Hey everybody,
I am a reformed iPhone loser, I had the original 2G, got the 4 for about a week and a half on release, and a good friend of mine talked me into returning it for a captivate and I have been hooked on droids ever since. I am an IT guy by trade and a tinkerer in general so Android is perfect for me. Found this site and haven't looked back.
Recently my company put me on their verizon plan and I opted for the Charge as I have been very happy with my Galaxy phone from Samsung. My company is cool and doubt they would mind me throwing custom ROMs on this beast, I just have to build up the courage to risk the warranty on this thing. Anyway, now that my overly long introduction has been done, here are a few gripes I've found so far and hopefully you guys can help me with.
The basics (non development related)
1.) I love the factory e-mail app, the fact it handles both my corporate and gmail in one central app is nice. However, the Gmail app still takes priority for whatever reason and all my gmail mail goes to that, but if I manually press refresh on the e-mail app, it will load. I have tried to uninstall the Gmail app but as you all know, it's embedded.
2.) My cappy handled threaded texts very well, my charge seems to break up the bubbles by pages like a normal phone would. I will get seperated messages all the time, hate that.
3.) I get a lot of double text messages, no clue why.
4.) My SD card has already corrupted, I took a picture yesterday, clicked on the small thumbnail in the corner and deleted it from there, all of a sudden all of my pictures turned to small grey boxes with ? symbols. The phone still detected the card and displayed the storage space, but I kept getting a notification the card was damaged. Eventually I formatted it, but then couldn't get it to mount. I physically removed the card and the battery and let the phone sit for 2-3 minutes, then put it back in, and after media scanning, the card was working again. I could then take pictures, and store them normally again.
5.) Random data droppage, from 3G to 1x to nothing, then back to 3G. Never had so many time outs on the web browser before. The WiFi also seems to be pretty bad, sitting next to my router at home, I was getting 1-2 bars?
Development related
1.) Like I said, I haven't even attempted anything yet, but from my initial reading it seems like Samsung and VZW have teamed up to make it more difficult to get root on these phones. On my cappy a simple .zip installation through recovery could get root, but to have to flash a kernel to get root, seems risky and unnecessary.
Hopefully this phone will grow on me as I start to explore the third-party stuff more, I know custom ROMs on my cappy made the phone a completely different beast.
Thanks,
-be
Glad to have u on board with the Charge! Ok to address some of ur issues, the one issue that I seem to have in common with u would be the signal dropping. That has to be the most annoying thing. Its not something I can pinpoint myself, but I would guess it has to be something to do with a faulty antenna in the phone or maybe some issues with the towers. I've taken it up wit VZW and there isnt anything they could do except send me a replacement, which STILL has the reception issues.
Another thing u will notice is that sometimes ur data reception just wont return AT ALL. pulling the sim card and battery for a few mins solves this issue.
When it comes to developement, rooting this phone is as easy as u would think. Flashing a kernel with Odin isn't a pain at all. Very simple. Flash the recovery, then kernel to lock the recovery in. From there, flashing via CWM is easy. U know the drill comin from a Captivate I assume.
Hopefully some of this helps u out man! Don't be scared to take the plunge!!!!
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App
Welcome to the droid charge. for your email problem, open the settings app, scroll to accounts and sync, select your gmail and then uncheck sync gmail. now go to the email app, open your gmail, press menu, press account settings and check email notifications. now go into email check frequency and put it at what youd like.
The data drop problem happens to me maybe once every few months and it will be fixed in the gingerbread update with the new radio software. your sd card problem appears to be solved. the double messages would be solved by downloading a third party messaging app or doing a data wipe (in settings>privacy>factory data reset) but that will wipe everything except for your email and contacts and you may get some of your apps back automatically but for the most part you would have to reinstall redownload them manually
Kernels arent very risky because there is almost no way to file brick this. there is a full odin which will completely bring it back to stock. also if you get a voodoo kernel (almost every kernel) you get improvements to your phone's sound quality, you get root and you get the option to change it from the laggy samsung rfs filesystem to ext4 filesystem which results in faster boot times, faster media scanning, faster app opening, and pretty much everything gets a small speed boost.
