• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Not bricked but messed up after upgrade

bind00

Member
Aug 31, 2010
68
1
I finally caved in and upgraded from 2.3.3 to 2.3.6 with Odin 3 after the new firmware was not forthcoming on Kies.
I used the procedure here. It worked, in as much as the firmware is now upgraded, but my phone is somewhat downgraded overal. It lost its settings. First thing I noticed is the pattern unlock is gone. Then the keypad is beeping and buzzing and Swype is not selected. Then I see the home screens are all reset. I used to have five but it went back to seven and all the shortcuts are gone. Contacts are gone. But the worst thing is that most of the apps don't work anymore. They're still there under Applications but I get force closes all over the place. My music player (Mixzing) works and it found all the files but K9 email won't start, nor will browsers and various others. So what to do?

I could just reinstall everything, maybe hard reset first but it would take a long time to set it all up as it was. I'm wondering if I could try to put it back to 2.3.3 using the same procedure? Do you think that might work? The data all seems to be there still (for example, the wifi password didn't need to be re-entered).

Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks
 
I finally caved in and upgraded from 2.3.3 to 2.3.6 with Odin 3 after the new firmware was not forthcoming on Kies.
I used the procedure here. It worked, in as much as the firmware is now upgraded, but my phone is somewhat downgraded overal. It lost its settings. First thing I noticed is the pattern unlock is gone. Then the keypad is beeping and buzzing and Swype is not selected. Then I see the home screens are all reset. I used to have five but it went back to seven and all the shortcuts are gone. Contacts are gone. But the worst thing is that most of the apps don't work anymore. They're still there under Applications but I get force closes all over the place. My music player (Mixzing) works and it found all the files but K9 email won't start, nor will browsers and various others. So what to do?

I could just reinstall everything, maybe hard reset first but it would take a long time to set it all up as it was. I'm wondering if I could try to put it back to 2.3.3 using the same procedure? Do you think that might work? The data all seems to be there still (for example, the wifi password didn't need to be re-entered).

Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks

You'll be best off doing a hard/factory reset and setting things up anew. You'll never get your old setup back exactly the way it was in any automatic way, unless you backed it up beforehand in e.g. Kies.

Even through Kies you should never trust that everything (even anything) is exactly the way it was before after a firmware upgrade. And if it seems to be, it will likely be full of internal conflicts and unstability. That's why hard resets after every firmware upgrade is highly recommended. When I used Kies for 2.1 > 2.2 it was bugged. The transition from 2.2 > 2.3 was less painful. But now I always hard reset the phone for best results.

Smooth upgrades with all settings intact (or at least automatically adapted into the new version) only works in a perfect world, and Android with Samsung on top is very very far from that point. It's a tradeoff to upgrade with new firmware/OS, but one that's worth it in my opinion - at least out from the horrid 2.3.3.
 
Upvote 0
Thanks.
Sounds like it'll take days to get it back to how it was. :(
I've never fully understood exactly what happens when you hard reset. Does it erase everything except the firmware?

Likewise I never got to the bottom of exactly what needs to be backed up to get everything back to how it was. It's not losing the apps that bothers me as much as losing all the apps' settings.

I'm considering going back to 2.3.3 just to be able to back it up so I can restore it after a re-upgrading and doing a hard reset.

But if you back it all up, don't you just reintroduce all the same problems when you restore it?
 
Upvote 0
Thanks.
Sounds like it'll take days to get it back to how it was. :(
I've never fully understood exactly what happens when you hard reset. Does it erase everything except the firmware?

Kind of, it makes it like a clean installation as if there was nothing on the phone from before. As fresh out of the store.

Likewise I never got to the bottom of exactly what needs to be backed up to get everything back to how it was. It's not losing the apps that bothers me as much as losing all the apps' settings.

I haven't done it myself, but Kies should have an "entire backup" function to totally revert your phone to the way it was (you may have one from last upgrade). It relies of course on a previous backup to restore, so unless you have that you're on a fresh slate now (after hard reset).

I'm considering going back to 2.3.3 just to be able to back it up so I can restore it after a re-upgrading and doing a hard reset.

But if you back it all up, don't you just reintroduce all the same problems when you restore it?

It would probably only lead you to where you are right now.

Upgrading is a bit of work, and Kies doesn't do it painless either. Anyone who blindly relies on Kies without a backup is playing russian roulette. A firmware upgrade isn't just like running windows update on a PC in comparison, it's more like installing Windows 7 over Win XP or Vista (E.g. driver-, application-, UI issues). SOME issues WILL occur, no matter what. And this is something you need to consider when upgrading.

Contacts are easy, as you can just import them from gmail contacts again (if you sync towards that). APN settings are easy too. Other apps need individual attention, as they are just like PC programs - not easy to predict their compatibility. I gladly sacrified any app settings I had to get my phone back to an acceptable status and had my phone up and running again within an hour with the most important things.

PS. some app settings may still be available after a hard reset, they were with me as they were stored in an unaffected location, the SD card perhaps.
 
Upvote 0
I downgraded to 2.3.3/JVO just to see what would happen. Nothing to lose. But the mess was still there so I took it back up to 2.3.6 again.

I have contacts and calendar stored in MyPhoneExplorer and synced to Thunderbird but I'm trying to document which apps I have downloaded before I do a hard reset. If possible I'd like to back up the apps and their settings too. However all the utilities that I've looked at require root to do this. And the only root procedure I've seen for a Galaxy S on 2.3.6 requires a hard reset afterwards. So it appears to be a vicious circle.

I figure now is a good time to understand all this stuff while I have a phone with no brains.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones