TUTORIAL: Unbrick your Huami AmazFit Smartwatch / Xiaomi AmazFit PACE

[Neuer_User]

In case you bricked your watch, here is a tutorial how to unbrick the watch:

1. What is a "bricked" watch?

A bricked watch does no longer boot. It typically stops at the boot logo and waits forever. This can happen for example, if a flash of the system image failed and the boot image can no longer boot the system.
In such cases, you cannot reach adb from the command line, so there seems to be no way to recover the watch. Fortunately, it has been discovered how fastboot can be entered without a running system.

2. Procedure

Step 1: Get into fastboot
This is the most difficult part. @kiralex1995 has developed a procedure that will lead reproducible to boot the watch into fastboot mode, but it may take many tries (one user reported that it took him 30 min of tries).
Follow this guide: https://forum.xda-developers.com/sm...tches/amazfit-boot-fastboot-directly-t3546829
When you are in fastboot and see the fastboot logo, you have mastered the most difficult part.

Step 2: Choose a ROM to flash on the watch
There are currently three possible ROMs to choose from:
a.) The English AmazFit firmware 1.3.0n
Download the following file on your PC: https://mega.nz/#!xIkC1IQZ!bLLSN9BMvbp7zhZHg2oQq6p4ud-EFyUYkatCGKgHeS8
b) The Chinese AmazFit firmware 1.2.5a
Download the following file on your PC: https://mega.nz/#!tNdggR4b!VXmExGqdNixrj8pVLqTkAi_munmjF5RidRJP9L-LAXE
c) An old Chinese AmazFit firmware 0.9.50:
Download the following file on your PC: https://mega.nz/#!wY9mEQoI!0ARB0MaK0byjttgrPmJJQX4ZFdIXgHOUquxqFhghg7U

Step 3: Download flash script from xda
Download the attached flash script from this post to your PC.

Step 4: Unpack the archive on your PC
Depending on you PC choose the right method to extract the files in the ROM archive and the flash script.

Step 4: Boot the watch into special recovery
Check that your fastboot drivers see that watch (which should still show the fastboot logo):
'fastboot devices'
You should see your device listed. Otherwise check your fastboot driver installation on your PC. (Note: On Linux you sometimes need to use "sudo fastboot ...".)
Then boot the modded recovery that is included in the archive you unpacked in step 2.
'fastboot boot Amazfit-mod-recovery.img'
You will see a "FAILED" message on your commandline. This is normal.
On the watch you should see the recovery triangle and the text "No command".

Step 5: Transfer the ROM files and the flash script onto the watch
First check that you are now able to connect to your watch via adb:
'adb devices'
You should see your watch listed. Otherwise check you "adb driver" installation. For Windows take care that you use Khoushs universal adb drivers.
Then push the files to the watch:
'adb push boot.img /data/media/0/
adb push system.img.gz /data/media/0/
adb push md5s.txt /data/media/0/
adb push flash_rom.sh /data/media/0/'

Step 6: Enter the shell on the watch and check your files
After you have successfully transferred the files to the watch, you then enter the shell on the watch:
'adb shell'
You should see only a "#", meaning you have full root access.
Now switch drirectory to the sdcard
'cd /data/media/0/
ls'
You should see your files on the "sdcard", including the ones that were pushed before

7. Start flashing the files
Run the flash sccript with the following command on the watch:
'sh flash_rom.sh'
If everything worked correctly, you should see something like:

Validating images
boot.img.gz: OK
system.img.gz: OK
Starting to flash now. DO NOT TURN OFF OR REMOVE THE USB CABLE! Press Enter to continue or CTRL-C to stop!

Flashing boot.img
2304+0 records in
2304+0 records out
9437184 bytes (9.0MB) copied, 2.075793 seconds, 4.3MB/s
Flashing system.img
210944+0 records in
210944+0 records out
864026624 bytes (824.0MB) copied, 107.981352 seconds, 7.6MB/s
Finished

If you see any error message during or after flashing, then DO NOT REBOOT the watch, but get some help or analyse yourself, what went wrong. You can still reflash.

8. OPTIONAL: Delete the dalvik-cache
You can erase the dalvik-cache on the watch with the following command:
'rm -rf /data/dalvik-cache'
This will make the system "re-optimize" all apps when it boots (successfully) the next time. This is optional, as you could always do that later again.

9. Reboot the watch
If everything is ok, then you can reboot the watch
'reboot'

Your watch should boot normally into the flashed system, you downloaded. CONGRATULATIONS, you unbricked your watch!

 

[superino]

Thank you for this post.

