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Good evening everyone!
Little did I know, my father had his OG Droid just sitting in a drawer when he upgraded to the Inc2. I had him ship it out to me this past day so I can use it as my play thing!
Upon first boot up, before root or anything at all, I noticed the left side of the screen wasn't responding. Say, the back button and all the way up. Everything beyond the back button seemed ok.
I felt that maybe it was just a quirk with how old and how much he had used his phone, and was hoping for a software fix (read - flashing) and not a broken screen or any hardware problem.
As I began wiping data and resetting everything that could / should be, it started to get worse. Random "touches" on the screen, menu keys moving, total unresponsiveness. Just general whacked out problems that make you want to throw any device across the room.
I did manage to get Clockwork on, flash into recovery and install (successfully!) a plain 2.3.5 ROM I like. It was annoying with all the menus and key presses going all over the place, but they weren't happening while in recovery, so I was hopeful.
Upon the successful bootup of 2.3.5 though, the screen was even worse - more bouncing around, less responsive, etc etc.
So, my long winded question: anyone have any idea if this could be any problem but some sort of screen mishap or other hardware problem? I kind of hope it's not, just so I can have a device to constantly play with.
Thanks in advance!
broken digitizer, a common issues with droids/milestones.
I used to be a Droid 1 user and I played with a lot of custom ROMs. Got the Droid 4 on release day and I'm thinking of playing around with custom ROMs.
If I install the recovery and a custom ROM, isn't the factory restore option always on the phone so anytime I want, I can restore the phone to the day I got it?
Are there any downsides to installing custom ROMs as of now (such as battery, glitches, etc)
I rooted my phone and I've seen a decline in battery life. There is another thread about it but I wanted to ask here, anybody else have this issue?
Lastly, is it worth installing custom ROMs now or just waiting for the official ICS update? I basically just want a working phone with the best battery possible. The only reason I rooted was to uninstall the bloatware on the phone however wifi tether and screenshot are nice to have.
Thanks!
Installing any custom ROM right now is going to be a little risky simply because there are no fastboot files to restore your phone with. Now, SafeStrap does a pretty good job of minimizing that risk by creating what is essentially a dualboot environment allowing you to run a secondary ROM on your phone while leaving the stock ROM intact.
I am running the ICS Beta ROM by Hashcode and it is running really well for me. Battery life has been fine, pretty much on par with stock. Being a beta there are things that are not perfect but I am using it as a daily driver with no issues. You can find a list of known bugs in the ROM OP. Although it seems to be hit a miss with some of them. I have had no issues with wifi or mobile data connections at all.
I ran stock rooted for about 1 1/2 weeks and didn't notice any decline in battery life personally. Not I froze apps rather than uninstalling anything so I could get them back if I needed to. And I really didn't freeze much unless it was something I saw running in the background that I knew I wouldn't need/use.
Really, if you are just looking for a phone that works with the best battery life, you are probably better off staying with stock. In my experience with the Droid 2, no ROM I ran could touch stock for battery life. And really, I think the stock experience on the D4 is fine. The bloatware wasn't overly bad IMO, smart actions is pretty neat, and the UI was plenty snappy. I'm just a flashaholic.
I am quite happy with stock after debloating it.
Sent from my DROID4 using XDA
Thanks for explaining safestrap. Does it actually set up a dual-boot environment, or does it swap out /system, /data, etc. I've tried reading hashcode's blog, but the instructions are a little fuzzy on what exactly is going on. I don't have my D4 yet, and I'd like to get a handle on what exactly safestrap is doing before I take the plunge.
Currently I have a D1 and I'll fully admit I'm spoiled that it is essentially unbrickable. Once, I screwed it up so bad that it wouldn't even boot up into recovery. I have no idea how I managed that, but a quick session with RSDlite fixed everything...
Of course, I know a lot more now than I did back then, but here is hoping we get hold of some fastboot images for the D4 soon...
