[Q] Rollback a Telstra Velocity help please.

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Jaximus

Member
Apr 30, 2012
6
0
Ok, first up I want to apologize for being a huge noob when it comes to smart phones, the Velocity is my first.

Ok, recently upgraded to stock ICS as was told by a Telstra store it would improve battery life.
Suffice to say I now need to charge my phone 2 times during the day, even with all non essential things turned off. Also while my 4g has picked up slighly, my 3g is almost non existent.

I work in a remote town and I usually dont have the luxury of charging the phone at noon, hence a dead phone by 1pm now (used to last all day fine)

Simply, I just want to take it back to the stock gingerbread it came with so I can at least use it again.

I have read through the forums for about 7 hours now, can't find what I need (noob remember)

I did find the holiday shipped rom collection post and D/L the RUU_HOLIDAY_SENSE3_5_Telstra_WWE_2.27.841.6_Radio_3.01.4720.09_3
file.
If I run it it wont do anything because its older than what is on the phone.
Found the instructions on how to turn it into a PH39IMG.zip file and loaded to a SD card. pretty much did the same thing at the hboot menu (older file)

Found out how to turn autoloader to unlock and did that, the sd card method now runs through (every file says missing or something though) till the end, but if you reboot its still ICS.

Yes, I have seen the super guide, but it seemed to be for AT&T phones, and being that i don't know much about them, I didnt want to go through it and be wrong.

I have been told it should be as simple as dl the ruu from HTC and running it, but HTC only have the ICS ruu for telstra phones, not the old GB version.

I have emailed both HTC and Telstra asking about it and no response.
Local telstra shop had conflicting info.. one guy said they could do it, but would cost $100, a different guy said no way to go back.

I'm hoping someone can show an extreme noob how to fix this, otherwise I'll have to look at buying a new phone as its pointless having this one for just half a day!
 

Aus_Azn

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2010
902
104
First of all, thank you for actually taking the time to read.

Second, anything in the superguide is applicable to your phone. Just replace any instances of ATT with Telstra, and you're good to go.

What you're going to have to do, if you want GB again, is to unlock your bootloader and fastboot flash a recovery image (ClockworkMod recovery will do), and then you can get a Telstra stock ROM zip from GB and flash that in recovery.

My other suggestion would have been to do the RUU method, but you've already tried that. I'm working under the presumption that your bootloader is locked, as the RUU method is guaranteed to fail if it is.

I'm curious, however, as to why ICS is using more battery on your device than GB did. That's not normal. Do me a favor, could you either screencap or read out what it says in your Settings -> Power -> Battery Use screen when your phone is nearly dead (14% battery or just an extended usage period). Something is very abnormal if you are getting worse battery life on ICS over GB.
 

Jaximus

Member
Apr 30, 2012
6
0
Thanks very much for that,
Bootloader is unlocked (I think I said autoloader before, oops) Did it via the HTC unlock tool.
For a bit more info, I had an error 140 before I unlocked, and an error 155 afterwards. I did look up the error codes and the 155 seems to be a wrong version.


Will do a screen cap when I can for you, but from reading the Telstra forums and Whirlpool, it seems there are a lot of people with the same issue and more
(lower battery life, worse signal strength, tinny speaker on calls, call drops, random reboots on charging.. I only have the first 2 issues)
Most of them are looking for fixes for the issues, well.. complaining about them mostly. I think I'm one of the few that want to return to the old version.

As i said, I dont know a lot about them, and I know GB worked for me :)

EDIT: Get the Telstra stock rom.. is where I got the first one from ok, or is there somewhere else?
 
Last edited:

Aus_Azn

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2010
902
104
You CANNOT run an RUU with an unlocked bootloader, but that's another story for another day.

Do you have some form of recovery on it (CWM, WCX, TeamWin Touch)? If so, it's just a matter of finding a zip of the stock GB ROM. Else, you can use Jirv311 (I hope I spelled that right)'s method of compiling the stock RUU-based ROM posted on the development forum. I know a PH39IMG flash was made for ATT users, but I would advise against using that.

Per your question about ROM source, where did you find it exactly?