 

[Deleted member 4490808]

In case you bricked your watch, here is a tutorial how to unbrick the watch:

1. What is a "bricked" watch?

A bricked watch does no longer boot. It typically stops at the boot logo and waits forever. This can happen for example, if a flash of the system image failed and the boot image can no longer boot the system.....[/B]

I'm so happy that my post help people. Thanks to your job and thanks to your rom @Neuer_User .
I wonder if it would be possible to create a rom with all google services included ?

 

[Neuer_User]

First watch has just successfully been unbricked (1immortals watch) [emoji106] [emoji2]

 

[Neuer_User]

I'm so happy that my post help people. Thanks to your job and thanks to your rom @Neuer_User .
I wonder if it would be possible to create a rom with all google services included ?

Yes, it would be possible. But you also need to look at connectivity. The watch checks does turn off wlan automatically.

 

[1immortal]

@Neuer_User, you're a GOD !!!
All bow @Neuer_User , he is the true ruler of Amazfit, conquer of the M200 SoC, bringer of root to the MIPS platform ! all hail the king !!!

 

[Beleriand]

Yes, it would be possible. But you also need to look at connectivity. The watch checks does turn off wlan automatically.

Well i guess constant WiFi would dramatically reduce the running time? On the other hand it might just be turned on for short periods, don't know how Google does that.

@Neuer_User, you're a GOD !!!
All bow @Neuer_User , he is the true ruler of Amazfit, conquer of the M200 SoC, bringer of root to the MIPS platform ! all hail the king !!!

Congratulations and thanks to Neuer_User.

 

[Pingy82]

hi, after this step the watch reboot and restart the loop on logo. why?

'fastboot boot Amazfit-mod-recovery.img'
You will see a "FAILED" message on your commandline. This is normal.
On the watch you should see the recovery triangle and the text "No command".

edit: after more test, i'm not able to go to recovery mode. For an errore, when i try another time to go to Fastboot mode, i push 2 times the button and i ERASE ALL the watch, now i have a device called JZ4785 USB Boot Device.

There's some way to save this watch?

Thanks.

 

[1immortal]

I think that you have entered some "Deep" flash mode - the JZ4785 is the SoC model, and you need to provide a driver for the flashing process.
please download this tool:
ftp://ftp.ingenic.com/DevSupport/Tools/USBBurner/cloner-1.2.0/cloner-1.2.0-windows_release.zip
you will need a 32 bit machine for running that.
it contains the drivers and the software for flashing. I hope that there's a way of creating a dump file of a working watch, and flashing it directly on yours.

 

[Neuer_User]

I think that you have entered some "Deep" flash mode - the JZ4785 is the SoC model, and you need to provide a driver for the flashing process.
please download this tool:
ftp://ftp.ingenic.com/DevSupport/Tools/USBBurner/cloner-1.2.0/cloner-1.2.0-windows_release.zip
you will need a 32 bit machine for running that.
it contains the drivers and the software for flashing. I hope that there's a way of creating a dump file of a working watch, and flashing it directly on yours.

This could indeed be the case. Noone of us ever entered that mode so far. It would be very good to understand, how you really got into that. It must have happened in the first step, where you were supposed to enter fastboot. Did you see the screen on the watch with the two options? There is a video in the link of @kiralex1995 post. Maybe you can comment, what exactly looked identical for you and where it exactly started to differ.

In case, you are really in that SOC flash mode, the Ingenic USBburner tool would indeed, probably, be the right tool to reflash the watch. As I mentioned, nobody here used that before. I have some experience with similar tools for the MTK platform. I believe that it should be possible to generate the necessary dump from a working watch, but this is all theory so far.

Where are you located?

 

[1immortal]

well, nothing helped, there's no configs for the JZ4785, and there's no relevant information of partitions offset for flashing. we tried to flash both 1.2.5 and some generic ingenic image, with a lack of success as well
contacted ingenic for some clarification and some help, lets see where this lead to ...

 

[albertus76]

Hello and thanks for tour support.
Also "launcher has stopped" i have to consider as a brick situation?
Palese led me know because i tried to update from chinese firmware but Now it doesn't work, i am able to start in fastboot mode
Thank you vero much fo and your advice

 

[1immortal]

regarding the launcher errors, please try to unpair your watch and re-pair it again, it's a non-brick situation.

 

[alon1211]

after i worte: fastboot boot Amazfit-mod-recovery.img . it says:

downloading 'boot.img'...
FAILED (command write failed (Unknown error))
finished. total time: 5.014s

 

[Neuer_User]

after i worte: fastboot boot Amazfit-mod-recovery.img . it says:

downloading 'boot.img'...
FAILED (command write failed (Unknown error))
finished. total time: 5.014s

Try a different USB cable. Bad cables are known to produce that error.

