked to this boot loop issue? Both times, the video was playing via the Adobe Flash 11 player. Also, I've read some posts that seem to hint that this issue might be specific to 3.1. I'm wondering if this problem will go away after ICS is available for the Galaxy Tab.
Thoughts?

Thought the Tab 10.1 was 3.2 now, mine is.
Sent from my Galaxy Tab 10.1

jbh00jh said:
Thought the Tab 10.1 was 3.2 now, mine is.
Sent from my Galaxy Tab 10.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm still on 3.1. Did Samsung fix the OTA update? I just checked this morning for a new update and didn't find one. Wasn't sure what the timeline was for the IO version.

I am going to guess that he did not read that you said specifically the Galaxy Tan IO. We do not have 3.2 and IMHO we will not be getting 3.2.
This is a lost device that I have given up hope will ever be updated again - I mean it was free after all. I am not sure what anyone else has done, but I wonder if I just try and install a TouchWiz based update will my device get updates too? I think assuming it will get ICS is a huge leap of faith too BTW.
Anyway, I have had the boot loop of death multiple times after I left it booted up all night. If I turn it off cleanly, it does not seem to happen. I think what is happening is that some file is being left open when you have to hard power down the device by holding the power key and it gets corrupted. So when you try to boot it fails from that point onward. That is what it seems like anyway.
-frank

kaediil said:
I am going to guess that he did not read that you said specifically the Galaxy Tan IO. We do not have 3.2 and IMHO we will not be getting 3.2.
This is a lost device that I have given up hope will ever be updated again - I mean it was free after all. I am not sure what anyone else has done, but I wonder if I just try and install a TouchWiz based update will my device get updates too? I think assuming it will get ICS is a huge leap of faith too BTW.
Anyway, I have had the boot loop of death multiple times after I left it booted up all night. If I turn it off cleanly, it does not seem to happen. I think what is happening is that some file is being left open when you have to hard power down the device by holding the power key and it gets corrupted. So when you try to boot it fails from that point onward. That is what it seems like anyway.
-frank
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm still hoping for some sort of update, even if it's not OTA. Hopefully someone will create an ICS image for the Galaxy Tab IO. I figured that there are 6K+ of those floating around in the hands of users who would be more inclined than your typical tablet user to install a manual update.
The first time I ran into a boot loop, I did have to do a hard power cycle, but the second time, I shut it down normally and restarted it again. I was really surprised to see the boot loop problem again.

SOLVED: Newly purchased Iconia - won't update

I just purchased this Iconia on clearance. I brought it home, went through set up everything went fine and I love it.
Then the update thing popped up, I was like "cool" and said OK download. I waited and nothing seemed to happen.
I clicked on the third button over on the bottom (not sure what it's called) and checked what it was doing. It was not downloading. So either I get a bar with downloading and 0% out of 100% or it just dissapears when I say OK download.
It's not a deal breaker. Just annoying. Thanks.
Android version 3.1
Kernel 2.3.36.3
Build number Acer_A500_4.010.13_COM_GEN2

This may sound silly, but have you tried a full shut down, bringing it back up and trying again?

If it refuses to update then you could always root the thing, install clockworkmod and manually install an update from SDHC. That atleast works.

please check the fallowing .
Since you say that you bought the tablet on clearance..
Was it new in box and plastic wrap..
was this tablet a return. IF This is the case .. browse the app folder .. LOOK for programs like Acer Recovery Installer... Bustbox .IconiaRoot. .
these things will give you indication that the tab is rooted...
download root checker app from the market can also check for this..
if its not been rooted .. try going into settings /privacy and reset the device.. post back if you figure any of the above out. The more information you provide the easier it will be to help you get to 3.2.1 latest android system
Good Luck

It was a floor demo model, reset to "new" settings. I don't believe it was rooted since it didn't leave the store. I did powered it down and back up again. I wanted to post this before I reset the device, you said in settings/privacy? I don't mind resetting to like it was right out of the box. Thanks again for the help.

Floor Demo models are very iffy. The brutality they endure in the hands of people walking by, it's troublesome...

I did a reset, still no update love.
I called tech support for Acer and talked to two different levels of support. Basically talked me through stuff I had already tried. Force stopping and clearing cache of updater. Rebooting, turning on Bluetooth (?) Still no luck.
He wants me to let it sit and see for a few hours and gave me a number to use when I call back to set up sending it in to be fixed. He has no idea, never had this happen before.
Oh well so much for wanting an easy android tablet, without the bugginess of my rooted nookcolor. Thanks.