Thanks for all the help guys!
I took the plunge yesterday and flashed Humble 1.5.1 using ODIN, other than having it scare the **** out of me twice by failing before I realized I had to put the battery back in once in download mode, it passed with flying colors and I now love this phone so much more. All my problems seem to be solved with this new ROM too, no more double texts, no more email problems, data seems to be more stabile too.
It's faster, it's simpler, it's not doo doo brown, and it's way better on battery. Looking forward to being apart of this community and trying out all the ROMs.
bamathrasher said:
It's faster, it's simpler, it's not doo doo brown,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually loled at that last sentence.
The data going in and out has been a problem for everyone on every rom at some point. It's a Samsung/Verizon issue. The quick fix is to go into airplane mode for a few seconds, then turn it off. BTW Imnut's just released an update for his kernels a few days ago that has improved performance fairly well, so look into flashing an updated kernel.
Related
I am on my third one and now my 30 days are over so I'm stuck with it and if I return it based on warranty help I get a remanufactured one but I am having some really annoying problems. I have searched these forums but frankly they are very complicated and you all seem very advanced and technical and it's very confusing. I'm hoping someone can lay out in baby steps how to help me with these issues.
1. My folders, and TF3D indicate I have a text message when there are no conversations in there it's completely empty in every folder but it still indicates I have one new text message and it won't clear with a soft reset or anything.
2. Often times my calls go straight to voicemail and do not ring on my phone.
3. I drop a lot of calls
4. Often times my phone will flash and show who is calling but not actually ring even though the sound is completely on.
5. I get a ton of errors that want to report to Microsoft especially the shell32.exe error
6. Often times when I try to connect to the internet it won't work on the Opera browser or IE browser just says can't connect.
7. Often times my email won't download and I get a message saying check in my network connections and the only way it'll fix is if I power the device off.
8. The feature where I can flip it upside down to mute it doesn't work
9. Often times I will click on one spot and it activates something I didn't click.
These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Can someone please help me? I am begging. You can find me on Yahoo at julesthequeen06 if it'd be just easier to tell me I'm a lost cause on chat. Thank you in advance for reading this far.
Julie
BroncosMom said:
I am on my third one and now my 30 days are over so I'm stuck with it and if I return it based on warranty help I get a remanufactured one but I am having some really annoying problems. I have searched these forums but frankly they are very complicated and you all seem very advanced and technical and it's very confusing. I'm hoping someone can lay out in baby steps how to help me with these issues.
1. My folders, and TF3D indicate I have a text message when there are no conversations in there it's completely empty in every folder but it still indicates I have one new text message and it won't clear with a soft reset or anything.
2. Often times my calls go straight to voicemail and do not ring on my phone.
3. I drop a lot of calls
4. Often times my phone will flash and show who is calling but not actually ring even though the sound is completely on.
5. I get a ton of errors that want to report to Microsoft especially the shell32.exe error
6. Often times when I try to connect to the internet it won't work on the Opera browser or IE browser just says can't connect.
7. Often times my email won't download and I get a message saying check in my network connections and the only way it'll fix is if I power the device off.
8. The feature where I can flip it upside down to mute it doesn't work
9. Often times I will click on one spot and it activates something I didn't click.
These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Can someone please help me? I am begging. You can find me on Yahoo at julesthequeen06 if it'd be just easier to tell me I'm a lost cause on chat. Thank you in advance for reading this far.
Julie
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you flashed a new rom, loaded any progams, or done anything beyond out of the box configuring? The easiest answer would be to hard reset the phone and see if that helps.
We need to know some more in-depth info
Carrier:
Rom:
If you haven't tried flashing a rom I highly suggest doing so. This can help with a lot of the problems you are having. For the Stock Rom has a lot of problems.
i wouldnt flash a new rom if its screwing up like this out of the box. what have you installed on your phone? if its doing all these these without any installed programs or mods why have you waited 30 days to do something about it? it seems to me its more of a software issue. try hard resetting and go from there. if its fine, install one program at a time and find out which is causing it. if you have att then i dont think your mute is supposed to work like that, thats a feature you have to install another program to do. i could be wrong but mine doesnt work like that.
