Dead photon?

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

Hello, my Photon started acting up really weird. First of all, it was really slow. I thought it's because I had like 150MB left and it was nearly full data-wise. However, I erased most of the data, and left it with 3GB left. Didn't work and it got worse.
I have these stripes around the display (just at sides, not at middle), while phone is turned on. Doesn't matter if in system, or at boot logo. Doesn't matter, because whenever I get to system, I can be in system for like 1 minute, then every application starts crashing (Apex launcher, Google play, whatever you pick) and I basically can't get anywhere. Also if I go to sleep mode, phone is basically dead and it's pure luck when I will turn on phone again. I am trying every few minutes and it's worthless, because any time I get to system anyway, I crash after few seconds.
What to do? I was planing to install custom ROM yesterday, but never got to that, because this all started to act up. So what should I do? Reset system? Any other ideas? Is phone dead?
Sorry for bad english, no bully please.
Thanks in advance

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

Update - now when I am trying to start up my phone, I have just black screen with white lines in the middle. Then phone shuts down. I will give more info when I will be at home and can get phone on charger

arrrghhh · Apr 14, 2014

Well definitely try to charge the device up. You might try re-flashing the stock ROM using RSD Lite... Although from your description I fear your issue may be hardware related.

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

Could turn device on. Apparently that black screen with white lines was just discharged phone. When I put it on charger, I could again boot into system and it was working until I pressed power button to go to sleep mode and phone is again dead. Will try to flash RSD Lite later today and will post what happened

arrrghhh · Apr 14, 2014

kanek06 said:
Could turn device on. Apparently that black screen with white lines was just discharged phone. When I put it on charger, I could again boot into system and it was working until I pressed power button to go to sleep mode and phone is again dead. Will try to flash RSD Lite later today and will post what happened

Charge the device as much as you possibly can before doing anything with RSD. Ideally you should have at least 50% battery in the device when flashing anything.

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

This is really miserable. I can't really get into bootloader. Because phone after that 'crash' or whatever you want to call it is dead and I can't even see if it's turned on or not. Basically I am randomly waiting when it's gonna restart and then I just get into system. Even if I fully discharge it, it will have black screen with white lines first, it flashes quite couple times and then it will finally boot into system. Also I remember it was ***** in past to get into recovery. Can I do anything from system? Because as soon as I don't turn off my screen by power button, phone is working, though it has those lines on side of LCD (I will try to borrow camera from someone and post it here today).
I set automatic turning screen off for 10 minutes and I am really careful about pressing power button. Sucks there is only option for just 10 minutes, so I have to tap on screen at least for once every 10 minutes or I will not have working phone. **** my life, really.

arrrghhh · Apr 14, 2014

kanek06 said:
This is really miserable. I can't really get into bootloader. Because phone after that 'crash' or whatever you want to call it is dead and I can't even see if it's turned on or not. Basically I am randomly waiting when it's gonna restart and then I just get into system. Even if I fully discharge it, it will have black screen with white lines first, it flashes quite couple times and then it will finally boot into system. Also I remember it was ***** in past to get into recovery. Can I do anything from system? Because as soon as I don't turn off my screen by power button, phone is working, though it has those lines on side of LCD (I will try to borrow camera from someone and post it here today).
I set automatic turning screen off for 10 minutes and I am really careful about pressing power button. Sucks there is only option for just 10 minutes, so I have to tap on screen at least for once every 10 minutes or I will not have working phone. **** my life, really.

Why can't you turn the phone off and charge it while off, or boot to recovery and charge the phone in recovery?

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

arrrghhh said:
Why can't you turn the phone off and charge it while off, or boot to recovery and charge the phone in recovery?

About charging it while turned off - Can't because when I try to turn it on again, it's roulette when I get finally bootloader logo and not black screen with white stripes.
And boot to recovery. Is it possible to like download some command prompt application and boot to bootloader from there? I know when I had my G1 (and when I actually understood android

) you could boot to recovery or bootloader via console. I have astro installed on phone, so downloading some console application and installing it shouldn't be problem.
Btw as we are speaking, I tried to call someone and I basically get same thing like when I am going to sleep mode, I get black screen and now I am just waiting, when phone will eventually want to restart itself.

arrrghhh · Apr 14, 2014

kanek06 said:
About charging it while turned off - Can't because when I try to turn it on again, it's roulette when I get finally bootloader logo and not black screen with white stripes.
And boot to recovery. Is it possible to like download some command prompt application and boot to bootloader from there? I know when I had my G1 (and when I actually understood android ) you could boot to recovery or bootloader via console. I have astro installed on phone, so downloading some console application and installing it shouldn't be problem.
Btw as we are speaking, I tried to call someone and I basically get same thing like when I am going to sleep mode, I get black screen and now I am just waiting, when phone will eventually want to restart itself.

