Database Users

[Q] Soft brick? Hard brick? Sort of firm'ish brick really

I've made a bit of a mess and I need help please. My s4 is softbricked, but as softbricks go, it's rather hard.
I have an early S4 i9505 bought from Carphone Warehouse (UK, unlocked, pre knox). I rooted it, installed TBackup, greenify and got it how I wanted it. Then I downloaded a stock firmware from Sammobile and tested to see if I could get it back to 'warranty' condition, which was a success.
Confident that I could obtain warranty if I needed it, I re-rooted it, installed TB and greenify, and it ran sweetly for months from that point onwards.
I read about the arrival of updates (and knox) and concluded I didn't need them. It was working, leave it alone.
Then out of the blue, my nice stable machine broke. I didn't change anything I was aware of to cause it.
No normal boot.
No recovery.
Download only.
Using Odin, I tried allsorts, eventually getting the same Sammobile firmware to run.
2 days later, it broke again, same as before, but worse!?
Then I tried all sorts of stuff downloading no end of things trying to get it to boot or even go into recovery. The most promising approach was to reload the firmware along with a .pit file, but still no joy. I've lost track of the other things I tried, but I've been doing it for a week, so a lot has been done. In desperation, I even tried downloading the latest firmware, so I now have signs of knox of the odin page.
I now have the following symptoms:
Booting into recovery brings up the blue 'booting recovery' message then just blackness.
Normal boot is exactly the same as above.
Unpowered conection to my laptop gives a 5 second boot loop featuring the buzz only.
I can reliably boot into download and download stuff with Odin and change the little Odin page status messages. After (foolishly) trying the latest firmware, these messages say
ODIN MODE
PRODUCT NAME GT-I9505
CURRENT BINARY Samsung Official
SYSTEM STATUS Official
KNOX KERNEL LOCK 0x0
KNOX WARRANTY VOID 0x0
CSB-CONFIG-LSB 0x30
WRITE PROTECTION: enable
eMMC BURST MODE enabled
Please can anyone give me some advice on what else I could try?
Thanks
Steve

Wrinklespots said:
ODIN MODE
PRODUCT NAME GT-I9505
CURRENT BINARY Samsung Official
SYSTEM STATUS Official
KNOX KERNEL LOCK 0x0
KNOX WARRANTY VOID 0x0
CSB-CONFIG-LSB 0x30
WRITE PROTECTION: enable
eMMC BURST MODE enabled
Please can anyone give me some advice on what else I could try?
Thanks
Steve
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If anything else is not working (especially, if you're unable to go to recovery) I'd call sammy service center. Your download mode says that you did not rooted your phone, and knox is untouched either.

spamtrash said:
If anything else is not working (especially, if you're unable to go to recovery) I'd call sammy service center. Your download mode says that you did not rooted your phone, and knox is untouched either.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for looking spamtrash.
I was wondering if I could get away with that. It does look good from the Odin display, but the flash counter must have a pretty high number in it by now! Won't that show up somewhere?
Do you think it does actually have a fault on it, rather than just some software that's messed up and needs tweaking?
Thanks
Steve

Wrinklespots said:
Thanks for looking spamtrash.
I was wondering if I could get away with that. It does look good from the Odin display, but the flash counter must have a pretty high number in it by now! Won't that show up somewhere?
Do you think it does actually have a fault on it, rather than just some software that's messed up and needs tweaking?
Thanks
Steve
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Are you able to go to recovery mode?
2. Assuming that your previous communicates were taken from the screen in download mode - you're clean.
If answer for 1 is: NO, and assuming 2: do not bother the flash counter. Flash counter does not means you messed with custom ROMs, it just means amount of the ROM update tries. As they are unable to prove that the counter was not increased by failed KIES updates, you're safe.
To go deeper, service will have to flash and wipe your phone.
One thing: remove your sd card prior to giving/sending it out.

Try a different usb cable.I was in same boat as you (after stupidly thinking mobile odin pro liked modems).
Luckily I had an unused cable off my tab 3.

any advice greatly appreciated

Hi there, I have a problem with my phone and I was ponited in the direction of this forum to see if anyone would be able to help out. Any assistance woud be very greatly appreciated
I am based in UK and I recently bought myself a Galaxy Note 4. 2nd Hand but as new condition. I tried to do an over the air software update to see if the phone would be able to get a more recent version of Android (it was running 5.0.1) and the phone wouldn't connect to the server. Also whe I tried to connect to Android Pay I got an error saying the device was rooted so I couldn't use the app on this phone. I therefore wanted to unroot the phone
I must stress my real technical knowledge of Android phones is basically at novice level but I tried to unroot the phone using SuperSU which I downloaded from the app store. I ran the unroot option and restarted the phone as prompted but this resulted in my phone being stuck in Bootloop. It wouldn't go past the Samsung load screen
I probably did the worst thing which was panic, went into recovery mode and attempted to factory reset to return the phone to out of box settings. I wiped the cache and did the factory reset but, of course, this hasn't resolved the problem. I then done a bit more reading and downloaded Odin and attempted to find the stock firmware for my phone (Model SM-910F), which i did, but unfortunately when I tried to flash this firmware back to my phone through Odin I get a failed error
So basically i'm on my knees trying to get some technical advice as to what else i can try or how to proceed. I did try taking it back to the Samsung Store and plead ignorance for help but the best I got there was that my main board would need replacing which would probably set me back another 200 nicker. For that money I may as well just buy a new phone. any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm currently left with a very expensive paperweight
Many thanks in advance guys
Lash

lashley82 said:
Hi there, I have a problem with my phone and I was ponited in the direction of this forum to see if anyone would be able to help out. Any assistance woud be very greatly appreciated
I am based in UK and I recently bought myself a Galaxy Note 4. 2nd Hand but as new condition. I tried to do an over the air software update to see if the phone would be able to get a more recent version of Android (it was running 5.0.1) and the phone wouldn't connect to the server. Also whe I tried to connect to Android Pay I got an error saying the device was rooted so I couldn't use the app on this phone. I therefore wanted to unroot the phone
I must stress my real technical knowledge of Android phones is basically at novice level but I tried to unroot the phone using SuperSU which I downloaded from the app store. I ran the unroot option and restarted the phone as prompted but this resulted in my phone being stuck in Bootloop. It wouldn't go past the Samsung load screen
I probably did the worst thing which was panic, went into recovery mode and attempted to factory reset to return the phone to out of box settings. I wiped the cache and did the factory reset but, of course, this hasn't resolved the problem. I then done a bit more reading and downloaded Odin and attempted to find the stock firmware for my phone (Model SM-910F), which i did, but unfortunately when I tried to flash this firmware back to my phone through Odin I get a failed error
So basically i'm on my knees trying to get some technical advice as to what else i can try or how to proceed. I did try taking it back to the Samsung Store and plead ignorance for help but the best I got there was that my main board would need replacing which would probably set me back another 200 nicker. For that money I may as well just buy a new phone. any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm currently left with a very expensive paperweight
Many thanks in advance guys
Lash
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to odin download mode and tell me what exactly your model shows there? Maybe I can help.
Press 3 button combo while phone is turned off to go into download mode.(volume down+home+power)
Or even better if you can take picture and upload it while your phone in download mode.

Trex888 said:
Go to odin download mode and tell me what exactly your model shows there? Maybe I can help.
Press 3 button combo while phone is turned off to go into download mode.(volume down+home+power)
Or even better if you can take picture and upload it while your phone in download mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi and thank you for coming back to me, i get the following
ODIN MODE (HIGH SPEED)
Product Name: SM-910T - (this does confuse me slightly as the phone model actually says SM-910F)
Current Binary: Custom
System Status: Custom
Reactivation Lock: OFF
KNOX Warranty Void: 0x1 (3)
QUALCOMM Secureboot: ENABLE (CSB)
RP SWREV: S1, T1, R1, A2, P1
Secure Download: ENABLE
Hope this is of help

lashley82 said:
Hi and thank you for coming back to me, i get the following
ODIN MODE (HIGH SPEED)
Product Name: SM-910T - (this does confuse me slightly as the phone model actually says SM-910F)
Current Binary: Custom
System Status: Custom
Reactivation Lock: OFF
KNOX Warranty Void: 0x1 (3)
QUALCOMM Secureboot: ENABLE (CSB)
RP SWREV: S1, T1, R1, A2, P1
Secure Download: ENABLE
Hope this is of help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello there.
Sorry to say but you dont have N910f international model.its refurbished and faked by n910F software.as you can see your download mode shows n910t that's the orignal motherboard model.and also it shows binaries and status custom and not official as it should.also knox is 0×1 it means it was rooted before and warranty was void.
You have sm-N910T that's T-mobile usa model.
You can download latest N910T firmware from www.sammobiles.com/firmwares and flash through odin.
Dont try to flash n910f firmware otherwise it can be bricked and unusable.
Hope this will help.

Trex888 said:
Hello there.
Sorry to say but you dont have N910f international model.its refurbished and faked by n910F software.as you can see your download mode shows n910t that's the orignal motherboard model.and also it shows binaries and status custom and not official as it should.also knox is 0×1 it means it was rooted before and warranty was void.
You have sm-N910T that's T-mobile usa model.
You can download latest N910T firmware from and flash through odin.
Dont try to flash n910f firmware otherwise it can be bricked and unusable.
Hope this will help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, I'm going to give this a go and see if it works
Many Thanks

lashley82 said:
Thank you, I'm going to give this a go and see if it works
Many Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome.
Make sure after flash firmware go to recovery by pressing (volume up+ home+ power ) while phone is off and do (data factory reset & wipe cache)otherwise it will stuck on Samsung logo at first boot.
First boot will take approximately 15 minutes.

help please!!!!

I have a s7 edge I got through sprint. I flashed smg935u firmware, a couple weeks later, took it to cell store to have them unlock it, and they did. custom with unlocked symbol. I had problems with texting, couldn't change apn settings, so they told me to flash back to the sprint firmware. I was on smg935u android 7.0, and my dumb ass wasn't paying any attention and tried flashing to smg935p android 6.1. so now my phone is soft bricked and stuck in a bootloop. someone please help me. what can I do? I have tried various firmwares with both odin 3 12 3 and odin princecomsy. this is pretty much the extent of my knowledge. someone please help me get this working again. I keep getting the sw rev check fail abort fused 4 binary 2 and its hard to even get into download mode. I can not get into bootloader mode at all.
odin mode high speed
product name smg935u
current binary Samsung official
system status custom
fap lock off
warranty void 0x0
qualcome secure boot enable
rp swrev b4(2,1,1,1,1) k1 s3

Shanedavid30 said:
I have a s7 edge I got through sprint. I flashed smg935u firmware, a couple weeks later, took it to cell store to have them unlock it, and they did. custom with unlocked symbol. I had problems with texting, couldn't change apn settings, so they told me to flash back to the sprint firmware. I was on smg935u android 7.0, and my dumb ass wasn't paying any attention and tried flashing to smg935p android 6.1. so now my phone is soft bricked and stuck in a bootloop. someone please help me. what can I do? I have tried various firmwares with both odin 3 12 3 and odin princecomsy. this is pretty much the extent of my knowledge. someone please help me get this working again. I keep getting the sw rev check fail abort fused 4 binary 2 and its hard to even get into download mode. I can not get into bootloader mode at all.
odin mode high speed
product name smg935u
current binary Samsung official
system status custom
fap lock off
warranty void 0x0
qualcome secure boot enable
rp swrev b4(2,1,1,1,1) k1 s3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know sometimes if you let the battery go dead then after charge boot into bootloader, make sure you got a good tar file for your stock phone it may be a bad tar file if you are getting errors.

Hmmmm sounds like you accidentally flashed very old 6.0.1 firmware back when it bootloader version 2 (which they eventually updated to version 4 so you can't go backwards) so I would just completely charge the phone and go into recovery and do a facorty reset then try flashing the latest Sprint 7.0 firmware and you should be good

Rooting

I have tried every post I can find on rooting the SM-S550TL and I can't get past Odin. It keeps sboot.bin and then FAIL!. I have done a complete factory reset. Did not setup any accounts. Setup the developer options. Completely lost.

I guess I should have said this first. I have been looking for a phone call recorder that will work. None have so I thought maybe I needed to be rooted. So that is why I am here. So I am having a HELL of a time trying to root. I have NEVER had any big problems rooting before. So there is a pic attached of what Odin says and below is what
my phone screen says after I try to flash:
ODIN MODE
PRODUCT NAME: SM-S550TL
CURRENT BINARY: Samsung Official
SYSTEM STATUS: Official
FRP LOCK: OFF
Secure Download : Enabled
WARRANTY VOID: 0 (0x0000)
RP SWREV: B:2 K:2 S:2
SW REV. CHECK FAIL. DEVICE: 2, BINARY:1

anaylor01 said:
I guess I should have said this first. I have been looking for a phone call recorder that will work. None have so I thought maybe I needed to be rooted. So that is why I am here. So I am having a HELL of a time trying to root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The S550TL is a TracFone variant of the On5. I would imagine that the S550TL is like all of the other TracFones that are impossible to root. Looking at your pic I'm confused as to why you are flashing a firmware build instead of a custom recovery (TWRP) and then flashing an SU like SuperSU or Magisk to root, but like I said, TracFone is notorious for making rooting an impossibility.
As far as call recording a I used to use an app in the Google Play store called Call Recorder Pro that worked really well. You might want to try something like that instead of trying to unlock that feature through rooting or buy a T mobile variant that you can use with a TracFone Sim card.

Here is what I found out. I am using WIFI calling and NO apps will record calls over WIFI. At least not that I have found.

anaylor01 said:
Here is what I found out. I am using WIFI calling and NO apps will record calls over WIFI. At least not that I have found.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you check out this thread for rooting? https://forum.xda-developers.com/samsung-galaxy-on5/how-to/sm-s550tl-root-instructions-t3555352. Reading through half of the pages in the thread, there is a lot of valuable info from the comments on how to root your phone.

am i in over my head trying to root and install Pie?

so I am a mom of 3 including an infant and exhausted trying to figure this out. Trying not to clog the board opening a new thread. Long story short- I want to use an app that the developer has not been able to fix the errors with it when using Nougat on an S7. They suggested I upgrade to Oreo or Pie to fix this. I have an unlocked phone purchased outright on eBay and use Total Wireless. So there will be no one to assist me in this. I'm fairly tech savvy so I looked on YouTube about rooting and upgrading with a custom ROM.
I watched these videos:
sorry new cannot post
So easily I enabled developer options and OEM unlock and USB debugging. Downloaded Odin and Magisk and no verity and Gapps and lineage 16.0 (from Ivan Meler) and twrp with the twrp-3.3.1-0-heroqltechn.img.tar file which I determined is which one I needed.
Odin will not flash TWRP (one of the first steps). Fails every time. It does start blue and I did download and install the latest Samsung drivers package just to be sure.
Then I found it was probably because I had a locked bootloader. So, I used this tut and that did successfully download to my phone via Odin. But TWRP still will not "flash" to the phone.
Now, my fingerprint sensor says "The fingerprint sensor is not responding, please try again later". and my phone has a security notice stating "unauthorized actions have been detected. Restart your phone and undo any unauthorized changes". So I am thinking that I did successfully unlock the bootloader? But TWRP still will not flash.
I considered using oneclickroot.com but it's $40, phone only worth about $100, and my husband is convinced they're going to steal info from my computer and phone in the process (even thought they're XDA endorsed). They also told me they can only give me Oreo not Pie.
I have downloaded and used SuperBackup. Also all my photos are auto backed up to Google and my contacts and calendar are too. So I don't think it's a huge deal if I lose everything. Even if I brick it I can get another. Reinstalling and relogging into all my apps will be a pain but whatever. I have a password app that can be logged into from the web.
Also my camera has been getting buggy and not opening and having to be restarted and in general the phone is just getting glitchy, so I was hoping an upgrade might help.
All the info I have:
Model G930V Ver 7.0
Baseband G930VVRS4BQC9
Build NRD0M.G930VVRS4BQC9
Knox 2.7.1
When I enter developer mode:
Odin Mode (High Speed)
Product name: SM-G930V
Current Binary: Samsung Official
System Status: Custom
FAP lock: Off
Qualcomm secureboot: enable
AP SWREV B4(2, 1, 1, 1, 1) K1 S3
Secure Download: enable
My startup screen where it says Galaxy S7 powered by Android also now has an unlocked lock icon and says "custom" underneath.
Should I just figure out how to "undo" what I did and leave it alone? I'd really like to use the eMeals app and I'd really like to not buy a new phone.

You can't flash twrp on a US branded snapdragon s7... only on exynos versions of the phones...however...there are ways to obtain root and there are ways of using twrp temporarily while running programs on your computer...it is very perplexed and I can't easily explain it but just read through the threads and google root and twrp xda snapdragon s7 and read up on it...or better yet look into the roms thread...jrkruse has some roms with temporary twrp and easy root...u will never have true custom roms or magisk on that phone but has got some awesome stock base roms and ways of doing things where you wont really miss custom roms
---------- Post added at 12:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 AM ----------
To get back to normal use Odin and flash the ap, bl, cp, and Csc files via the instructions...u have to read up on it...google Odin s7 back to stock