Worse comes to worst, just flash a custom GB ROM instead of a stock one if you can't find it. Holiraider is hella nice and gave me plenty of battery life.

By the by, if you choose a rooted ROM, I would heavily recommend to you to use SetCPU and underclock your phone. Search the HTC Dream G1's app board (under legacy devices), and you'll find a link. It's free to XDA members. On ICS, I have no problems ending the day at 50% battery, and that's with reasonably heavy use and my 3 email accounts checking mail at highest frequency.
 

Jaximus

Member
Apr 30, 2012
6
0
Well, doing some thread hopping I think I have done a proper rollback. Using mainly the superguide and associated links, I have unlocked the phone, think I have rooted it, flashed the Kernal and flashed the rom.
For some reason the only proper RUU/roms I could find wouldn't work, so have installed holiraider. I think I did it right because its running and usable on my phone now.

Unfortunately though, the issues I got when I upgraded to ICS are still there. Bad signal and battery life.

As a guide, I used to be able to have full 3g signal anywhere inside my house, now it fluctuates wildly, if I put my wife's phone alongside mine, hers is steady full signal, mine fluctuates between 0 and 3 bars.

Battery life: If left on screen locked, it seems to last overnight (8 hours)
As soon as you use it you can see the battery metre falling.
Sending a txt messages is using 2-3%, a post on facebook is about 5%

PRE ICS: Standby time about 32 hours, usable time: about 8-9hours
POST ICS: Standby time about 8-9 hours, usable time: anywhere from 4-6 hours.

I can only think with my limited knowledge that the signal fluctuating all the time may be what is chewing up the battery? (Bluetooth and wifi both off) And maybe the ICS update 'upgraded' something that the Holiraider rollback hasnt downgraded?
 

pod0087

Senior Member
Jun 6, 2011
109
28
Same thing happened to me upgrading from GB to ICS. Turns out GoogleBackup was causing partial wakelocks, using both CPU and radio constantly. To check for this or anything else keeping your phone from sleeping, install and run BetterBatteryStats (free for xda users) from http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1179809 and look at partial wakelocks.

Otherwise try checking a process monitor to look at what is active all the time, or perhaps use DroidWall to block internet access to apps that don't require it but may be using it.

Regarding the phone's signal, you'll have to go into the network status (in settings) to get numbers (IIRC correctly anything above -106dBm is a usable 3G signal). If this doesn't help, 2G will give you a better signal but it's not ideal. Nothing should be affecting your signal if you don't change the radio however.
 

Jaximus

Member
Apr 30, 2012
6
0
Only major thing in the wake locks is alarm manager.
Signal goes from about 91db to 108db. Borrowed a friends phone and sits stable on about 85db.
I think the radio would have been updated when ics was installed. Can the radio be rolled back too?
 

Aus_Azn

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2010
902
104
Only major thing in the wake locks is alarm manager.
Signal goes from about 91db to 108db. Borrowed a friends phone and sits stable on about 85db.
I think the radio would have been updated when ics was installed. Can the radio be rolled back too?

Are you talking about the HTC Clock app, or did you install a third-party app by the name of Alarm Manager? If the latter's the case, you know what to do.

If the former is the case, you might just need to go to Settings -> Applications -> All -> Clock and clear its data.

Is your friend also on a Velocity? Different phones can have different readings based on random variables like interference and antenna placement.
 

Jaximus

Member
Apr 30, 2012
6
0
Yeah, its just the HTC clock app. turned off the alarm earlier and its gone from the wake lock, but battery life hasnt changed. My last post was from the phone in question and it used 8% battery to type and post it.
Had a 15min phone call today too, used up 45% of my battery ( made sure to check before and after call.)

Nope, friends phone was a moterola Defy+

Thing is, I had this phone from a few days after they released here, so have been using it since Feb-ish on stock GB with no abnormal battery problems or signal problems.

Installed ICS and problems. Rollback to GB, still problems. I'm using the phone in the same area at home that had no issues before, so its gotta be something ICS, or at least Telstra's version of ICS, did to it.Since I still have the issue, its also gotta be something that didnt rollback with just flashing the rom..