Root A tale of two (rooted) Erises

[jae_63]

This is a longish story, and I'm going to break this into two posts to begin with, describing first my original (Verizon) Eris and then its replacement.

In October 2010 I rooted my Eris (via Eris One-Click root) and subsequently installed KaosFroyo 37, where most things went fine. I tend to install a lot of apps, and was able to leverage the Apps2SD capabilities of Froyo to move a lot of apps to the the SD card, and then install still more apps ... at times, my free memory ran pretty low, perhaps around 20MB. This is relevant because of misc reports that SMS receipt can disappear when internal memory runs low. See, e.g.:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4991

On February 1st, 2011 I received my last successfully SMS on this phone. I don't know exactly when thereafter someone sent me my first incoming SMS which I failed to receive, but probably sometime in early February.

Realizing this problem in early April, I started to debug the problem. This included sending myself texts using the Verizon website. I had backups dated:

• 10/18/2010 (virgin 2.1 environment, just after rooting and prior to installing 2.2)
• 11/21/2010 (an early KaosFroyo backup)
• 04/12/2011 (a much later KaosFroyo backup, after I started debugging the texting problem)

First I tried a different SMS application ... no luck.

Then I tried to go forward instead of back ... I installed GSB 2.8, but this didn't fix the SMS problem.

I then went back to my 11/21/2010 backup, but the SMS receipt problem still didn't go a away. Since this predated the beginning of the problem in February, I decided it was time to discuss this with Verizon (without telling them that I was rooted). They were very forthcoming and reproduced the problem with me, and noted that I was able to send SMSes but not receive them. I told them that I had done a clean wipe of my phone, which was more-or-less true, since of course I had done a clean wipe plus a Dalvik wipe prior to flashing each ROM and/or recovering from Nandroid backups.

After a few days I received a call back from a 2nd-level Verizon tech support person. I asked whether my phone was:

1. Accepting the SMS (a positive acknowledgement)
2. Not responding at all OR
3. Declining to accept the SMS (a negative acknowledgement)

He said that it was third case, a NACK. He then passed me along to the customer-service-rep, who said that although my phone is 15-month old and out-of-warranty, they'd replace my Eris with a refurb Eris without extending my contract, and that the refurb phone would have a 90-day warranty. I tried to negotiate a paid upgrade to something like an Incredible, but without success.

So at this point I needed to unroot my Eris prior to sending it back to Verizon, but also realized that I should try a few more things. I tried all my different Nandroid backups again until I finally went back to the oldest one, dated 10/18/2010. And lo-and-behold, I was able to receive SMSs again. Furthermore, after having done that, I was able to move back to any of the more recent ROMs, and continue to receive SMSs.

So the SMS handling is very puzzling. It makes me think that (notwithstanding what the level-2-tech rep told me) in addition to the software in the Eris, there's also a flag somewhere in the Verizon database where it refuses to send an SMS to a device that it's marked as bad, but somehow moving to a very old version caused this flag to be cleared???

When the new Eris arrived I noticed immediately that the trackball worked poorly, and considered calling Verizon to say that I'd solved my problem and would like to just send the newer phone back. But that seemed complex in terms of dealing with Verizon, and I wanted to take advantage of the 90-day warranty (who knows ... maybe they'll upgrade me to a newer phone next time). So I sent the old Eris back, and will describe my challenges with the new Eris in the next post.

 

[jae_63]

OK, so now I've got my new Eris. The trackball doesn't work well, but with some fiddling you can perform the essential up-down movements through the ROM Recovery environment. So I immediately rooted, but didn't notice before rooting whether my data service was 3G or "1x" (see below).

I had problems getting any of my Nandroid backups to restore ... it always fussed at me and told me that I'd have to use adb to recover using these backups. Rather than take this route, I just went ahead with a fresh GSB 2.8 installation, and then quickly decided that I might as well go with GSB 2.9 instead. So I installed a fresh GSB 2.9, and then used a recent MyBackupPro backup to get my phone more-or-less back to its desired state.

[ One minor difference I observed is that my original GSB installations with my old Eris preserved my Wifi encryption keys, but this information was lost on the new Eris. Furthermore, I had problems with my old Eris where the phone failed to ring audibly using GSB (worked with vibration on, though, or with Froyo), but this problem didn't recur with the new Eris. ]

But then I noticed that all of my data from the network using the new phone and GSB is at 1x transmission rates, rather than 3G :-( But other than that, things seemed to work pretty well, for a day or so.

Then last Friday, I took the train from my home near Washington DC to Philadelphia. By the time I got to Philly, I had no phone service (data or voice) whatsoever. This persisted throughout my 24 hours in Philly, despite multiple reboots and even another ROM wipe/reinstall.

Then just about when I crossed the Maryland state line (driving southbound on I-95 this time), my phone announced that it had found a network. And everything is working again, except that I continue to experience 1x data rates. This leads me to think that I've got some sort of PRL problem, but the fact that this phone is new to me is confounding.

So this is all pretty frustrating. I guess the thing to do now is to unroot the phone and restore it to a 2.1 state. I can even try it with both the "old" and "new" 2.1 radio software, and see whether I get 3G in any of these scenarios.


Thanks in advance for any theories and/or alternative ideas.

 

[doogald]

First, to anybody who stops receiving SMS messages, the first thing to try is to either install or Nandroid restore a close-to-stock ROM, like xtrSENSE, xtrROM, etc. This will frequently fix that problem, and the fix will stick when you Nandroid restore the ROM you were running before. If it does not fix it after a restore, you can go back to xtrSENSE, verify again that it receives texts, install the market app APN Backup & Restore and run a backup from that app. Then Nandroid restore the other ROM, install APN Backup & Restore, delete APNs and then Restore APNs. You may need to restart - I don't recall - but see if you can then receive texts.

If you are having network problems as you describe, you can try updating the PRL by dialing *228. If you are on GSB, after it connects long-press home to bring up the keyboard and press 2 to update the PRL. Another thing to try is just like the first - try to run xtrSENSE and see if that works there.

And then I'll ask this - on the chance that everything works with xtrSENSE or xtrROM, are you fine running one of those ROMs rather than a Froyo or GB ROM? What would you be missing by running a stock-based ROM?

 

[jae_63]

And then I'll ask this - on the chance that everything works with xtrSENSE or xtrROM, are you fine running one of those ROMs rather than a Froyo or GB ROM? What would you be missing by running a stock-based ROM?

Thanks for your very helpful response, and teaching me how to deal with the PRL issue. I'd thought I needed to call customer service prior to that PRL update attempt. And this successfully updated me to 3G speeds! But I have no plans to return to Philly anytime soon, so it would be hard to re-test that scenario. [an old joke for the youngsters: Someone held a raffle and the first prize was a week in Philadelphia; second prize was two weeks ]

Here's what I'd be missing using a stock ROM:

• Hebrew support
• Wifi hotspot (I only use this occasionally, but really nice to have in a pinch)
• Ability to have many more apps using Apps2SD
• Bluetooth voice dialing

 

[doogald]

Thanks for your very helpful response, and teaching me how to deal with the PRL issue. I'd thought I needed to call customer service prior to that PRL update attempt.

Here's what I'd be missing using a stock ROM:

• Hebrew support
• Wifi hotspot (I only use this occasionally, but really nice to have in a pinch)
• Ability to have many more apps using Apps2SD
• Bluetooth voice dialing

Just as an FYI, xtrSENSE/xtrROM do have the WiFi hotspot, and have both something called cache2cache, which allows about 20 MB more app space, plus support for apps2sd if you really need it.

Hebrew, though, I don't know about.

BTW, I am really liking Condemned CM7 (a Gingerbread ROM). It's a real good ROM.