Database Users

Flashing cutom ROM's

Hi all
A quick question please. I hope nobody minds me posting his here as a new thread. Aplogies if so.
I read somewhere yesterday that custom ROM's are only a "grey area" as opposed to automatically and immediately invalidating your warranty. Is this corrrect please? I must admit I have always conisidered being forced what ROM to run is a bit like telling me I cannot change my PC's OS from Windows to Linux. At the end oif the day it is my hardware and I can put what I like on it in terms of software is, my view. I really take exception when HTC support tell me and have done more than once, I should install no 3rd party apps. on my phone. A PC with no software now, either!?
Many thanks in adavnce.

As far as I can guess...
Well, you're kinda right about it being a "grey" area. Reason being, as far as I can figure, is because HTC needs to cover their bases. Their devices can really only be insured to work according to the specifications they were designed to work. Ever heard of a flasher bricking their phone? Well, it wouldn't have happened if said person didn't flash their phone. These devices are tried and tested at the company's factories, to run well under very specific conditions. When we go flashing other roms onto them, it begins taking the hardware out of those safe confines of operation.
If you've ever read about what to do with a phone you need to return, it always states that you should return the phone to it's original SPL, and that if the spl is hacked, the company won't take it back. Most likely because if they took back a functional phone (with a hacked SPL) it would work against them if another device with a hacked SPL had to be returned on account of hardware problems.
If the hardware faults while running the intended rom, the blame is easy to place, and hard to dispute. If the device faults while running modified software (rom) it becomes harder to place who's fault it is. Sure, the phone SHOULD technically run the other rom and SPL, but then again, if something goes wrong you're certainly going to be trying everything in your power to get a new one for free. And unfortunately for HTC, that means they take the brunt for a failure that otherwise wouldn't have happened were you not modding your phone.
Grey area? Yep. One of those things, if you get caught, you're guilty. Then again, the amount of phones that need to be returned on account of modding, seem relatively low compared to the amount of devices which are regularly and successfully modded.
-Caid.
444

It's not that big a deal. If there's a hardware fault - just flash everything back to the stock spl and rom before you send it back and HTC will honour the warranty. If you brick it through flashing that's your problem though although it's basically unheard of.

How to re-flash if the phone won't boot
How I re-flash if won't boot up?

You can always start it in Loader mode (power and volume up (or down, never remember) button and reset the phone, it will launch in loader mode) while having the image in the root of your Flash card. It should flash the rom from there.

Screen Issues

Having some random and annoying screen fluctuations. Its like the screen depolarizes and the images become distorted and somewhat inverted. Happens off and on and reboots do not help. Im gonna go back to stock just incase it needs to be sent in and to see if the ROM I am using is completely to blame, I have tried reflashing too.
Just thought I put this out there to see if anyone else is having similar issues.

I may have had something similar the other day - basically the color blue would go away, and the remaining R&G pixels would smear. Best way to describe it would be to pretend that there is a specific frame buffer for blue, and it has a pointer, and that pointer was getting whacked. Meanwhile the pointers for the red and green buffers were having less-significant bits screwed with. Yeah, like I said, "pretend". My initial gut said it was a simple case of some bad silicon on a line driver. Done.
While getting ready to exchange the Tab (aka removing stuff), I discovered the behavior was strongly impacted by memory pressure. If you've played with ESXi, you know what I'm referring to. If not, go read about Ballooning.
With lots of crap floating around, screen gets more wonky more often to the point of being unusable. Including during the boot splash screen. Remove the junk (not programs - just... stuff, music, browser cache, whatever)... less wonky, less often. Still wonky, mind you, but less wonky, and less often.
Decided the culprit was likely Task Manager by Rhythm Software. Removed exactly it, cold started, and never had an issue since. Note that I'm not really keen on saying Rhythm's work was at fault, especially since saying "it's fixed!" is trying to prove a negative and this is not a reported problem. OTOH, the behavior did start within a few days of installing it, and the behavior's ending exactly coincides with RTM's removal.
In that sense, take a close look at what you're installing - something otherwise fine might be suffering an... unexpected feature.
HTH,
- sbb

Thanks for the tip, mines still looking like hardware failure. Sometimes when i put it into the samsung keyboard dock it randomly clears up, as if the jiggle in the pin connector port affects it but it will reappear eventually.
Been trying to use the return to stock stuff from the main sticky in the development section but it keeps erroring and failing in CWM when I attempt to flash. Oh well.
Thanks for the reply yo!
I think its because the stock rom they have is p700 and I am p7510 or whatever. Am I in the wrong place? lol Time to scavenge the forums.

