Help Help please! seriously stuck with custom ROM

[MatthewEllis90]

Hi Guys,

This is my first post here, I'm really hoping someone can help.
I bought a cheap Galaxy S6 to use for playing about with, nothing serious.

It is loaded with a very strange, custom ROM I have never seen before by Gem Flash?

alps.kk1.mp6.v1
https://firmware.gem-flash.com/index.php?a=browse&b=file-info&id=2161

It seems to be completely unusable, opens links to surveys, appears to be full of malware and viruses, sometimes reboots without any interaction from myself.

Now the strangest thing is, when I look at the phone storage, it is showing roughly 60gb in total however when I connect it to my laptop to try and move over the stock firmware and ROM, Windows only shows 1gb internal storage no matter what I try.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1) Reset to factory settings on the phone via Settings
2) Reset to factory settings from recovery
3) Tried to connect via adb and wipe everything

Because the stock Samsung ROM is 1.6b compressed and the device is only showing 1gb total space in Windows I cannot for the life of me move the file over to the phone.
Once the file is on there, I should be able to install it from the bootloader in recovery.

Please can anyone help or suggest what I can do?
I'm determined not to be beaten by this thing!

Thanks and regards
Matt

 

[Jfalls63]

If it is a true Galaxy S6, you would use Odin flash tool to install it.
Can you download this app from the Play Store and post screenshot of for what is listed under General, Firmware and CSC Codes?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.vndnguyen.phoneinfo

 

[mikedt]

Hi Guys,

This is my first post here, I'm really hoping someone can help.
I bought a cheap Galaxy S6 to use for playing about with, nothing serious.

It is loaded with a very strange, custom ROM I have never seen before by Gem Flash?

alps.kk1.mp6.v1
https://firmware.gem-flash.com/index.php?a=browse&b=file-info&id=2161

That's Mediatek MTK firmware. Which means that cheap Galaxy S6 you've got is a fake. Samsung does NOT use Mediatek. And it's very likely nothing can be done with the thing. The 1GB internal storage that Windows is reporting is probably correct, as counterfeit devices will usually lie about their true capacity.

 

[MatthewEllis90]

That's Mediatek MTK firmware. Which means that cheap Galaxy S6 you've got is a fake. Samsung does NOT use Mediatek. And it's very likely nothing can be done with the thing. The 1GB internal storage that Windows is reporting is probably correct, as counterfeit devices will usually lie about their true capacity.

Thanks for the reply, the device is branded as a Samsung one, I cannot see physically how it cannot be genuine though

 

[mikedt]

Thanks for the reply, the device is branded as a Samsung one, I cannot see physically how it cannot be genuine though

Well it might look like a Galaxy S6 and have Samsung printed on it, that doesn't necessarily mean it's genuine though. The fact you say it's loaded with that alps.kk1.mp6.v1 Mediatek ROM, means it's a cheap Chinese fake that only has 1GB storage, and website you linked to in your OP is headed "China clone".There's absolutely no way to load a real S6 ROM into this thing, because it's NOT a Samsung.

Did you buy it from an Ebay vendor or something?

 

[Hadron]

Yeah, that's the thing with fake phones: they are made to look like the real thing, and some of them are quite convincing. In fact they are commonly programmed so that the system settings will tell you it's a Samsung, often even giving genuine Samsung software version numbers (though the baseband version is usually a giveaway) and to lie about the hardware specifications (including the storage, as it sounds like yours probably does).

And yes, of course it is illegal to sell such a thing as a Samsung in most countries. But China doesn't care about Korean trademarks, and your redress if you bought it off the internet may depend very much on which country the seller is based in.

For what it's worth, even if it had enough storage you would not be able to install Samsung firmware on it. And if the installer were to somehow flash Samsung firmware to it that would break the phone so badly you'd not even be able to reflash the previous firmware, never mind actually boot the phone.

 

[MatthewEllis90]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate the help.
I think you're right, I bought the phone from a private seller on gumtree.
What kind of rom could I reflash with?

 

[svim]

Given the situation, this particular phone just doesn't seem to be worth investing much more of your time and efforts. Keep it to experiment on but I'd be very wary and judicious about using it as a day-to-day phone. As for flashing a ROM that will actually make this phone usable? There is no such thing as a generic, universally-compatible Android ROM. Taking into consideration there's little validity on the hardware configuration of this phone, any ROM you flash it with will be a wild lab test on your part. You can spend a lot more time trying to get this phone into some kind of working condition but I'd recommend you just buy a valid phone from a more reputable retailer.

 

[Deleted User]

Can you get any recompense from the seller? Seems like you were ripped off there - unusable phone, and no way of reinstalling it.
I'd certainly be getting back to the seller if I'd handed over cash for this brick.
Were you made aware of the problems at time of sale? How was it sold to you?

 

[MatthewEllis90]

I wasn't made aware of this by the seller. I have contacted them but they are dodgy. Don't think I'll see the money back again. I tried reflashing with the same version that was on there but it failed. Needless to say it is now in the bin.

Thanks everyone for the assistance, it's greatly appreciated.

 

[Deleted User]

I wasn't made aware of this by the seller. I have contacted them but they are dodgy. Don't think I'll see the money back again. I tried reflashing with the same version that was on there but it failed. Needless to say it is now in the bin.

Thanks everyone for the assistance, it's greatly appreciated.

You could try and get at least some money back by selling it off as spare parts e.g. screen.

Oh yeah, and definitely give a negative rating on Gumtree for the seller.