I am trying to help my nephew with his dysfunctional Sony Xperia Z3. Strange things started to happen after he dropped it.
Some of the issues may not be related to the drop. My nephew are eleven years old and only play games, he have no idea if any of these things worked earlier. It is VERY important for him that I backup before a potential reset, as he have some game data and possible (?) local saves that he dont want to lose for anything in the world.
Side note: I am not using Sony myself, so I am unaware of any model specific quirks that I need to pay attention to.
I did spend some hours searching for a solution, but can't find anything useful.
The display is *NOT* broken, and the phone have no third party screen protection.
The phone have been restarted, turned off etc. I've tried to boot to safe mode.
According to the hidden Service menu, the rooting status is (empty), and the bootloader can be unlocked.
Android version is 6.0.1.
Model number D6603.
I've done the built-in Sony Xperia tests, and everything seems to work fine from there.
LIST OF PROBLEMS
Issues possibly connected to the drop:
The notification/top menu can only be pulled down half ways. Then it gets stuck and have to be pulled up again. It always state "No notifications". None of the icons can be pressed. No difference between portrait or landscape mode.
Only the back key in the bottom navigation bar (the soft navigation) works. The middle and the right button do not.
I don't believe that the touch-screen digitizer is broken, since I can push the buttons and I get both a vibration and visual feedback. The problem is that there is no action at all when I press the buttons.
I can't download anything from Google Play. I have a connection, I can surf, but Google Play is stuck on preparing the downloads with the eternal message "Download pending". I can download and install apps from for example ApkPure, so the abobe is probably an issue related to Google Play. I've tried/checked this so far:
As far as I can see, there is no download restriction.
I've cleared the cache and data of Google Play, Download Manager and Downloads.
Mobile connection or Wifi = same problem.
I did not log out from Google Play. I don't use Google Play myself, so I am not sure what will be erased if I remove the account. Will everything be restored when logging in, since I cannot backup (see next point)?
Similiar to the above problem, I cannot do a backup (it goes halfways, throws an error, and then exit). This is bad, since I can't do a factory reset if I can't do a backup first.
Other strange issues:
I can't enable the Developer Options. The usual trick with tapping the Build number menu is NOT working. This is the recommended way for this phone model, as far as I understand.
An article at Sony Developer site (I can't post a link as I am new here), about unlocking the bootloader, implies that an unlocked phone, already will have the Developer Options enabled;
"On your device, turn on USB debugging by going to Settings > Developer options and click to enable USB debugging."
This is however NOT the case.
The phone cannot boot into recovery mode (there is a Sony recovery, right? Else, ignore this...). I am holding the power button and the down volume button while booting up (as per recommendation from the Sony support page), but no go. I also tried with pressing the volume up and down while booting, as recommended on various web pages. Not working.
I would be VERY grateful for any ideas on how to solve this. If I can at least enable USB debugging I can probably work things out from there. Thank you in advance!
Related
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
LMurphy said:
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely sounds like malware. You have two choices that I see, either root and custom rom or flash back to stock. Since you are stock you'd just be overwriting your existing install. Read this thread and decide your course of action http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2203309
Hey guys-
Was on a long international flight yesterday and decided to put my (unrooted) Galaxy S6 into "ultra power saving" mode for the first time. It was a horrible mistake and I'm not sure how to undo it!
The first issue it had was that it said Ultra Power Saving mode doesn't support the use of themes, so it was reverting to the default theme (I use Material Black).
After a long time of saying it was reverting to the default theme, I'm not sure if it worked - it ended up in the state that it is currently in: if I turn the phone on, the screen is just black - it has the status bar at the top of the screen, but just a blank black screen below it. It does not look like images I've seen on other websites for what Ultra Power Saving mode is supposed to look like (no icons on the screen, no "More" at the top right). If I go to settings by dragging from the top of the screen and hitting the settings button, I get a very limited set of settings: WiFi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode, Mobile Networks, Location, Sound, and Brightness - nothing that enables me to turn off Ultra Power Saving mode.
I am afraid to reboot the device, because when I did that yesterday, I had major issues. My device is encrypted, and I think this mode doesn't play nicely with encryption; when I rebooted the device, I was asked to sign in to unlock the encryption (as normal), but then the encryption booting screen (an unlock symbol with a circle around it) just idled indefinitely - for an hour or two. I couldn't do anything to get the phone to actually boot. Eventually, many hours later, rebooting the phone and logging in allowed it to boot to the state I described above; I don't know what went differently that time.
I tried various key combinations on restart, one of which seemed to result in the device trying to boot to Safe Mode (it said safe mode in the bottom left corner when asking me to sign in to device encryption), but ended up leaving me in the exact same place - the extremely limited Ultra Power Saving mode black screen I described above.
Anyway - is there anything I can try to get my phone out of Ultra Power Saving mode and back to normal? It is unusable right now and I can't figure out how to get it back. Would like to avoid a factory reset if possible (because I'm overseas with ****ty internet, and don't have access to my office to get it re-set up with enterprise mail etc.).
If I have to factory reset the device - I'm not even sure how to do it from this current UPSM state, so any tips there would be helpful too.
Thanks a ton in advance for the help guys
Go to download mode, reflash original rom with odin. You need your rom file from sammobile or samsung-updates or xda and odin 3.
