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Phone Repair, Android Lollipop and Marshmallow

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Rye83, Nov 26, 2015.

  1. Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    My phone, a Nexus 5 bought in the US, started acting weird about 3-4 months back due to a bad charging port and I couldn't bring myself to pay 40k+ for a phone with equivalent specs here in the Philippines.....considering I paid about 15k for the phone in the US and they are now selling them refurbished for around 6k. The charging port was causing the screen to go haywire, the microphone to malfunction during calls (unless it was put on speaker phone :o o:) and it was unable to charge the battery.

    I didn't feel like taking a chance on ordering a new phone from the US and having it jacked by the postal service here or getting hit up with ridiculous custom's fees so I had decided to say screw it and go without a phone. About two weeks ago it became apparent that I needed a phone (was constantly being asked for a contact number) so I decided to see if it I could get my phone fixed.

    I took the phone to a repair shop to see if the part could be found in the Philippines.....I was almost positive it wouldn't be available since the phone is not sold here to my knowledge but I guess I was bored that day and needed to be reminded of where I live and how disappointing it can be at times. The repair shop didn't even know how to open the phone (it's not designed to have a user removable battery/back case) so I took the phone home and took it apart myself. Luckily the manufacturer of the phone (LG) took note from Samsung and made the charging port (probably the most abused piece of hardware on a phone) replaceable and didn't build it in to the freaking motherboard. Ordered the part I needed from China about a week ago and received it 2 days ago, I was surprised I didn't have to pay any duty on it even though customs opened and inspected the contents of the shipment :wideyed:.

    So after swapping out the port myself and dealing with a bad connection on the motherboard that needed a bit of pressure applied to fix (cut off a small piece of rubber from some swimming goggle's strap and a couple layers of electrical tape on the back case :wink:) I decided to upgrade the Android version. I went with 5.1.1 and downloaded the appropriate image file (500MB+). I thought 6.0 was still in development and hadn't been released to the public yet and didn't want to deal with a buggy phone....turns out I could have saved myself a lot of time and data on my plan (almost 2GB) if I had just done a simple Google search. Flashed stock 5.1.1 to the phone and everything was fine. The phone then started an OTA update for Android 6.0 (which is over 500MB) :meh:. Once that finished I went ahead and updated the phone to 6.0 and everything was good. I wanted to root the phone so I flashed a custom recovery to the phone (TWRP) and rooted it......which caused the phone to boot loop :banghead:. I tried everything I could to stop that nonsense but the phone just refused to boot up. Since the 6.0 update was OTA I didn't have a copy of the image file to remove root and return to stock and was forced to go back to stock 5.1.1 to fix the boot loop. Downloaded the 6.0 image file last night and I'm getting ready to have another go at it since I preferred the 6.0 over the 5.1.1. Hopefully since I already have the custom recovery with 5.1.1 installed with no problems I can just flash the 6.0 and get root without getting a boot loop. This crap never goes as it should for me though.
     
  2. DaveD

    DaveD DI Senior Member Showcase Reviewer Veteran Navy

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    Sounds like you had quite the experience trying to upgrade your phone. I am more of a desktop repairman as was factory trained by IBM back in 80's but not much on cellphones. Heck I just upgraded to a smart phone (reluctantly) last year after my old Nokia died and found I couldn't get a replacement so I bought a Chinese knockoff for next to nothing. Works OK but I am already wanting to upgrade to something that really works as it's supposed to without 'bass ackwards' reverse engineered software and hardware....
     
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    Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    This stuff never goes well for me, I'm no stranger to a soft bricked phone (haven't hard bricked one.....yet :wink:). The reason the root soft bricked the phone in the first attempt on 6.0 was because it needed a custom kernel flashed before attempting to gain root access. The article I read didn't mention that.....the author decided to make that bit of important information known in the comments section instead of updating the main article. *I don't have a smiley face for an "asshat" but that's what goes here.*
    I haven't used Nokia since I had the little blue phone that my parents forced me to carry around when I was a teenager (you can still find those being sold here in the Philippines). I played around with some of their newer models but I've always found their UI sloppy and sluggish. My first "smartphone" was a Blackberry that I first bought when I started contracting (LMCO gave me one because they had great security and email features). Switched over to Android in 2010 and have been using that since. Tried Apple for a about a week then traded it for another Android. The Nexus 5 is the best phone that I've had to date (I like that it is stock Android without any manufacturer's bloat and annoying UI's on it), I'll likely buy the Nexus 5x the next time I find myself in the US.

    I still haven't gotten 6.0 installed on the phone yet. The download didn't pass the MD5 checksum and I don't have good enough internet to try to download it again directly from Google (I downloaded the first one from as a torrent because it would get half way through the download then fail if downloaded through Chrome....sucking 250MB off my data cap with nothing to show for it). :meh:
     
  4. KINGCOLE

    KINGCOLE DI Senior Member Highly Rated Poster

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    Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    Yeah, I'm doing the installs with ADB/Fastboot commands over USB from a laptop (I don't believe there is another way to go about it for the Nexus devices). I just finished re-downloaded the latest Marshmallow (mra58n) so I will have another go once I finished up doing all the backups. The problem I had the first time was that I tried to do some extra stuff (custom recovery and rooting the phone). I'm under the impression that Marshmallow requires a custom kernel (the Despair kernel) to be flashed before you can root the phone. I had the latest version of Marshmallow working perfectly on the phone.....it boot looped when I installed a custom recovery and rooted the phone. This time around I'll make sure I read the entire article AND all the comments. :wink:

    Straight from the source for the Nexus devices:
    Factory Images for Nexus Devices  |  Nexus Files for Developers  |  Google Developers
     
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    Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    So far so good. Marshmallow with root access on the phone. (custom kernel not needed, flashed a modded boot image and installed front end app in pay store). Backing up again then will try flashing a custom recovery. :wink:

    Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
     
  7. Nutz2U2

    Nutz2U2 DI Member Showcase Reviewer

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    And I thought I was the only one who "bricks" their phones on a regular basis - because I have to try this new bootstrap / kernel / root util / etc etc ....

    But then we do have fun don't we .... ???
     
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    Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    I used to play around with flashing custom ROMs quite a bit (and regularly bricking them) until I got the N5. I was always in search for the most basic/vanilla versions of Android and was never really satisfied with all the crap UIs and features phone manufactures and custom ROM developers added to their products. I have achieved what I was looking for now with the most up-to-date Android version, root and custom recovery. I'll leave it alone until the next big upgrade or until I buy the Nexus 5x.......or as long as I can stay away from the benchmark apps. :wink:
     
  9. jimeve

    jimeve DI Forum Luminary Highly Rated Poster Showcase Reviewer Veteran Army

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    Where's the best place to buy a smart phone in Dumaguete? I'm back over for a couple months and wife wants a reliable smart phone for Christmas
     
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    Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    All the stores pretty much sell the same phones. Pick-N-Carry (?) usually has a decent selection. There are a couple locations in Dumaguete if I remember correctly. One is before you cross the bridge heading from Robinsons to the Bell Tower. The other is on the same road somewhere around Lee Plaza.....might be a couple more around town as well.
     
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