I would do a hard reset and clear everything... i would change my time to redirect the call to voice mail to the Max: 30 seconds, I would turn off error reporting because its just a pain in the arse.. the flipping it upside down to mute is the program thats having and issue but like everyone else said what do you have installed on your phone
Well it appears I don't have enough karma to post to the relevant thread so I'll just drop this here. Hopefully the folks over at
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1501667&page=1
will see it....
Et all,
I would like to step out of my normal lurking to post some feedback. Firstly, I'm not a dev. Like most of you I'm just an avid consumer of ROMs who is technical enough to keep up with them. I've installed the 1.9 HF release and am mostly pleased. I know people complain about install issues and BB issues and etc so let me throw out a recommendation for a clean install:
1) Assume nothing. You will lose everything. I don't even work off a backup really although I do sync with Google like a good boy.
2) READ THE ENTIRE FORUM THREAD. Yes. It hurts. But it hurts less than a bricked phone or a lousy experience. And you don't end up asking questions that have already been asked. I'm always please with how polite folks can be. Sometimes I just want to lean close into my monitor and yell "RTFM or RTFP!" but that's probably why I keep a lower profile. You also catch the glitches that might give you that bad experience. Like the baseband concern(s) that have been posted.
3) I did everything I could thru the proper LG update tool first. Tmobile G2X P999DW. This got my BB up to 3-11-2012 before I started anything.
4) Get all your backups and get them completely off your phone.
5) Get the LATEST CWM first.
6) Go thru the usual wiping out of your phone. One comment I have on this part is that I always completely wipe my phone. Meaning, in addition to the usual "wipe data / factory reset" | "Wipe Dalvik Cache" | etc. I also clear out the battery stats and completely format the external SD card. Silly? Dunno. My complaints seem less than others.
7) Once the phone boots let it sit. Uncheck syncing with google and just let it warm up. Seriously leave it for like 20 minutes just sitting there. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
8) Play around with the default apps. Default settings. Default functionality. Audio? Data? MMS? USB tether? Is everything working? Is everything reasonably responsive? Basically the goal here is to have a "sign off" on the upgrade process and the installed ROM at this point. Before you add your apps and your settings back. Make sure that the ROM is solid at this point.
9) Decide at this point if (and what) you want to restore from backup. I do have titanium backup and do use it sometimes but I often find that simply pulling my relevant apps back down from the store and reconfiguring my preferences keeps things a little more stable and I also maintain an understanding of the ROM settings if I manually navigate things myself.
Result? My install went clean and the ROM seems very solid. I've reloaded my apps and widgets back and customized everything in my preferences and I am happy. I am experiencing what I believe is being referred to as the data drop issue. I have noticed several times a "network unreachable" type error (depending on the app) when I know my coverage is good and I can often retry a few times and it'll work again. Looking forward to seeing some progress on this. Other than the data drop the ROM is everything the positive feedback hypes it up to be. Seemingly solid. Fast. I love the interface. Definitely extends the life of my G2X.
Thank you everyone who contributes either as a dev or as a consumer to these threads. You keep the culture alive.
-Psychopuff
psychopuff said:
Well it appears I don't have enough karma to post to the relevant thread so I'll just drop this here. Hopefully the folks over at
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1501667&page=1
will see it....
Et all,
I would like to step out of my normal lurking to post some feedback. Firstly, I'm not a dev. Like most of you I'm just an avid consumer of ROMs who is technical enough to keep up with them. I've installed the 1.9 HF release and am mostly pleased. I know people complain about install issues and BB issues and etc so let me throw out a recommendation for a clean install:
1) Assume nothing. You will lose everything. I don't even work off a backup really although I do sync with Google like a good boy.
2) READ THE ENTIRE FORUM THREAD. Yes. It hurts. But it hurts less than a bricked phone or a lousy experience. And you don't end up asking questions that have already been asked. I'm always please with how polite folks can be. Sometimes I just want to lean close into my monitor and yell "RTFM or RTFP!" but that's probably why I keep a lower profile. You also catch the glitches that might give you that bad experience. Like the baseband concern(s) that have been posted.
3) I did everything I could thru the proper LG update tool first. Tmobile G2X P999DW. This got my BB up to 3-11-2012 before I started anything.
4) Get all your backups and get them completely off your phone.
5) Get the LATEST CWM first.
6) Go thru the usual wiping out of your phone. One comment I have on this part is that I always completely wipe my phone. Meaning, in addition to the usual "wipe data / factory reset" | "Wipe Dalvik Cache" | etc. I also clear out the battery stats and completely format the external SD card. Silly? Dunno. My complaints seem less than others.
7) Once the phone boots let it sit. Uncheck syncing with google and just let it warm up. Seriously leave it for like 20 minutes just sitting there. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
8) Play around with the default apps. Default settings. Default functionality. Audio? Data? MMS? USB tether? Is everything working? Is everything reasonably responsive? Basically the goal here is to have a "sign off" on the upgrade process and the installed ROM at this point. Before you add your apps and your settings back. Make sure that the ROM is solid at this point.
9) Decide at this point if (and what) you want to restore from backup. I do have titanium backup and do use it sometimes but I often find that simply pulling my relevant apps back down from the store and reconfiguring my preferences keeps things a little more stable and I also maintain an understanding of the ROM settings if I manually navigate things myself.
Result? My install went clean and the ROM seems very solid. I've reloaded my apps and widgets back and customized everything in my preferences and I am happy. I am experiencing what I believe is being referred to as the data drop issue. I have noticed several times a "network unreachable" type error (depending on the app) when I know my coverage is good and I can often retry a few times and it'll work again. Looking forward to seeing some progress on this. Other than the data drop the ROM is everything the positive feedback hypes it up to be. Seemingly solid. Fast. I love the interface. Definitely extends the life of my G2X.
Thank you everyone who contributes either as a dev or as a consumer to these threads. You keep the culture alive.
-Psychopuff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too am just like you. I did the same as you but lost audio now I am not complaining this rom works amazing but just trying to revert back to see what went wrong getting bacm to Oem is the problem I am having
Brothers! We almost have the same story here. I did not have many data problems from what I remember on the stock Hellfire ICS 1.9, but my battery would hardly last 12 hours. Even if I did not install any background apps. Do you guys have this type of battery drain?
Anyways, I flashed the Harsh non-OC kernel over the ROM. My phone got smoother and the battery is almost as good as stock. But...I started having in call audio problems. This really confused me but it sure sounded like a BB problem even though I have 21y. So started over, cleaned, did ROM, did kernel, did new baseband fix just to see what would happen. Let the phone sit for a bit, then did a few reboots to see what the results were. So far so good. *crossing fingers*
EDIT: OK, I still do have some call issues, but it took longer. 14 minutes into a call, the audio audio cut out but still showed connected. After looking over my phone I discovered that it was unable to get a data connection again, the antenna bars showed nothing, and airplane mode would not function. But I could still receive a call, only to have the audio cut in and out after 15 seconds. WiFi would still work though. Very strange.
EDIT 2 Hardware fix, ROM works fine. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1808262
This is my first post. I am not a programer, well not for 30 years and not since my backups were on a tape, but am fairly good at fixing my own issues with the help of this site, which much of is way over my head. I have don't everything in every thread that I can find here and have some more information that might help everyone figure out this issue.
Phone is a non-rooted EVO 4G lte. Screen captures below should give you all the specifics that you need. If you need more info, please email me!
I get a break from error after I delete contact info/cache from both Contact Storage and People (contacts) apps.
I started having the problem a few days ago and the last three things I installed were:
Adobe Flash (got it from this site and have now disabled and would like to totally remove if any of you know how to do that. There is not option in the settings/apps/adobe to uninstall, just disable.
Skype which I have removed.
2012/3 Live Wall Paper, also removed
I have reset the phone, unmounted and remounted the SD card, moved programs that use contacts from SD card back to phone storage and as I said removed all contacts, disabled Smooth sync for the cloud and the JB workaround and still after all most of the contacts are resynced form Google, the error starts to appear. It doesn't lock up my phone, but occasionally crashes app that I am working in. ROYAL PAIN.
