Okay. Ignore the title, I couldn't think of anything to put. In short, I want to know about roms, about clockworkmod, cyanogen mod, and stuff like that. What they do, how to put them on, and I pretty much wanna know about the general stuff you do past rooting your phone. And I know that the section says No Noobs, but technically, I'm a newb, as far as I know i'm not annoying anyone or being completely nooblike.
Mainly with cyanogen. I read the instructions, and they seem too, I dont know, simplistic. I'd prefer exact details. Like, after I have clockwork mod installed, and I flash cyanogen, can i restore all the stuff I had on it? And once cyanogen is on there, is it already rooted, or must i root again? And if someone would explain to me how clockworkmod works in the first place. And how would I flash cyanogen? I thought it'd be through clockworkmod, but if I wipe everything and factory reset, wouldn't clockworkmod be gone?
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S (Vibrant or not vibrant, I dont even know) It's a GT-i9000M. Running android 2.2.1, Rooted, I have clockworkmod installed, but still no idea what to do past that point. Also, my Kies isn't telling me about any 3.x upgrade, so how would i go about manually installing a new version of android? I know it has to do with Odin, but whenever i tried i ended up not doing anything.
And one last thing about MetaMorph. Where could i find themes for it? And do i need to have a certain Rom running in order to use metamorph themes?
I'm mainly used to iPhones and such, where there isnt really much to do besides jailbreaking and such, and moving on to android phones is pretty intense. XD So much more to do with Android phones.
Well uh, thats about all i can think of at the moment. Also please post anything you feel that a (somewhat) newb to android modding should know.
Sorry for all the questions, and to those that help me, I love you. <3
And if any moderators deem this thread as against the 'No Noobs' rule, at least send me a message telling me you deleted it, or else I'll end up looking endlessly through the forums for my thread. I've done that before, not fun. LOL (Couldn't find a 'My Threads' thingy on the forum i was using.
Gutana said:
Okay. Ignore the title, I couldn't think of anything to put. In short, I want to know about roms, about clockworkmod, cyanogen mod, and stuff like that. What they do, how to put them on, and I pretty much wanna know about the general stuff you do past rooting your phone. And I know that the section says No Noobs, but technically, I'm a newb, as far as I know i'm not annoying anyone or being completely nooblike.
Mainly with cyanogen. I read the instructions, and they seem too, I dont know, simplistic. I'd prefer exact details. Like, after I have clockwork mod installed, and I flash cyanogen, can i restore all the stuff I had on it? And once cyanogen is on there, is it already rooted, or must i root again? And if someone would explain to me how clockworkmod works in the first place. And how would I flash cyanogen? I thought it'd be through clockworkmod, but if I wipe everything and factory reset, wouldn't clockworkmod be gone?
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S (Vibrant or not vibrant, I dont even know) It's a GT-i9000M. Running android 2.2.1, Rooted, I have clockworkmod installed, but still no idea what to do past that point. Also, my Kies isn't telling me about any 3.x upgrade, so how would i go about manually installing a new version of android? I know it has to do with Odin, but whenever i tried i ended up not doing anything.
And one last thing about MetaMorph. Where could i find themes for it? And do i need to have a certain Rom running in order to use metamorph themes?
I'm mainly used to iPhones and such, where there isnt really much to do besides jailbreaking and such, and moving on to android phones is pretty intense. XD So much more to do with Android phones.
Well uh, thats about all i can think of at the moment. Also please post anything you feel that a (somewhat) newb to android modding should know.
Sorry for all the questions, and to those that help me, I love you. <3
And if any moderators deem this thread as against the 'No Noobs' rule, at least send me a message telling me you deleted it, or else I'll end up looking endlessly through the forums for my thread. I've done that before, not fun. LOL (Couldn't find a 'My Threads' thingy on the forum i was using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I guess to first start off, here's a few pointers:
1. don't put the title in 1337 (people will most likely not click on it, thus no help)
2. you're right about this being the wrong thread. You should post this under the Samsung Galaxy S section (google your model number and you'll see it instantly) and should probably try the Q&A moreso than a general area (but it doesn't really matter all too much)
3. no matter how nooblike you may or may not be, you're still a noob XD
Now that we've gotten past the anally parts and all (hate doing that, but gotta =P), let's talk about what you came here for: answers.
Let's start with some definitions:
ROMs - these are the (usually modded) softwares that you flash to your phone. Depending on which phone you have, you can only flash ROMs made for your phone. Of course, if you have root/custom recovery, you can also install custom ROMs.
ClockWorkMod (CWM) is a recovery system made in order to allow people more features while they're in recovery mode. Of course, this is one of a few out there, but people stick to CWM cause of its huge support plus it's popularity. When you think of CWM, think of custom features being installed in (almost) one step (modding files and such will be taken care of for you, so you don't have to do it yourself). You can usually also fix a bricked system this way by reflashing either the entire ROM or the boot.img/other files (we'll get to this in a second)
CyanogenMod (CM) is an example of a very popular custom rom. They have a great team and usually is available for most devices, which in turn makes them so popular. It is widely supported and has a lot of extra features like updating to the latest OS and features not previously available on your phone. It's skinned, but usually follows the stock Android look for the OS in which they've skinned.
lol The reason why the instructions look so simple is because they've taken out all the hard work and all the stuff where you can possibly screw up your phone, so that they don't get a million messages saying "OMG MY PHONE BRICKED WHAT HAPPENED" and stuff like that. Protects them, makes it easier for you. If you had made a backup before you flashed CM (usually you only have to back up whats on the phone if it has internal and external memory, but back up your sd card always just in case. never hurt to), then yes. If you backed it up with your previous ROM, then you'll probably need to revert to get it back. If you didn't, chances are whatever you didn't backup and didn't sync, is safe to say gone. You can try recovering it using a recovery software on the computer like i detailed here for another person, but of course you'd skip the whole trying to save the phone part and just start with mounting the phone to your computer and running the software.
