i605 Hard-Unbricking via KOBOL's Method :)

[roflcoptersoisoi]

I will honestly call bs on his post. The only way to downgrade atm is to get mobiletech to do it

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[iooooooc]

I will honestly call bs on his post. The only way to downgrade atm is to get mobiletech to do it

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

It did seem a little too easy to be true. We can all dream though, right? I guess SafeStrap will have to do for now. It's really awesome that Beastmode and HashCode figured out that workaround for now.

 

[GiGaLeOnZa]

3-button vs resistor

Could you please clarify? I just attempted the three button method and was able to access download mode, but nothing will write from my SD card. Is there another step I need to do to get the .img to write once I am in download mode? I am attempting to downgrade from 4.3 to 4.1.2

It appears that using the resistor-short method while booting accesses the firmware differently and forces the boot loader to be written to from the SD. the 3-button boot accesses normal download mode, which won't read the sd under normal operation; ODIN or KIES would write to the NAND via a usb connection. Then there's the jig, which I can't comment on because for my situation, I didn't use it.

Try downgrading with the resistor method, and let us know...

 

[roflcoptersoisoi]

I even backed off in fear of tearing that resistor up. This method is insanely hard to pull off..

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[iooooooc]

I even backed off in fear of tearing that resistor up. This method is insanely hard to pull off..

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

I've had my phone apart 3 times and backed off for the same reason. I am working on building a power wire with alligator clips to hook up to a spare battery charger. ..I'm hoping by eliminating the battery holding issue, it may be a little easier to control my precision tools so I dont bust that resistor. Will attach pics if my proof of concept works

 

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Pls do. I have all the jewelers tools to do this. It's just controlling the battery and move throws me off

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[GiGaLeOnZa]

I've had my phone apart 3 times and backed off for the same reason. I am working on building a power wire with alligator clips to hook up to a spare battery charger. ..I'm hoping by eliminating the battery holding issue, it may be a little easier to control my precision tools so I dont bust that resistor. Will attach pics if my proof of concept works

Do NOT do this!!!

Battery chargers output 5 volts, you do NOT want to hook that up directly to the board!! You must use the battery. If you want to make a jig for this i'd suggest 3 test lead wires with aligator clips on one side (to clip to the board) and the other side just strip the wires, wrap in small squares of tin foil, and tape to the battery. then you have proper voltage!!

I even backed off in fear of tearing that resistor up. This method is insanely hard to pull off..

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

I think you are both over thinking it, it's not too bad to be honest! especially if you have the means to hook the battery to the board with the method I suggested above. Then you'll simply need to put the precision screwdriver on the resistor and then press the power button, count to 5, remove screw driver and that's it.

** You can put the screwdriver on the resistor in advance! If the phone isn't on, there's no power to the board and therefore no risk to the resistor. It's when you power it on that you have to count to 5!! **

Figured I'd clear that up in case any1 is trying to short to the resistor at the same time as powering it up... that would be incredibly difficult indeed!!

 

[roflcoptersoisoi]

I have small hands so holding the battery and doing all this is kinda hard. .

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[GiGaLeOnZa]

Try this.

I have small hands so holding the battery and doing all this is kinda hard. .

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

Ok no biggy. Wire up the aligator leads via the above method. Hook 3 aligator leads to the motherboard, hook the 3 wires correctly to the battery via wrapping the ends in tin foil and taping to the battery. Now you have a means by which the battery is connected without any fancy techniques.

then get your precision screwdriver on the correct resistor and hold it there. Power up the board, start counting to 5 from the start of the power up, not from after it boots, then remove the screwdriver. With any luck you'll see the screen that says the image write was completed and you'll be able to flash in ODIN mode now.

 

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Will try it in a few days. I'm working on Jtagging a xbox a friend just gave me.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[iooooooc]

Thanks for the heads-up GiGaLeOnZa. I may not have made myself clear on my intentions. I did not intend to use the wall transformer part of the battery charger. I put my battery into the charging part and attached a micro usb cable to it and linked red to positive, black to negative/2.2k resistor, and the other end of the resistor to the middle terminal. However, this didn't have intended effect (no voltage). Wish I had read your post before I tried this. Now it's back to the drawing board to set it up like you suggested. Will let you know if it works out. I would honestly just feel better if i could eliminate one moving part in this process.. Thanks for the encouragement though, I am dying to know if this works for downgrade.

 

[chuckbeez]

Do you think this method would allow for a downgrade and BL unlock?