 

[FalconFour]

This is pretty awesome! I used this to convert my Chinese Amazfit watch to English ROM, and it seems to work OK.

However, there's a piece missing from the bundle -- the recovery image. There's an OTA available, and I pulled the update.zip file using the Fastboot trick so the OS didn't load and delete it - then booted the "mod recovery". Here's that update.zip (to 1.3.2b): https://mega.nz/#!nIBDhLrR!7nQlWsn-TF4bsMNBSaTOfimY-vo-Z2R3dSavrDp1wsA

The OTA didn't succeed -- when it went to reboot to recovery and apply the update, it booted with Chinese text in recovery boot and failed with just one word - "Error". I'd imagine that's because recovery.img wasn't part of the bundle, so my watch still has the Chinese ROM recovery on it. Looking at the update.zip, it's fairly clear it's built in English - with English error messages in "updater-script".

I'm hunting around for the English ROM's recovery image, and will probably find it in the next few minutes, but figure I should mention this hole - and that this routine is also useful for converting to English. It'd been demonstrated before that you can run the English ROM just by flashing it (and boot.img), but no unified thread seems to exist for it yet (that I can find via Googling at least). :good:

edit: Literally 5 minutes later, bam. https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=71264431&postcount=599 - I downloaded that Fix_recovery bundle, pushed it to /data/media/0/ from the mod recovery, ran it, and it gave some errors but fell back to the "dd" method. So, all that's needed to get a complete English ROM flash is to add recovery.img and the line:

busybox dd if=recovery.img of=/dev/block/platform/jzmmc_v1.2.0/by-name/recovery bs=4096

 

[dpenevdpenev]

Hi All,

I have just received my watch from a BT/WiFi issue repair.
I am not sure if they have fixed it as starting the watch and
I am getting "Unfortunately the launcher has stopped" message.
I do see the charging indicator but this is pretty much the only thing I see.
If I reboot pushing the button I get to the same point.

I see that this is an old problem. How do you guys fix this?
I do have adb shell access. Can I somehow reset to factory default using adb?

Thanks
Dimitar

 

[Neuer_User]

Hi All,

I have just received my watch from a BT/WiFi issue repair.
I am not sure if they have fixed it as starting the watch and
I am getting "Unfortunately the launcher has stopped" message.
I do see the charging indicator but this is pretty much the only thing I see.
If I reboot pushing the button I get to the same point.

I see that this is an old problem. How do you guys fix this?
I do have adb shell access. Can I somehow reset to factory default using adb?

Thanks
Dimitar

You can boot into the bootloader (fastboot) with "adb shell reboot bootloader". Then in fastboot you can tyoe "fastboot -w continue". That will boot the watch normally, but clear cache and all userdata.

 

[dpenevdpenev]

You can boot into the bootloader (fastboot) with "adb shell reboot bootloader". Then in fastboot you can tyoe "fastboot -w continue". That will boot the watch normally, but clear cache and all userdata.

Thanks Neuer_User,

what I did:

1. I have entered Fastboot as you explained. Fastboot logo on the watch
2. :~$fastboot devices
0123456789 fastboot
:~$fastboot -w continue (this in the Linux bash shell)
resuming boot...
FAILED (status read failed (No such device))
finished. total time: 6.395s
:~$
The watch reboots due to above

Or should I enter fastboot watch shell first?
The above procedure doesn't help.
Still I get "Unfortunately the launcher has stopped"

This should be on the original Chinese ROM 1.2.9 as far as I remember. It was long time ago I ship the watch to China for repair.
Should go to Pace ROM. what would you advice.

Thank you once again.

 

[Neuer_User]

Thanks Neuer_User,

what I did:

1. I have entered Fastboot as you explained. Fastboot logo on the watch
2. :~$fastboot devices
0123456789 fastboot
:~$fastboot -w continue (this in the Linux bash shell)
resuming boot...
FAILED (status read failed (No such device))
finished. total time: 6.395s
:~$
The watch reboots due to above

Or should I enter fastboot watch shell first?
The above procedure doesn't help.
Still I get "Unfortunately the launcher has stopped"

This should be on the original Chinese ROM 1.2.9 as far as I remember. It was long time ago I ship the watch to China for repair.
Should go to Pace ROM. what would you advice.

Thank you once again.

Hmm, if that doesn't work, try "fastboot erase cache" and "fastboot erase data". That will really completely delete all user and cache data. The next restart should take a long time.