Sorry, I am no power user although I am not totally tech incompetent. Can you tell me in a little more detail what your instructions mean? It sounds like it is basically a total reset of the OS; is that right? Any implications for my warranty? Any alternatives?
If you had package disabler and disabled any of the packages required to run ultra power saving mode, you get symptoms like this.
com.sec.android.emergencylauncher is one package amongst many.
I have honestly only heard of factory resetting working.
http://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g920f-galaxy-s6/
Hi, I have a toasted moto x play which I believe moto is responsible for, (bought on Amazon) but I'm doing volunteer work in Africa. I'm wondering if I can somehow salvage my phone with an Android upgrade or a custom rom (never done that). Ok here's what happened: My phone gave me a message that it was running very low on memory. I was super busy at the time and had to ignore it. When I rebooted the phone it came up with a black screen. However after rebooting about 3 times finally it came back. I cleared some storage removing pictures and Vids etc. However strangely the settings Icon had disappeared from the notifications bar. I then noticed that the home button and the multitask button did not work. I can get to settings from the settings app. But I can only run one app at a time and then back out of it as only the back button works. I was able to copy some stuff to Dropbox and back up my SMS messages before trying a factory reset. But then I found the factory reset button is greyed out! Google told me that some people have had this and solved it by removing their account. Bad advice. I removed my account and now cannot add it back. At least before this I could still access my mail, Google drive etc. I tried the factory reset by pressing the volume and power keys, and scrolling to recover mode. I get a message: Command not found.
Is my phone 'bricked'? It was running Android 6. I understand that 7 should be available soon. Is there any hope of manually installing such an update?
we have two S7's, non-edge, and they have been almost bulletproof to now. I have a rooted S5 but have not modded either S7. My wife dropped hers, no breaks in the glass but it came up black after briefly displaying a partial image.
I can force reboot it, and it works. the backup 'key' lights up at times, the LED's work, and the phone receives calls [rings] but of course we can't see a thing.
Is there a fix? I've tried the reset via Vol - Power, that works to restart but no display. I've done Vol+ Power, can't see a thing. Tried Vol - Pwr Home, can't see anything so not sure what the result was. Plugged into PC but without being able to grant permission on the device, no dice.
How can I force a backup of everything? or... it may be backed up to her google account but how to reach, sans S7 display?:silly:
Hi, you can try to access the phone via samsung find my mobile website. You need internet connection at the s7 working and the logon data of your samsung account. In find my mobile there is a backup option.
Regards
Oliver
Fabulous! Going to try now
Oliver, unfortunately she never setup a samsung account period. hard lesson.
Surely the forensics community has a way to get to the stored data.... I guess/think the only things missing, that were not on SD card or SIM, would be a few pictures stored in default local memory, a few downloads, and things that will not be restorable easily like Calendar entries [and a whole lot of app cache stuff that is not high value]... am I wrong?
But then there is the security aspect; even if I cannot fetch usable data, I need to nuke it all... Is there no way to mount those volumes on a pc or other? A universal "nuke everything on the blind" approach?
thank you for your help
I have also black/blank screen but all audio works, hardware buttons work. I can tap the screen and it makes a sound. Voice assistant turns on for some reason and she verifies the touches I make to the screen. She also verifies I am pressing on screen buttons. I also know this because I can turn the phone off using the power button, then on screen buttons, even though it's blank. So the screen does work, just noting visually. I have tried the power + volume down to no avail. I believe the battery has totally died as was also recommended. If anyone has an idea of what to do next...please help.
, I believe, and I'm going to try today, that we can get in Via download mode. So we'll set up adb, set the "blind" s7 in download mode and see if I can browse the file system
My Nan got a new phone from Tescos Mobile a couple months ago.
From what she's told me it seems like this issue has been around since the time she got it.
The phone will randomly reboot into safe mode, disabling all her non-essential apps, without warning and suddenly.
There appears to be no rhyme or reason for it, the only non-android apps on there are 'Tesco Clubcard', 'Lidl Plus', 'Tesco Mobile' & 'Whatsapp'.
It seems unlikely either one of these apps is causing the phone to reboot into safe mode.
When I last saw her I did a factory reset on the phone to see if that resolved the issue.
It was fine for 2 weeks, but then it started rebooting into safe mode again.
She had not installed any new apps in those 2 weeks... I'm pretty sure she doesn't know how to. All I can think is maybe a system update automatically installed that caused this issue to re-occur.
The phone is currently up to date.
I've told her to return the phone for a replacement, but she went to their help desk she was told it would cost £120 (!!!)
I had a look online and it seems like you can only book returns via Tescos online repair and they won't accept returns in person.
It would be preferable just to fix the issue myself if possible... Is there an internal log I can access to get a hint why as to why it's rebooting into safe mode all the time?
Google has been useless. All I can find are guides on 'how to reboot into safe mode', I have yet to find another instance of someone with this problem, but I'm sure it must be common.
EDIT:
It's just occurred to me... I've never personally experienced it suddenly rebooting into safe mode, and google suggests this is not a thing that commonly happens... is it possible my Nan is triggering this with some kind of 'hidden' user input to reboot into safe mode? (ie, holding down the power button and volume button too long)