So in short, 1. How can I totally get rid of Flash?
2. Is there someway to do a repair on my contact database without rooting phone
3. There is java mentioned in the error message, I didn't think Droid used java (see how little I really know, so be nice) is there a way to update that service?
4. Other than a hard reset AGAIN, what can I do! (Or after all this would that work this time? I hate going to all that effort and still have same issues) Is there a way to force a reinstall of JB?
I realize that I know just enough to be dangerous, but can follow detailed direction to fix this. I go through way too many phone to root my current phone and take the chance that Sprint wouldn't replace it. I never have a phone last more than a year! And the last quarter of of 2012 I went through 5 phones. Galaxy Nexus didn't like me!
Thanks for the great site and in advance for taking the time to read all of this.
More Info
I have also been deactivating Facebook and that wasn't helping, but many people were saying that was an issue.
Those of us that just started having this issue think it might be a date issue. Is here anything that could do this if someone's b'day is the 29th of February?
I have one of those people and that seems like a strange issue, but heck, humans programs this stuff so I guess anything is possible! It makes sense that a value in a contact field is causing the issue, but a date that only exists every 4 years?
I have not had the error since i fixed this, BUT only about 500 of my 2,500 contacts are installed and I have yet to re enable facebook.
Thanks again!
Pat
I have the charge running FP5 firmware and the Tweaked ROM 3.0.
I've run into a situation where the phone has become rather laggy and buggy.
Example: Click the notification for voicemail...wait 30 seconds and phone dials. or Phone battery dies. I plug it in and it charges up to 30%, then starts getting very laggy and non responsive. I reboot and am told battery power is really 50% and phone is good to go.
I'm used to rebooting the phone at least once a day or more. I'm looking for a way to correct the problems and bring the phone back to how it was when I last upgraded and and loaded the ROM... too bad I didn't backup the phone at that point. Anyways...I know that if I reload the firmware and apply the ROM, everything will work correctly again but I'll spend hours tweaking the settings to add custom ringtones and photos to contacts.
Is there some cache or data I can clear to fix this without clearing everything and starting over?
Mike
P.S. I'm keeping this phone until Verizon allows me to upgrade and keep unlimited data or the phone dies and I have to get another.
beavermjr said:
I have the charge running FP5 firmware and the Tweaked ROM 3.0.
I've run into a situation where the phone has become rather laggy and buggy.
Example: Click the notification for voicemail...wait 30 seconds and phone dials. or Phone battery dies. I plug it in and it charges up to 30%, then starts getting very laggy and non responsive. I reboot and am told battery power is really 50% and phone is good to go.
I'm used to rebooting the phone at least once a day or more. I'm looking for a way to correct the problems and bring the phone back to how it was when I last upgraded and and loaded the ROM... too bad I didn't backup the phone at that point. Anyways...I know that if I reload the firmware and apply the ROM, everything will work correctly again but I'll spend hours tweaking the settings to add custom ringtones and photos to contacts.
Is there some cache or data I can clear to fix this without clearing everything and starting over?
Mike
P.S. I'm keeping this phone until Verizon allows me to upgrade and keep unlimited data or the phone dies and I have to get another.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean Tweaked 3.2, right... if not first upgrade to the 3.2 version of the ROM... it is the current FP5 option.
There is a build.prop thing commented out at the bottom that should force launcher into memory (supposed to help with screen redraw issues, but might also help with general responsiveness). I think you could do it from root explorer, just edit the file, scrool down, read comments, when you find one that sounds like what I said just remove the "#" from the line below it.
re-installing tweaked might really help...
but you might try going into CWM and wiping cache only... NOT data & cache... JUST CACHE... that helped me when i had "funky" things going on on a different device/ROM worth a try.
Finally, you should always take a CWM backup, Nandroid, before poking around....
Also... check swappa for relatively cheap phones with no ties to VZW contract it is where i picked up the GN2 (if it is rooted and you don't want to show it off at the corp store, just call customer support say you are too busy store hours. They will send you the micro/mini SIM via FedEx.
