Crunchbase
As you know, if you follow my writings, that I am sort of a tinkerer in android phones and other computer items. This morning while drinking that wonderful cup of coffee and doing my morning thinking’s, as I always try to do. I have been centering my thoughts around a particular Samsung phone that Sveta bought me. A Samsung Galaxy Note. This is the Galaxy Note with Android Ginger Bread, 1 GB Ram and a dual core 1.4 GHz processor…
It is not the latest and greatest as now there is a Galaxy Note 2, but I liked the older version and it seemed to have more opportunities available for it due to its age and popularity…
Having found a Grey Market* version of the phone at a vastly reduced price…
Sveta and I purchased the phone…
That is when the facade started to fall apart…
The phone was the real McCoy and was a 100% Samsung and that is part of the problem. I think I would have been better off with one of the India/China perfect clone phones at half the cost…
The phone had shipped out of the German markets and was set up just fine for Russia as we are all considered Europe, most of the time. They had installed Ice Cream Sandwich on the phone as the latest update to android and that upset me a little bit. I wanted the phone with Ginger Bread, as that is the easiest way to customize the phone. I am not a stock android guy and when I get a android phone it has to be rooted and ROM’ed. The only way to get the full potential is to take control of the phone…
I was excited about this phone, because it was touted as the greatest thing since Apple Pie, Baseball and Chevrolet’s. The mainstream media can not say enough about this phone and how it was the latest and greatest in its day. Heaven forbid how wonderful the newest version (Note 2) is…
In fact the good about this phone in the media completely overwelms people looking for information and finding the truth is not easy unless you scourer the forums, I use forums for fixing things and that is when I found out about the Galaxy Brick Bug! As I sat and looked at a bricked Samsung Galaxy Note…
If you own a Samsung Galaxy S II or the Galaxy Note and are a regular member of the xda-developers forum, you may already be aware of a bug with some of these devices where erasing the EMMC could hard brick your phone.
This problem would surface if the user tried to flash a custom ROM or kernel that used MMC_CAP_ERASE. Thankfully, developer Chainfire came up with an app that would let you know if your device was shipped with a faulty eMMC.
Apparently, this issue has existed for a long time now and even though it was noticed a couple of months ago and was much talked about in the developer community Samsung did not respond to it, until now.
According to user Daniel Hillenbrand on Google+, Samsung has said that “Patches will be out in form of new official ROMs and also sourcecode releases after testing, which might take some time.”
Hmm! Okay well that sums up trash to me and I just happen to have one of these particular phones. Just think if I had a clone, it would never have been an issue. The clones have Chinese android installed and do not have the problems…
Now before we start mouthing about a grey phone and other such things as why root, why flash roms and why why why? I will pass on that this issue is a well known issue and it affects even the phones that are just upgraded through Samsung normal upgrade procedures. That is how the phone acquired the issue to start with, it was flashed with a Samsung ICS upgrade. I will also tell you that if an android phone can not be treated as another computer, than why have it? It either plays my way or no way and in the trash it will go. With that said, lets explore the issues…
Number one fault was Samsung, they have developed and built a phone with major flaws and they knew about it from the beginning. They knew all along that their phone was trash…
Number two thing that happened, the in between people decided to flash the phone with ICS and re-sticker the box as never opened. That set the stage for the EMMC Bug to rear its head. Ginger Bread is safe…
Number three I got very sick and was running a 41+ C degree fever and was trying to work on my phone. Stupid huh?
So it was a combination of several things and anyone of the issues could have been changed to have made things better…
But regardless I bricked the phone and bricked it good. All I had left was the ability to get into download mode. I was too sick to do anything but make it worse and worse I made it. I am good about that and looks like I will never change, You know – “teaching old dogs new tricks” sorta things…
That is when I found out about Svet’s son (Misha) and his wonderful abilities with android operating systems and bricked phones. Misha took the phone and with Svet’s help they un-bricked my phone and it came back to me with original Ginger Bread on it…
I still had a very high temperature (over 40 C) and just played with it for a few days. I also did a whole bunch of studying about this Brick Bug issue. I also found the Samsung update and several other goodies to play with, for when I felt better…
To make a long story short, Misha set the ground work and saved my phone. He got it going again and did what everyone says is the only way to save it and that is to repartition the phone and with that you loose a whole bunch of your internal rom sd card. He did what I could not and from there I took it with my expertise and have recovered all lost sd rom and applied a custom rom and kernel. With a few days of tweaking, the phone rocks and rolls! It is what it should have been from the beginning. I have all aspects of the Samsung software and all the stability of a brick proof rom and kernel…
In fact the phone is running android Jelly Bean from a Galaxy 3 and has an overclock kernel that allows it to run 200 GHz faster than stock. It is smooth, slick and just plain my favorite phone. It looks to be a long time before I find a better phone for the money…
The big thing that I am upset about is that Samsung knew about this issue and refused for a long time to even acknowledge the fact. My studies have pin pointed it as to a hardware and software flaw. They continued to make these phones with these issues and never corrected the problem, They knew full well that they are reputed as an easy to work with phone and unlocked boot loader on top of it all…
Instead of trying to fix it, they went on a huge coverup campaign and spent millions to saturate the market with the selling points of the phone and never once gave what was needed and that would be a fix to solve the issue of the Brick Bug and make millions of happy rom flashers, even happier. I truly believe the phone would have sold millions more if they had played the game correct and not tried to hide the truth…
Now that I have the phone running Jelly Bean and a safe kernel, many thanks to Misha and Sveta, It is able to reach its potential…
Why didn’t Samsung just do what is right in the first place? I will never buy another Samsung after it took three people and three weeks to get the phone under control. Now I know why people are sending the phones back to Samsung in record amounts to get them re mothered boarded after they do a normal update and brick the phone…
Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…
PS: I will tell you with all honesty: “Korean Samsung does not hold a candle to the Chinese Huawei and my Huawei has been flashed hundreds of times, with nary an issue!” I have to now leave the Samsung Galaxy Note alone or chance bricking it again, which I have done already and un-bricked it myself – again!” The Galaxy Note looks good and tough on the outside, but is a wimp and weak, on the inside…
My Suggestion: Don’t buy a Samsung Galaxy Note…
Related articles
- From A CM Developer – ‘The “Superbrick” Nightmare’ Or How Samsung Screwed All Galaxy Note Owners (techie-buzz.com)
- How to convert your Galaxy Note into Galaxy Note 2 (thedroidguy.com)
- Five million Samsung Galaxy Note II phablets sold (HEXUS.net)
- Made in USA in Russia… (windowstorussia.com)
- Think With The Pocketbook as you Travel… (windowstorussia.com)
- Russian Thoughts With a Cup of Coffee… (windowstorussia.com)
- Galaxy Tops iPhone as Best Selling Phone in the World (news.windowstorussia.com)