I finally took the plunge and installed Safestrap. Once your phone is rooted, you just run an APK installed on your phone. The process feels incredibly clean, and I was completely comfortable that as long as I was careful, nothing bad would happen. This proved to be true.
It really does set up a dual-boot. I spent several hours today playing with CM9, and when I was done, I simply disabled the safe system, and the phone booted right back up into my rooted and debloated stock. The most dangerous part is making sure that you do NOT try to flash over the non-safe system, and, in fact, Safestrap generally won't even let you do that.
Not only did I find that Safestrap worked great, but CM9 works better on the Droid 4 than almost any other device I have played with it on. If they can make sure that the data connection is reliable and get the font camera working, it is practically ready for prime time. Everything else works great. I am now confident that we will see CM9 for the Droid 4 as soon as CM itself is complete and stable, since drivers do not seem to be a problem on this phone. I also suspect we will see some CM7-based roms quite quickly as well.
I am also very glad of the option to always easily revert back to the stock system without losing anything, it will make going to the Verizon store very easy if I ever need to.
I also came from a D1, installing ROMs was so easy, I'm a little hesitant on this one especially since a genuine ICS update is on the way. I might wait for that before I try custom ROMs. I use a front camera a lot so CM9 is unfortunately out of question. My battery issue was solved with a calibrate (deleting batterystats) even though it's not supposed to work, I can confirm that it definitely worked for me.
Once you toggle on the safe system, installing ROMS is just as easy as it was on the D1. What is nice, though, is you can keep your stock system fully in tact. I actually keep my phone on a simple rooted stock, but when a friend asks about Android ICS, I just toggle on the safe system, and boot it up. When I'm done, I toggle off the safe system, and back to stock. Safestrap is awesome.
core2kid... this is moto, the official update is gonna take 3-6 months so i would not suggest waiting it out.
i came from a D1 as well and safestrap bugged me out for a while... but once i installed and started using it i really like it. think of it as a dual-boot.
1 is your stock system that you do not f** with... you just leave it so that you have a backup should you f** up your...
2nd system is the one you flash all your ROMs on... no matter what you do to it, the first system is not touched, so you have to try REALLY hard to brick it.
Thanks. I'll give it a go. Last question, if I have hardware issues with the phone, is there a way to restore it to factory so I can warranty it? My main concern is my battery dying. I don't want to be stuck with a useless phone because the battery is in built.
i cant say with 100% certainty, but theres got to be a way.
as for the battery... it will probably die the day after your warranty is up, and by then there will be DIY replacement kits.
greekchampion04 said:
as for the battery... it will probably die the day after your warranty is up, and by then there will be DIY replacement kits.
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With my luck, I can see that happening :/
hi all,
i'm experiencing a weird problem. i've been flashing lots of roms (cm10.x, omni, stock-based ones), and suddenly my phone's camera started not working. however, if i turn the device off completely, start charging it, and turn it back on, the camera is fine until a reboot (even after unplugging from the charger). removing the sim card and rebooting also helps sometimes.
i've tried:
- factory reset
- flashing different roms
- revering to stock
- some forum post on the 'net about deleting the 'dcim' folder on both sd cards (wtf lol)
- disassembling the phone (my warranty is void anyways) and checking the main, battery and the camera's ribbon cable connection (they're fine)
i'm pretty sure it's not a hardware problem, but i can't be certain, of course.
anyone had this issue before? any suggestions? something else i forgot and should try?
thanks,
bamdad
update: somehow, after installing the new 4.3 firmware, it was alright for a while, then it started happening again. since my back cover was in quite a rough shape, i ordered a new one; after putting it on, the camera started working normally.
now i really don't get this, because i've taken the device apart dozens of times. it might have something to do with those little copper contacts being corroded on the old back cover, someone correct me if i'm wrong. the strange thing is that the camera seemed to work fine with the back cover off.
well, it's fixed now, but for how long? :/
this is just insane. yesterday i tried omnirom again, played around with it, then restored my backup of the official .199 firmware, and some time later tried to take a photo - boom, camera and flash hasn't worked since. now that i think of it, i distinctly remember trying a previous build of omnirom before the last time my phone went bonkers.
now i'm not hinting at that it's omnirom's fault directly, since apparently lots of people are using it without similar issues, and at the end of the day custom roms aren't responsible for damaging a device, but it's strange.
if someone has any pointers as to what should i do, i'd be really appreciative. i'm going to try flashing from an original ftf file, maybe this has to do with some firmware stuff that's reeeally over my head. fingers crossed..
the funny thing is that it works great after restoring my backup of omni. bloody hell. : ) i mean what am i missing here? : )
okay, so i managed to (maybe) fix it. the trick was to *not* use omnirom's cwm recovery to restore the stock rom, rather flash the stock kernel with philz touch, *then* restore the backup. man.. hope this lasts.
started again this morning on dark lord's blackxt (stock .199-based), torch went too. rebooting and the other tricks didn't do diddly-squat. however, a trip to recovery and back fixed it. i did install doomkernel, but it's probably not the one that helped, because i've been using that last time the problem started.
btw, i know i'm spamming this topic all alone, but maybe someday this will prove useful to, or someone who knows what's going on will laugh and tell me to idk reformat the whole device or flash some obscure firmware file or something.
Hi there... new to the forum, but long-time reader, especially over the past two days since I dropped my AT&T HTC M7 (flashed to GPE) on cement and it pretty much died.
I'm out of ideas and could use some help. After the drop, it was stuck in a boot loop, but I was able to get to hboot with volume down. From there, I can access fastboot, but recovery or factory reset options just trigger the boot loop again. During the loop, it shows the Google logo (or HTC logo when flashed to stock) for 15-20 seconds and then reboots. Physical damage to the phone is not too substantial, and I have unfortunately extensive experience opening it up from repeated attempts to fix the purple tint issue with bad modules from eBay, so I checked inside and everything is intact.
Over the past two days I've flashed RUUs and recoveries like crazy, downgraded and upgraded hboot, changed CID, etc. I can oem lock and unlock... fastboot kicks out an error when I do it, but the status in hboot is changed when I reboot into the bootloader. Flashing ROMs and recoveries works like a charm, so does erasing cache. What I mean is that the process works exactly like before in fastboot, and I can see the splash screen logo change, so I know it's taken effect, but NOTHING gets past the boot loop. I am thinking the drop resulted in a corrupt partition, but since I can't get into recovery I haven't been able to find any way to do anything about that. If it was physically broken, it just doesn't seem like I would be able to do everything I can. I initially thought maybe it was a busted/stuck power switch, but that works perfectly navigating hboot menus and nothing ever auto-selects or anything like that, which I would expect.
Aside from the fact that I really like this phone, and that I really don't want to have to pay to replace it, I feel attached to it since I've dismantled it successfully to repair more than once and flashed ROMs many times in the past without issues. I've just run out of ideas, and of course I can't go on much longer without a phone.
Does anyone have any experience with this or hunches I can try out?
placebored said:
Hi there... new to the forum, but long-time reader, especially over the past two days since I dropped my AT&T HTC M7 (flashed to GPE) on cement and it pretty much died.
I'm out of ideas and could use some help. After the drop, it was stuck in a boot loop, but I was able to get to hboot with volume down. From there, I can access fastboot, but recovery or factory reset options just trigger the boot loop again. During the loop, it shows the Google logo (or HTC logo when flashed to stock) for 15-20 seconds and then reboots. Physical damage to the phone is not too substantial, and I have unfortunately extensive experience opening it up from repeated attempts to fix the purple tint issue with bad modules from eBay, so I checked inside and everything is intact.
