Chinese Note 2 bricked?

[happienumber]

OK so here I am. I generally hate to make threads but I have spent the better part of a week searching this forum and all other internet places I can find and have as yet been unable to solve my problem.

(If this is in the wrong section please let me know, I didn't know whether to put it under note 2 or other android)

I have a chinese version of the note 2, n7100. It was working really screwy for the last few weeks (kind of expected with chinese knock offs), so I decided to do a factory reset. It wasn't rooted. After the factory reset, it rebooted to a normal lockscreen, but when I unlocked it there was no launcher, just a black screen. I could lock it and get the lockscreen back, but every time I opened it up it was a black screen with the status bar up top. I cleared the cache, erased my data, and did another factory restore for grins and giggles, but no luck, same problem.

So I thought I would do a full factory restore by flashing it with an original ROM, and this is, I think, where I bricked the bloody thing. I unzipped the ROM and put it on my SD card, booted into recovery mode, and selected update from SD card, selected the ROM, and it went into a progress bar, got halfway though, and then rebooted. Then it was in a reboot loop ALL NIGHT. It would get to the spinning blue circle robot screen, and then reboot and/or just get stuck there until I pulled out the battery this morning.

This morning I tried to do it through Odin, but I cannot get the phone into download mode. Vol-, home, and power brings me to a menu entirely in chinese and I cannot read it to determine which selection is download mode (and i tried brute force chooseing one after another, but just random crap kept happening like the screen turning red, or "power up down home" showing on the screen or just further sub menus in chinese) Vol+, home, and power gets me to option of recovery mode, fastboot mode, and reboot. Odin does not recognize it in recovery mode. I read somewhere that fastboot mode = download mode so I tried that but the phone freezes if I choose fastboot and odin still doesn't see it. I tried just turning it on and leaving it on the splash screen, no luck. Tried turning it off and leaving it on the battery charging screen, no luck. Odin will not see this thing.

I have tried multiple usb cords and ports on my PC.

Any direction would be helpful. I am brand new to android, I've only had it for a month (I have a degree in EECS and I thought it shouldn't be too complex- aparently I'm more of a moron than I thought i was.)

I have a feeling I'm just sunk, but if i'm missing something I could do, I'd love to know about it. Thank you in advance.

 

[Hadron]

Welcome to the forum, and sorry you are having problems.

Was the ROM for your particular clone, or for a Samsung Note? Clone phones won't be compatible with Samsung software, nor Samsung-specific tools like Odin.

You need to find software that's intended for your phone, not the real Note. I suspect Other Androids may be a better place - I'll ask a Mod to have a look at this thread.

 

[happienumber]

That's a good question, I think I did use a samsung ROM. I will go look for one for my clone. Is that a correct manner of doing it? Putting the ROM on my SD card and installing as an update? Becuase it seemed to have worked halfway before it stopped and had issues. Thank you for your help so far, I'll wait and find out if I need to post this somewhere else.

 

[Bob Cat]

I unzipped the ROM and put it on my SD card.

Welcome to Android Forums, happienumber! I wish it could be under better circumstances.

I don't know anything about a Chinese knockoff but I did notice in your post that unzipped the file and put it on your SD. You don't unzip the file, you just move the unzipped file to the root or top of the SD card. That may not help you this time but it will in the future. We're still looking into possible help for you.

 

[happienumber]

Ok thanks! I will keep checking back. I am going to try the chinese ROM in the meantime and see if it works, I did find one. I'll put the zip file on my SD card and see if I can get up and running. New development, I hadn't been able to get past the spinning blue circle splash screen all day, but just now it booted up into the original problem (only access to the lock screen, no launcher. I just discovered I can open anything I had on the launch screen- camera, messages, phone, and browser) but once I unlock it, it's just a black screen. It's almost as if just the launcher interface got corrupted.)

I don't know if there's anything more I can do from this point now that that is available.

 

[mikedt]

Odin doesn't work with knock-offs, only works with genuine Samsungs. Problem with flashing ROMs for these things unless you've got the correct ROM from the phone's manufacturer, it most probably won't work properly or will brick. Problem is though the manufacturer is unknown.

There's so many of these counterfeit Notes now, all from many different back street Shenzhen manufacturers, and distributed by hotel room trading companies, all of whom prefer to say anonymous because what they're doing is basically illegal.

Don't think I can be any more help than that...sorry.

 

[happienumber]

Ok, Thank you everybody! I actually did fix the problem last night. I'll describe what I did in case anyone else gets the same problem.

So it went back into the bootloop after I said it could get into the lockscreen. So I went ahead and used a chinese ROM I found and put it on my SD card, went into recovery mode, and updated from SD, and chose that ROM. It started by doing the exact same thing it did with the last ROM- rebooting repeatedly to the blue circle. But this time it only lasted an hour instead of something like 12. Then it booted to the lockscreen again, and I unlocked it....only to find the black screen again.

So I went back into the lockscreen, opened up browser through the lockscreen, and googled apex launcher, clicked on the link and said "open in play store". Play store opened, I installed the launcher, and suddenly my phone is back to normal.
Better than normal, in fact. All of the bugs that caused me to want to reset it in the first place are gone.

Hooray! Happy ending.

Thanks for all your help everyone! I'm sure I'll be knocking around on this forum more in the future!

 

[Bob Cat]

I'm glad to hear that you got it working.

 

[sanjaymahajan]

Hi
I am having the same problem. Can you help me? Thanks Sanjay