Sent from my rooted, xposed, and locked Verizon note 2.

 

[chuckbeez]

Here's the deal. I have a rooted vzw note 2 on 4.3. I really want to go back to 4.1 to get the unlocked BL before the kit kat update. I think I'm meticulous enough to do this method. Does anyone with any expertise have any speculation as to whether a bl downgrade would work this way?

Sent from my rooted, xposed, and locked Verizon note 2.

 

[iooooooc]

Downgrade

Ok. Let me start this out by saying that this procedure is very risky...I'm not even sure why I followed through with this....but, I will tell my story and you can decide if the risk is worth it.

I was running the 4.3 locked bootloader VRUEMJ9. I was running SafeStrap with N3bula ROM. Like many others, I've been frustrated with this locked bootloader...So, for the third time, I decided to test this method to see if I could downgrade back to 4.1

Using the knowledge from KOBOL, and the very helpful write-up by GiGaLeOnZa, I spent over an hour trying to hold the battery in place and short that little tiny resistor. After an hour, I finally got the stars to align, and was able to hold everything together while pressing the power button. As I counted to 6, the screen flashed white, and I pulled my screwdriver off of the resistor, and the screen stayed white for another second, then went black. After thinking, "oh great, there goes my phone" I reconnected everything and prepared to put my bricked phone back together. Imagine my surprise when I turned it on, and the safestrap screen appeared. After hitting continue, my phone booted in system recovery mode. I chose the "update from SD card" option. This resulted in a failure to mount. So, after I realized that I still had to imaged SD card in the device, I turned it off and put my normal SD card in. When I booted my phone, N3bula loaded like normal, and I was able to check my e-mail and voicemail. So, obviously, I felt like I needed to mess with it even further. Brazened my the backup I had made yesterday, I decided to ODIN the root66 firmware onto the device. After ODIN declared the process successful, I waited with my breath held while my phone booted up...After what seemed to be a long time on the "Samsung Galaxy Note II" splash screen, the little Android with an open chest appeared with a status bar. After that had completed, my phone rebooted and I went back to holding my breath. When the phone got past the first splash screen and the old "4GLTE" logo with the emanating rings appeared, I almost fell off my chair. After an eternity, my phone turned on and finally, what we've all been waiting for....

Now please, I beg you to read this whole post before you decide to do this yourself...as I said before, this is extremely risky, and I'm not sure if I just got lucky, or this worked.

Huge thanks to GiGaLeOnZa and KOBOL for their extremely helpful guides and knowledge.

 

[tdawgg777]

Ok. Let me start this out by saying that this procedure is very risky...I'm not even sure why I followed through with this....but, I will tell my story and you can decide if the risk is worth it.

I was running the 4.3 locked bootloader VRUEMJ9. I was running SafeStrap with N3bula ROM. Like many others, I've been frustrated with this locked bootloader...So, for the third time, I decided to test this method to see if I could downgrade back to 4.1

Using the knowledge from KOBOL, and the very helpful write-up by GiGaLeOnZa, I spent over an hour trying to hold the battery in place and short that little tiny resistor. After an hour, I finally got the stars to align, and was able to hold everything together while pressing the power button. As I counted to 6, the screen flashed white, and I pulled my screwdriver off of the resistor, and the screen stayed white for another second, then went black. After thinking, "oh great, there goes my phone" I reconnected everything and prepared to put my bricked phone back together. Imagine my surprise when I turned it on, and the safestrap screen appeared. After hitting continue, my phone booted in system recovery mode. I chose the "update from SD card" option. This resulted in a failure to mount. So, after I realized that I still had to imaged SD card in the device, I turned it off and put my normal SD card in. When I booted my phone, N3bula loaded like normal, and I was able to check my e-mail and voicemail. So, obviously, I felt like I needed to mess with it even further. Brazened my the backup I had made yesterday, I decided to ODIN the root66 firmware onto the device. After ODIN declared the process successful, I waited with my breath held while my phone booted up...After what seemed to be a long time on the "Samsung Galaxy Note II" splash screen, the little Android with an open chest appeared with a status bar. After that had completed, my phone rebooted and I went back to holding my breath. When the phone got past the first splash screen and the old "4GLTE" logo with the emanating rings appeared, I almost fell off my chair. After an eternity, my phone turned on and finally, what we've all been waiting for....View attachment 2713239

Now please, I beg you to read this whole post before you decide to do this yourself...as I said before, this is extremely risky, and I'm not sure if I just got lucky, or this worked.

