Mine is super bricked the same way. I can get to recoveries and odin and such. Sfhub, if you'd like, i could ship you my phone. I have a NS4G on the way, so if it'd help anyone else out, or if it could unbrick my E4GT, i'd be willing to send it your way.
Wow this has gone on awhile without any progress on the data partition. This must really be a whopper. Has anyone gotten a response from mobiletechvideos about a successful JTAG?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
Mine arrived yesterday. Hopefully I'll hear something from him today or tomorrow.
Unfortunately I have now worked with 2 of these and a dead/defective EMMC chip is to blame. One of them was not even writable via JTAG and the other, although it took a full JTAG write is hanging on the boot animation and start up sound. I've fixed hundreds of actual bricked D710's but this issue is separate from a standard brick. A good rule of thumb is that if something just randomly dies, it is most likely hardware and not a software based issue (i.e. phone turning off during regular operation of any kind). Now if you flash incompatible bootloaders or PIT files, I'm the man to talk to... 
I'll update more as time goes by...
EDIT: I've also seen this issue on other Exynos based devices with this EMMC chip. It seems to be a quality control issue at the factory level as all of a sudden several D710's are being plagued with this issue. I only see it in about 1-5 out of every 100 Exynos devices I repair though so it is quite rare.
Just PM me if you have specific questions related to your brick...
I'll update more as time goes by...
EDIT: I've also seen this issue on other Exynos based devices with this EMMC chip. It seems to be a quality control issue at the factory level as all of a sudden several D710's are being plagued with this issue. I only see it in about 1-5 out of every 100 Exynos devices I repair though so it is quite rare.
Just PM me if you have specific questions related to your brick...
Last edited:
Unfortunately I have now worked with 2 of these and a dead/defective EMMC chip is to blame. One of them was not even writable via JTAG and the other, although it took a full JTAG write is hanging on the boot animation and start up sound. I've fixed hundreds of actual bricked D710's but this issue is separate from a standard brick. A good rule of thumb is that if something just randomly dies, it is most likely hardware and not a software based issue (i.e. phone turning off during regular operation of any kind). Now if you flash incompatible bootloaders or PIT files, I'm the man to talk to...
I'll update more as time goes by...
Nice thanks for the response Josh (I assume this is you heh)! But if you have the time to read this thread, while I'm no expert on this stuff by any means, you'll see that it's probably unlikely that all of these folks are having failing EMMC chips. All of this started happening after the first ICS build leak, and something in the flashing process for some (depending on all the variable involved) is causing a problem with the data partition. Can a bad firmware flash cause the EMMC chip to fail?
Unfortunately I have now worked with 2 of these and a dead/defective EMMC chip is to blame. One of them was not even writable via JTAG and the other, although it took a full JTAG write is hanging on the boot animation and start up sound. I've fixed hundreds of actual bricked D710's but this issue is separate from a standard brick. A good rule of thumb is that if something just randomly dies, it is most likely hardware and not a software based issue (i.e. phone turning off during regular operation of any kind). Now if you flash incompatible bootloaders or PIT files, I'm the man to talk to...
I'll update more as time goes by...
EDIT: I've also seen this issue on other Exynos based devices with this EMMC chip. It seems to be a quality control issue at the factory level as all of a sudden several D710's are being plagued with this issue. I only see it in about 1-5 out of every 100 Exynos devices I repair though so it is quite rare.
Just PM me if you have specific questions related to your brick...
Any chance i can get some info on the devices you were working with?
Did they boot at all?
Only reason i ask, mine will get tot either odin/cwm, and will also boot to the boot animation and just stay there.... forever....
And now that i think about it, sbrissen had his external sd mounted to emmc in the build i was using before i tried to wipe data.
Related? idk
I just received my notification of my phone being shipped back to me from mobiletechvideos. Neither one of the emails stated that he was unable to repair it. I would assume that if he wasn't successful he would have stated that in the emails. I'll know in a couple of days I guess.
Sprint Exchange
I ordered a jig to reset my custom binary download count and took my phone back to sprint. They replaced my phone free of charge. Not saying this will happen to everyone, but I'm happy it worked out for me. I was another one eager to try ICS and I flashed FB21, used it for a couple days and tried to restore a Nand backup then all hell broke loose. I think I'm gonna wait until an official build of ICS is released my Sammy....good luck and happy hunting all.
I ordered a jig to reset my custom binary download count and took my phone back to sprint. They replaced my phone free of charge. Not saying this will happen to everyone, but I'm happy it worked out for me. I was another one eager to try ICS and I flashed FB21, used it for a couple days and tried to restore a Nand backup then all hell broke loose. I think I'm gonna wait until an official build of ICS is released my Sammy....good luck and happy hunting all.
Yeah, if he was unable to fix mine I'm gonna try Sprint. I bought mine second hand but I think the manufacture warranty is still applicable.
Clearlyif jtag is not writing successfully then something low-level is wrong. I can believe that fake flashing cwm touch onto a 3.0 kernel and restoring or wiping did something out of bounds rendering portions of the emmc inaccessible, but i would find it hard to believe this is coincindental emmc failure due to quality issues with the emmc. It is simply too specific, both in reproducability, symptoms, and prerequisites.