CM is a custom rom, and so most (if not all) custom roms have root preinstalled (besides, who wouldn't want root?!) As for CWM, it works by being (usually) flashed into the recovery partition of your phone. The nice thing about the phone is that it's split up into parts: boot, recovery, system, and some other ones i can't think of off the top of my head. Those three are important, as if you get a softbrick, you might still be able to recover all your data simply by using CWM/fastboot (a dev-tool used to flash/unlock, but only available in certain phones, as it is disabled usually) to reflash the boot.img (one requires command line, whereas CWM only needs you to flash a created/pre-made package). Also, since they're in separate partitions, even if your system and boot.img doesn't work, you can probably still access recovery (unless you screwed up really REALLY bad, and in that case I can't help >.<)
Observant you are =] Yes, if you were to flash CM, your CWM will be gone (i don't understand why most people don't just bake it into the ROM in the first place) but, not all is lost. Just go back into the Android Market and redownload ROM Manager. Of course you'll need to open it up and flash the same exact recovery again (annoying, isn't it?) but unless you know how to mod zip/img files and edit the script, you'll just have to make do with that. If you do, you could just (usually) take out the recovery partition and just leave the one you have already in there (but its usually safer and better to just redownload/reflash it as annoying as it is). But yes, you would use CWM to flash it. It's as simple as "Install from SD Card" which is why custom recoveries like CWM are popular. So simple
At this point, I would look into a few things. One is skinning your phone (though you probably can't do too much if you don't want to touch system files). If you find a psuedo-rom (slightly modded) that themes it, that's your best bet. Another is gaining access to certain features in apps you didn't have before (i.e. androidLost, LBE Privacy Guard, titanium backup) and of course more control by the ability to control your system files (if you know what you're doing, of course). Lastly, you can use stuff like MetaMorph to theme out certain sections of your rom (provided that they give you one compatible with your phone model/rom), minus having to flash it and having more fine-tuned controlled. Usually, Metamorph will run on all ROMs, but it doesn't guarantee that there'll be stuff for every ROM. Also, want themes? google it (google is your best friend!)
Kies won't tell you that you have an upgrade because it is ROM-dependent. It looks for their official ROM and says "Hey, this guy has our ROM. Check for an update". Think of owning a custom rom like being kicked out of your family. You won't get anymore updates from them XD. However, if you're looking to get the latest updates, check out the Samsung Galaxy S Dev threads. They will usually have another method of loading in the new ROM into your phone. And if you want to stick with ROM Manager, shell out for premium and they'll include "Check for Updates" in ROM Manager, along with several other functions (though you can check for free via computer/browser ). Mostly, manually updating the software requires the "Install from SD Card" feature in CWM/other recoveries, so you don't have much to worry about.
Odin is, as you stated, most likely your best bet. Not too many people repackage official ROMs into easy-to-flash zips. Odin is the Samsung equivalent to Motorola's RSD Lite from what I googled (i have motorola, so no exp. on odin >.<) It's mostly like a dev tool allowing you to flash/re-flash phones and is also usually your one-way ticket out of a semi/full brick (assuming you didn't mess up the hardware and you can get into download mode). It's the flashing tool that can access the core system of the phone even without root and allows you to reflash OFFICIAL ROMs. Should you use Odin (should be your last resort), you WILL lose root and all your data. No questions asked. Its like reinstalling everything to the state in which you got it in when you bought the phone. Word of advice: BACK UP OFTEN! (did i forget to mention Titanium Backup? )
Yeah, the transition from Apple to Android is so different and had I not had experience with my PSP, i'd be dying with the information overload. However, just read a lot of stuff on the forums (*cough*general android forums*cough*) and you should be just fine. We have an excellent community here that will try our best to fix whatever problems you encounter (note the key word: try. we're not gods XD) You'll get the hang of it soon enough.
Oh, well, I don't want to keep you for much longer, but since you mentioned something that any noob should know, it's definitely ADB (Android Debugging Bridge). This is where you'll probably spend a lot of time, as people's fixes usually involve shell (terminal for your phone). If anything, get acquainted with it, as it might save your butt in the future/unlock a few extra features for you ;D .
Well, that's all i can think of, and honestly, after typing this thing up for about an hour now, I think I'm going to grab me some breakfast Good luck to you and welcome to the Android commmunity! (and next time, remember to post in the right place! XD)
~jojojohnson7410
P.S. PM me if you need anything. =]
Observant you are =] Yes, if you were to flash CM, your CWM will be gone (i don't understand why most people don't just bake it into the ROM in the first place) but, not all is lost. Just go back into the Android Market and redownload ROM Manager. Of course you'll need to open it up and flash the same exact recovery again (annoying, isn't it?) but unless you know how to mod zip/img files and edit the script, you'll just have to make do with that. If you do, you could just (usually) take out the recovery partition and just leave the one you have already in there (but its usually safer and better to just redownload/reflash it as annoying as it is). But yes, you would use CWM to flash it. It's as simple as "Install from SD Card" which is why custom recoveries like CWM are popular. So simple
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to nit-pick a bit. CWM is part of the recovery partition, and unless the Galaxy S is different from every other android device, flashing will not remove it. ROM Manager and CWM are two different things. ROM manager will allow you to download the roms, which will then instruct CWM to flash the rom (when it reboots).
jojojohnson7410 said:
Well, I guess to first start off, here's a few pointers:
1. don't put the title in 1337 (people will most likely not click on it, thus no help)
2. you're right about this being the wrong thread. You should post this under the Samsung Galaxy S section (google your model number and you'll see it instantly) and should probably try the Q&A moreso than a general area (but it doesn't really matter all too much)
3. no matter how nooblike you may or may not be, you're still a noob XD
Now that we've gotten past the anally parts and all (hate doing that, but gotta =P), let's talk about what you came here for: answers.