Huge thanks to GiGaLeOnZa and KOBOL for their extremely helpful guides and knowledge.

Very nice!

 

[bcoop8]

Thanks! going to keep this on file just in case

 

[GiGaLeOnZa]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner!

Ok. Let me start this out by saying that this procedure is very risky...I'm not even sure why I followed through with this....but, I will tell my story and you can decide if the risk is worth it.

I was running the 4.3 locked bootloader VRUEMJ9. I was running SafeStrap with N3bula ROM. Like many others, I've been frustrated with this locked bootloader...So, for the third time, I decided to test this method to see if I could downgrade back to 4.1

Using the knowledge from KOBOL, and the very helpful write-up by GiGaLeOnZa, I spent over an hour trying to hold the battery in place and short that little tiny resistor. After an hour, I finally got the stars to align, and was able to hold everything together while pressing the power button. As I counted to 6, the screen flashed white, and I pulled my screwdriver off of the resistor, and the screen stayed white for another second, then went black. After thinking, "oh great, there goes my phone" I reconnected everything and prepared to put my bricked phone back together. Imagine my surprise when I turned it on, and the safestrap screen appeared. After hitting continue, my phone booted in system recovery mode. I chose the "update from SD card" option. This resulted in a failure to mount. So, after I realized that I still had to imaged SD card in the device, I turned it off and put my normal SD card in. When I booted my phone, N3bula loaded like normal, and I was able to check my e-mail and voicemail. So, obviously, I felt like I needed to mess with it even further. Brazened my the backup I had made yesterday, I decided to ODIN the root66 firmware onto the device. After ODIN declared the process successful, I waited with my breath held while my phone booted up...After what seemed to be a long time on the "Samsung Galaxy Note II" splash screen, the little Android with an open chest appeared with a status bar. After that had completed, my phone rebooted and I went back to holding my breath. When the phone got past the first splash screen and the old "4GLTE" logo with the emanating rings appeared, I almost fell off my chair. After an eternity, my phone turned on and finally, what we've all been waiting for....View attachment 2713239

Now please, I beg you to read this whole post before you decide to do this yourself...as I said before, this is extremely risky, and I'm not sure if I just got lucky, or this worked.

Huge thanks to GiGaLeOnZa and KOBOL for their extremely helpful guides and knowledge.

Holy crap, so you successfully went back to 4.1.1?? With an unlocked bootloader?!

 

[redrol]

Holy crap, so you successfully went back to 4.1.1?? With an unlocked bootloader?!

Whoa!!!!!! This post should be made more obvious. Amazing! :good::laugh:

 

[unicell]

Unfortunately I did not have the luck I imagined when reading this post.

A little bit background of my problem: two days ago I decided to upgrade my rooted VARLJB to a more recent MJ9 firmware. The major motive behind this is make my i605 play with my new H7 heart beat sensor (Android 4.3 has ANT+ support). At first, I flashed stock MJ9 ROM, every image file within stock MJ9 ROM except for sboot.bin and tz.img, with heimdall. That is because I don't want my BL get locked and someone told me it is possible update MJ9 without flashing new bootloader. The new system boot up, shiny new and made me excited for a few seconds before I realize WiFi couldn't be turned on.

Google study leads me to the conclusion of new KNOX enabled system doesn't plays well with my old bootloader, and Dr Ketan's wifi patch seems to be the solution. So here begins my miserable day... I flashed BL_MJ5_DN3 bootloader with heimdall. It suppposed to fix the WiFi issue caused by old bootloader but there's one thing I missed. This BL is for N7100 instead of i605!!

I end up with my i605 stuck in looping N7100 boot logo. Still able to enter download mode (reported product name: GT-N7100) but ODIN flash simply doesn't work. Heimdall on the other hand keeps prompting me "ERROR: Failed to detect compatible download-mode device."

KOBOL's experiment and GiGaLeOnZa's detail instruction ignite the light of hope for me, cause the problem you guys solved seem to be exactly the same case what I have. But after spending almost half a day holding battery, short resistor and press that little tiny power button. I gave up... (sigh) no magic happened...

Right now, I started wondering whether KOBOL's method even applies to my case or not. The answer could be NO, I guess

 

[GiGaLeOnZa]

did you prepare the SD card properly?? follow the instructions exactly and with the SD card in place, you'll see the black screen saying success or something like that.

Keep at it, worst case scenario is you don't succeed...