So like many of you, I have been really frustrated with T Mobile that they are the only carrier not to upgrade their Note 2 to Android 4.4, and they probably never will. There are more an more apps that I cannot run, some of which are important to me. So I gave up with calling T Mobile, and struck out on the custom ROM trail, seeing that CM has a 4.4 mod for this phone. After rooting and attempting to unlock (not necessary) and changing to custom recovery, I managed to get the CM mod loaded and running, after many hours of learning by trying everything, I got the phone running on the CM 4.4 mod, only to find that I could not make any calls, as there are no mods, anywhere, that support T Mobiles WiFi calling. I guess T Mobile uses that because their network is weak, but hey, I have used Sprint, AT&T and Verizon over the years, and every network has holes, especially inside buildings. It so happens that both where I work and at my home is spotty, so I cannot survive as a phone without WiFi calling. After all, for all of the bells and whistles, a Smart Phone is first and foremost a Phone. So after all that, I started on a new trail, unrooting and installing a stock mod.
There are lots of help out here that tell how to unroot and go back to stock, and they are all trash, every one of them. I tried stock mods from several sources (SAMMOBILE and others) and only found two out of six update versions that even functioned on my phone, and only one of those actually worked like it should, and that was the very first 4.1.1 version T889UVALJ1 that came with my phone years ago. No LTE and more apps that would not install at this level. I was hoping to at least get to the T889UVCOH4 version of 4.3, which is the current latest version from T Mobile.So here I was, an older version of ROM on my phone, no LTE, Flash counter not at zero, and Knox telling the world the phone was modified, excluding any chance of help. Why in the world did I even step into these problems. And then I made a startling discovery.
As I tried to at least restore the data backup I did before this whole thing started by using Smart Switch from Samsung, I found that not even that would recognize my phone because of the older version of android so I could not even get to my backups. When I got the phone it used Kies, but with the 4.3 version of android, Samsung changed over to Smart Switch. So at that moment I felt I was completely screwed. Then I saw the little "More" button on the Smart Switch dialog that was telling me my phone was not supported, and I clicked it. It brought me to some other options, and one was emergency recovery, which allowed for an initialization after a failed upgrade. I did not expect much, as my phone was not supported anymore, but I could not see any other option, so I chose to initialize the phone for recovery.
Well guess what, everything ran perfect, and when the process was completed, my phone was just like new, no flash record, no Knox report, a completely authorized phone. It was if I had never rooted it at all, and I had flashed a dozen ROMs. So for everyone that has a bricked or soft bricked Samsung phone or find out the custom ROMs are not what you were hoping for, all you need to do to get it back is install Samsung's Smart Switch on your computer and click the little "more" button on the screen and reinitialize your phone. It will be like the whole rooting and ROM experience was a bad dream, And yes, the backup did load when I was finished. It is that simple. This should work for any Samsung with Android 4.3 or higher on any carrier.
Related
So I have traditionally been a rom junkie, trying new ones each week (both aosp and tw), however I recently became more entrenched in touchwiz due to the battery savings. I was using Ditto Note 3 when I noticed that my GPS appeared to never find a lock, despite multiple applications such as gps toolbox and also leaving it to load outside for long periods.
I found another thread on the GS3 which described accessing service mode using the code in dialer '#*197328640#' and going into UMTS/COMMON/NV REBUILD to reset nv data. This let me access the menu on tw roms, however everytime I got to the NV REBUILD screen, it always said 'not support in custom binary' with both rooted and unrooted stock.
I have since unrooted my phone in a last ditch attempt to avoid returning it for repair as I am still on 4.1.2 bootloader and have a warranty for another 7 months- I don't want them to update my software to add knox, which I know will occur if I do this. Even on unrooted stock 4.1.2 after verifying that my download bootup screen shows no custom binary, official software and status official, along with a 'normal' status in phone settings, it is still giving me that same error in service mode.
Does anyone have any ideas? I'm seriously lost on this, and I need gps for work. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Help!
I have the exact same problem right now. Did you manage to fix this?
Nope- I ultimately handed it in for repair and got myself a knox'd replacement. That being said, the warranty would be up now regardless so it didn't matter. It might have been a hardware fault as I've flashed about 20 different roms since then and had no issues locking gps. Good luck!