Let's start with some definitions:
ROMs - these are the (usually modded) softwares that you flash to your phone. Depending on which phone you have, you can only flash ROMs made for your phone. Of course, if you have root/custom recovery, you can also install custom ROMs.
ClockWorkMod (CWM) is a recovery system made in order to allow people more features while they're in recovery mode. Of course, this is one of a few out there, but people stick to CWM cause of its huge support plus it's popularity. When you think of CWM, think of custom features being installed in (almost) one step (modding files and such will be taken care of for you, so you don't have to do it yourself). You can usually also fix a bricked system this way by reflashing either the entire ROM or the boot.img/other files (we'll get to this in a second)
CyanogenMod (CM) is an example of a very popular custom rom. They have a great team and usually is available for most devices, which in turn makes them so popular. It is widely supported and has a lot of extra features like updating to the latest OS and features not previously available on your phone. It's skinned, but usually follows the stock Android look for the OS in which they've skinned.
lol The reason why the instructions look so simple is because they've taken out all the hard work and all the stuff where you can possibly screw up your phone, so that they don't get a million messages saying "OMG MY PHONE BRICKED WHAT HAPPENED" and stuff like that. Protects them, makes it easier for you. If you had made a backup before you flashed CM (usually you only have to back up whats on the phone if it has internal and external memory, but back up your sd card always just in case. never hurt to), then yes. If you backed it up with your previous ROM, then you'll probably need to revert to get it back. If you didn't, chances are whatever you didn't backup and didn't sync, is safe to say gone. You can try recovering it using a recovery software on the computer like i detailed here for another person, but of course you'd skip the whole trying to save the phone part and just start with mounting the phone to your computer and running the software.
CM is a custom rom, and so most (if not all) custom roms have root preinstalled (besides, who wouldn't want root?!) As for CWM, it works by being (usually) flashed into the recovery partition of your phone. The nice thing about the phone is that it's split up into parts: boot, recovery, system, and some other ones i can't think of off the top of my head. Those three are important, as if you get a softbrick, you might still be able to recover all your data simply by using CWM/fastboot (a dev-tool used to flash/unlock, but only available in certain phones, as it is disabled usually) to reflash the boot.img (one requires command line, whereas CWM only needs you to flash a created/pre-made package). Also, since they're in separate partitions, even if your system and boot.img doesn't work, you can probably still access recovery (unless you screwed up really REALLY bad, and in that case I can't help >.<)
Observant you are =] Yes, if you were to flash CM, your CWM will be gone (i don't understand why most people don't just bake it into the ROM in the first place) but, not all is lost. Just go back into the Android Market and redownload ROM Manager. Of course you'll need to open it up and flash the same exact recovery again (annoying, isn't it?) but unless you know how to mod zip/img files and edit the script, you'll just have to make do with that. If you do, you could just (usually) take out the recovery partition and just leave the one you have already in there (but its usually safer and better to just redownload/reflash it as annoying as it is). But yes, you would use CWM to flash it. It's as simple as "Install from SD Card" which is why custom recoveries like CWM are popular. So simple
At this point, I would look into a few things. One is skinning your phone (though you probably can't do too much if you don't want to touch system files). If you find a psuedo-rom (slightly modded) that themes it, that's your best bet. Another is gaining access to certain features in apps you didn't have before (i.e. androidLost, LBE Privacy Guard, titanium backup) and of course more control by the ability to control your system files (if you know what you're doing, of course). Lastly, you can use stuff like MetaMorph to theme out certain sections of your rom (provided that they give you one compatible with your phone model/rom), minus having to flash it and having more fine-tuned controlled. Usually, Metamorph will run on all ROMs, but it doesn't guarantee that there'll be stuff for every ROM. Also, want themes? google it (google is your best friend!)
Kies won't tell you that you have an upgrade because it is ROM-dependent. It looks for their official ROM and says "Hey, this guy has our ROM. Check for an update". Think of owning a custom rom like being kicked out of your family. You won't get anymore updates from them XD. However, if you're looking to get the latest updates, check out the Samsung Galaxy S Dev threads. They will usually have another method of loading in the new ROM into your phone. And if you want to stick with ROM Manager, shell out for premium and they'll include "Check for Updates" in ROM Manager, along with several other functions (though you can check for free via computer/browser ). Mostly, manually updating the software requires the "Install from SD Card" feature in CWM/other recoveries, so you don't have much to worry about.
Odin is, as you stated, most likely your best bet. Not too many people repackage official ROMs into easy-to-flash zips. Odin is the Samsung equivalent to Motorola's RSD Lite from what I googled (i have motorola, so no exp. on odin >.<) It's mostly like a dev tool allowing you to flash/re-flash phones and is also usually your one-way ticket out of a semi/full brick (assuming you didn't mess up the hardware and you can get into download mode). It's the flashing tool that can access the core system of the phone even without root and allows you to reflash OFFICIAL ROMs. Should you use Odin (should be your last resort), you WILL lose root and all your data. No questions asked. Its like reinstalling everything to the state in which you got it in when you bought the phone. Word of advice: BACK UP OFTEN! (did i forget to mention Titanium Backup? )
Yeah, the transition from Apple to Android is so different and had I not had experience with my PSP, i'd be dying with the information overload. However, just read a lot of stuff on the forums (*cough*general android forums*cough*) and you should be just fine. We have an excellent community here that will try our best to fix whatever problems you encounter (note the key word: try. we're not gods XD) You'll get the hang of it soon enough.
