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Help Custom OS Warning

TMPilot

Lurker
May 13, 2013
3
0
Hi,

I'm completely new to Android. Finally moved from iPhone :beer:

But I'm confused by a warning I got the other day. Being the paranoid type I thought I'd check it out.

So I turned my phone off to concentrate on the pub, when I turned it back on later, there was some kind of message saying "Installing custom OS can harm your device..." (or something along those blurred lines). And gave an option to "Install" or "Ignore". I clicked install, and the little android alien fella showed up with "Installing...". I had no idea what it was doing so I held the standby button until it went off.

The phone seems fine, but I'm wondering what that was and if some kind of software I don't want is on my phone. There was no mention of "Update" etc. Is there any way I can check to see if something dodgy has been installed?

Cheers,
R
 
Don't worry, you just appear to have accidentally ended up in Download mode. This is the mechanism for installing third party ROMs from a computer. It can indeed knacker your phone if you install a dodgy ROM but what you did will be completely harmless.

If you turn off your phone and then press Vol - and the Power button at the same time until it starts to boot, you can reproduce this.

It's harmless (although what possessed you to select Install when you didn't know what was happening I don't know) unless you are actually connected to a computer using eg Odin, which you are hardly likely to do by accident.
 
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Ahh I see. I did reproduce it and how I managed to do that I'll never know...

I'm curious to know what/where it was downloading from when I clicked Install though?

Although you're right, I shouldn't have clicked Install and when sober I'm usually careful and only download trusted apps from the play store.

Thanks.
 
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The short answer is nothing.

Your phone will have been expecting to see data on the USB port but since it wasn't connected to a computer, it didn't see any so it wasn't actually downloading anything, it was just ready to do so.

When the phone is in download mode it doesn't have any access to anything that is not plugged in ie no internet access via wifi or 3G and no bluetooth.

PS Feel free to click the like button if my post was helpful.
 
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