Electronics & Appliances Best Posts in Thread: Which Dumaguete company will root a Samsung Phone

Well since you asked, I had given up and the phone guy has given up so in a last "Hail Mary" effort I contacted the Samsung support chat line.

I think it was Abdul who I was chatting with. and he simply confirmed that there is no way that Samsung permits to add additional internal storage. They will not support any programs to use the SD card to run apps. They suggest the SD card for media storage only. They will not support any plan to add additional internal memory, such as a hardwired plug in. In effect he said: What you have is what you get.

The phone seems great. My gf really loves it. But she has NOT managed to transfer any parts of her apps from Internal storage to SD card so now she is running with 5.5 out of 8GB Internal Storage and 436 mb out of 32GB on the useless SD card. (Brings tears to my eyes because if it was rootable it has the Marshmallow to run the SD as Internal but not rootable yet).

This is after 24 hours of use as it was just reset to factory specs yesterday when the final rooting attempt was made. All she added is Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Candy Crush, and Pitu. That's it! That's all she has loaded and she is pretty much screwed if she ever wants to add additional apps. In 3 months she will hate it.

And Samsung says: Sorry there is nothing we can do.

 

Thanks Dude, but I may have already solved the problem. How? Gave it to the gf to fix. She went downtown looking around and asking questions WBOF (without benefit of foreigner) and found a guy/repair shop who was willing to fix it for her and whom she felt she could trust.

The guy worked on the phone (mainly searching and downloading different things to find what worked) from 10 am yesterday until 5 am this morning. I know that because she stayed at the store almost the whole day to be sure her genuine Samsung parts were not "replaced" with Chinese parts but seems the guy was/is good. He only tinkered with the software and did not break the seal. At 6 PM he sent her home because he was closing and told her he would work overtime and text her once the job was complete and the phone was all working again. He texted a couple time during the evening and a final text at 5 am said it was all done and she could pick it up at the shop at 9 AM this morning.

What he says he did is return everything to Factory specs. Not a simple task after I had amateurishly screwed it up without backing anything up. What he will do on Tuesday is do a proper root job on her. (The phone, not the gf).

The quote so far is 800 pesos to return to specs and another 400 to do the root. Sounds fair. Hope the story has a happy ending.

EDIT: Gf picked up the phone at 10 AM. Price was as stated. Its back in the original state. Works well. She is happy. Gonna get it rooted on Tuesday from the same guy. Fingers crossed

 

Just a warning I recently bought a brand new VIVO smartphone and after using it to download various apps found it was Rooted (jail broken). How I found out was on using the app for my HSBC bank in Australia it immediately flashed on the screen words to the effect "This phone is Rooted and if you use it for transactions and there is fraudulent activity we will not reimburse you"

Maybe it is just the HSBC but Rooting a phone raises hacking issues affecting not just the warranty it seems.

 

I did the same kind of thing. I was always happy with my S5, couldn't think of any reason to upgrade at all. When the wife needed a phone I wanted to stay Samaung then bought the cheapest, current model, 4G phone they had. With the way technology moves I incorrectly assumed my 4 year old phone would be matched by even low end current models.

hahaha, thinking about it, in a way, it had been so long since I bought minimum instead of maximum performance, I forgot how to shop.

 

Putting this in a separate reply:

It looks like you have the best idea. I barely use the apps on my cell phone and I think I would do as Dude suggested and run everything I need from the web, so the only app I would have to download is a couple games to play while waiting to be served in Dumaguete restaurants.

So better off to follow your lead and give a good phone to GF and keep the Samsung for my own use. I'll see what she thinks of the idea.

 

What a PITA.

The fix for this IMO is to get a phone with better specs or don't install apps.

There are many systems being sold (even laptops) which barely have the specs to run the software they are loaded with (or don't last long). Fighting this is like trying to polish a turd.

Once you start using a smart phone, you realize the only app worth a **it is that which allows you to make calls and send texts.

Use web apps.

The most useful app outside that basic functionality which allows calling and texting is the web browser. For example, you can run FB in the browser on your phone, it takes up no additional room and you can close the ****ing thing when it starts getting lippy.

Manufacturers don't give a **** about your phone specs.

Many developers are developing for relatively high-end phones. They aren't optimizing for phones with low specs. Many of these applications take up a ridiculous amount of space in your storage and eat up RAM running in the background.

Many applications are now running as web applications anyways. Developing for Android, IOS and Windows is a PITA. Then you have the desktop as another possible device. The easiest way to build your app to run on almost everything is to package it up as a browser app. To the busy user, it looks and feels like any other app and you install it via the app store, but the controls and layout are all the same as you would use if you were building a web site . You're basically just downloading a running multiple instances of Chrome.

For example, on my Windows 10 laptop each of Skype, Spotify and Facebook have options for installation from the app store. Each of them are basically running in separate instances of Chrome (you wouldn't know it from using the app) and they all eat ridiculous memory and storage because the browser is a beast. I prefer running the actual web app (without having to install anything from the app store) if possible.

Most people end up using only a handful of apps after an initial app happy phase with a new phone. And of this handful, some of them can be loaded through the phone browser. Rather than wasting your life away trying to fight the reality of cheap hardware, it might be best to take a close look at what you actually need on the phone.

Also note that storage works differently in different versions of Android. If my memory serves me, I believe the app manufacturers decide how their apps use your storage in Marshmallow. Some applications may allow you to run them on an SD card and some might not. I believe in later versions of Android, you get full control over this as the user.

As mentioned earlier in another post, your phone storage has better performance than removable storage. This is why app developers would force their app to run on phone storage given the option. They don't want crap reviews because their app is slow.

 

Unfortunately, we're not smart. Friends/family who are getting our off-contract iPhones go to Dos Unlock and then recently, they found JM Cellshop to be cheaper P1,300--cost is about one pint of a fine draft beer in Japan.
Luckily, I found out today that we can have our phones unlocked now before giving them away. Unlocking a Japanese iPhone to Use with Cheap SIM | Tokyo Cheapo

 

Well now I don't feel so stupid :-) The guy at the cell phone shop followed similar steps to what I did when rooting the phone. He got to the same conclusion I got. That being the phone was rooted but now required a password to use the phone. The difference is that he knew how to reset it to original condition and so that's where it is now. Still unrooted and still with an 8 GB storage problem.

So has anyone encountered a problem when rooting a phone where you end up with a password to get into your newly rooted phone? How did you solve that problem?

@Plainspoken the same guy said he could unlock an Apple phone so it will still be worth visiting him for that.

 

iUseDito.Shop The guy who runs the shop is Al. I can vouch for him.