Oh, well, I don't want to keep you for much longer, but since you mentioned something that any noob should know, it's definitely ADB (Android Debugging Bridge). This is where you'll probably spend a lot of time, as people's fixes usually involve shell (terminal for your phone). If anything, get acquainted with it, as it might save your butt in the future/unlock a few extra features for you ;D .
Well, that's all i can think of, and honestly, after typing this thing up for about an hour now, I think I'm going to grab me some breakfast Good luck to you and welcome to the Android commmunity! (and next time, remember to post in the right place! XD)
~jojojohnson7410
P.S. PM me if you need anything. =]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, thanks a lot. I still have a question or two, bear with me.
Well for one, is flashing roms made for different firmwares alright, or no? Since I have 2.2, and im assuming the latest cyanogen is made for 3.x, would I have to upgrade my firmware to the corresponding firmware.
And about Clockwork, if my phone bricks, I'd have to restore using odin, right? But if the phone still works, i can just root and cwm and restore it using rom manager?
And uh, I'm not sure if this is a problem or im just doing something wrong, but in RomManager, i click Backup Current ROM, and it goes into recovery mode, and theres no new options, there's just like, format, factory reset, clear cache, reboot, but nothing involving rom manager. And when i check for the recovery file in my sd card, it's not. Wut do.
WoZZeR999 said:
Just to nit-pick a bit. CWM is part of the recovery partition, and unless the Galaxy S is different from every other android device, flashing will not remove it. ROM Manager and CWM are two different things. ROM manager will allow you to download the roms, which will then instruct CWM to flash the rom (when it reboots).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol true true that would be my mistake. XD Nice catch
~jojojohnson7410
Gutana said:
Wow, thanks a lot. I still have a question or two, bear with me.
Well for one, is flashing roms made for different firmwares alright, or no? Since I have 2.2, and im assuming the latest cyanogen is made for 3.x, would I have to upgrade my firmware to the corresponding firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you wouldn't have to upgrade to the latest firmware to get the ROM installed. So long as the ROM is confirmed to work for your device, you can flash any ROM you want (which is convenient in my case since I have an Atrix 4G and it was oh-so-lonely without some Gingerbread XD)
Gutana said:
And about Clockwork, if my phone bricks, I'd have to restore using odin, right? But if the phone still works, i can just root and cwm and restore it using rom manager?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the thing is, you really only need that usually if you're on a stock rom or some official version and either you want to flash a new stock ROM from Samsung or you want to pull your phone out of a brick. Most of the time, however, even if you bricked it, so long as you can get into the recovery menu, you'll be alright. Just re-flash the ROM that you want (or in my case yesterday when I was dealing with an Inspire, I had to use a different ROM to unbrick the phone. I don't know why this happen, but it was being nit-picky >.<)
Gutana said:
And uh, I'm not sure if this is a problem or im just doing something wrong, but in RomManager, i click Backup Current ROM, and it goes into recovery mode, and theres no new options, there's just like, format, factory reset, clear cache, reboot, but nothing involving rom manager. And when i check for the recovery file in my sd card, it's not. Wut do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol nooo this is not a problem at all. See, like the guy above me posted, the Recovery Menu is completely separate from anything in the ROM. It's located in the recovery partition rather than the system and the boot partitions, so they usually don't touch the recovery. ROM Manager is just a means of providing GUI to CWM so then you can either flash the CWM to your phone or help download ROMS into your SD card. Stuff like backup and everything needs you to boot into recovery as you can't be backing up the system while your system is mounted on, so they send you to CWM. From there, there's an option called "backup and restore". In this place, you can choose where to save the backup. And since the backup is made by CWM, it will be recognized by CWM if you want to restore it. I think it saves it in a zip file, but im not 100% positive, so take that one with a grain of salt.
Hope this answers the questions! Let me know if you need more help (or just PM me. I check that regularly )
~jojojohnson7410
jojojohnson7410 said:
No, you wouldn't have to upgrade to the latest firmware to get the ROM installed. So long as the ROM is confirmed to work for your device, you can flash any ROM you want (which is convenient in my case since I have an Atrix 4G and it was oh-so-lonely without some Gingerbread XD)
Well, the thing is, you really only need that usually if you're on a stock rom or some official version and either you want to flash a new stock ROM from Samsung or you want to pull your phone out of a brick. Most of the time, however, even if you bricked it, so long as you can get into the recovery menu, you'll be alright. Just re-flash the ROM that you want (or in my case yesterday when I was dealing with an Inspire, I had to use a different ROM to unbrick the phone. I don't know why this happen, but it was being nit-picky >.<)
lol nooo this is not a problem at all. See, like the guy above me posted, the Recovery Menu is completely separate from anything in the ROM. It's located in the recovery partition rather than the system and the boot partitions, so they usually don't touch the recovery. ROM Manager is just a means of providing GUI to CWM so then you can either flash the CWM to your phone or help download ROMS into your SD card. Stuff like backup and everything needs you to boot into recovery as you can't be backing up the system while your system is mounted on, so they send you to CWM. From there, there's an option called "backup and restore". In this place, you can choose where to save the backup. And since the backup is made by CWM, it will be recognized by CWM if you want to restore it. I think it saves it in a zip file, but im not 100% positive, so take that one with a grain of salt.
Hope this answers the questions! Let me know if you need more help (or just PM me. I check that regularly )
~jojojohnson7410
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But theres no backup and restore options, its jut the recovery options you'd get if you were on a brand new phone.
