I think it's possible that I very well may have, quite probably and very understandably, soft-bricked my phone.
My /data and /cache have filesystem errors. These errors prevent the phone from doing many cool things, such as getting past the 4G LTE logo. This makes me very .
I would like to format these partitions to get rid of the errors. This would make me very .
But when I tell CMW Recovery to wipe data/factory reset, something interesting happens...
Did you try going into Mounts and Storage and making sure each one was mounted manually? You can also format these partitions individually from this place as well, just don't mount and format /system... that would be bad.
Also note that the filesystem isn't likely corrupt, the more correct term would be the partition table is corrupt if it can't mount them. If this is the case it is probably time to get a replacement, the only way to fix it would be with a full ROM image flash, and we really don't have one.
Last edited by acejavelin; November 10th, 2012 at 12:34 AM.
I tried mounting everything manually. It still couldn't mount them.
I also tried flashing a kernel and factoryfs I found for EI2 as a last resort. I wasn't 100% sure if EI2 was the right version for me (I know there's also an EH and EK for the strat), but in any case, the flash just "completed successfully" and nothing about my situation changed.
Does this mean I'm out of luck because my phone isn't popular enough?
You know, I find it funny that it even needs to mount the filesystem in order to format it. I always unmounted devices in Linux before formatting them. In fact, I thought you were required to. But it does make sense that a bad partition table would make formatting... quite difficult.
Last edited by ExpHP; November 10th, 2012 at 08:32 AM.
Reason: redundant info is redundant
All of these ROMs and "Images" you will find are not really images, they are file system backups. Avoid anything other than EI2 and FF1 at all costs, once you go to one of the others there is no changing to another ROM again, unless for some strange reason Samsung releases the full set of radios, which seems highly unlikely given the history of this device.
Your best bet at this point is probably to flash back the factory recovery and get it as stock as you can, then call Verizon and say you got the update and now your phone won't boot... a little underhanded but probably the best way to go right now, the phone has a one year warranty so you should be able to get a replacement at no charge.
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Thanks, I hadn't considered that option. I'll bring it into a Verizon Wireless store today.
Unfortunately, I flashed the stock recovery, and despite there being no conceivable reason that it shouldn't have worked, I still get CWM Recovery when I hold Vol Up + Down. The yellow "!" is gone, but, somehow, I get the feeling that Big Red's gonna notice.
While I'm there, I suppose I'll have a chance to start looking for which other phones have nice hardware keyboards...
Last edited by ExpHP; November 12th, 2012 at 07:11 AM.
Thanks, I hadn't considered that option. I'll bring it into a Verizon Wireless store today.
Unfortunately, I flashed the stock recovery, and despite there being no conceivable reason that it shouldn't have worked, I still get CWM Recovery when I hold Vol Up + Down. The yellow "!" is gone, but, somehow, I get the feeling that Big Red's gonna notice.
While I'm there, I suppose I'll have a chance to start looking for which other phones have nice hardware keyboards...
Then you didn't flash stock recovery if you can still get to CWM.
Once you have everything back to as stock as you can, put the file below on your SD card and flash it in CWM Recovery, ironically it will replace CWM recovery with stock recovery from CWM, but once it's flashed the only way to go back is to ODIN/Heimdell CWM back in, so do it last. I did this as well and sent mine with a 3 on the custom binary counter and all was well, so little chance of problems (in my experience anyways).
Flashing the stock recovery through CWM Recovery did work, and I visited a VZW store yesterday. They took one look at my perpetual 4G LTE logo, tried to factory reset it, and then arranged for a replacement to be shipped overnight. I did have to call customer service after getting my name added to the account in order to finish the deal, but their menu wasn't too hard to navigate. Just keep dialing 4 for "Other options". :P
Honestly, I have to their customer service a thumbs up. If it weren't for the fact that something did go wrong with my phone under warranty, I'd feel guilty.
(I know how I screwed up the partition table, and it's because I was trying to fix another problem)
Can't wipe corrupt data (Bootloop)
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