Still sounds like some sort of a hardware issue, is the phone new to you?

You can certainly force bootloader mode, in several ways. When it's off you can hold power + camera and it will give you a choice of what to boot. When it's in Android you can do "adb reboot recovery" or "adb reboot bootloader" depending on where you want to end up. There are various apps which can also do this for you, if you are on the stock ROM but rooted.

kanek06 · Apr 14, 2014

arrrghhh said:
Still sounds like some sort of a hardware issue, is the phone new to you?

You can certainly force bootloader mode, in several ways. When it's off you can hold power + camera and it will give you a choice of what to boot. When it's in Android you can do "adb reboot recovery" or "adb reboot bootloader" depending on where you want to end up. There are various apps which can also do this for you, if you are on the stock ROM but rooted.

Phone is not new. I bought it used about one year ago.
I am not entirely new to android, but I didn't have android phone for 2 years and then I got this one. So I am really pretty **** with android atm

I will try reboot to bootloader from some console application.
I am rooted, opened bootloader, stock rom

kanek06 · Apr 28, 2014

Finally got into recovery, what now?
Also, when I once booted to system, I downloaded some root checking app, and root apparently isn't here. Well cornholio told me it is rooted back when I gave him my phone to perform sim card mod, but whatever. However, I am in recovery, but device is not detected by RSD Lite.

arrrghhh · Apr 28, 2014

kanek06 said:
Finally got into recovery, what now?
Also, when I once booted to system, I downloaded some root checking app, and root apparently isn't here. Well cornholio told me it is rooted back when I gave him my phone to perform sim card mod, but whatever. However, I am in recovery, but device is not detected by RSD Lite.

Well reading back thru this thread, I was suggesting RSD Lite back to stock. I'm not really sure what you want to achieve tho, what your "final" goal is here.

I'm not even sure what kind of recovery you are booted into - stock recovery? CWM?

Either way, if you want to RSD the phone back to stock, you need to boot into fastboot/bootloader mode - not recovery. Just make sure the phone is charged up as much as possible before flashing in RSD.

kanek06 · Apr 28, 2014

Oh, sorry - misunderstanding from my side, thought I can switch to fastboot from recovery, oh well.
Also yeah, stock recovery.

To spread more facts - in case somebody would have similiar problems, when I try to just turn phone on, I have zero success what so ever. There's just this blank black page flashing every few seconds. However, when I remove back cover, I somehow force phone to load to bootloader logo, then I finally get chance to force phone to get to recovery. I will try to get to fastboot

arrrghhh · Apr 28, 2014

kanek06 said:
Oh, sorry - misunderstanding from my side, thought I can switch to fastboot from recovery, oh well.
Also yeah, stock recovery.

To spread more facts - in case somebody would have similiar problems, when I try to just turn phone on, I have zero success what so ever. There's just this blank black page flashing every few seconds. However, when I remove back cover, I somehow force phone to load to bootloader logo, then I finally get chance to force phone to get to recovery. I will try to get to fastboot

Not sure if stock recovery has adb enabled, but if you have adb you can 'adb reboot bootloader'.

Otherwise do the power+cam trick I mentioned earlier.

kanek06 · Apr 28, 2014

http://i.imgur.com/3XYLngJ.png

arrrghhh · Apr 28, 2014

kanek06 said:
http://i.imgur.com/3XYLngJ.png

Did you remove the getvar lines from the xml file...?

kanek06 · Apr 28, 2014

arrrghhh · Apr 28, 2014

Weird. I only recall seeing that when people were trying to downgrade... but you are flashing 4.1.2.

The phone is in fastboot mode? What happens when you click "show device"? The "Device Properties" section is eerily empty.

kanek06 · May 15, 2014

I know it sounds shady, when I am coming back here again in few weeks, just been a bit busy lately, sorry about that.
However, somehow I got phone to flash it. The white graphical lines on sides dissapeared, however I got some new bug - I can't use phone in portrait mode, just in landscape - aka I need to swipe keyboard to have phone working. Also, that thing when phone completely stops working now occurs only when I am in that portrait mode, but I can restart phone this time.
When I finished this, it was midnight so I went to bad, so I tried to set up alarm, if it's gonna randomly shutdown like before and unfortunately, yes it did. I was waken up with this classical white line graphical bug black screen and had to reboot the phone. Oh well, managed to boot to system and it takes 5 minutes to fetch sim card (I have sim card mod from cornholio) and as I said, those white lines on side aka mysterious graphical bug is back.
Unfortunately for me, starts looking like real hardware issue now

Dead photon?

Senior Member

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Inactive Recognized Developer

Senior Member

Similar threads