Hello guys,
a few days ago I dared to root my Xperia X10 Mini Pro with SuperOneClick and flashed a Cyanogenmod 7 Android 2.3.3 ROM. All in all, it worked pretty well.
After doing some apps installation stuff I rebooted in the Recovery (Clockworkmod which obviously came along with the ROM) and made a backup, just for the case. Afterwards, I selected "power off" in the CWM menu because I wanted to go to bed.
Then, immediately, CWM said something like "Error - This recovery seems to be bad" and something with a "risk". I managed however to power off. Can't remember if that worked via CWM or if I pushed the power off hardbutton or removed the battery.
Yet - the ROM seems to work. Now I'm a bit anxious because of the CWM error.
Is there really a risk? I planned to dare unlocking the bootloader soon. Is it dangerous to do this with a "bad recovery" or doesn't that matter at all?
Is there a possibility to repair CWM? Can I just install a new CWM? If yes - how?
Sorry - pretty noobish questions, I know.
Can you help me anyway?
Thanks a lot!
deleted post
Thank you for your help! I already thought that no one would answer because the thread disappered on page 3 of this forum
I've never heard from Odin before and therefore googled it. It only occured in connection with Samsung devices. Are you sure it is compatible to my Sony Ericsson?
Anyway, can I also install a new CWM via ROM Manager or wouldn't you recommend this?
Warning: I'm a noob. Take my advice at your own risk!
From what I understand, flashing CWM via Rom Manager is exactly the same as manual flashing (perhaps better, since the Rom Manager presumably keeps up to date). So I think you should be able to do so and make another recovery (without going through any of that manual flashing stuff). You should get a second opinion just because I'm so noobish, but I think this is the case.
However, from my limited understanding, I don't think the recovery will make any difference when dealing with the bootloader. The bootloader is, more or less, the very first set of instructions executed when the phone turns on. If you mess that up, your phone won't even be able to get into recovery mode. Also, the recovery images are stored on your sd card, which is wiped upon unlocking. Once again, I could be wrong.
deleted post
Dude, what are you talking about? You can't use ODIN on a non-Samsung phone.
trich025 said:
don't use rom manager just use the odin for your safety, you can bet that samsung users are the one benefiting on odin but as you can see erricson and samsung are both android phones and if you examine them both device have similar programs, and one thing, always keep in mind that you have to back up your current rom for emergency uses so you can still get back to were you started in case something went wrong.
if i helped you with this problem you could click the thanks button >>>>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK now this is flat out wrong. Each Android device has a different program used. Samsung has Odin, HTC has an RUU. Not sure about SE. But never use a software made for one device on another unless you want a brick. Just because they both use android doesn't mean they are the same.
Thanks to everyone, especially Product F(RED)!
No offence, trich025, but I guess you were wrong.
Can I destroy something by re-installing or updating CWM via ROM-Manager just in case my CWM has a bug?
Hello,
Pretty new to rooting, tried to root my HTC Vivid to install some apps which are "incompatible" with my device. Unlocked bootloader and rooted successfully by installing TWRP recovery and installing the supersu zip. After copying the build.prop file to another folder I proceeded to make some minor changes to the build.prop file with ES File Explorer. Essentially changing the model ID of the phone to another device to try to prompt Google Play to show the incompoatible apps, didn't touch anything boot-related or anything else. Phone was working fine at that point, rebooting ok, but Google Play still showed the apps as incompatible, so I temporarily brought back the old build.prop file by copy/pasting it from the folder I made. The system indicated the copy was made successfully, and I tried to reboot once more. That is where the problem started.
When the power button is pressed for a second or so, the phone vibrates once and shows the starting splash screen (HTC) as it did when working, and then the screen goes blank, although the LED backlight is still on (so phone has power). Nothing comes after, no "HTC quietly brilliant" logo nor the chime that indicates it's booting up. At that point it stops responding to any stimulus except the removal of the battery, at which point the LED backlight finally goes off. Waiting for ~10min solved nothing, still blank black screen with backlight on. Upon reinserting the battery, the phone once again responds to the power button, with the same results.
I can boot to recovery by holding down Vol down and pressing power, and there I get the usual options including Fastboot, Recovery, etc. I tried doing a factory reset. It gives a bunch of error messages along the lines of "can't mount emmc", then says it's starting the reset, and gives a successful completion prompt after half a minute or so. However, that seems to do nothing at all to fix the problem (tried 4x times, with SD card in and out).
The only change that comes to mind is the last replacement of the build.prop file I did, which should have just restored the original. Assuming the factory reset doesn't actually reset that file (where would it get a copy to do so?) perhaps it being broken is preventing me from booting after the reset. Just my theory though, and could be something else.
From what I understand I could try putting a recovery image on the micro sd from a PC, then doing a recovery rather than a factory reset from the TWRP menu to replace all the files, including the potentially problematic build.prop. However, I didn't make a backup of the system before this happened (learning experience) and have no such image. Could anyone perhaps point me to a clean image for the Vivid that I could download and flash to my phone with recovery? Or otherwise shed some light on what could be causing the problem? I also realize there are various unbricking tutorials online, but after many hours of this I'm a bit too exhausted to follow all of those just to see if they work or not.
Edit: Upon further research I realize I can try to flash a new rom to the Vivid, but no matter how much I search I can't find a working link for a stock ICS .zip. There is a RUU .exe file from HTC but my phone can't get past fastboot, so I'd need to do this with a zip file. Anywhere I can get a working one? I could also try a custom rom, I just have 0 knowledge of those so don't know which would be a safe bet.
