May I have your attention please.
Greeting to all who may be concerned or able to fix camera failed issue on Samsung Galaxy S4 i9500 !!!
I know that there are other threads with similar topic, but I think we should recindle this issue as serious problem.
The story goes:
I bought slightly used S4 i9500 phone with no guarantee. It worked fine, was taking pictures and all. Splendid.
It was on some stock firmware. Some german version I think.
Then crappy and useles bloatware began to bother me. Just mountains of really crappy and uselles meaningless bloatware.
I wanted to remove that horses*it apps and therefore I rooted the phone flashing adam kernel and cofface cwm.
One lovely day i tried to take photo, camera opened with black window and showed camera failed notification with persistancy.
i flashed some newer stock firmware, it opened and was taking pictures till i tried some camera modes (action or something) and it froze with pink screen.
After that event, nothing was helpfull to fix this problem.
1. I flashed countles stock roms, nearly all available custom roms, new and old (think over 20 flashes).
2. Prior to flashing I did: Wiping dalvik, system, data, cache, preload, or full wipe, hard resets, wiping sdcard and external card.
3. Tried also nand erase (it took some time to revive phone afterwards).
4. Tried solutions like clear camera cache and data.
5. Tried turning off phone, taking battery out for some time, with full recharge,
6. Tried non stock camera apps. (e.g. camera fx, camera mx..)
7. Tried removing camera app by deleting it with titanium backup, or with root exploer - then installing it back to system apps with root explorer.
8. Tried switching sd cards- 8gb, 16, 32, 64 gb, no card, and tried settings without saving pics to sd card but internal storage.
9. Tried turning off gps, and location services
10. Tried limiting processes to 4 only.
11. Tried flashing with odin, or via cwm cofface or philz.
12. I opened phone with screwdriver to check for posible visible faults or something - all ok.
13. Flashed official firmware claimed to solve camera problems.
Maybe something more i did?- i cant remember, if i do i will notify about it.
And I ordered camera module from internet, will try to replace it - we will se what happens.
In the meantime, if someone, some wise one, genious or ordinary person, knows how to fix this persisting problem PLEASE HELP!
You will help me, and help others that have this problem.
Samsung officials, if you somehow should read this, take this into consideration. There are many eyes upon you. Provide solution for this.
Any one - SOS
FIXED IT.
Since no one cared enough to even try to help me with this problem I will not post the solution !
Said enough.
duxerica said:
FIXED IT.
Since no one cared enough to even try to help me with this problem I will not post the solution !
Said enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too like you tried everything and found nothing. Camera takes forever to open. Hope you decide to share the solution.Knowledge should be shared.Don't be bitter about it.I'm sure if someone had a solution they would have posted it.
cheers.
duxerica said:
FIXED IT.
Since no one cared enough to even try to help me with this problem I will not post the solution !
Said enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Likewise, some people may have missed your post or nothing good to add, still I too would like to know what finally worked as I tried most of what you did.
Bests
M
If you have message "Camera failed"...
First of all try this: Open Camera app from the "Application manager" and do "Clear data", then restart the phone.
Second: Do a Factory reset (of course save your data!).
Third: Reinstall Android OS.
If this not help you, you have a hardware problem. You need to change the camera.
-------------------
Video tutorial:
http://youtu.be/3nzetqisty0
I have created this thread to clean up the forums a bit and to fix one confusion that most people in the forums which are saying which can mislead people to think that user means that when they don't mean that.
Q: What is the different between brick and soft-brick?
A: This is the issue I was talking about above.
A soft-brick is where you cannot access the kernel or/and rom and a brick is where you cannot access the bootloader so you cannot turn on your device unless you JTag it.
Q: Since I flashed a kernel I got stuck on the splash screen (Google logo bootloader screen), I attempted to reflash but it did not help.
A: Make sure the kernel is supported by the Rom's build number and Android version, to fix this you have to flash a supported kernel, remember that not all kernels are supported.
Q: Since I upgraded to Android 4.3 via OTA I noticed a large battery drain, WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!
A: On day 1 after the upgrade Google Backup will be using your battery for restoring your data so you will have to wait until it is done BUT then it will backup your settings such has brightness and app data but you can switch off "App Data" from the sync settings to stop Google Backup.
Q: A while/day later the issue is gone but Google Services is draining my battery.
A: That is actually Google Maps doing the draining, it is using the internet to locate you, to stop the battery drain go to Settings, Location settings, and disable WiFi & Mobile network location.
Q: Titanium Backup is not restoring my backups, what can I do?
A: Flash SuperSU v1.51 via recovery, this will fix the root issues and the Titanium Backup restore issues.
Q: Root is not working on Android 4.3, I'm panicking!!!!!!!!!!!!
A: Don't worry, flash SuperSU v1.51 has mentioned above to fix root since it now uses the SU Deamon due to the new security.
Q: The stock recovery says "No command.", what can I do?
A: Either keep pressing or hold volume up and power to unlock the menu.
This does not always work for certain users so I would try volume down and power so see if that does anything.