Heya people.
I have a weird issue.
First some history.
I bought this phone years ago as a backup and soon after I decided I did not like it and got another phone. Meanwhile I fiddled with custom roms. This was back in 2012 probably so im pretty sure the rom that is on the phone now is Cyanogenmod unofficial android 4.0.
Phone boots fine but is quite unstable. random reboots etc when using it to its fullest.
I litterally threw it in a box, and forgot about it. until my mom called me needing an emergency phone. I remember I had it and offered it. Saying it could be there in about a day or 2. She needs a phone for a couple off weeks till her current phone gets replaced by Huawei since it broke. She specificly needed a simlock free phone. Mine is unlocked so that would have been great.
So I read up about Odin and how you are supposed to reflash to stock firmware. Downloaded the stock firmware from Samfirmwares. Dutch firmware. I downloaded 2 versions since there is a vanilla one and a vodafone branded one.(my phone is the vodafone branded one so I tried that one first)
First I used the newest Odin version and it didnt work. Got stuck on setup connection for about 5 minutes and then timesout with a fail.....
Ok so I went back to browsing and found that using a older version of Odin might work. Been there done that. tried 4-5 different lower numbered Odin versions. All the same issues. Switched USB ports multiple times and also doesnt work.
I am currently at a loss.
PS I also tried the Samsung Kies method.. Initialize firmware and upgrade. type model number(succes) type serial number(succes) then it tells me my device is unsupported for this method.
Hi folks. Admitted Noob here asking for help.
[backstory]
After many years resistance I finally decided to get a phone. Freedompop's free plan was enough to push me over the fence. Found a nice S3 (L710VPUDOH1) on ebay and bought it. Everything was fine...except the stock rom had so much crap in it I was about to have a seizure. Back in the day I had put CM on a nookcolor so I thought that was the way to go. I consulted with a friend who assured me that CM played nicely with freedompop so down the rabbit hole I went.
[the first sign of trouble]
Installing CM went fine. Odin. Heimdall. I installed the latest clockwork mod touch recovery (6.0.4.5). Then I installed the latest CM snapshot (cm-12.1-20151117-SNAPSHOT-YOG7DAO1K7-d2spr.zip) and the appropriate gapps. Worked great. Nice and fast, good configuration options, no bloat....but it couldn't connect up to the 3g/4g network. Freedompop worked as long as WiFi was on and would not otherwise. Crap. What's the point of a cell phone if I have to have a WiFi hotspot???
Some googling revealed that the APNs were wrong so I tried that route. I was able to get LTE working but never got 3G. I live out in the boonies, so 3G is kinda important. Also found that CM breaks Sprint's PRL auto update which doesn't seem too happy.
[^H^H^H^H^H]
So, I decided to go back to the factory ROM and see how FP worked as I dutifully made a backup before installing CM. Now the SHTF. When I restore from backup in CWM (followed by a factory wipe data and cache to avoid the boot loop) the ROM cannot connect to Sprint's network. Doesn't know its IEMI or much of anything. It does connect up to wifi, log into my google account, get my paid apps, etc....but still no phone.
I installed Kies and attempted to restore/upgrade firmware (non-emergency mode). Kies got to about 66% and said there was an unexpected error. I'm guessing it didn't like the custom recovery and just plain quit on me. Was worried that I'd made a brick but alas I could still get to download mode. </bullet dodged>
I would like to put the phone back to stock (including recovery) but I have no factory recovery image. Does anyone have a recovery image for L710VPUDOH1? Alternatively, is there any harm in flashing the full ND8 onto the phone even though it had OH1 running before? I seem to remember reading things about bricking phones when trying to downgrade....which is in effect what I would be doing.
Any other suggestions about how to get back to stock would be most appreciated.
TIA
You can flash nd8. Nj2 is newer though. I don't think anyone has captured the oh1 tar yet. The only thing you should not do is flash anything before nd8 (pre Knox) like mk3 or older. Which is jellybean anyways so....
Hope this helps.
Yes, thank you; that was exactly what I needed to know.