Would appreciate any help, and hope the post isn't overly long. Tried to give as much info as I could. I already spent a ton of time on both the root procedure and trying to fix this and would really like to hear professional opinions before breaking anything else. Thanks for reading.
Hi, thank you for using XDA Assist. The best place to get help is in your device's specific forum here, http://forum.xda-developers.com/htc-vivid They are the experts on your device. You may have already seen this but it's a good place to start, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1486024 If it were me I'd return the device to stock and start over. If you're messing with your phone you will want to be comfortable on how to return it to stock as you'll probably have to do that more than once as you learn more about your device.
jd1639 said:
Hi, thank you for using XDA Assist. The best place to get help is in your device's specific forum here, http://forum.xda-developers.com/htc-vivid They are the experts on your device. You may have already seen this but it's a good place to start, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1486024 If it were me I'd return the device to stock and start over. If you're messing with your phone you will want to be comfortable on how to return it to stock as you'll probably have to do that more than once as you learn more about your device.
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Thanks for the advice, I basically got into rooting from scratch a day ago, so many resources I don't know about. Trying to return to stock, but I need a rom of the stock in .zip form since the phone can't get past recovery, and having trouble finding that. Perhaps due to age of phone, but most links to those seem to no longer be functional.
rohanreddy277 said:
Actually u shouldnt have rooted with that zip file containing supersu u actually should have done it with kingo root. anyway, the best waty to revive it is to install cyanogenmod. download the version for ur device and google how to install cyanogenmod. this will give a new life to ur phone. hope it helps.
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Right, I basically learned as I went along for this root, haven't even heard of kingo before. I was very careful, but apparently something still went wrong. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try that mod and see if it works.
Edit: I'm only finding a nightly build for the Vivid on the CyanogenMod website, with no stable versions. Nightly build is dated two years ago, so clearly no stable versions coming. While I'm in no position to be picky, and I'll try it if needed, I'd rather not break what's still functioning in my phone. Any mods out there that are stable for the Vivid?
Edit2: the nightly cyanogen build seems to have brought the phone back online, but besides the different look and feel from what I'm used to, it doesn't seem to have Google Play... so I can't download anything. It also isn't seen by HTC Sync so I can't run the RUU from there, but I did successfully extract the rom.zip file using some instruction on this forum from the stock ICS RUU .exe. However, installing that from twrp recovery fails as it cannot open the zip, and an attempt to use the "fastboot flash zip rom.zip" command fails saying it's not allowed. Integrity of zip fail is tested to be ok with an archiver program. The zip file extracts properly, and I can flash things like boot.img and recovery_signed.img to the phone, yet system.img cannot be flashed (data length too large error). Not sure what to try next.
Thread closed.
Picked up an AT&T Radiant Core for cheap at a store around me. I don't intend to use it with AT&T, it was just such a low price that I figured I'd get it and see if I can break into it just for fun. It's an MTK6739 chipset phone, so in theory it should be easy to pull partitions from this thing with something like SPFT (or Miracle Box, if you paid for it) and do a dirty port of TWRP to get root privileges on it. But this is harder than it seems.
I need an auth file to do anything with SPFT. Apparently this has to do with some kind of "secure boot" mechanism that MediaTeks sometimes have now. There's no stock firmware for this device online from what I can find, nor for the generic version of the device, the Tinno U304AA (AT&T just rebranded it). If I had a stock firmware image, maybe I could risk wiping the partitions and reflashing the stock firmware to get rid of the secure boot stuff.
I saw a guide for how to access the bootloader on the Tinno U304AA generic version, but on the AT&T version of the phone there's no option in the boot select menu (Vol. UP + Power) to get to the bootloader to run a fastboot oem unlock. All the AT&T version has is recovery and normal boot. I'm not sure what I can do to maybe reset this to get the other options. Maybe if I had the stock firmware for the generic version of the phone I could overwrite it and get access to those other options.
Either way, just posting this up for anyone else that got one of these and wants to collaborate/contribute. Maybe with enough collective brainpower we can make something happen.
UPDATE: found a stock system image dump, thank you to @lopestom for directing me to this. This guy's been the MediaTek king for as long as I can remember.
It appears to be a dtbo and system partition dump. It also has the vendor partition and a (partial?) boot image dump. Not sure if things like the full boot and recovery images are stored somewhere in here, I didn't look too deeply into it yet. I have no idea how whoever this is managed to pull these partitions... they either got root access somehow, or they found a proper Download Agent and Auth file to pull it all. Either one of these would be awesome. I reached out to the user to ask them how they did it, we will see what they say if they want to share how they did it.
https://git.rip/dumps/att/u304aa
jasonmerc said:
Picked up an AT&T Radiant Core for cheap at a store around me. I don't intend to use it with AT&T, it was just such a low price that I figured I'd get it and see if I can break into it just for fun. It's an MTK6739 chipset phone, so in theory it should be easy to pull partitions from this thing with something like SPFT (or Miracle Box, if you paid for it) and do a dirty port of TWRP to get root privileges on it. But this is harder than it seems.
I need an auth file to do anything with SPFT. Apparently this has to do with some kind of "secure boot" mechanism that MediaTeks sometimes have now. There's no stock firmware for this device online from what I can find, nor for the generic version of the device, the Tinno U304AA (AT&T just rebranded it). If I had a stock firmware image, maybe I could risk wiping the partitions and reflashing the stock firmware to get rid of the secure boot stuff.
I saw a guide for how to access the bootloader on the Tinno U304AA generic version, but on the AT&T version of the phone there's no option in the boot select menu (Vol. UP + Power) to get to the bootloader to run a fastboot oem unlock. All the AT&T version has is recovery and normal boot. I'm not sure what I can do to maybe reset this to get the other options. Maybe if I had the stock firmware for the generic version of the phone I could overwrite it and get access to those other options.