Unroot for Return
So, I made my backup copy of my ROM after it was rooted. How do I get this thing rooted again so I can take her in? I tried using the info on the stickie in the Dev section but I get an error when flashing the supplied stock ROM, repeated, no mistakes I am pretty sure.
Any tips?
also, hasnt been 30days, should I just go back to best buy or call samsung?

I have the exact same issue with my tablet and going to return it for warranty. I had to unroot and get it back to default blind, since the screen is almost never readable here (too much distortions).
I got it back to factory default (unrooted) through ODIN + Download Mode. Use the files and step-by-step guide on this webpage: http://droidangel.blogspot.com/2011/06/samsung-galaxy-tab-101v-p7100-stock-rom.html

I got the same problem. the screen just distorted, which happens on several custom ROM. It happens after heavy use. I have to put it aside for a couple of hours to get it back to normal.
Is that hardware issue? If it is, how could you convince the shop to get it replaced?
you may not be able to reproduce it at the shop.

I lost my interest to samsung product. It took quite some time to create an account and file a case. Now the webpage just keeps telling that it is processing the data.
I remember that I have never succeed to create an account through the TAB.
very bad service.

Well, mine's finally going in for repair.
As mentioned in the post above... after removing a few apps and most of the data from the tab... not a single issue with the screen, since.
Then... the behavior came back last week, gradually becoming worse until the colors are just plain hosed. Blew out the browser caches, wiped any remaining data... pulse, etc... and it cleared back up again... for about an hour, but rapidly reverted back to horrid. Did a hard reset... no avail.
It is quite the interesting behavior, to say the very least.
It's not mechanical. It's not thermal.

Is samsung service center the only solution for this?

Does yours look like this?
www youtube com/watch?v=WauTDdzxGq0
(Sorry, you;ll need to fill in the obvious missing doys. It was either that or posting 8 random posts)

My Tab also has similar issue and it still appears after hard reset, trying to convince the shop to exchange or help me to send back to Samsung.
Did Samsung cost you any charge for repairing? The shop say it need charges and they don't want give any help.

not really. Mine has distorted display but more likes adding white noise.
Seems that sumsung really sucks. products have so many different issues.
pholklore said:
Does yours look like this?
www youtube com/watch?v=WauTDdzxGq0
(Sorry, you;ll need to fill in the obvious missing doys. It was either that or posting 8 random posts)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

simgamer50 said:
My Tab also has similar issue and it still appears after hard reset, trying to convince the shop to exchange or help me to send back to Samsung.
Did Samsung cost you any charge for repairing? The shop say it need charges and they don't want give any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was covered by seller warranty. I sent it back, and the seller sent me a new device. I don't know where you're at, but usually sellers are required to handle this for you, if under warranty, _by law_. This is obviously a manufacturing fault, not bad usage.

[HELP!] Rescue this baby! Challenge Accepted!

Ok guys, I need your help. I picked up a T-Mobile HD2 from a friend for $40 who said "it won't boot". Being the experience Android user that I am I decided to give it a try, but I am at my wits end. Here is the sitch:
1. The phone is stuck at the "Stick Together" screen.
2. The bootload WORKS, to a point. It sometimes give a black screen when connected to the computer and a flashing tool is polling the USB.
3. I can flash all different WinMO roms from the bootloader, even HSPL, but still no boot.
4. Sometimes, when the ROM and SPL info come up in the bottom left, the phone will chug at the boot logo for a second, then strange graphical glitches start to appear on the screen. Similar to flashing an i9100 kernel on captivate, but not exactly.
This phone is a hackers dream, or more specifically my dream phone. Please help me get it back to working. I am not stingy; if there person who can get this to work and has a donation link... well... you know.
I have already:
Flashed the ship rom.
Used Task29
Flashed the current TMO rom.
Installed MAGLDR -> bootloader cannot make it to MAGLDR, even holding button.
EDIT: I also can't get it to recognize or flash roms from the SD card. All I have is a 4GB SDHC.

