The perils of voided warranties.

[ajdroidx]

No one ever really talks about messing up their devices trying to do things that void warranties. Stuff like rooting. Unlocking your bootloader. Installing a custom recovery. Putting on a new Rom. Well...

I now have a Samsung Galaxy Note II that is now unreliable. Yup.

Lets go through the list:

- I bricked the device trying to root. Using odin to flash a root injected image. I suspect because the PC had issues with drivers. A factory reset fixed it.

I later got root by a different method by chainfire.

- I installed TWRP. Had issues trying to create a nandroid. Tried 3 times where it would start the backup and be done a second later. It done this on my galaxy note 10.1 as well. Good thing I found this out before trying to flash a rom. Finally the third time, using the default backup name, it took. (So I thought...) Keep this in mind...

- I finally flashed a custom rom, CleanRom SE for AT&T and started to have issues with my data connection. It would just drop my data connection. And I had to reboot to get it back. I learned that toggling airplane mode would work instead of a reboot.

- I decided while we where out today, I would just revert to stock. By now, this is a routine act. But I ran into a problem.

I booted into recovery, TWRP, checked to see if the backups where there. There was 3 of them. The two "bad ones" and the "good one" I backed out of restore, went into wipe, I did my two wipe series, factory reset, cache, delvik, and repeat. With that done, it was time to restore. So, into that menu, I select the nandroid, swiped. And was almost instantly told, DONE!!!

What does this tell you? It takes a few minutes to restore a backup! Not one second! I try another image. Same thing.

I tell TWRP to reboot and was asked, "NO OS! Are you sure!?"

Crap. My nandroids did not exist. Or where botched. I have NO factory image!!!

I also took note of a message of "Unable to mount E: path don't exist or something cryptic that went too fast for me to see. It was not good.

Okay. Plan B. I still have the rom. So back into the wipe menu, and I run my usual wipe functions, then install cleanRom SE again. It dumps me back onto TWRP after aroma is done. I reboot the system.

And it bricks at the samsung logo. I pull the battery, reboot and it does it again! Pull the battery and factory reset, wipe, etc and reboot. Finally I get cleanRom to boot.

Now the data connection seems even more unstable. I thought set CPU may be the problem, but it is not installed! I did not save it with titanium yet.

So, it looks like TWRP has issues.
my SD card may be toast.
My nandroids are non nandroids. Nothing is there or they are corrupt.
Looks like my factory image is gone (overwritten).
CleanRom looks to have bugs or AT&T is having issues.
I could try odin to flash a stock image, but at this point I am gun shy. I feel as if I would brick the device again and be right back here with the same issues.

This is like the best phone I have ever had, and now, it is basically unreliable due to the data drops and I seem to brick it almost every time I go to do something.

I am highly discouraged by the recent failures I have had voiding my warranties.

So, I think I am going to buy another device and just, leave it "as is" while I try to get my Note II back to its former glory, if I can. I don't want to attempt until I get something else I can rely on incase I really mess my device up, which now seems common place.

I realize it may seem as if I am being harsh on myself. I may be, but I wanted write something up of what could go wrong with hacking their android phones.

As to what device I may grab?
I am not sure... I am looking into that.

One thing though, I am not sure I would be interested in rooting it or unlocking its boot loader or putting a custom rom on it. Probably be stock for a good while.

 

[OrlandoFL]

Fun story

 

[shelliewnj]

I think this is why I leave my device stock. I'm afraid to brick it and am nowhere near as knowledgeable as you are to fix it again. I am nearly crying for you about your phone!

 

[XplosiV]

I feel for ya AJ, maybe try different recovery and rom? I'm not sure what's available for the note 2 but generally cyanogen don't put out 'any old stuff' they are usually quite reliable, and Cwm has been around for a long while now, so that should know what is doing.

 

[breadnatty08]

I know it'll be nearly impossible to get, but how about a Nexus 4? Or are you only on Verizon now?

 

[2 Phonez]

You sure there wasn't a hardware problem in the first place that caused the data issues? If it's not a known bug for the ROM it's probably your hardware I find.

And did you try reinstalling the recovery image and using a different microSD card? It could just be a bad microSD causing all these problems in fact - it could just be corrupting everything. Again I know this from experience, a bad microSD can cause a lot of problems, my whole OS was unstable on one of my older Android phones because of a bad microSD.

 

[SiempreTuna]

That's a scary story!

I'm with the other cyber cowards who leave everything stock coz I just know it's exactly the sort of thing that would happen to me.

Re a new device, your best bet has to either be something second hand (pretty risky and I'm guessing that's not what you're looking for at the minute) or a Nexus 4: there's nothing else comes close to matching it for the money. It can still be ordered here in the UK (OK, not for immediate delivery), so it would appear the stock issues have been addressed.

 

[Speed Daemon]

I think this is why I leave my device stock. I'm afraid to brick it...

Same here.

Although I have the technical expertise to feel comfortable doing it if I wanted to, what I found was that I didn't need root to do 99% of what I wanted to do. In the case of my phone, which conceivably be needed in an emergency, I feel better leaving it mostly stock for the sake of reliability.

Some day I'll get around to rooting my Kindle Fire so I can run Kismet on it. But for now I'm more than happy with the plain old apps that I can install the easy way.

 

[davoid]

I could try odin to flash a stock image, but at this point I am gun shy. I feel as if I would brick the device again and be right back here with the same issues.

This is what I would suggest. It is what I would do if I found myself in your situation. After all the other things you've already tried, this is probably the safest operation you will have performed on the device. A stock Samsung rom from sammobile.com should set you straight again.

As to the nandroid backups not working, I had the same problem on my S3 using the Chainfire CWM recovery. My restore attempts failed, and I have heard of others having the same issue with that particular recovery. If you were to venture into rooting again, choose another recovery.

I personally don't trust nandroids anymore - at least I don't depend on them. I use Titanium to back up my apps and data, use SMS Backup for my messages, and just flash whatever rom I want and although it's a bit more long-winded logging into google and dropbox each time, and restoring from Titanium, I don't sweat about nandroids failing on me.
My homescreens are even backed up in Nova Launcher's data, so all my widgets and shortcuts are already set up once I do a batch restore in Titanium.

Nothing to lose by flashing a stock rom in odin.

 

[dan330]

check out the size of the nandroid file... they should be rather large.. about 1gb or more depending on all the things your have loaded and backed up.

if they look large... then maybe it is just a bad sdcard or TWRP needs to be re-installed.

this is what I would try next...
re-install the TWRP.. but make sure you re-download the files fresh.
then flash a different ROM.. one that is more closer to stock.

if it comes back.. try to update PRL.

maybe a radio files have gone bad.. you can try flashing them or updating them.
(warning: doing this wrong.. can break your phone!)