Some keys water damaged, stuck at recovery screen.

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I got some water on my G1 (possibly crept in through the slide mechanism) and I have this (unique) problem.

After the water damage the phone did continue working for a few hours before it became unstable and just hung. The "home" key became intermittently unresponsive.

Now, after some time it has gotten into an infinite loop to "recovery mode" screen when rebooting, Alt+L gets me the prompt but Home+power does not reboot, popping the battery brings me back to this screen after the bootup.

Now if we assume that home button is stuck in "on" state this would result in this loop (that is my guess).

I have already attempted reflashing with cupcake (completes successfully and prompt for reboot but I end up again at the recovery screen). I tried getting to RC29 (to ultimately move to Haykuro) with the steps elsewhere in this forum (and many other places on the net) but I cannot get to the boot loader always the recovery screen (camera + power button).

Also attempted wipe several times, the loop persists.

I dont know if the camera button is working, so its possible the the key combo is not getting registered for my bootloader attempt.

Any help on possible things to do is appreciated.

Going to t-mobile is not an option, my friend brought it back from the US and I unlocked it with the intention of development on that platform. I cannot send it back to the US even though it is under warranty, just don't think they'll entertain water-damage.

Hey, I have this same prob. I bought a phone that had been dropped in water for about $50 thinking that since it did get to the T-mobile g1 screen i would be able to get to the recovery utility ( and recover). I could get to the utility but no amount of wiping or flashing worked. I also tried flashing every ota official rom i could get my hands on (since this phone didnt have root). But nothing worked.

At one point i found the official HTC Dream repair manual and posted it in the Dev forum, but who knows if its still there or much like this post, has been moved. Inside the repair manual pdf there is a link that will take you to the HTC RMA III login page. If you can get a user/pass you can prob log in and find the diagnosic prog HTC uses to troubleshoot. I have searched high and low for one of the user/pass but only found a couple that had already been closed. So maybe you could try to find a user/pass, get the diagnostic prog, make a G1/Dream gold card sd, fix your phone and help the whole forum. I dont think anyone has a copy of the diagnostic yet, or at least i havent seen it.

Let me know if you are able to find a work around. I have already completely taken the phone apart to use as spare parts, but I can always reassemble!

Went through the service manual, I tried to do a soft reset (never got to the prompt). Next, I attempted hard reset (home + back + power) and I reach the prompt that says "press send to start factory reset", but nothing happens when I press the "call" button (assuming "send" is same as "call").

I will attempt to look through the net a bit more and if nothing comes up I am thinking of opening up the phone and see if I can do something to the buttons in case they are internally jammed.

Thanks for your help though!

I need help with this as well!

Originally Posted by axicide

Went through the service manual, I tried to do a soft reset (never got to the prompt). Next, I attempted hard reset (home + back + power) and I reach the prompt that says "press send to start factory reset", but nothing happens when I press the "call" button (assuming "send" is same as "call").

I will attempt to look through the net a bit more and if nothing comes up I am thinking of opening up the phone and see if I can do something to the buttons in case they are internally jammed.

Thanks for your help though!

I have this same problem!

Is there a way we can remove Recovery mode
or disable the home key somehow?

on a water damaged phone you have ONE and ONLY ONE choice. you have to take the phone apart.

first make sure to get the service manual and it will show you how to take the phone apart properly, then you'll need a large bowl of rubbung alcohol(or some other volatile solvent)

take each piece of the phone apart and dip in the alcohol for several seconds completely submerging it, then take 10-15 minutes SCRUBBING the piece from every possible angle with a toothbrush. when you have finished each piece set on a clean towel or dry rag. repeat for all pieces of the phone.

then take a hair dryer and set it to low and dry the pieces of the phone for about an hour(or you can let sit for a day) and be sure to flip the pieces over halfway to ensure full drying. i have used this approach on many phones(one of which being a phone i found at the bottom of a lake). i am not promising that this will fix your phone as you probably shorted out a few circuits when you continued to use the phone, but it will help as long as nothing has short circuited

Same problem..

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I'm also having the same problem... Any Solution ??

Hope is always an option. Testing is a SOLUTION!!!

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I have the same problem with the home key being stuck after humidity entered my phone. Which boots me straight to recovery mode. I have managed to recover my phone with the following steps:

YOU MUST HAVE ADB AND FASTBOOT INSTALLED IN YOUR PC!!!

1) If your phone has the home button stuck, you can't update or confirm anything with the Cyanogen Recovery! Because you need the Home button to confirm. So you must revert your Recovery back to JF's Recovery to use the recovery properly in this case.

2) I have tried for weeks to make the system bypass the recovery and have succeeded. YOU MUST REBOOT YOUR PHONE FROM RECOVERY TO BOOTLOADER. So use ADB to reboot in to Bootloader mode ( adb shell reboot bootloader ). Now that your in Bootloader mode, use the FASTBOOT commands ( fastboot reboot ) and voila, it bypasses the recovery.Make a script on your Winbows or Linux to make it as easy as one click!

Before you disassemble try this.
Take off the back and remove the battery. Take out the sdcard. Put the phone, all opened up, in a ziplock bag full of uncooked rice. Leave it in there for 24 hours. Put it back together and 99 times out of 100 this will fix your problem. The rice is dry, like really dry and will suck the moisture right out of there. It is also dirt cheap.
Good luck.

Thanks, But Unfortunately my message got noticed a bit too late :)

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My phone is working fine since the last month ..

@RichiDaze
Unfortunately m my phone was unrooted , without terminal in the stock recovery console, so i could not use ADB...

@Billquinn1
Would have helped if moisture had not corroded my connectors....

But Thanks for your replies...Hope it helps people having similar problems ..

What i ended up doing was taking a safety pin and started scraping(gently) the non shiny parts of the connector ( daughter board to main board) .

I think it was previously shorted near that area , so by scraping removed the shorted metal joints ..

The Recovery problem did not reoccur since then