Of course take what I say with a grain of salt... I am just a crazy guy from the internet
(oh great XDA... please correct me if I've misspoken)
Thanks for the info. I never did load Tweaked 3.2. I will put that on the back burner as I don't want to reload all the settings. Maybe I can load it without wiping data. Do you know? For now I will try wiping the cache and see if the phone improves.
Someday I'm gonna have to explore the latest OTA and a new ROM. I'm getting tired of ignoring the update message. either that or learn how to shut the message down. any recommendations on a ROM for the new OTA?
beavermjr said:
Thanks for the info. I never did load Tweaked 3.2. I will put that on the back burner as I don't want to reload all the settings. Maybe I can load it without wiping data. Do you know? For now I will try wiping the cache and see if the phone improves.
Someday I'm gonna have to explore the latest OTA and a new ROM. I'm getting tired of ignoring the update message. either that or learn how to shut the message down. any recommendations on a ROM for the new OTA?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will never tell someone "don't say it click the button"... However, I'm like pavlov's dog clicking the button is appreciated...
Not sure about a dirty flash... Never tried it. I got turned on to Root and Such well after FP5 and Tweaked 3.2 came out.
If you give it a go... You could retain much via Titanium Backup. Or just send a CWM Backup/Nandroid on the SD Card before playing around.
Either way...
There has to be a proper stop notification how to thread around here somewhere!
Cliffs Notes:
From a Root Friendly File Explorer (Like Root Explorer HERE, it is worth the $)
edit a line in "/system/build.prop"
Find
ro.build.fingerprint=verizon/SCH-I510/SCH-I510:2.3.6/GINGERBREAD/FP5:user/release-keys
replace the FP5 with FP8 so it reads:
ro.build.fingerprint=verizon/SCH-I510/SCH-I510:2.3.6/GINGERBREAD/FP8:user/release-keys
NOTE: BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO HOSE THE PERMISSIONS (If I recall some of the other "freebie" root file explorers break the permissions... Best to find that a real thread with all the details if you are not 100% confident.)
Also feel free to double check my facts... I'm just a crazy guy from the internet!
Good luck!
Edit Alert:
PS. While poking around at the tweaktools back-end, I noticed there were some mods that specifically addressed lag (I have little to no experience with them though... Just FYI...
beavermjr said:
Thanks for the info. I never did load Tweaked 3.2. I will put that on the back burner as I don't want to reload all the settings. Maybe I can load it without wiping data. Do you know? For now I will try wiping the cache and see if the phone improves.
Someday I'm gonna have to explore the latest OTA and a new ROM. I'm getting tired of ignoring the update message. either that or learn how to shut the message down. any recommendations on a ROM for the new OTA?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, you can flash tweak 3.2 over 3.0 without wiping data. not sure if it comes with the updated kernel, but I would certainly do that as well.
in terms of lag, try the crossbreeder mod on XDA - worked for my charge!
I have an HTC One E8... I know, it's ancient... But... It's been a good phone until this past year when it really started dragging. Takes forever to do anything. A year ago, the main camera (is that the front or back camera) stopped working (phone doesn't even recognize that it's there -- flash doesn't work either with a flashlight app). Before that, phone dialing using my Bluetooth earpiece stopped working. Maybe related, but the phone doesn't work as a phone (holding it to your ear). If I'm not using the Bluetooth earpiece, it will only work on Speaker-phone mode (voice command apps such as Google Assistant and song recognition apps like Sound Hound don't 'hear' anything). Lastly, the Bluetooth has been disconnecting for no apparent reason. My earpiece will say 'Phone 1 disconnected', but when I look at the Bluetooth icon on the phone, it still thinks it's connected. Tapping the icon to turn off Bluetooth and then tapping again 'fixes' the problem and it connects again. It's just annoying when it does this in the middle of a conversation (and because, when it happens, the other party doesn't hear me yelling at them to wait because my Bluetooth disconnected because the phone doesn't know that anything is wrong). I had read ones that the Bluetooth drivers for this phone were sketchy. It's strange, though, this this problem has really gotten worse over the past couple of months without me making any changes to the phone. Lastly, the battery has really gone downhill. The phone will unexpectedly shut off around 30% battery. (I even tried the HTC battery recalibration technique -- no joy.) I chalked all of this up (except for the battery issue) to software. I thought maybe a good ol' factory reset (wipe) would fix the issues. For years (literally) it's been nagging me about a system update (Android 6.0). I never did it because the phone was already running slow and it's always screaming about being out of storage space. It hovers around 500MB free most of the time. I don't have that much installed on it. Any apps that will allow it, have been moved to the SD card.