So the good news and the bad. Good news the tablet wasn't the problem, my internet connection was. I guess satellite internet and Acer's update servers don't get along.
I brought it back to Staples and spoke to a easy tech guy and explained what it was doing, he hooked it to their wifi and poof it started downloading. Boy did I feel stupid. So let the big patch download there and went to the free MC Donald's wifi for the following two smaller ones.
So all is good in the tablet world again, even received the case and screen protectors I ordered.
Thank you.

Google Now crashing

Not sure when this started. I unlocked and rooted before I had even started up, and since then just used the Trinity kernel and toolbox, but apart from that completely stock. It was working, but now it force closes when bring up the results. For example if I ask for the weather it will be half way through the reply then back to the home screen. Happens both on typing and voice search.
Only two threads I can find are below, none of them have a fix
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1784694
http://www.xoomforums.com/forum/motorola-xoom-general-discussion/18016-google-now-crashing.html
I have deleted the cache and disabled/enabled google search. Any ideas?

philipwll said:
I'm having this problem as well with my Nexus 7. I'm not sure what's wrong with it. it's just so frustrating. I tried to download the offline language pack but still didnt work. Like u said no other post online available for this solution yet. Wondering if many people get this.
However one thing did happen, my nexus 7 ran out of batt and turned off by itself. I then plugged it into a power source and turned it on. I run an app and suddenly some blur screen like the TV tuned out came on and all i can hear is some buzzing sound. then i plugged off the power and i charged it again and everything was alright apart from the Google Now thing!!!!!
when the batt ran out, all the memories seems to be wiped out... such as time and date.. seems strange when they built such high tech stuff and they do not have memories to keep track of time and date?!
i really hope this gets resolved soon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Another N7 user

New version of Google Search downloaded today seems to fix

device keeps shutting down

No matter what battery i have left, if i leave the tablet with the screen off for any length of time (half hour say), the tablet seems to die?
To start it again, i have to long press the power button and the device reboots.
Does anyone know why? Its only started since recent updates.
My N10 is not rooted, and running 5.0.1.
Any help would be appreciated.

I guess no one else has this issue?
I literally go back ten minutes after using the N10, and it has shut down. Only a long press to reboot will bring it back?
Frustrated

sparks7 said:
I guess no one else has this issue?
I literally go back ten minutes after using the N10, and it has shut down. Only a long press to reboot will bring it back?
Frustrated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just bought/ordered a Nexus 10 so I might as well come in here and start talking to people about it. lol
I haven't used a Nexus 10 before but it should be like any other Nexus device. If your tablet is turning off on it's own, first off, pray it isn't hardware related. Hopefully some hardware inside isn't failing on you. But to make sure it isn't software related, I would say use the factory images and do a fresh install. This will set anything that is out of wack straight. If its software related, it will fix it.

Cheers for the reply.
Do you mean a factory reset, and I will lose all my saved stuff?
I'm not very clued up tbh, and only ever update the Nexus when notified.

sparks7 said:
Cheers for the reply.
Do you mean a factory reset, and I will lose all my saved stuff?
I'm not very clued up tbh, and only ever update the Nexus when notified.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not just a simple factory reset that you do in the settings or recovery. It will wipe your device (Internal storage and all) but it wipes everything including all system files and reflashes everything back to the way you got it out of the box. If you had a software issue and sent it in to get fixed, they would most likely do this. Its safe if you read up on it and know what you are doing. Google gives us the factory images for this reason. Here is an article for instructions. Not used to the Nexus 10 forums so I don't know if they have a dedicated thread for this:
http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/11/flash-factory-image-nexus-device/
I'm sure there are some videos on YouTube explaining in depth on how to do it as well. You might want to watch them and get familiar with the process. It's not that hard once you have everything you need to do it. Just back up everything onto your computer, flash the images and put everything back onto your tablet when done.

Thanks very much. I'll have a read up on that and give it a go.

My tablet used to do that. I've had this tablet since I pre-ordered it on initial release (so it's old!) It would also freeze/reboot at times, especially using any browser, so I naturally thought it was a browser problem. But, it would also occasionally do as you describe, wouldn't turn on unless I did a hard reset - holding power button 15-20 seconds or so. I'm also rooted so I started trying different roms. Finally, I flashed the 10.18 release of AOKP. It's beautiful & runs perfect. I've not had ANY, not a single issue & have been running it since last October. I don't think I'll ever change anything from here on. That's just my personal experience.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 2

Thanks for your help.
I'm going to properly read up on things before I try to resolve it. I don't want to make a mess of it