I have a working phone at the moment so stock is not necessary required. For others that may be interested I flashed in Wicked X 8.2. From there the phone once again knew its IMEI and I was able to carrier reset and get it activated with Freedom Pop.
Gonna try my best to give as much information as I can to make it easier for anyone good enough to try and help me with this. So I have an HTC One M9, from Sprint right here in the good old US of A, and it was working fine until I got the OTA Marshmallow update. At that point, apps started crashing like crazy (even after all were updated) and the status bar at the top of the screen and navigation buttons at the bottom would randomly disappear for several seconds after pressing the volume buttons, even after wiping the cache for both the system as well as the individual apps in question.
"No problem," I thought, "I'll just root it and install a custom ROM like I have with all my Android phones in the past." So I did that and tried Android Revolution, ICE, and ViperOne (all the latest versions), and every one of them had the same issues with programs crashing, the volume buttons messing up the screen, and so on. Actually, I couldn't even get through the setup wizards for any of them because those kept crashing too, and I had to use TWRP to rename the HTCSetupWizard.apk just to get to the home screen. Once there, my home button was inoperable, and no notifications or usual buttons like WiFi, Bluetooth, etc appeared when I pulled down on the status bar (which I discovered is what Android does if you don't complete the setup wizard).
At this point, I thought, "Well, maybe it's just a problem where my phone doesn't like Marshmallow for some reason. Let me try downgrading to Lollipop and see what happens." So I got the latest Lollipop versions for each of the aforementioned Custom ROMs, and they all ran smooth as silk, which tells me it's not an issue with faulty or damaged hardware. Only problem was that mobile data wouldn't work, on either LTE or CDMA settings.
I tried changing network modes, popping my SIM card in and out and rebooting in various combinations, but none of it worked. I couldn't even get into APN settings since the phone couldn't seem to detect my SIM card and had the APN menu greyed out. I thought I might have somehow damaged the SIM card with all the time I spent screwing around with the phone, but just to see what happened, I flashed a Marshmallow ROM back onto the phone and, sure enough, LTE service was right back.
I did some more research and saw that the issue may lay in the fact that the firmware (which is currently OS version 3.41.651.4) is not usable for Lollipop OS versions, and since my phone is S-ON (and I'm really not interested in spending $25 to S-OFF it), I'm not able to downgrade the firmware or, I assume, the radio firmware (if that's something you can even do separately from the "regular" firmware. Currently version [email protected]).
At this point, I'm really not sure what to do, and could use some guidance. I feel like my options basically boil down to the following:
1)Find a way to make Marshmallow ROMs more stable, possibly by reinstalling the firmware or some other method someone here might know that I don't,
2)S-OFF my phone, downgrade my firmware to something Lollipop can work with, and try a Lollipop-era ROM (not ideal), or
3)Go back to stock and hope Sprint pushes down an update my phone can use.
After going through all that, does anyone reading this have a recommendation for which of these options would be best (and how to go about them), or possibly offer other ideas I haven't come up with during the week and a half I've been researching and trying to fix it myself? I'm not hellbent on any particular option, I just want my phone to work (all of it) without constant crashes and glitches. Thank you to anyone who read all that and is still moved to offer help!
If you can run lollipop based roms you'd be on Lollipop firmware.
If you're going to mess around with aftermarket software you need s-off. If you don't s-off then you are risking unrecoverable bricks.
Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk
Okay, so if I'm on Lollipop firmware, would it stand to reason that that's why I'm having trouble running Marshmallow ROMs, including the stock ROM from Sprint? If so, what's the best (and safest) way to update it?
DON'T PANIC!
I own two Verizon note 4 devices. You could call me a flash-a-holic. I love this stuff and really love my Note 4. It's the best phone I've ever seen with great features that many newer ones do not have. However, you already know that ... so I'll dispense with the speech. Before any of you think I'm new to this stuff, I should say I've been flashing devices since 2005 with my old Windows Mobile devices. I also manage a total of seven Note 4 devices from Verizon, five of which are on my own plan. My neighbor has the other two because they loved mine so much.