Over the past two days I've flashed RUUs and recoveries like crazy, downgraded and upgraded hboot, changed CID, etc. I can oem lock and unlock... fastboot kicks out an error when I do it, but the status in hboot is changed when I reboot into the bootloader. Flashing ROMs and recoveries works like a charm, so does erasing cache. What I mean is that the process works exactly like before in fastboot, and I can see the splash screen logo change, so I know it's taken effect, but NOTHING gets past the boot loop. I am thinking the drop resulted in a corrupt partition, but since I can't get into recovery I haven't been able to find any way to do anything about that. If it was physically broken, it just doesn't seem like I would be able to do everything I can. I initially thought maybe it was a busted/stuck power switch, but that works perfectly navigating hboot menus and nothing ever auto-selects or anything like that, which I would expect.
Aside from the fact that I really like this phone, and that I really don't want to have to pay to replace it, I feel attached to it since I've dismantled it successfully to repair more than once and flashed ROMs many times in the past without issues. I've just run out of ideas, and of course I can't go on much longer without a phone.
Does anyone have any experience with this or hunches I can try out?
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yeah try a new motherboard yours is broken, really it's hardware damage no amount of flashing will fix it
clsA said:
yeah try a new motherboard yours is broken, really it's hardware damage no amount of flashing will fix it
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Thanks clsA. I'm surprised by that since in my experience a broken motherboard results in a much more substantial and obvious failure, but I guess the point is moot if I can't get into recovery to try anything else.
There isn't much of a market for new motherboards, and my experience with eBay sellers for oem components on this device makes me think trying to replace it there would be a fool's errand. I guess I could buy a used M7, but on the other hand the damn thing has basically been nothing but problems. The defective camera turned to garbage in under a year and one drop killed it? Unless anyone has another suggestion, I guess it's time to cut my losses on this thing. I may feel a sentimental attachment because I've nursed it along so much, but damn... a phone is a phone and this one has been a LOT more problematic than any other one I've had.
Gotta thank you again clsA! Your words of doom made me feel that extra bit wreckless, so I decided if the phone was cooked anyway I might as well tear it down and try whatever I could... firmly reseating cables and squeezing heatsinks, etc. Low and behold, I reassembled and the problem is fixed! I'm not sure what the exact issue was, and I won't be surprised if it comes back at some point down the line, but I'm back up and running tonight and that's a hell of a lot more of a victory than I was expecting.
So... it wasn't a motherboard issue, but it was hardware related.
I should have posted on here when this first happened. I love xda!
placebored said:
Gotta thank you again clsA! Your words of doom made me feel that extra bit wreckless, so I decided if the phone was cooked anyway I might as well tear it down and try whatever I could... firmly reseating cables and squeezing heatsinks, etc. Low and behold, I reassembled and the problem is fixed! I'm not sure what the exact issue was, and I won't be surprised if it comes back at some point down the line, but I'm back up and running tonight and that's a hell of a lot more of a victory than I was expecting.
So... it wasn't a motherboard issue, but it was hardware related.
I should have posted on here when this first happened. I love xda!
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That's great, I'm glad you were able to fix it
I may be the lucky one whose screen didn't start to peel off yet,but f*ck me this phone is starting to really piss me off.
Everything worked well after I have gone to SLiMM 1.4(way before) and as I was upgrading SLiMM versions it was slower and slower to the point where the phone is unusable!
So I thought,let's try to do a good old phone reset,reflash the ROM and go from the beginning.
I restored the apps,rebooted the phone and it was STILL painfully slow,so I resetted it again but this time restoring half the apps and half the Xposed modules I have used before.
It improved a tiny bit but nothing significant.
So I thought it is finally time to unlock the bootloader and see if there is any good AOSP ROMs,as the first one I tried was AOSP 7.1.1.
Fastest ROM I have used by far,the biggest problem,my device gets very hot from loading Messenger and jumping back to Snapchat and in AOSP 7.1.1 it would stop charging the phone because of the high temperature and this was quite a big issue.
So after using it for 2 weeks,I couldn't handle the charging thing anymore,so next best thing was Sony Concept ROM.
I install the ftf,goes well,install the recovery,install DRM fix,SuperSU and Xposed.