I have the same issue with my phone and it was definately CWM touch that messed it up . Samsung has a one year warranty on these phones.....and even though mine was bought as soon as they were available which was last june I called samsung and was told my phone is indeed under warranty until december of this year by it`s lot number...so as you can imagine I am sending mine directly to sammy free shipping out and back She expected to have my phone back to me in five to seven days !!! Samsung support number 1-800-726-7864 Hope this helps !!!
She expected to have my phone back to me in five to seven days !!! Samsung support number 1-800-726-7864 Hope this helps !!!
Well, it's certainly possible that he recently worked on a phone that had a bad EMMC, coincidentally around the time all this mess started happening. It sounds like we should start getting reports from people who sent their phones in from JTAG service soon. My money says JTAG gets them back up and running, where that blue light means a good thing not bad.
You are correct in your statement sfthub. JTAG is about as low a level initialization of reading and writing from the EMMC chip as you can possibly go. It's pure binary serial communication between the EMMC/oneNAND and CPU so if I am experiencing the inability to write at that level, then yes the EMMC chip is truly problematic and it is a hardware problem. With that said I'm not going to state the ROM flashing experience is to blame here as it would be highly unlikely but at the same time I have seen very odd things happen such as ROM's causing documented digitizer problems on the HD2 when Android or Windows Phone 7 are installed. A while back on the I9000M platform a leaked firmware was causing similar issues to the oneNAND and it was documented as true hardware failure as I could never pull one out of it's partition problems either.
EDIT: Also the blue light only represents that the boot.bin zone is intact which in nearly all cases it is as the primary bootloader is NOT on the EMMC chip but yet on a smaller segmented individual chip. In all cases where I can't write to the EMMC chip, I'm still able to write to the primary bootloader chip without issue.
EDIT: Also the blue light only represents that the boot.bin zone is intact which in nearly all cases it is as the primary bootloader is NOT on the EMMC chip but yet on a smaller segmented individual chip. In all cases where I can't write to the EMMC chip, I'm still able to write to the primary bootloader chip without issue.
I have the same issue with my phone and it was definately CWM touch that messed it up . Samsung has a one year warranty on these phones.....and even though mine was bought as soon as they were available which was last june I called samsung and was told my phone is indeed under warranty until december of this year by it`s lot number...so as you can imagine I am sending mine directly to sammy free shipping out and back
Come to think of it, I did use touch CWM to attempt a nand restore. Insurance and warranties are wonderful things. If you're going to be a mad scientist, of course you're gonna kill a few subjects. Let me know what happens with the sammy warranty process. I'm curious to see the outcome.
Man, to hear that while highly unlikely, there "could" be a kernel/recovery scenario that could permanently damage the internal memory chip to the point where even JTAG can't write to it is a bit unnerving.
To clarify, we are not talking about the act of flashing a rom causing emmc issues, we are talking about partition operations issued from recovery which are interfacing with a new linux 3.0 kernel. This brings into the the picture the possibility these are device driver level issues being exposed.
Imo it is equally hard to believe all these people who combined cwm touch with the ics linux 3.0 kernel are the only ones suddenly having an issue with just the /data partition, and only if they performed a wipe or restore using previously described setup. In addition nobody who has used the previous gb linux 2.6 kernels packed with cwm has ever reported such an issue.
There are too many specifics, imo, for this to just be arbitrary emmc failure. I'm not saying emmc isn't hoarked in some way, clearly it is, as your jtag bit blasting is failing, just imo the previously mentioned actors are somehow involved.
Last edited:
I agree 100% although hard to believe, the specific way these phones died are all the same as everyone was working with a specific build of ICS at the time this damage occurred. I've seen strange like this happen and be associated with flashing a file. In nearly all cases it's also the data zone as well that has the issue and not the entire chip. However in some cases I've seen the entire chip be un-writable...
So perhaps you could add your expertise, what is different about the data partition making more prone to these issues. Is it on a separate emmc chip? Or is everything on one chip that gets segmented? Is the issue with the section of emmc memory containing /data or is it with the meta data the keeps track of the sections?
I noticed the major/minor dev numbers changed for /data between the 2.6 and 3.0 kernel while the other partitions remained the same. That might just be a red herring.
I noticed the major/minor dev numbers changed for /data between the 2.6 and 3.0 kernel while the other partitions remained the same. That might just be a red herring.
There is nothing exclusive about the /data partition. It resides on the EMMC chip with all other partitions (except for the primary bootloader). The fact that it would be the zone failing the most is beyond me other than the fact it most likely sees more I/O than any other segment...
well mine will get to cwm, and download mode. most people have just the blue light i hear. Im kind of out of options regarding this. this post might be my last resort.
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=23131534&postcount=10
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=23131534&postcount=10
Similar threads
Top Liked Posts
-
There are no posts matching your filters.
-
11After trying to follow about 3 or 4 different threads on this issue, I finally came across the guide here for the Galaxy Note: ATTENTION! my way out of a MMC_CAP_ERASE brick! Lucky for E4GT owners with the brick issue, it works for us too! (brick issue meaning your phone powers on, and you can get in to recovery, but can't format /data or install a rom)
I just tried this today, and so far so good. First off, the guide is worth a read to understand the issue, and how they went about solving it ...but we'll save all that reading for afterwards... :silly:
Head over to the ATTENTION! my way out of a MMC_CAP_ERASE brick! thread, and scroll down to the section Update: instructions for unexperienced users
Read those instructions carefully so you have a basic understanding what is going on. You'll also need this 16GB file PIT file: Q1_20110914_16GB-patched.pit
(Updated: The OP added specific E4GT PIT files to avoid confusion, after this post was written. The Q1_20110914_16GB-patched.pit is confirmed to work, yet as time goes on, there may be a better solution discovered.)
Now open up ODIN. Make sure your phone is plugged in and in Download Mode (When phone is off, hold down Power and Vol Down until you see the warning screen). There should also be a yellow box in ODIN meaning your phone is ready.
Choose the 16GB PIT file in the PIT box. Select the EG30 Stock Rom in the PDA box. Cross your fingers, and Start the process.
If the process Passes (Green), then EG30 Stock should start booting up!
If you're cool with that, you're done. Otherwise, use e4gtauto-sfx to root and install CWM, then flash a *good* ICS rom such as Phantom's Blazer Rom. :good:
* one small note though, using the Standard PIT fix, will decrease your internal storage from 16GB, to a total of 8GB. There are other PIT files you could try to get some of that space back, or just write it off as a loss, and get a bigger MicroSD card.6Step by step instructions
So after months of trying...flashing all the one clicks they showed and of odining stocks and ics I just got to flash al el26 modem and the calks format all and cyanogenmod 9?!?! and thats all?! or I have to do the galaxy note page that is shown?! confuseed
Okay.
1) create a folder on your desktop. call it "epic4gtouch". Something...
2) Download "pits-patched-standard.zip"
3) open the zip, select both "Q1_20110914_16GB-patched.pit" and "Q1_20110914_16GB-patched.pit.txt" and drag them to the "epic4gtouch" folder you created.
4) Download ODIN.
*The link should go to Google Docs. The two arrows on the far right are clickable. Click, then "download". (Download both .ini and .exe)
**Place those in a new folder called "ODIN", place the ODIN folder in the "epic4gtouch" folder.
5) Download this "EG30 stock rom".
*Place it in the "epic4gtouch" folder.
6) Open the ODIN folder, then open "odin3 v1.85"
7) On your phone, go into download mode: hold volume down + power.
*"Warning...blah blah..." Release those buttons, then press the volume up button.
8) Connect your phone to your pc with the usb cable.
9) Back on ODIN, a box should highlight yellow. The big white box on the corner should say added.
10) Click the PIT button, navigate to the "epic4gtouch" folder on your desktop. Choose the 16GB PIT file.
11) Click the PDA button, navigate to the "epic4gtouch" folder on your desktop.
Choose the "Stock-EG30" rom.
12) Make sure "Auto Reboot" and "Re-Partition" are the ONLY ones ticked. Also make sure the usb cable is not loose.
13) Press the big button "Start."
Once it's complete, it will boot to the EG30 Stock rom.
Mine went into a loop on the Sprint 4G Screen animation.
This post solved that.
______
Put the Calk's_FORMAT_ALL script, the gapps package, and THIS rom CM9 alpha5 all on the external SD card.
Go back to ODIN, hit the Reset button. Click PDA select the EL26CWM kernel.
Untick re-partition AND reboot.
Connect phone with pc via usb cable.
Press the big Start button.
Once complete, unplug, take the battery out, re insert it. Volume Up + power.
Hold till you get into recovery.
Flash Calk's_FORMAT_ALL script.
Flash the ROM.
Flash the gapps package.
Reboot.
____
Anyway, thats pretty much what I did to fix my phone.
Follow all the above if the original post is too confusing. (which really... it isn't at all.) :highfive:3
I am still around, but had to travel at the last minute.
It is hard to do any debugging without my dev setup, so i wouldn't expect any updates from me until the end of the week.
Before i left i think i at least figured out why cwm touch was causing issues for some but not others. As mentioned earlier cwm touch already behaves funky on gingerbread roms.
What tipped the scale appears to be if you used the cwm touch update.zip to "fake flash" using the stock ics fb09/fb15/fb17 recovery. When you "fake flash" cwm touch, you end up combining a cwm touch recovery, that was already behaving funny with a linux 2.6 kernel, with the ics linux 3.0 linux kernel. This was just too much and when cwm touch went to format or restore it hoarked some meta data making it impossible for utilities to access, format, or repartition /data.
The people who did not have fatal situations with cwm touch didn't the fake flash on top of the 3.0 linux kernel. They odin flashed a 2.6 gb kernel with cwm touch packed into the initramfs.
So the moral of the story is don't go fake flashing recoveries with arbitrary kernels, you might not like what you get.
Btw both update.zip and rom manager do fake flashes.
Sorry for the typos, i am using swype.