Either way, just posting this up for anyone else that got one of these and wants to collaborate/contribute. Maybe with enough collective brainpower we can make something happen.
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OMG! So excited to see this here! My Mom gave my nephew this phone and niece has one. So I've been trying my best to get the thing to at least be a decent phone! I installed a launcher on it, changed the icons and wallpaper and made it look good at least. It will be nice to have someone to talk to about this. The thing has been beyond frustrating! First off though how did you get the computer to recognize it? I can't get Windows or Linux to recognize it and couldn't find any drivers. If you managed that much you got further than I did. I haven't tried with my nieces though. It might just be his phone. She's 13 so it took awhile to pry it from her long enough to find out what kind it was, but I'm willing to try to get it from her once again if the phone can be improved.
sjjtnj said:
OMG! So excited to see this here! My Mom gave my nephew this phone and niece has one. So I've been trying my best to get the thing to at least be a decent phone! I installed a launcher on it, changed the icons and wallpaper and made it look good at least. It will be nice to have someone to talk to about this. The thing has been beyond frustrating! First off though how did you get the computer to recognize it? I can't get Windows or Linux to recognize it and couldn't find any drivers. If you managed that much you got further than I did. I haven't tried with my nieces though. It might just be his phone. She's 13 so it took awhile to pry it from her long enough to find out what kind it was, but I'm willing to try to get it from her once again if the phone can be improved.
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Linux should just work, plug in the thing and the "drivers" if you will should be there already. Check the phone's settings for USB Debugging in the Developer Options if there's further trouble.
Don't get me wrong too, this phone is, was, and will always be a piece of junk. There's no getting around a screen this bad and 1GB of RAM. I'm actively trying to find a Download Agent and Auth File combo to get this thing to work with SPFT so I can try to port a custom recovery to get us Magisk root permissions at least. Root will make the phone slightly better, but it will still be junk. Unless we can get kernel source for it as well to mess with things like clock speeds and CPU governors (which LEGALLY we are supposed to be guaranteed, but good luck convincing a Chinese company to give it to you) everything we do, if we CAN do anything, will be like deodorant on a turd. It'll smell a little better, but it's still a turd.
jasonmerc said:
Linux should just work, plug in the thing and the "drivers" if you will should be there already. Check the phone's settings for USB Debugging in the Developer Options if there's further trouble.
Don't get me wrong too, this phone is, was, and will always be a piece of junk. There's no getting around a screen this bad and 1GB of RAM. I'm actively trying to find a Download Agent and Auth File combo to get this thing to work with SPFT so I can try to port a custom recovery to get us Magisk root permissions at least. Root will make the phone slightly better, but it will still be junk. Unless we can get kernel source for it as well to mess with things like clock speeds and CPU governors (which LEGALLY we are supposed to be guaranteed, but good luck convincing a Chinese company to give it to you) everything we do, if we CAN do anything, will be like deodorant on a turd. It'll smell a little better, but it's still a turd.
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Right, I'm considering giving him my current phone when I get a new one. It doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to unlock and root it so I want a phone I can. Mainly for space personally. He's young so he doesn't need it rooted, but I'm thinking if I can root it then I might be able to use it to root my phone. Speaking of rooting I think I found a way to root this phone. It took me a couple days to get the phone since he said he couldn't find it, but I have it now. It just needs to charge, but the battery sucks so it takes forever. I did find out that it does have a decent recovery. I had booted it into recovery and then I was messing around with the keys after the little passed out green guy popped up and suddenly it loaded stock recovery. It had an option to mount the system and flash with adb and everything. The only problem is I kept booting it by messing with keys. So I honestly don't know which ones worked. I kept booting into it last night by messing with them, but now I can't seem to get it to boot into the right recovery now that I'm trying to figure out the right key combination. I will figure it out though (eventually) and let you know what you have to click, but if you get the chance just mess with it and hopefully you'll find it like I did.
Also I was looking up the phones variants and downloaded a couple stock roms that I felt had all the right specs I'm going to try to flash one if I can get it plugged in. I downloaded custom twrp image's for them as well, and even found one twrp that I was able to download in the app. If you used it then you know that it takes you to a download page if you are downloading the wrong twrp.img. So the fact it let me download it in the app meant it tricked twrp into thinking it was that phone. So I'm going to try that stock rom first. Maybe we'll be able to change it to another model. It really needs something flashed, because it's a mess. I thought he messed it up, but after reading what you said maybe it's just the phone. He's young so it doesn't matter as much to him, but I feel bad for my niece. I really need to look into at least getting her another phone. I'm going to work on it later today and see what I can do. First I got to get it to work on the computer, but I may be able to root it without the computer. I'll keep you updated with my progress.
any luck with this?
Yeh, is there a status update?
