Help Is my phone in some store demo mode?

[Markaruckus]

Hi there,

I searched around but I couldn't find existing posts that answered my questions. So... I just got a Vibrant from Bell, and am having 2 problems getting it set up. I am moving from a Rogers HTC Desire (cupcake), and I bought my mom a Vibrant last month, so I am familiar with Android. I am also a server admin (ie. I can understand technical answers).

First, the phone seems to be stuck in some store display or demo mode, repeating a 1 minute video after the phone is left idle for a minute. I can't even shut off the screen without cutting power to the phone (holding power or removing battery). In Settings > Sound and Display I didn't see any clear store demo mode on/off options. I did notice in the > Screen Timeout submenu I only have three options: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and 1 minute - on my HTC it goes up to 5 minutes, and has the option to never timeout. I'm pretty sure the Vibrant should too. On the home screen when I hold the middle button to show running apps I do see VideoViewDemo as running even right after I boot up my phone. The only other place I can find VideoViewDemo is in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications,and it has permission to control pretty much everything, but my only option is to force stop which does nothing.

Second, I can't download anything from the market over wifi (tried several apps over a few hours, and confirmed I could download them on my HTC). I am trying to connect to download the Samsung Galaxy S Unlock Tool in order to use my Rogers sim card and fully utilize the phone (stuck in a plan for 12 more months). I was however, able to install Facebook S via Samsung Apps. So the phone is allowing me to download and install non market apps (which I allowed) but the market is giving me a Download Unsuccessful message when I try to download through it. After I click install it says "Starting download..." for about half a second and then fails, so it's failing on the download not the install.

I mentioned the screen timeout list as part of my first problem as it makes me wonder if the market issue is related in a way. Perhaps the phone is not letting the market download anything because it sees that the phone has a setting checked that it's intended for store displays? Makes sense to prevent window shoppers from installing tons of crap on it when on display.

I may be grasping at straws but I've been waiting for this phone for a month... my HTC keeps dropping connection randomly and when it does (daily) I need to reset it before I can send/receive SMS or make/place calls.

Thanks in advance for your help, looking forward to learning a lot here, there seems to be plenty of content.

 

[Markaruckus]

I noticed when entering *#1234# on the keypad that my CSC # is I9000BMCJG6_DEMO - not sure what CSC stands for but the _DEMO at the end further suggests the phone is stuck in some store display demo mode? Do I need to take the phone back to the cell store or can I fix this? May be a few days until I can get back to the store so I'd like to fix it myself if I can. Thanks

 

[Markaruckus]

So to update on this:

I gave my phone back to the store I got it from, and now (3 weeks later) I have the same phone back, with a confirmation that it was in some sort of store demo mode. I was dealing with the store through a friend of mine so technical details were lost in translation, but he was told that if I had called Bell they should have been able to help me over the phone. I did infact call Bell, but the rep I spoke with hadn't heard of this problem before.

As suspected, now when I type *#1324# my CSC number doesn't have _DEMO at the end. The number is completely different now (the digits after I9000 that is).

Anyway, I wanted to post the outcome of this in case anyone else runs into the same problem. I saw a few similar posts on the web, but no outcome details. If anyone else runs into this perhaps by pushing harder with your carrier's tech support group you can fix this problem over the phone and avoid a lengthy wait in sending it out.

 

[snapper.fishes]

So to update on this:

I gave my phone back to the store I got it from, and now (3 weeks later) I have the same phone back, with a confirmation that it was in some sort of store demo mode. I was dealing with the store through a friend of mine so technical details were lost in translation, but he was told that if I had called Bell they should have been able to help me over the phone. I did infact call Bell, but the rep I spoke with hadn't heard of this problem before.

As suspected, now when I type *#1324# my CSC number doesn't have _DEMO at the end. The number is completely different now (the digits after I9000 that is).

Anyway, I wanted to post the outcome of this in case anyone else runs into the same problem. I saw a few similar posts on the web, but no outcome details. If anyone else runs into this perhaps by pushing harder with your carrier's tech support group you can fix this problem over the phone and avoid a lengthy wait in sending it out.

Oh wow. They must have sold you the display unit or something.

 

[kikas]

I just purchase a phone via a charity silent auction and the damn thing is doing exactly as you described. I've had no luck trying to sort it out yet.

 

[zucchabar]

same problem here demo video during idle... draining my battery,, How to stops this?

 

[TomBlack]

Finally got to the bottom of it, your S2 is in some form or retail mode i.e. it was once a demo!
If you go to Playstore and download APK Manager and open the app you will find an installed app called Retail Mode... uninstall and job done! No more demo video!