That's the back-story to give you some insight as to what's going on with the phone. I included all of that 'other' stuff (camera and voice dialing issues) in case someone has seen them before and can offer any suggestions there.
So here's where I'm at. I decided to try to do a factory reset to 'refresh' the OS (remove all the patches and updates) and start over. Afterwards, I wanted to run Link2SD with a 64GB SD card so I wouldn't have the space limitations that I'm experiencing now after all of the apps have updated. The other night, after backing up the internal memory and the SD card, I started the process. (BTW, I have another SD card that I'm going to use that I've already partitioned per the Link2SD instructions.) After much trial and error, dead download links, incompatible versions of adb.exe and fastboot.exe I finally managed to get TWRP recovery installed. Then there was the issue of getting a working SuperSU installed. Finally did that. The phone booted and started walking me through the process of setting up my Google account. Everything seemed to go well. The phone was just as speedy as the day I got it. I was even able to restore my 15000 text messages and it was still zippy. It was wonderful! Unfortunately, the camera still doesn't work. Seems like voice dialing isn't working at the moment either. The Bluetooth issue seems to have gone away. Since the camera still isn't working, it looks like I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get a new phone. This one will just become a 'toy' or a temporary backup phone in the event something tragic happens to the new phone. I'll just use this one on Wi-Fi only to check the weather and maybe play some games (which I had pretty much stopped doing because it was so slow and always out of storage). I would also use it as my portable media device for listening to downloaded podcasts and music while I'm running or riding my bike. It could also (maybe without mobile data) track my runs and rides, etc. As long as it doesn't get slow like it was before, I think it'll do just fine in its re-purposed life. (It was so slow I could barely play music from Google Music and have Google Fit tracking my run at the same time. It would take forever to switch screens!)
Ah, what's this?! Oh, there's that software update again. I guess I'll go ahead and do it before I start setting up a bunch of apps and tweaking the phone to my preferences. Nope! It downloads the OTA update into the Downloads folder and starts the process, but when it reboots, it reboots in Recovery mode into TWRP. I'm now finding that you can't easily do an OTA update after you've rooted your phone and put a custom recovery on it. I've seen lengthy instructions on how to put get a stock recovery.img out of the OTA zip file in the Downloads folder. I've moved it to my PC and pulled the firmware.zip file out. When I try to open the firmware.zip file to get to the recovery.img file, Windows is saying it's corrupted. I also see something about using an RUU.exe or RUU.zip file to restore the phone to stock. I've downloaded the correct RUU .exe file for my Sprint e8 in case I decide to go that route.
Here's my question... I know, finally! Since I don't have really anything on this phone since I did the reset and root, would it just be simpler to use the RUU method to blow it away and start over instead of trying to resolve the corrupt firmware.zip file issue and all of the other steps that follow? That's question #1. Question #2 is this... Will this RUU that I downloaded actually take the phone straight to Marshmallow before it starts walking me through setting up my Google account? If so, that's great! I'm all for the ease of that. I noticed that OTA download was about 250MB, while the RUU download is 1.5GB. Why such a difference? Is it because the RUU is the full-blown deal and not just the patches? I'm fine doing the RUU and then reinstalling and rooting the phone afterwards if that'll work. I still have all the files that I previously downloaded.
Sorry for the novel, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible to eliminate the back and forth "Did you try this?" "Did you try that?" However, if there is anything that I left out that would help with your answer/advice, please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give a noob.
lrbarrios