Sorry, I got a concussion and haven't been able to do much, but really I'm stuck because I can't get it to connect to the computer at all. Not in Windows or Linux. I think he's messed it up beyond repair at this point. The offline root gave me an error around the mounting of the system, but that can be done if you can get the recovery to show up. It's one of the options. I was trying this method. HERE see if you can get it plugged in and to work. Also, Kingoroot gets to 90% on the apk alone. So the computer app might do the trick. Then you can switch it to su. Really a rooted phone can get a lot done with apps like flashify and flashfire that we can't do right now. If you can get even a temp root let me know and I'll tell you what I found out about the apps to unlock the bootloader, flash TWRP, Flash Magisk, then flash ROMs. If you want to try the variant route I was trying then just do a search on google. Some sound just as bad, but other similar phones seem better. You can pick which one you want to try. The phone I have got to a point that it kept deleting applications and stuff on the phone and has trouble with the sd card. So I don't have the stuff I had saved on it anymore. I'm giving him my current phone when I get a new one. It's too messed up to salvage. I hope you have more luck.
sjjtnj said:
Sorry, I got a concussion and haven't been able to do much, but really I'm stuck because I can't get it to connect to the computer at all. Not in Windows or Linux. I think he's messed it up beyond repair at this point. The offline root gave me an error around the mounting of the system, but that can be done if you can get the recovery to show up. It's one of the options. I was trying this method. HERE see if you can get it plugged in and to work. Also, Kingoroot gets to 90% on the apk alone. So the computer app might do the trick. Then you can switch it to su. Really a rooted phone can get a lot done with apps like flashify and flashfire that we can't do right now. If you can get even a temp root let me know and I'll tell you what I found out about the apps to unlock the bootloader, flash TWRP, Flash Magisk, then flash ROMs. If you want to try the variant route I was trying then just do a search on google. Some sound just as bad, but other similar phones seem better. You can pick which one you want to try. The phone I have got to a point that it kept deleting applications and stuff on the phone and has trouble with the sd card. So I don't have the stuff I had saved on it anymore. I'm giving him my current phone when I get a new one. It's too messed up to salvage. I hope you have more luck.
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I need to unlock my phone U304AA
Ok boys and girls, in case anyone is still wondering here is how to root this sucker.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--Ul1ae73zcejNuJ1a7ftq5sTo2VP8Ya/view?usp=drivesdk
Comes with two files. Mtksu amd magisk be sure to use the magisk version included in the zip. Install mtksu then wmagisk, open mtksu and install the top magisk option. Reboot then open magisk hit install when it asks. Now open mtksu scroll to the bottom and hit activate and reboot again. Should be good too go at this point. Oh yeah be sure to click apply at boot in mtksu. Not sure if this had been posted before or not. Now, to find a way to unlock bootloader and install twrp.
Thank you, I tried Mtksu on mine and it didn't work, but it might've been the phone. I don't have one of these anymore, but I hope you all the best of luck. For the bootloader and Twrp try Flashfire or flashify.
MTK bypass method released by some smart dudes out there. I will test if we can use SPFT on this phone now. Stay tuned. This could mean root & recovery in a matter of minutes.
EDIT: It ALMOST works. Technically it bypassed the auth file as advertised. The only thing left now is finding a compatible preloader/scatter file to use.
Used a modified Moto E6 Play scatter file to pull images from the device. Tried flashing over stuff and got an error. Long story short my U304AA is now permanently bricked, so I'm tapping out of this project here
I do have recovery and boot images that (supposedly) work if anyone else wants to try and take over Keep in mind these were pulled with a scatter file from a DIFFERENT phone that's of the same chipset, so not everything is guaranteed to work. For example, the preloader was pulled with the specified parameters but I do NOT know if it's functional
Because I'm tapping out, and because nobody else seems to have anything on this, I'm uploading everything I can. Some pulls are too big to upload and some just won't work for some reason, but use whatever you'd like for anything you can. Hope I did something helpful
I have searched in Google Search and the tutorials forum but not found a tutorial
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Well AT&T is giving away lots of Radiant Core devices because of their 3G shutdown: https://www.xda-developers.com/att-3g-shutdown-free-phone/
My wife and I just got one, so now I have two of these but I'm not sure I trust AT&T enough to use the "free" phone that they sent.
It would be great if someone can pickup this project, especially since so many phones are now flooding the market.
I just got 3 of these "free" from AT&T. In fact I don't really need them, I just happen to have phones with an IMEI number that AT&T cannot decipher, so they sent me new phones just in case I can't use 4G.
Anyway, I'm trying to use mine as spare Google assistants scattered around the house, but because they run that crappy Android Go, the Go version of Assistant won't listen to me until I long-press the home button. I would also like to use them when I travel as a spare.
These things are essentially throw-away, so I'm OK to risk bricking one of them.
What I really want to do is install a real version of Android on here, has anyone managed to crack this yet?
I personally have been writing and reading using this tool https://github.com/bkerler/mtkclient, which is much simpler than the others
Its a little rough around the edges, but it certainly works
My final problem is disabling secure boot (I already have a boot.img patched with magisk)
It appears that fastboot is simply not a mode for booting on this model, so I was wondering if anyone knows how to disable AVB by hand with just partition images
kayshinonome said:
I personally have been writing and reading using this tool https://github.com/bkerler/mtkclient, which is much simpler than the others
Its a little rough around the edges, but it certainly works
My final problem is disabling secure boot (I already have a boot.img patched with magisk)
It appears that fastboot is simply not a mode for booting on this model, so I was wondering if anyone knows how to disable AVB by hand with just partition images
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if it's possible to downgrade the firmware to before the october 2019 patch, it might be possible to mtk-su the device: https://www.att.com/device-support/article/wireless/KM1376142/ATT/ATTU304AA
might be another alternative to trying to disable avb on a locked bootloader
luridphantom said:
if it's possible to downgrade the firmware to before the october 2019 patch, it might be possible to mtk-su the device: https://www.att.com/device-support/article/wireless/KM1376142/ATT/ATTU304AA
might be another alternative to trying to disable avb on a locked bootloader
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Not possible to do, already tried before when I didn't brick it
KJ7LNW said:
Well AT&T is giving away lots of Radiant Core devices because of their 3G shutdown: https://www.xda-developers.com/att-3g-shutdown-free-phone/
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Just got mine from this. I'd like to install something like NixOS mobile, but I've never used an android phone before. Will that be possible on this phone? If so, is there a good guide for newbs like myself?