i can't figure out for sure if it's hardware or software that's been failing you. Since i'm more experienced with hardware i'll try to figure out a cause should the problem turn out to be hardware based after all.
1. nand memory corruption. the nand memory is made out of individual memory blocks, linked in a matrix mode and controlled by a memory ...controller (pretty logical i guess ). NAND memory is organized at a logical level in a way very similar to the classical electromagnetic drives (normal hdd's). I mean, blocks, sectors etc. If a memory sector gets damaged, it will produce something called a "bad" memory block. Again, similar to HDD's. But, different to HDD's where you can remap the memory regions and isolate bad blocks, you cannot do this to a flash chip inside a phone. At least not using standard tools or software. These tests are made only once by the manufacturer when the motherboard itself is being build. So, if your nand memory get's corrupted the phone itself won't "know" it since the individual damaged blocks can't be "marked" as damaged for the software to see and avoid placing data over there.
What happens is that you flash a rom, it may complete to 100% and from the bootloader "point of view" data was written over the flash memory. But when you attempt reading data from the damaged sectors, you'll get either nothing or corrupted readings. A more worse situation is when the boadloader itself resides over the damaged memory areas. If this is the case, even bootloader operations will behave erratic - bootloader lock-ups, freezes, strange screens etc.
I've seen phones with similar behavior that will react just like that. Sometime you can flash them, sometime not and when you flash them, they will stick to some random screen or simply freeze since the OS loading process halted with some random error when the corrupted data was read. I only managed to fix this by means of JTAG, a pretty low level debugging tool that requires a direct interface between the cpu and a pc. A memory diagnostic is loaded into the RAM memory and executes from there, it's purpose being to remap the NAND memory. It cannot be done from inside the NAND memory itself just like you cannot simply format the windows drive on a pc, while still being logged in on windows.
But, it's nasty business, service center kind of business.
2. CPU I/O failure. If you look into my signature here on xda, you'll find a link about hd2's cpu and overheating. That problem can in turn cause your problems - also saw this kind of stuff happening to a hd2. In fact is easier to determine if this is the cause. While i won't repeat myself again about how heat cause dilatation in the chip's soldering and how this affects the cpu operations, you can try a simple test. Place a sd card with some rom on it in the phone then place the phone in a bag, then place the bag in the fridge for about an hour. After that (while still keeping the phone in the bag and in the fridge interior) power on the phone, go to the bootloader and try to flash the rom from the sd card. Let the phone in the fridge during flashing and after it restarts. If you can't load a rom from the sd card, try using usb, the ideea is that the phone must remain as cold as possible during the whole process. Check to see if you notice any improvements - phone booting up, different errors or something different in any way from what you noticed so far. If this is the case, that topic from my signature would describe your problem in more detail. If not, we need to look further.
These should be my main suspects. Try to check #2 and reply with some results.

First of all, thank you for the information. I am actually very experienced reflowing PS3 and Xbox 360's, so I will try the refrigerator experiment, and if that succeeds I will disassemble the phone and reflow it in my reflow station. I find (seriously, not joking) that a reflow and (after cooling) a good 10 minutes in the oven on "warm" gets everything nice and settled.
Do you know if they used lead-free solder in the HD2? I'm not sure if phones also fall under RoHS.

yep, i think it's lead free, can't say for sure. But by the way it reacts to heat.. it seems so.
If you try the fridge/freezer, try to get the hd2 as cold as possible while preventing any condensation occurring on it - those transparent zip bags can help, that's what i use for example.

I had the EXACT same problem for a version that I bought off from a NY store (jr.com), it was a t-mobile version, tried everything, just to return it after 8 hours of my purchase.
Looking again for buying another hd2.
EDIT: looking online for hours and hours in vain, I concluded that it was a hardware issue due to some versions of the hd2 as someone explained earlier here.

I reflowed the motherboard and the phone now works.
I think its official, the"Stick Together" screen is the new RROD / YLOD.

good to hear. my hd2 was broken in the same way as yours. fixed it the same way, works as good as new even now.
Well, at least you know what to do if it happens again

Phone stuck in update mode after mmc error

Hello,
This morning, I got the dreaded mmc error for the first time on my Note 4 after the phone was unresponsive and I rebooted it. After a few minutes, I pulled the battery, replaced it, and left the phone off for the day. This evening, I tried to boot it again to backup data, and now it always goes straight into recovery mode with the message, "Installing system update...". Of course, there are no more system updates for the phone. Using the recovery button combination does the same thing. How can I try to boot normally again? I can go into download mode fine, so maybe I should try flashing the stock ROM with Odin/Heimdall? I'm afraid of wiping my data though, would that do it? Anything else I should try? Thanks!

maybe this
https://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/help/100-fix-galaxy-note-4-emmc-error-random-t3859448

I saw that video, but I'd rather try something else first before I resort to taking apart my phone. Is there a way to flash the stock recovery without wiping the data?