After rebooting I notice that Xposed didn't install properly so I jump back and flash it again,and the problem now was it would get like VERY VERY hot(you couldn't touch it) when it came to the "Android is starting" screen and of course the device started rebooting itself because it was way too hot.
So what I did was put the phone on a bag of f*cking ice to keep it cool,and it FINALLY passed that screen,only to find out a second later it returned to the bootanimation and gone into a bootloop.
Now I reflashed the ftf,but before even booting the ROM for the first time I flashed recovery,Xposed,SuperSU and the DRM fix.
It booted up fine,so I started to restore my apps and everything went well until I rebooted my device to find out it doesn't want to log in to Snapchat,the app I use very often.
So I flashed Magisk,systemless Xposed just that I can hide the root from it and disable Xposed just to log in to my account.
Even that didn't work so fine I'll try it next day.
So I decide to reboot the phone quickly and it has gone into the "Android is starting" screen and shut off in the half of the process. F*cking pissed.
I cool the phone down,boot it up,wait for it to finish and when it was close to finishing it has gone into a bootloop,and wiping cache doesn't solve it.
It is currently in a bootloop as we speak.
I really do like the phone but why is it behaving so badly? I do not know if someone had a similar experience as I did.
If anyone could give me a suggestion to make my phone stable and functional,please write a post since I need my phone to work.
Flash original android rom/kernel to the device to make device fully stock. Once it is back to stock, if problems still continue i recomend sell device and buy new one.. On my xperia, display stopped working out of blue, replaced it and my camera became blurry and vibration motor stopped working... Opened it again, fixed vibration motor, now it waits another opening to replace battery and camera lens... Disaster, but hey, device is great in hw department..
Strmy said:
Flash original android rom/kernel to the device to make device fully stock. Once it is back to stock, if problems still continue i recomend sell device and buy new one.. On my xperia, display stopped working out of blue, replaced it and my camera became blurry and vibration motor stopped working... Opened it again, fixed vibration motor, now it waits another opening to replace battery and camera lens... Disaster, but hey, device is great in hw department..
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I forgot to mention,every time I said reset the phone I actually did flash the stock ftf and set it up all on my own,but whatever.
I guess it is just bad luck.
Dinkec27 said:
I forgot to mention,every time I said reset the phone I actually did flash the stock ftf and set it up all on my own,but whatever.
I guess it is just bad luck.
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Jebiga mi Hrvati imamo lose srece sa mobitelima hahah
More luck next time
Dinkec27 said:
I forgot to mention,every time I said reset the phone I actually did flash the stock ftf and set it up all on my own,but whatever.
I guess it is just bad luck.
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internal memory is failing.
bookworth said:
internal memory is failing.
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Awesome
bookworth said:
internal memory is failing.
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Dinkec27 said:
Awesome
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Exactly, I suggest the same issue. I had exactly the same problem on my Xperia T, it became slower, slower, incredibly slow after three years so I couldn't even flash anything using flashtool - it was showing many errors. Even after factory resetting the phone, it was booting and setting up for like... two hours or more, becoming VERY hot but it finally booted, still was very slow.
Two solutions - warranty or selling it.
romcio47 said:
Exactly, I suggest the same issue. I had exactly the same problem on my Xperia T, it became slower, slower, incredibly slow after three years so I couldn't even flash anything using flashtool - it was showing many errors. Even after factory resetting the phone, it was booting and setting up for like... two hours or more, becoming VERY hot but it finally booted, still was very slow.
Two solutions - warranty or selling it.
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It just doesn't make sense to me that the internal memory could be failing just under a year...
I cannot go for warranty since I voided it with unlocking the bootloader,and selling it is not an option because I am on a contract currently and I can only sell it once it expires and then get a new phone to renew my contract.
If it is internal memory,it is a second tine in a row,before I had the Galaxy S3 and it had the same symptoms,it looks like I'm prone to internal memory failures lol
Is there a way I can test the internal memory?