Q: How do I disable the OTA updater?
A: You will need root and an application, thanks to @joshuab227 for the information, the following is from joshuab227's post:
Here's how to disable the auto OTA download on any ROM
Install Autorun Manager from the Play store.
Then enter its recommended advanced mode.
Go into the settings and enable the following : system entries and system app disable.
Disable com.android.gsf.update.SystemUpdateService$Reciever under Google Service Framework
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q: The Play Store app and web store will not recognise my device!
A: @ColdEmbrace has got this issue and found the solution so that should explain why the start of the post starts how it starts:
After trying all of the above options my device was still not showing in the store. I went to this link.
play.google.com/settings
I clicked on one of my devices and clicked the update option this loaded my Nexus 4 onto the list it is now available on the web store.
Thanks everyone for the advice and I hope this helps people who are still having issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q: My device says that I have no internet connection with a empty signal bar with or without a sim card.
A: The user @matt0401 was one of the victims with this issue and managed to fix this issue with a interesting solution:
Wow, I'm up and running! Weird fix though...
I installed the toolkit and downloaded the ROM, and was attempting to get into fast boot manually because trying to do it during the unlocking process in the toolkit wouldn't work. I thought I remembered the buttons for getting into fast boot from my old Gnex as being "hold power and volume up at same time". I tried this, and the phone went to the white "Google" logo and then vibrated, and then screen went black and the LED notifier at the bottom of the phone glowed red for about 2 seconds. The phone then rebooted, about 10x faster than before might I add, and when I was booted up I saw "No SIM detected... emergency calls only". This would infer my SIM slot was finally being detected, whereas before even with no SIM inserted I just got "No Internet Connection".
I popped my SIM in, rebooted, and the network is connected. Time to review 5 days of missed texts. Thanks for the hand!
tl;dr --> Anybody having this problem, try turning it off, and then turning it back on with the SIM inserted, holding POWER + VOL UP til it does this hard reset type fucntion. When rebooted, the problem should be resolved.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q: I have to reenter my pin code for my sim every time, what do I do?
A: @lucker#1 you guessed it has the same issue has well but he wasn't the OP of the thread that the issue was discussed in but he did sure find a fix, the following is a quote from his post:
i've also had that issue the second day after receiving the phone. I removed the sim, put it back in but that didn't help - i looked at my sim card tray and i realized that a one side of the sim card chip was close to one metal side of the tray and i figured that could be the issue - so what i did is i took a stripe of adhesive tape and made sure they wouldn't touch - I haven't had the issue again and it's been more than 2 weeks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q: Since I installed Android 4.3 a few of my apps are force closing, what should I do?
A: You have to reinstall that application to fix the issue.
Q: I am getting screen flickering.
A: Flash the correct kernel which supports your Android build and version.
Q: Got a kernel panic, HALP!!!
A: That is pretty rare for the kernel to panic but you can actually easily trigger it, to fix it you must reflash the kernel (make sure it is the correct one!).
Q: Since Android 4.3 on YouTube using Slimport there is a blue graphical glitch, why is it doing that and how to fix it?
A: Since Android 4.3 there is some major bugs, improvements and fixes and the graphical glitch (I got this myself) is due to the new Software Encoder, there is no fix yet but you can go around it by using VPlayer as it apparently supports YouTube videos and it has Hardware Encoding.
If you have any questions and answers please post them here.
Bump!, Not much people are reading this...
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
Bump once again and the last time.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4
[Q] Stuck between two "handicapped" results of flashing PA through diff. recoveri
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2020336 This is where i got all the zip which i flashed (radio, bootloader, PA ROM, and GApps)
So there are two problems I have noticed after flashing my nexus with paranoid android.
The biggest one is that my phone cannot get any cellular service. The phone just shows No Service, and when i tried to set mobile network manually it told me to insert sim and restart while already having a sim card in the phone. I tried removing and inserting it again to no avail.
The second one is that I can't use my camera, it opens the app for like half a second then it shows "Can't connect to camera" and quit abruptly.
Everything works just fine when I flashed the backup stock ROM, including the mobile data and camera
UPDATE :
I tried using TWRP instead as the recovery that I use to flash the exact same 4 zip files (radio, bootloader, PA ROM, and GApps, all from the official PA account on XDA developer). It indeed solved the No Service problem, it now has fully functioning HSDPA connectivity, but then two problems emerged.
The first being the unavailability of keyboards. The phone would just show the microphone icon for voice typing and no keyboard is found in settings.
The second problem being there is no Camera app, so I can't decide whether the "Can't connect to camera" issue is solved.
So I am stuck in between two "handicapped" results of flashing PA through different recoveries. (keep in mind that I used the same exact 4 zip files to flash)
1. I can flash it through Clockwork Recovery but then the phone wouldn't recognize the SIM card although everything else would work perfectly.
2.I can flash it through TWRP and the phone would have perfect mobile connectivity, but then the phone would have no keyboard showing up and no Camera app. I had assumed this would be an easier problem to solve by googling, but it seems like this problem is rather unique/specific.
Is there a way i can install the keyboard and camera by itself?
Remember that there is no keyboard so I really can't type in anything including signing in on the Play Store. I attempted installing Google Keyboard through the desktop play store, but since the one on my phone isn't connected to my Google account, the download won't start on the phone.
wolverine060 said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2020336 This is where i got all the zip which i flashed (radio, bootloader, PA ROM, and GApps)
So there are two problems I have noticed after flashing my nexus with paranoid android.
The biggest one is that my phone cannot get any cellular service. The phone just shows No Service, and when i tried to set mobile network manually it told me to insert sim and restart while already having a sim card in the phone. I tried removing and inserting it again to no avail.
The second one is that I can't use my camera, it opens the app for like half a second then it shows "Can't connect to camera" and quit abruptly.
Everything works just fine when I flashed the backup stock ROM, including the mobile data and camera
UPDATE :
I tried using TWRP instead as the recovery that I use to flash the exact same 4 zip files (radio, bootloader, PA ROM, and GApps, all from the official PA account on XDA developer). It indeed solved the No Service problem, it now has fully functioning HSDPA connectivity, but then two problems emerged.
The first being the unavailability of keyboards. The phone would just show the microphone icon for voice typing and no keyboard is found in settings.
The second problem being there is no Camera app, so I can't decide whether the "Can't connect to camera" issue is solved.
So I am stuck in between two "handicapped" results of flashing PA through different recoveries. (keep in mind that I used the same exact 4 zip files to flash)
1. I can flash it through Clockwork Recovery but then the phone wouldn't recognize the SIM card although everything else would work perfectly.
2.I can flash it through TWRP and the phone would have perfect mobile connectivity, but then the phone would have no keyboard showing up and no Camera app. I had assumed this would be an easier problem to solve by googling, but it seems like this problem is rather unique/specific.
Is there a way i can install the keyboard and camera by itself?
Remember that there is no keyboard so I really can't type in anything including signing in on the Play Store. I attempted installing Google Keyboard through the desktop play store, but since the one on my phone isn't connected to my Google account, the download won't start on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried re downloading the zips again? maybe one is corrupt? make sure you do a full wipe before flashing ( also do advanced wipe and wipe all except sdcard and usb)
You could also try Wugs root tool kit, http://www.wugfresh.com/ im pretty sure it has a feature to allow you to push apps to your system,
I am not responsible for anything that can go wrong... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
Introduction
When Alcatel released Android 6 for there Idol 3 phones the Fastboot commands required to root were removed making it impossible. Well I have found a way and I was quite surprised that it worked. In this guide I will give a step by step tutorial on how to 1) Flash TWRP Recovery 2) Flash a Custom Rom 3) Flash GAPPS onto the Custom Rom. If you have any questions please ask away!
For this tutorial we will be flashing the Resurrection Remix Rom onto our phone.
I will be using the 5.5 variation for this tutorial
For the 4.7 variation, the steps should be the same but you will need to download the appropriate files for your device
What you will need
• A Windows PC
• Administrator privileges on the PC
• Extracting Software; WinRAR, WinZIP, etc (I'm not including the link, they are easy to find)
• A good Internet connection (for files to download faster)
• An Alcatel Idol 3 4.7 or 5.5 running Android 6.0.1
• A MicroSD card in your phone (To hold a backup and to hold our Flashable files)
• The Alcatel Drivers installed
• Files provided by link down below
Files Needed
*Note: Non of these links are mine, but they all worked and seemed safe to me*
*The links send you right to the download page, not to the forum where they came from*
• Sahara & Firehose Test [Broken] | New Sahara & Firehose Test [Uploaded by XDA Member]
• TWRP V3.1.1 for Idol 3
• Open GAPPS (Platform: ARM64, Android: 7.1, Variant: Whichever one you want (I'd recommend Stock)
• Resurrection Remix a.k.a the ROM
Getting things ready on Windows
Step 1: Drag all your files onto your desktop (To keep things tidy put them into a folder)
Step 2: Extract "Alcatel_Flasher" (Password: decker.su)
Step 3: DO NOT Extract the ROM or GAPPS
Preparing Phone
*Note: Make sure your phone has at least 70% Battery, if the battery dies during a flash it can break things*
*Make sure you device is also plugged into the computer*
Step 1: Turn off your device completely
*Note: Since the device is plugged into the computer it may "Turn on" again, this is just the phone going to the battery screen*
Step 2: Push and Hold the Power and Both the Volume Buttons
*Note: You should now see a Red Screen*
Step 3: Release All Buttons
Step 4: Quickly Hold the Volume Up Button until the screen turns Black
Flashing TWRP to the phone
*Now back to the PC*
Step 1: Open Alcatel_Flasher
Step 2: Next to "Device Model" select "Alcatel Idol 3 5.5" [OT-6045]"
Step 3: Click the "Detect" Button
*Note: Next to "COM #" there should now be something in the box*
Step 4: Click the "NPRG" Button
*Note: The console in the window should now have "Send done command" near the bottom of it*
Step 5: Click the "Get GPT" Button
*Note: The bottom of the window should now be full of Partition names and other information*
Step 6: Scroll down to "Recovery" (It might be 27 on the list)
Step 7: Scroll Across to "Filename"
Step 8: Check the Box next to "Filename"
Step 9: Double click inside the "Filename" Box
*Note: A prompt to select a .img file should have popped up*
Step 10: Locate the "twrp-3.1.1-idol3.img" file
Step 11: Open it
Step 12: Click the "Write" Button
Step 13: Click "No"
Step 14: Wait until the progress bar is full
Entering TWRP
Step 1: Hold the Power and Volume Up Buttons
Step 2: Wait for a vibration and then release the Power Button but continue holding the Volume Up Button
*Note: TWRP should have now opened*
*Note: If asked "Swipe to Allow Modifications"
Backing Up the device
Step 1: Press "Backup"
Step 2: Press "Select Storage"
Step 3: Select your MicroSD Card
Step 4: Press "OK"
Step 5: Select the Partitions you want to backup (I like to have a full backup)
Step 6: "Swipe to Backup"
*Note: Wait for the backup to complete, it may take a while but it's good to know that you have a backup if anything goes wrong*
Step 8: Press the NavBar Back button twice
Wiping the Storage
Step 1: Press "Wipe"
Step 2: Press "Advanced Wipe"
Step 3: Select "Dalvik / ART Cache", "System", "Data", "Internal Storage" and "Cache" (Nothing else)
Step 4: "Swipe to Wipe"
*Note: This Shouldn't take long*
Step 5: Press the NavBar Back button three times
Placing the Flashable files on the MicroSD Card
Step 1: Press "Mount"
Step 2: Press "Mount USB Storage"
*Note: "File Explorer" should have opened on your PC*
Step 3: Drag the "open_gapps-arm64-7.1-stock-20180216" and the "RR-N-v5.8.5-20171002-idol3-Unofficial.zip" into the MicroSD Card
Step 4: Wait for the transfer to complete and then Press "Unmount"
Step 5: Press the NavBar Back Button once
Flashing the ROM
*Remember that I am not responsible for anything that may happen to your device*
Step 1: Press "Install"
Step 2: Press "Select Storage"
Step 3: Select your MicroSD Card and then Press "OK"
Step 4: Select "RR-N-v5.8.5-20171002-idol3-Unofficial.zip"
Step 5: "Swipe to confirm Flash"
*Note: This might take a while*
Step 6: Press "Wipe chache/dalvik"
Step 7: "Swipe to Wipe"
*Note: DO NOT go on to flash GAPPS just yet, doing so can cause a boot loop. We will flash it later*
Step 8: "Reboot System"
*Note: The first Boot will take a long time, about 5 or so minutes*
*Note: Please keep your device plugged in to power during this time*
*Note: For some reason the phone is already set up*
Step 9: Choose a launcher
Flashing GAPPS
Step 1: Go back into TWRP
*Note: If asked "Swipe to Allow Modifications"
Step 2: Press "Install"
Step 3: Press "Select Storage" and choose your MicroSD Card and Press "OK"
Step 4: Select "open_gapps-arm64-7.1-stock-20180216"
Step 5: "Swipe to confirm Flash"
*Note: The "Super GAPPS" will open an installer for you to select which apps you want*
*Note: This can take some time*
Step 6: Press "Wipe cache/dalvik"
Step 7: "Swipe to Wipe"
Step 8: Press "Reboot System"
Step 9: Uncheck the 2 Boxes and Press "Do Not Install"
*Note: We do not need the app because we are using a version of TWRP that is modified to work on our device, so the app wouldn't do anything anyway*
Thaks a lot ^^*
Really appreciate you making this step-by-step noob-friendly guide. Worked for me exactly as advertised.
I had actually tried to flash TWRP and a custom ROM a few months ago after piecing together the necessary information from a few different threads scattered throughout the forum, but for some reason I couldn't get the Alcatel Flasher to properly read my phone's GPT. I spent hours trying different USB ports, different drivers, nothing. This time it worked flawlessly on the first try :victory: Maybe a Windows update between then and now fixed something.
It is so unbelievably nice to have a clean ROM for this phone after all this time. I've been doing my best to mitigate the malware stuffed onto it by Alcatel with the last few system updates and had finally reached the end of my tether. It's like a completely different device and plenty stable enough for a daily driver.
*edit* I think it would be nice if this thread was stickied since it consolidates all of the necessary information into an easy guide for novices.
thunderweasel said:
Really appreciate you making this step-by-step noob-friendly guide. Worked for me exactly as advertised.
I had actually tried to flash TWRP and a custom ROM a few months ago after piecing together the necessary information from a few different threads scattered throughout the forum, but for some reason I couldn't get the Alcatel Flasher to properly read my phone's GPT. I spent hours trying different USB ports, different drivers, nothing. This time it worked flawlessly on the first try :victory: Maybe a Windows update between then and now fixed something.
It is so unbelievably nice to have a clean ROM for this phone after all this time. I've been doing my best to mitigate the malware stuffed onto it by Alcatel with the last few system updates and had finally reached the end of my tether. It's like a completely different device and plenty stable enough for a daily driver.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're using the Rom suggested in the instructions, right? Which Provider are you using and have you noticed any issues? I've had a bad experience with an unofficial ROM in the past that ruined certain features on a phone, and I noticed there were still a few people saying there where things not working properly in this release and apparently no more work is being done on it? so I'm understandably hesitant because I'd hate to do it and end up just as irritated knowing the only options are live with it or go back to the poison Alcatel hit us with. Anything you can tell me about it would be helpful as I don't feel like much has been said since this thread started.
PN04 said:
You're using the Rom suggested in the instructions, right? Which Provider are you using and have you noticed any issues? I've had a bad experience with an unofficial ROM in the past that ruined certain features on a phone, and I noticed there were still a few people saying there where things not working properly in this release and apparently no more work is being done on it? so I'm understandably hesitant because I'd hate to do it and end up just as irritated knowing the only options are live with it or go back to the poison Alcatel hit us with. Anything you can tell me about it would be helpful as I don't feel like much has been said since this thread started.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I'm using the Resurrection Remix ROM from the OP. I'm on a unlocked 6045I model; from what I've read a few users with the Cricket (6045O, I think?) variant have run into some quirks that other 6045 variants don't have, so YMMV. I'm in the US using a AT&T-based MVNO (H2O wireless) and haven't had any problems. It detected my SIM immediately on first boot, incoming and outgoing calls as well as mobile data (H+ and LTE) works. BT works. I don't use NFC, but the menu options for it are all there, so it probably works. Audio and video playback works. Camera works. Video recording works, but everything comes out about 3 shades darker than the still camera (this is a known bug on this ROM). Play Store works. I installed the nano GApps, so I can't speak to the full suite of Google services, but Gmail, Hangouts and Maps work. Other than that there's really not much I use on my phone, but Firefox and the handful of puzzle games I play all run just fine. App changes, screen changes and scrolling are all a lot smoother on this ROM than stock. I used to get a fair amount of lag doing those activities on both the old Lollipop and Marshmallow stock ROMs. The flip feature where you can answer calls with the phone upside down doesn't work, but A) I never used that feature on the stock ROM anyway, and B) it stopped working for me on the stock MM ROM after the last System Apps update a few weeks ago (the tilt sensor stopped working entirely in all apps except the camera, actually). I've yet to put the battery life to the test, but it would have to be absolutely atrocious to convince me to switch back, and I've seen no signs of that yet. After installing and spending probably 1-2 hours setting things up and screwing around testing features, the battery was at about 95%. To me it's no contest, the RR ROM is streets ahead of the factory ROM. I'd be willing to put up with a lot of quirks just to get rid of the Joy Launcher, but really the only minor issue I've run into is with the video recording, which isn't a big deal to me as I very rarely ever use it. Everything else is daily driver quality.
thunderweasel said:
Yes, I'm using the Resurrection Remix ROM from the OP. I'm on a unlocked 6045I model; from what I've read a few users with the Cricket (6045O, I think?) variant have run into some quirks that other 6045 variants don't have, so YMMV. I'm in the US using a AT&T-based MVNO (H2O wireless) and haven't had any problems. It detected my SIM immediately on first boot, incoming and outgoing calls as well as mobile data (H+ and LTE) works. BT works. I don't use NFC, but the menu options for it are all there, so it probably works. Audio and video playback works. Camera works. Video recording works, but everything comes out about 3 shades darker than the still camera (this is a known bug on this ROM). Play Store works. I installed the nano GApps, so I can't speak to the full suite of Google services, but Gmail, Hangouts and Maps work. Other than that there's really not much I use on my phone, but Firefox and the handful of puzzle games I play all run just fine. App changes, screen changes and scrolling are all a lot smoother on this ROM than stock. I used to get a fair amount of lag doing those activities on both the old Lollipop and Marshmallow stock ROMs. The flip feature where you can answer calls with the phone upside down doesn't work, but A) I never used that feature on the stock ROM anyway, and B) it stopped working for me on the stock MM ROM after the last System Apps update a few weeks ago (the tilt sensor stopped working entirely in all apps except the camera, actually). I've yet to put the battery life to the test, but it would have to be absolutely atrocious to convince me to switch back, and I've seen no signs of that yet. After installing and spending probably 1-2 hours setting things up and screwing around testing features, the battery was at about 95%. To me it's no contest, the RR ROM is streets ahead of the factory ROM. I'd be willing to put up with a lot of quirks just to get rid of the Joy Launcher, but really the only minor issue I've run into is with the video recording, which isn't a big deal to me as I very rarely ever use it. Everything else is daily driver quality.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, this is helpful to know. The compass/rotation/gyro sensors are something I use fairly often for various apps, and is one of the reasons I haven't outright just bought a new phone (because It's been hard finding phones that have both and are reliable)... oddly enough this was one of the issues with the last phone I had where the custom rom, installed by the seller, disabled the compass sensor. At this point I'd be happy just going back to the stock version of the rom, but it seems like there are more difficulties in doing that.
Supposedly once you root the phone you can use another to delete (rather than just debloat) the offending apps causing all the trouble. Maybe if this can get me to that point I might be able to just delete them and continue using the phone normally?
PN04 said:
Thanks, this is helpful to know. The compass/rotation/gyro sensors are something I use fairly often for various apps, and is one of the reasons I haven't outright just bought a new phone (because It's been hard finding phones that have both and are reliable)... oddly enough this was one of the issues with the last phone I had where the custom rom, installed by the seller, disabled the compass sensor. At this point I'd be happy just going back to the stock version of the rom, but it seems like there are more difficulties in doing that.
Supposedly once you root the phone you can use another to delete (rather than just debloat) the offending apps causing all the trouble. Maybe if this can get me to that point I might be able to just delete them and continue using the phone normally?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be clear, the tilt sensor works perfectly in the RR ROM. It had gotten screwed up for me on the stock Marshmallow ROM with the last set of System Apps updates for some reason.
You can take a system backup once you get the TWRP recovery installed, so my recommendation would be to try the RR ROM and then keep your backup so you can flash back to the stock system if you need to. Rooting and debloating the stock ROM might be an option, but the RR ROM is complete enough that it's worth the upgrade to the Nougat base, IMO.
thunderweasel said:
To be clear, the tilt sensor works perfectly in the RR ROM. It had gotten screwed up for me on the stock Marshmallow ROM with the last set of System Apps updates for some reason.
You can take a system backup once you get the TWRP recovery installed, so my recommendation would be to try the RR ROM and then keep your backup so you can flash back to the stock system if you need to. Rooting and debloating the stock ROM might be an option, but the RR ROM is complete enough that it's worth the upgrade to the Nougat base, IMO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, then I guess I'll give it a shot (at least once I can get a spare moment where I can be phoneless for the process to complete.).
I've managed to install the new ROM, and boy, was it an adventure. While relatively "simple" there were variances between the instructions an what actually occurred between the screens on both the phone and my PC. I'm still evaluating the phone itself, and I'll probably post about it later if I find anything that others might want to know, but I will say it's refreshing to no longer have to worry about Alcatel's crappy software.
On the subject of the actual update. Again it seemed fairly simple aside from the fears of the USB getting unplugged during some important step but I'd say the first place where things went off the rails was Alcatel's drivers. Plugging the phone into my computer resulted in a driver install error, forcing me to got to Alcatel's website to download them... surprise! their website is suspiciously broken, so I had to find another source.
Next I needed to manually install the Legacy Devices because of the driver install error, and the instructions I googled assume I've clicked on a device first otherwise the option doesn't appear in the menu (not an entirely obvious thing), there were a couple of other cheek clenchers as I still got a few errors, but despite ignoring them things went okay in the Flashing TWRP stage, but I had to double click the check box rather than the filename box which only required one. The instructions that refer to backing out via the Nav bar didn't match so in one case I think the instruction was to back out 3 times I only had to go once and where it said once I think I needed to back out twice.
After flashing the Rom and being given the option to reboot the phone, it asks right then if you want to install TWRP as a system app. I tried to back out thinking maybe I missed something and ended up flashing the software twice, because it's not mentioned in the instructions until the GAPPS installation section later, so I wasn't sure if this would cause a Boot loop error. I decide it's not the GAPPS so I figure it's safe to install, the phone reboots without a problem, I pick the Pixel launcher and then go back to TWRP ( thinking "hopefully this didn't bork anything").
During the installation of GAPPS it never gave me an installer list to select which apps I wanted, it just automatically gave me all of them as far as I can tell, but I guess if I have bloat at least it's Google bloat that adheres to the rules and only works when you want it to I'll probably end up disabling some of these but most I think are still technically useful.
After it completed the installation I was given the option to reboot, and that's when I realized that there were no check boxes or "Do Not Install" option, but there was back after I first installed the new ROM, and that's where this I needed to see this instruction. Again, I don't think this messed up anything, but I'm still wading through the new phone and it's options right now (holy crap, is there a lot in here). I predict there may still be a few more unintentional crashes on the horizon, like the phone app crashing every time I opened it after the first time swapping between photo and video modes (I did get it back working by using the power button double click method to start it).
Fingers crossed, this may have saved me enough cash to be able to by a new computer.
Installing the TWRP standalone app won't hurt anything, it's just useless on this phone since we're using a custom TWRP image that will never be updated. I ran into the same screen, but I had pre-read the instructions and recognized the option from the GApps section and unchecked it.
I didn't get any options to choose specific apps when I installed GApps either, but I assumed that was because I chose the nano image rather than the full image. If you don't like the included apps, you can always boot into TWRP and install the nano or pico GApps package. Those will give you a much more minimal installation that gives you access to Play Store and basic Google services, and then you can pick which specific Google apps you want from Play Store.
Since I mentioned battery life before, I can report that the battery life on this ROM is substantially better than the stock ROM. With my usage patterns, I usually charge after 6 days and at that time the battery is usually in the 15-18% range. On this ROM after 6 days of typical usage the battery is at 49%. Very happy with that.
thunderweasel said:
Installing the TWRP standalone app won't hurt anything, it's just useless on this phone since we're using a custom TWRP image that will never be updated. I ran into the same screen, but I had pre-read the instructions and recognized the option from the GApps section and unchecked it.
I didn't get any options to choose specific apps when I installed GApps either, but I assumed that was because I chose the nano image rather than the full image. If you don't like the included apps, you can always boot into TWRP and install the nano or pico GApps package. Those will give you a much more minimal installation that gives you access to Play Store and basic Google services, and then you can pick which specific Google apps you want from Play Store.
Since I mentioned battery life before, I can report that the battery life on this ROM is substantially better than the stock ROM. With my usage patterns, I usually charge after 6 days and at that time the battery is usually in the 15-18% range. On this ROM after 6 days of typical usage the battery is at 49%. Very happy with that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The weird thing is I didn't even get the option for the "nano" version. When I got to that point I expected at least that, but it just skipped passed that item in the instructions and installed everything. They didn't take up much room thankfully, but yeah, the option to remove the ones I may fond don't care for later is a relief.
I feel like I'm getting less battery life, personally. I still make it through most of the day but just checking my messages in the morning I seem to like 5% of my charge in the first 10 minutes and I only have my screen brightness on like 15% or 25%. I've even become a lot more cautious about what functions I leave active when it's idling (usually none), but the drop off seems much steeper than before.
As for other issues. the one major thing I've definitely noticed is that the Proximity sensor no longer works, I have to manually turn off the screen when I get a call. The sensor test app I tried even crashed when I tried to test it. I guess if any of my sensors had to go I'm most okay with this one. Double tapping the top of the screen to sleep is a little odd, I used the original Double tap to wake/sleep all the time before so not so much a flaw but this choice was awkward for me. I also experienced a weird situation where I had no mobile internet the first time I left the house with it, I could get calls and texts but neither my webbrower nor games that rely on an internet connection worked. I fiddled with a bunch of options that I'm not even sure apply to the US (I turned off some radio options that were meant for Brazil and India then tried to refresh my APN) and then finally rebooted before it finally worked. I have to see if it happens again next time before I get worried, though.
I run very few apps and the phone spends most of its time either idle or doing emails, so that might explain the difference in battery life. My screen brightness is set to auto.
I hadn't even noticed until you mentioned it, but I just checked and I get the same thing with the proximity sensor. I wonder if I've been hitting buttons during calls this whole time... Still an acceptable compromise as far as I'm concerned.
I had to manually input my provider's APN settings and toggle mobile data from off to on in order to get mobile data access, but that's the expected behavior. I had to do the same setup on the stock ROM. Haven't dropped the network once yet, and no issues with performance.
thunderweasel said:
I run very few apps and the phone spends most of its time either idle or doing emails, so that might explain the difference in battery life. My screen brightness is set to auto.
I hadn't even noticed until you mentioned it, but I just checked and I get the same thing with the proximity sensor. I wonder if I've been hitting buttons during calls this whole time... Still an acceptable compromise as far as I'm concerned.
I had to manually input my provider's APN settings and toggle mobile data from off to on in order to get mobile data access, but that's the expected behavior. I had to do the same setup on the stock ROM. Haven't dropped the network once yet, and no issues with performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I shut down all my apps when I finish with them (sometimes even when I'm not done with them) so we're probably not that different in terms of usage I feel like maybe there's some setting I haven't tried. I don't use the auto because I find auto modes get darker than I want it to be and brighter than I need it most of the time so I stick with a low but consistent brightness to avoid wasting battery when it gets bright.
I wear a wired earbud a lot of the time so I didn't notice the lack of proximity sensor until I had to answer without it a couple days into the change. Depending on whether you're calling someone or answering the problem is a little different. On dialing buttons from the dialer or address book are at risk of being pressed, but when answering I think the only one I almost pressed was the loud speaker button.
Depending on who your Provider is it may already have the APN settings built in (T-mobile lte in my case) so you probably just have to register it to get your mobile data to start after a reboot. Today I did some grocery shopping and it didn't miss a beat so it seems to be working fine now.
THANK YOU. I am free from bloat ware and a botched root attempt with some other random tool that ended up installing more bloatware.
Possible change to the guide,
Flashing the Rom Step 8. vs Flashing the GAPPS step 9 uncheck the two boxes... maybe this step should have been in the flashing the rom part.
No Problem
xz3064 said:
Thaks a lot ^^*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem, sorry for not getting back sooner notifications have been disabled.
RobbieRobski said:
THANK YOU. I am free from bloat ware and a botched root attempt with some other random tool that ended up installing more bloatware.
Possible change to the guide,
Flashing the Rom Step 8. vs Flashing the GAPPS step 9 uncheck the two boxes... maybe this step should have been in the flashing the rom part.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll look into it
thunderweasel said:
I run very few apps and the phone spends most of its time either idle or doing emails, so that might explain the difference in battery life. My screen brightness is set to auto.
I hadn't even noticed until you mentioned it, but I just checked and I get the same thing with the proximity sensor. I wonder if I've been hitting buttons during calls this whole time... Still an acceptable compromise as far as I'm concerned.
I had to manually input my provider's APN settings and toggle mobile data from off to on in order to get mobile data access, but that's the expected behavior. I had to do the same setup on the stock ROM. Haven't dropped the network once yet, and no issues with performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The proximity is annoying, but still it's better than all that bloatware
thunderweasel said:
Really appreciate you making this step-by-step noob-friendly guide. Worked for me exactly as advertised.
I had actually tried to flash TWRP and a custom ROM a few months ago after piecing together the necessary information from a few different threads scattered throughout the forum, but for some reason I couldn't get the Alcatel Flasher to properly read my phone's GPT. I spent hours trying different USB ports, different drivers, nothing. This time it worked flawlessly on the first try :victory: Maybe a Windows update between then and now fixed something.
It is so unbelievably nice to have a clean ROM for this phone after all this time. I've been doing my best to mitigate the malware stuffed onto it by Alcatel with the last few system updates and had finally reached the end of my tether. It's like a completely different device and plenty stable enough for a daily driver.
*edit* I think it would be nice if this thread was stickied since it consolidates all of the necessary information into an easy guide for novices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, means a lot . I'm really glad to have gotten rid of the Alcatel software aswell!
One last thing
PN04 said:
Thanks, this is helpful to know. The compass/rotation/gyro sensors are something I use fairly often for various apps, and is one of the reasons I haven't outright just bought a new phone (because It's been hard finding phones that have both and are reliable)... oddly enough this was one of the issues with the last phone I had where the custom rom, installed by the seller, disabled the compass sensor. At this point I'd be happy just going back to the stock version of the rom, but it seems like there are more difficulties in doing that.
Supposedly once you root the phone you can use another to delete (rather than just debloat) the offending apps causing all the trouble. Maybe if this can get me to that point I might be able to just delete them and continue using the phone normally?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you already did it or not sorry for getting back late. The proximity sensor doesn't actually work, it's not the hardware just the software. Also when enabling video mode inside the camera made the app crash and made the app not open after that (even restarting the phone wouldn't fix it). But after installing it a second time it all worked.
Dubstepwolf123 said:
If you already did it or not sorry for getting back late. The proximity sensor doesn't actually work, it's not the hardware just the software. Also when enabling video mode inside the camera made the app crash and made the app not open after that (even restarting the phone wouldn't fix it). But after installing it a second time it all worked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah so far that one crash was the only one I experienced on the camera app, using the shortcut of double clicking the power button fixed the issue for me. I'm learning to live without the proximity sensor but I'm still finding that I have to soft reboot my phone occasionally to get mobile data to work after leaving the wifi of my house. Also, another random quirk where the audio failed once, not sure what cased that, maybe putting it to sleep while running a game? I had to do a full reboot to get that back.
will be that you can support me on something about this device, a while ago I wanted to install a rom lineage 15.1 and had many bugs, one of them was that Dolby stopped audio did not want to open, so I decided to change it to stock again using minimal adb, and all good, I start the cel, but the problem continued, and restart it I get a message like 10 times in a row that says "daxUser stopped" after that, I skip another window where it says the "internal system is damaged and may be unstable to restore the cell phone factory "and I do not know what to do because I have already installed the rom allegedly stock several times and it does not take off in fact does not sound at all, the speaker is dead, I can not make calls, if the resiven but nothing is heard, it no longer connects to wifi, it leaves the few applications without any reason. ect etc, I hope you can support me with that, and if there is any solution it would be great.
Unroot, lock and take it back for repairs? Sorry, not very XDA-style answer.
Edit: are you completely sure that you flashed the right stock ROM for your device?
Try again
Alvaro Luna said:
will be that you can support me on something about this device, a while ago I wanted to install a rom lineage 15.1 and had many bugs, one of them was that Dolby stopped audio did not want to open, so I decided to change it to stock again using minimal adb, and all good, I start the cel, but the problem continued, and restart it I get a message like 10 times in a row that says "daxUser stopped" after that, I skip another window where it says the "internal system is damaged and may be unstable to restore the cell phone factory "and I do not know what to do because I have already installed the rom allegedly stock several times and it does not take off in fact does not sound at all, the speaker is dead, I can not make calls, if the resiven but nothing is heard, it no longer connects to wifi, it leaves the few applications without any reason. ect etc, I hope you can support me with that, and if there is any solution it would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a Retla and received official 9.0. download the 89-2 stock firmware. You can find it here. Use the .bat
File, place inside extracted firmware click & when it restarts you should get a notification to download 89-5.. once it completes the next notification will appear.. that's 116-11 9.0..
mod edit - telegram chat spam removed