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What caused the stability problems?

Ok, i've been modding and playing with my LG Optimus Black P-970 lately, and it's been working pretty nicely. But today it started being unstabile, and weird. Examples, often when scroll around menus etc, i see a black rectangle i would guess is about 5x10 px in size, lined up in the left side of the screen. Lots of apps act weird and stops responding. If i tru to unlock after a while in standby, the screen freezes on what looks like a untuned analog tv channel, just with some colors in it. So what might have caused it?
What i have done tody, is to:
1. Updated GO Launcher EX
2. Download BusyBox, and apply the newest update it offered
3. Update the su-binary in superuser.
4. Lastly, which i suspect, i pulled Phone.apk, replaced a few background pictures in it (New ones is same resolution, but different type, from RGB to Monochrome), and pushed it back in.
Now i got problems, so i did this without any results so far:
- I've replaced GO Launcer EX with ADW.
- Removed some widgets i made with Chronotopia.
- Uninstalled BusyBox (But probably not the updates it applied to my system).
Any experiences/knowledge with these kind of problems? I do suspect the Phone.apk and the updated BusyBox...
EDIT: I managed to get a screenshot of that block dot that keeps appearing on the left side. For some reason, it appears as white in the screenshot. w00t? Dunno if it's relevant.

I would change phone.apk back to stock just to see if that helps. I kind of doubt it had to do with busy box. Good luck!

That was my idea, and i thought i had Phone.apk laying around, but no So i tried something stupid and ended up bricking the phone again, lol. So now i'm back to stock, rooted it and did a backup Updated BusyBox, Superuser and su-binary. Seems good so far, haven't done anything else. I'm gonna be so sad if i find out that i can't change a few png's in Phone.apk without stability problems. I didn't sign the modified Phone.apk before i pushed it back, may that be the problem?

I suppose it could be. Try your change again & see what happens.

Ok, last time i ended up doing a full LG recovery, and just a little tweaking. Yesterday, i made a backup, then started to heavily modify the framework-res.apk, and i got the same problem once again. This time i didn't even touch any other apk's. So now, barely awake, lol, i tried removing the old files and replace them with stock in drawable-hdpi folder, and push it back. Still the same. Tried to push the stock untouched framework-res.apk, still the same. Tried to recover to the backup i made, and still the same. What bothers is that i bypass an error message saying "ERROR, LG Security Team !" on every boot.
So i tried another, bit old backup, and this one works fine. But these problems i mentioned has not been showing between those two backups. I just had to try to restore the backup i made yesterday once more, and still it's buggy. I just can't make any sens out of that...

Good Lock needs some warning labels

I would just like to comment that the very beginning of my soft-bricked s7 (now fixed thanks to CuBz90's guide) was installing Good Lock and then attempting to uninstall it. I didn't realize that Good Lock is actually installed as a system update, which explains why I was given the prompt of "you will be going back to an earlier version of this software" when I uninstalled it. At any rate, after the uninstall of Good Lock, a cascade of problems ending in a useless soft-bricked s7 was unleashed. Anyone installing Good Lock should be aware of this and look for the proper method of uninstalling it if they choose to do that. This site claims to give the proper method (anyone please correct me, if the method is wrong!): http://www.xyztimes.com/10129/how-to-uninstall-good-lock-application-from-android-phone.html

It's easier to just go into the Good Lock Settings app and choose to uninstall from there. Seems like people want to overcomplicate things...

kettir said:
I would just like to comment that the very beginning of my soft-bricked s7 (now fixed thanks to CuBz90's guide) was installing Good Lock and then attempting to uninstall it. I didn't realize that Good Lock is actually installed as a system update, which explains why I was given the prompt of "you will be going back to an earlier version of this software" when I uninstalled it. At any rate, after the uninstall of Good Lock, a cascade of problems ending in a useless soft-bricked s7 was unleashed. Anyone installing Good Lock should be aware of this and look for the proper method of uninstalling it if they choose to do that. This site claims to give the proper method (anyone please correct me, if the method is wrong!): http://www.xyztimes.com/10129/how-to-uninstall-good-lock-application-from-android-phone.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suspect something else happened. I installed and uninstalled Good Lock multiple times while it was progressing, as did many others. Yours is the only soft brick I've heard of. Is your phone rooted? If so, you probably had something non-stock that caused the problem.

meyerweb said:
I suspect something else happened. I installed and uninstalled Good Lock multiple times while it was progressing, as did many others. Yours is the only soft brick I've heard of. Is your phone rooted? If so, you probably had something non-stock that caused the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will freely admit that I'm capable of breaking things without any assistance from errant software. It's happened before!

I am able to install and uninstall Good Lock with no problems.

[Help] Just bought an S8. Almost bricked it (Substratum-related)

Backstory
I bought a brand new S8 two days ago.
I decided to give Substratum a try. So I got both the app and the Samsung add-on.
I then downloaded and installed "StatusBar Icons (+extras) for Samsung." I toggled all or selected all the options for the overlay. I restarted my phone and it worked perfectly.
Then I was notified of a system update, so I downloaded and installed that as well. This was when the issue occurred. After the reboot, a popup, "System UI has stopped." kept showing. The screen is black. I couldn't do any actions. I couldn't turn off my phone. If I switched to safe mode, the issue was still there. The only thing I could do was restart my phone but of course that didn't fix the issue.
The Fix
I did a bit of research and found that one of the possible reason was changing the system nav bar. I am certain that this is the cause because it's the only "out of the ordinary" thing I did on a brand new phone.
There's some good news: I fixed the issue by restarting my phone and immediately pressing power button + volume up button + Bixby button together. I was able to factory reset my phone from there.
Concern and Questions
I'm pretty bummed because I absolutely LOVE theme-ing and customizing my Android phones and this experience has pretty much made me paranoid from doing anything to my S8. :crying: :crying: :crying:
Is there an exact cause for this? How do I avoid this issue from happening? Is Substratum still unstable for Samsung devices? Is there still hope? lol
Thank you for your help!

No, substratum is stable. You should have uninstalled all overlays before the system update. If you don't, systemUI can crash.
Did you read the first post here?
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=3658050

B3311 said:
No, substratum is stable. You should have uninstalled all overlays before the system update. If you don't, systemUI can crash.
Did you read the first post here?
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=3658050
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My bad!! I take it firmware update = system update? (facepalm)

Yup. It may be overkill on my part, but I uninstall any overlay before I update a "substratumed" themed app as well.
Check out the substratum threads in the themes forums - they know their stuff?

B3311 said:
Yup. It may be overkill on my part, but I uninstall any overlay before I update a "substratumed" themed app as well.
Check out the substratum threads in the themes forums - they know their stuff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tempted fate on both my S8+ and new Note 8, accepted a system update on both without uninstalling the subs and they didn't have any issues - subs still installed. IMO the subs are just apps and not going to have any issues, at least I didn't.

Will substratum work with go launcher z?
Is substratum just a particular look or something more?

Couple of problems with new S8+ caused me to have to reset twice in one day.

So far, my third iteration of setting up this phone (twice today) is working, so maybe I don't really have a question, other than "Has anything like this happened to you?", but I thought this was better in the Q&A rather than general discussion section. Mods please move if you disagree. I really did think about this, but couldn't decide where to put it.
I had to buy a new phone about two weeks ago because my S7 Edge's battery swelled up and bent the back of the phone's case. I wound up trading it in on a new S8+ (from Verizon). I love the phone even more than my S7 Edge, which is saying something.
Anyway, I like to use Samsung's themes to switch things up a bit, and I change themes every couple of days. I always search the theme store for new themes that are free. I've learned that most of them are crap, but you can usually tell by looking at the preview shots if the theme designer has gone overboard by using poor color choices/backgrounds in the dialer and messaging apps.
Ok, so first problem: I was playing with a couple of newer (free) themes:
1) Dark Night
2) [LSA]Shinny Moon Town Theme
I switched to the first theme and all was fine, but I thought it was boring, and kept looking.
When I switched to the second theme, I saw a brief message that some elements were incompatible and wouldn't be used, but the message went away before I could really read it carefully. The theme applied, though, and seemed to work correctly.
I liked the colors and style of this theme, but thought the folder icons were too ugly to live with, so I thought I'd just switch the icons back to the stock icons. Here's where things got wonky.
I went to the icons sections, picked the default Samsung icon set, and applied it. The folder icons did not switch back!
At this point, I panicked a bit and just decided to return to the stock theme. When I applied the stock theme, everything looked OK, but I noticed the Infinity wallpaper wasn't working - it just acted like a static wallpaper.
After web searching a bit, it seems this can happen if you set the Always-On Display screen background to not be just blank. I followed the steps in an online instruction for fixing this, but the infinity wallpaper still was not working.
At this point, I tried clearing all of the app caches (in Settings/Device Management/Storage) and rebooting. This did not help.
I then tried clearing the device's cache partition by looking up how to do that online. Timing is a bit tricky on holding down the power key, but after a few tries, I got it right, and managed to clear the cache partition.
Still no working infinity wallpaper. It really seemed broken, and none of the online suggestions I found worked at all.
Now, I realize this may not be a big deal to some, but it's a new phone, and I'm OCD enough to want stuff that was working out of the box to continue to work, so I decided to reset the device.
I did that, and got about 60% through my somewhat involved process in re-installing everything and re-enrolling in various services (iris scanning/fingerprints/credit cards in Samsung Pay/etc. etc. - you all know the drill).
When I went to set Smart Lock options for preventing the device from locking when I'm at home (Trusted Places) or the phone is detected on-body, I found that the Smart Lock screen was completely blank. No options appeared, and no button appeared at the bottom right to allow you to start the setup process for various Smart Lock options..
Back to Google, and I learned the fix was to remove "Smart Lock" from Trust Agents, reboot the phone, and re-add Smart Lock as a Trust Agent.
(PRO TIP: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THAT).
After the reboot, I couldn't even keep the Settings app from crashing whenever I tried to visit the settings page where Security-related settings are managed. (Samsung's or Google's wonderfully irritating dialog box: "Settings keeps stopping" - yes, no s**t).
Clearing caches and the cache partition did not fix this problem, either, so I reluctantly and nervously reset the phone for the second time in less than 6 hours.
So, I guess my story so far is that this third time appears to be a charm, and everything so far is working great. I'm staying far away from third-party (non-Samsung) themes in the theme store for now, even though they'd always worked fine for me before.
I have absolutely no idea why I had the problem with the Smart Lock setup, though. Everything worked fine after the second reset as far as the Smart Lock setup and options, although I hadn't done anything in the previous attempt that should have interfered with something as baked in as the Smart Lock stuff. I hadn't even changed the default wallpaper or home screen setup yet!
Also learned my lesson about slavishly following steps on a website (Remove "Smart Lock' as a Trust Agent? If I'd really been thinking, this would have seemed like bad advice to me, but things weren't working right anyway, so maybe a bit of experimentation was justified, I don't know...).
Anyway, just thought I'd post my experiences in case they're of help for anyone searching for these type of problems. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this setup will "take", but I have to say my confidence in messing around with manufacturer-provided capabilities and content, using their built-in software and eco-system on their current-year flagship device, has definitely been shaken.

UI Inconsistencies on 10.3 for different devices.

Hello everybody, Happy New Year to all! First post on here after a few years but I never left XDA without an answer till now. My question is about the color of the notifications and the Quick Toggles drop-down menu. I was on beta 3 (The *new* Beta 3, on Android 10) and my notifications and Quick Toggles finally became true black like I always wanted them to be. I didn't think much of it, just welcomed the change. Problem is, I then decided to backup my phone and install 10.3 stable, 2 days after it came out, via local upgrade. I backed up my phone and installed, rebooted and was greeted with a phone with all its data but reporting 10.6 (and having grey notifications and Quick Toggles). I knew that *shouldn't* happen and since I'd already backed up everything, I decided to wipe everything and reinstall. Problem was, the only rollback package I managed to find was 9.0.2 and that was after hours upon hours of searching. I installed the package via Local Upgrade and wiped everything from the stock recovery, booted into it fine and set up my phone. I then installed all OTAs back up to 10.3. Phone booted up fine and everything seemed normal. EXCEPT, for the fact my UI is pretty much how it was on Pie. I watched videos of OP6s with 10.3 having all black notifications and Quick Toggles and read posts from other users in Reddit and OnePlus forums where they either had the same UI as me or the all black one. I've read multiple, very differing accounts from users of the same phone on the same software and also noticed this inconsistency myself but I couldn't find a clear answer anywhere, no one seems to know how the UI is supposed to be and I don't know enough about how Android works to know what actually controls this part of the OS's looks. I'm starting to believe I did something wrong but although I've been through many roms, mods and magisk modules, I don't actually know what to do this time. Any insight, advice, help or guidance, would be really appreciated. Thanks a lot.