(GOOGLE DOCS SPREADSHEET)ATT & Tmo IMEI thread/ Report issues & info here!

UPDATE 7/29/2012 : PEOPLEARMY HAS FOUND A WAY TO BACK UP, RESTORE, OR INJECT YOUR IMEI! BELOW I WILL PASTE A LINK. THE PROBLEM APPEARS TO NOW HAVE A SOLUTION! PLEASE BE SURE TO THANK PEOPLEARMY, AND MOST OF ALL, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE I ENCOURAGE YOU TO DONATE TO HIM, AS HE HAS SAVED MANT PEOPLE FROM WARRANTY EXCHANGES, BRICKED DEVICES, AND MILD HEART ATTACKS!

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1801997

UPDATE 7/30/2012: IT APPEARS THAT USER "GEEK", WHO PLAYED A LARGE ROLE IN PEOPLEARMYS IMEI SOLUTION, HAS NOW WRAPPED UP THE BACK UP PROCESS INTO A VERY SIMPLE AND EASY TO USE TOOL THAT ONLY REQUIRES FREEWARE! BELOW YOU WILL FIND A LINK TO GEEKS TOOL & EASY TO FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS ACCOMPANIED BY A VIDEO DEMONSTRATION! PEOPLEARMY HAS SUGGESTED THAT HE BELIEVES IT WOULD BE BEST IF YOU WERE TO CREATE THE BACK UP USING BOTH METHODS. PLEASE BE SURE TO THANK GEEK WHEN YOU VISIT HIS "IMEI TOOL THREAD", AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IF YOU ARE IN A POSITION TO DONATE THEN PLEASE DO. WITHOUT THE HARD WORK OF BOTH OF THESE USERS, MANY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE LOST THEIR VERY EXPENSIVE GS3'S!

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1804123

Hi,

Just wanted to fill you guys in on what I'm working on.

So far I have built a custom rom that enables Diagnostic serial port on T-mobile SGS3
I have Extracted the 16 digit password from the modem
I have Connected to Qualcomm Service tools such as CDMA workshop and QPST/QXDM
I have READ the IMEI with these tools.
I have achieved a full NV dump of the phone.

The only thing left is to achieve WRITE of IMEI and your problems will be solved.

I do not have the issue on my device but decided to put some time into this to see if I could get it done. I am still working on it now.

Is there an official bounty for this solution or no?

getsaf said:

I'll concur, that command looks ok to me.. Don't really need to cd /sdcard though but it won't hurt anything.

zonly, good luck, and as usual, this is at your own risk but you already have a brick right

Assuming you can get back to a shell afterwards, you can (theoretically) re-dd the original img back to restore the original state.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Okay boys, I'm goin' in. Will report back.

buvk said:

has anyone tried restoring a complete dd backup after losing imei?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I believe this is the most important question that can be asked but it seems to have been looked over.

I know I've seen people say that the EFS Backup "App" doesn't work, but I'm not terribly surprised by this. Backups don't get much more rock-solid than a 'dd' backup.

(don't remember which thread this was from but it was posted by id_twin)

Backup by typing this in the terminal:

Restore by typing this in the terminal:

For those who are not familliar, this basically backs up a partition by reading directly from the storage device and outputting the byte-for-byte into a file that can be copied off for safe keeping when done. The restore process does the opposite, but writes byte-for-byte the entire partition block back to the partition area exactly the way it originally was pulled.

The important thing to know here is that most backup/restore apps will copy "files" out of a partition and into a different storage format than the partition such as tar or zip. To restore from one of these kinds backup apps, you would have to have an existing properly-formatted partition ready and mounted to extract the files to BUT when you're done extracting, the end-result is that you would have a different partition with the same files but with slight differences, such as the fact that the re-extracted files would likely be written to different areas of the partition than the original partition you extracted from, therefore your restore would NOT give you the EXACT same partition that you started with, just one that appears the same when mounted.

THIS kind of backup (dd backup) is a bit more awesome in that it will perform a partition-level backup which is the raw filesystem and all, it basically reads the 1's and 0's from a particular sector of your storage that includes the filesystem headers and filesystem structure and all in the backup. This means a couple of things. DD doesn't care (or know) what the underlying file-system is, in fact, there doesn't even need to be a filesystem present, it's just bytes in a block on a drive. This means that restoring THIS kind of backup will restore the base-level filesystem in-tact byte-for-byte. It's an exact mirror of your partition. These backups are so solid that these kinds of backups can actually be mounted as if they were a drive-partition on their own because technically, they ARE exactly a partition.

That being said, I really would be shocked if someone couldn't restore their EFS partition this way. I have backed mine up with this method but have not had any IMEI issues as of yet. If someone would be willing to share their DD backup with someone who has lost their IMEI as a proof-of-concept just to let the rest of the group know if this backup/restore method is effective that would be awesome. I have to admit I'm not terribly fond of handing out my IMEI to anyone, but it would be a great test for someone who has TWO GS3's handy (one with a bad IMEI and one good).

Hope this post helpful more than it is boring. I hope this gets figured out soon. I'm still a bit scared to flash another rom for now.