Ezzelin said:
I saw that video, but I'd rather try something else first before I resort to taking apart my phone. Is there a way to flash the stock recovery without wiping the data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you just want to get out of the mmc loop, remove the battery when it gets stuck. If that doesn't work. Remove the battery, put phone in freezer for 20 minutes and retry.
But once you have this error show, there is no non-hardware fix that works permanently. Wake Lock apps will prolong the inevitable, but it comes down to a crappy chip connection of the Emmc chip.
Samsung used to replace mobos under warranty --- but even that didn't fix the problem.
The best theory about the problem I've heard is that in 2014 Samsung (and other manufacturers) made the move from using lead-based solder to lead-free (all tin) solders, which -- over time -- resulted in connection faults. I have other non-Samsung gear from the same era of manufacturing that exhibits similar mysterious ailments that were solved by addressing physical connections inside the machines.
That video -- the one where you stick a piece of cardboard (or better, metal foil) between the casing and the Emmc chip's location on the board is the only thing I've found that actually works. I first (skeptically) tried it on a phone that would only boot or return from a screen off, after a freezer session and that had been tossed in the junk drawer for months.
If you get nowhere else with suggested software fixes (and I didn't go the root route -- too many variables and maintenance/compatibility issues) I'd recommend considering giving that video a shot. It's not as tricky as it sounds -- but pay attention to the thickness. I made the first tries too thick and the digitizer connection didn't 'click' when reassembling.
Now I'm trying to solve another Samsung phone problem: SD card corruption.
There's a lesson -- and incidentally, several class-action lawsuits -- to be learned from the Samsung Note Emmc chip issue. Many Note lovers didn't move to Note 5's and above because they wanted to hang onto the replaceable battery and external SD option. Samsung, like everyone else, is following the path blazed by Apple to try and make user-based maintenance/upgrading/repair and third-party repairs a thing of the non-profitable past. And this aint right. Designing obsolescence serves the shareholders, only to a point, at a real hit to brand trust equity.
I think we're rapidly approaching that point out here.

I tried the freezer trick, but it still does the same thing. I'm not even getting to the point where the mmc error happens, because it goes straight into the system update mode. I've never been able to boot it since the initial error.

[ZE551KL] Zenfone laser 2 Data Retrieval?

Hey, I've seen many threads about my phone and consensus is generally that the phone has what I perceive to be battery issues that cause the battery to sometimes slightly expand under heat causing a hardware failure, this confuses some but not all - less watchful users as to why their phone restarts constantly. From what I can tell, the gel used inside of the battery is low quality and cannot contain heat effectively, causing a failure that is inevitable in anyone who leaves their phone plugged in for too long. The excessive heat can warp the hardware and cause a failure in soldering, but I personally have no idea how to open the phone up and fix it. The software update that happened in 2017 also generally took a long time to apply and would generally encourage users to plug in their phone and wait for it to finish, ultimately spelling their doom, I've never seen warranty bull**** like this but it pisses me off to know that anybody who sent this unnecessary firmware update out, probably did so with the knowledge that it would overheat the phone and break it. 400$ for nothing goddamn you assholes at asus. Released in 2015 and updated in 2017 right as the standard 2 year warranty ends.
My primary concern is recovering my data from the phone's hard drive. Unfortunately my phone doesn't show up on my computer when I connect it via usb cable even with the asus drivers which are for windows 7 and i am on windows 10 and cannot get them to work, so I am limited to microsd updates for when I try to roll it back in the future via recovery menu. I can get the device recognized via adb drivers on windows 10 can use command adb devices to see my device name but all other commands fail. Since I can't use my pc to access my phones data I'm curious if anyone has the know how to access the hard drive with software, I've used some software like helium and others but it always fails on connecting. Could I possibly solder it and connect it, it has alot of important family memories and photos for me so I don't want to lose it.:crying: