Help!Very complicated issue - No recovery access, no root, locked bootloader

[χαινισ]

I own a Vivo Xshot which till recently used to work perfectly (bought in from China and using it in Greece). After -most probably- an incomplete OTA update or an incomplete factory reset), I am facing the following issues:

1. I have lost the root of the device
2. I cannot enter the recovery mode (I used to have cofface I think) from the buttons and from the fastboot menu.. It stacks on the logo screen
3. When I enter fastboot, I see that: Device is locked and Device tempered = true
4. When I connect the phone via USB (I have all drives installed) under "USB drive function" the SD card is shown as SD H:/. When I choose MTP, it is shown as Vivo Xshot (which means that the drivers are correctly installed).
5. However, the internal storage is not vissible (I have tried different cables, PCs, cleaning the USB, etc - and USB debugging is on). Moreover, it seems that the internal storage is set to read only
6. Strangly, even without being connected via USB, the phone is stacked in storage mode. All the apps that were stored in the internal memory are not vissible and when I try to enter e.g. the photo album I get a message "not available in storage mode"
7. The phone can receive and make calls, browse, install apks from Google play etc... That means that there is an OS installed (not fully bricked). But whatever is linked with the internal memory is not accessible
8. The device is vissible in adb (via MTP) and fastboot, but when I try to flash a recovery image, it says that failed because device is locked.. Mount/Unmount is not working either....
9. Adb Shell function is working but I don't know how and if I can use the chmod to make the internal storage read/write

Any suggestions? How can I unstack the phone from the fake storage mode? Any ways to flash a recovery without being rooted and with locked bootloader?
Android version is 4.4.2 - Snapdragon 801, 3.7.0 International ROM

Many thanks in advance for your help.. I have spend many many hours searching this and asking around, but nothing is working so far..
Xainis

 

[mikedt]

Note to self: "Do NOT buy a Vivo Xshot!".

I assume it tried to OTA update and it was rooted. Which is frequently a recipe for disaster, trying to OTA update a rooted and modified phone.

So you can't get into recovery, fastboot or anything properly? Frankly I think it's well and truly screwed, and no hope of bringing it back, not with what you're describing. Vivo Service might be able to, but they'll definitely charge you for it.

"3. When I enter fastboot, I see that: Device is locked and Device tempered = true"

I think that's something new Vivo doing with their phones, to stop rooting, tampering and unauthorized modifications.

 

[χαινισ]

Thanks for the reply.
In general, I am very happy with the xshot.. The best phone I ever had and I am familiar with many phones like iphone, xiaomi, huawei, samsung.. Anyway

I can enter fastboot, but as you said, not properly.. I can use many commands, but unfortunately not the flash update.zip one.. Unless I find a way to add in the rom package an android-info.txt

As a last resort I will send it back to vivo in china and see if they can fix it....

 

[WarrantyVoider]

When you say "fastboot," do you really mean Android's standard fastboot? As in connecting to a PC with the device responding to the command "fastboot devices"? Just want to make sure because I see from
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/vivo-xshot-info-downgrade-root-twrp-rom-t3132533
that the mode you enter by vol.up+power shows "FASTBOOT" and says "Device is lock [sic] Device tampered: true". If that's true fastboot, then the fastboot command you used to try to flash recovery was "flash recovery recovery.img"?

I am not familiar with your phone, but looking at the steps in that xda post, it seems the zip package needs to be in the root directory of internal storage. If the stock recovery only allows zip installations from there, maybe that your phone can't see the folder (internal storage) is causing the symptoms you've described?

I assume "internal storage" means the emulated SD inside the "userdata" partition (mounted at /data). The real location of the emulated SD is normally at /data/media. So check whether you can see that folder in a file manager and/or ADB (you might need root access though). The problem might simply be some issues with permissions and/or selinux contexts. Unfortunately, I don't know the structure of the file systems for your device to say for sure. Good luck.

 

[mikedt]

Sometimes there's a specific software tool that the manufacturer makes to completely restore a phone. Oppo released one for the Find 7 when it was upgraded to Lollipop. Even if it's completely hosed, as long as can get into fastboot and get a PC to recognize that, the Find 7 can be restored, even if totally bricked. Oppo and Vivo are subsidiaries of the same company, BBK Electronics. There likely is something like this for the Xshot, a restoring and flashing tool, but Vivo probably haven't made it public AFAIK. But Vivo service agents likely would have it though, and probably for the range of their phones, in cases were customers have managed to brick them.

 

[Deleted User]

Have you tried using Android Commander to access internal memory while in fastboot? If you are able to access from there i am pretty sure you will be able to get update.zip on the place where it should be.