Recently, I've been playing around with some of the International ROMS, particularly the Note 7 and S8 ports in the Snapdragon section. I really love those for the scrolling snapshots and S8 launcher (even though I use Nova on my daily device). However, after flashing so many of those and having to use a variety of data fixes to get 4G working, I seemed to have messed up my device. I was having really odd issues, like going from 1X, 3G, 4G, to disabled for several minutes before it would settle and finally connect. I also had issues with text messaging. It would work fine, for a while. Then it stopped receiving messages, but I could still send. I messed with APN settings, which didn't help. I flashed more data fixes and APN fixes I found. Nothing really fixed it. So I figured it was the SIM card. I went to Verizon and admitted it was a custom ROM, but he could see that obviously. He gave me a new SIM card, yet I still had the same trouble. After a reboot, it wouldn't settle on a connection for about three minutes, sometimes more. I still was unable to receive text messages (including MMS) on that device. Even a Nandroid backup did not fix the problem.
Here's what I did to fix it.
I decided it was probably best for me to restore back to stock and go through the rooting process again. Ugh... but I love my phones. I'd do anything to keep them going. Instead of using ODIN to restore back to the original stock, I used the Safe Upgrade for 6.0.1 found below. It's been fixed so it does not lock the bootloader again, but restores everything else to stock, but you get to keep TWRP recovery.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/no...firmware-safe-upgrade-to-marshmallow-t3402727
I let it boot and go through the process (without signing into anything). Immediately, I realized that my data/4G problems went away. It never flickered even once. I let it sit for 15 minutes once it finished it's initial setup and rebooted back into RECOVERY to flash Kevin's Flashpoint kernel. That gave me root again with Magisk. After a full reboot, I then went into DOWNLOAD MODE and flashed the newest modem (CQI2) using ODIN. Then it was time to settle on a ROM for my use. This time I decided to go back to another International ROM and it appears I'm good to go. Just remember, the Verizon Voicemail app won't be included and usually won't work with an International ROM. I've tried and only was able to get it to work on one of them. It runs, but just will not connect to Verizon properly to access your voicemail. I'd love to find a real fix for that.
Ah... it's good to be working again. Now I can use Titanium Backup to restore my apps and data. BUT I DO NOT RECOMMEND RESTORING SYSTEM DATA. It can only cause problems.
Just a few suggestions for anyone having issues. ALWAYS keep several files on your PC/Device for this type of recovery.
1. Keep the Safe Upgrade to Marshmallow 6.0.1. image. It will be your lifesaver in case something goes wrong.
2. Keep a good working kernel (of your choosing). I prefer @kevintm78 Flashpoint Kernel. It restores Magisk v14 and almost always passes SafetyNet. I keep both stock and port versions on hand (just in case).
3. Keep a good ROM or two (also of your choosing) in order to reinstall a ROM you prefer to use.
4. Keep a working data fix to flash if you're using one of the ported ROMs. Not all are created equal, nor the same at all. Not all of them work. I recommend the Aurora N7 Data fix (Alpha 5 for my N910V): https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=69066109&postcount=2681
5. Keep the latest version of ODIN around. You'll need it from time to time.
Last but not least ... try this fix before you start blowing up the forums with questions and complaints about problems you have. I've found that most of the odd problems people experience are caused by using Titanium Backup to restore system settings created from another ROM, or trying to add different mods, which cause issues. Don't blame the developer for issues that you have that no one else has reported. Most likely, it has nothing to do with their software. It's probably something you installed or restored from a previous backup. You can let those old text messages and phone history go.
If you use Titanium Backup, only store system data IF you are using the exact same ROM as before. Otherwise you will experience problems.
I was sure my Note 4 was ready for disposal after the cellular issues I was experiencing. However I'm happy to report it's good as gold now. I'm not sure how much longer these devices will work for us, but I'll never freely get rid of mine. Besides, who else can fix the TV in the bar when the bartender loses the remote? Not very many devices these days have IR Blasters installed. I've used mine at least a hundred times for that very reason. But that's only one reason for loving this device. I could go on, but you already know that Samsung made the best device with the Note 4 models.
I hope this info helps anyone having problems after flashing so many different ROMs. I know, it's hard to settle on only one. Happy flashing and remember ... DON'T PANIC!