[Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Androyed:
The last week I have been struggling to unbrick my i9023 Nexus S. Without any luck... Let's start at the beginning, how I bricked my Nexus S. If you don't think this is relevant you can skip it.

Stay with me because it's going to be a long thread...

How I bricked my Nexus S

I was running a CM9 Nightly (from around 10 March) until a week ago, together with the matrix CFS 18.0 kernel. I had a problem with rebooting. Every time I rebooted, it would take 2 or 3 tries before it actually started. First it would just reboot again, or even freeze. So after almost a month I was kinda tired of that problem, so I decided to flash a new CM9 Nightly, the one from 7 April. I flashed the Nightly like I always do, wipe cache/dalvik, and I also flashed the new matrix CFS 18.5 kernel, + the latest gapps and the reloadedICS mod. It was working fine. I rebooted a couple of times more into recovery because I wasn't happy with the reloadedICS mod. Everything was still working fine.

The battery was draining very quickly though. I was watching TV for an hour and when I decided to go to bed the battery was already dead. So I put it in the charger because I wanted to check my facebook before I went to bed. It booted fine, but when I started loading facebook in the browser, my phone freezed. I wasn't really alarmed because, well, let's face it, that's the risk with nightlies. So I pulled out the battery, something I have done a lot of times since I started rooting/flashing. After that: dead. No reaction. No charging icon when it was plugged in the charger. No vibration when I pressed the power button, nothing. A brick...

What I've tried

Although it is uncommon, I wasn't the first to brick a Nexus S. Apparently it had something to do with updating to ICS 4.0.4, on which the april 7 nightly was based on I guess.

Luckily there was AdamOutler's Unbrickable Resurrector. After some setbacks I managed to get the Resurrector working. And against all odds I "unbricked" my Nexus S on the first try! Well, I got it into download mode (home and search button). The only problem was that I still didn't have a screen. The home and search button were lit up, but the screen was still black... And according to most people, it isn't supposed to be black...

Ignoring that fact, I downloaded fastboot and tried to flash bootloader.img, as instructed. It didn't work because my bootloader wasn't unlocked, something that struck me as very weird because it definitely was unlocked before the brick. So I tried to unlock the bootloader. But for that, you need a screen... With a lot of luck I managed to unlock the bootloader. Don't ask me how, but after a few tries I succeeded.

I was making progress. And I was happy about that :p. So I tried to flash the bootloader again. But it still didn't work. "Write failed". After some internet research I found out wat the problem was. It had something to do with the bootloader and radio being a different version. I used the command "fastboot getvar all" and it told me the following:

- Bootloader version: i9020XXKA3

- Radio version: i9020XXXXX

Apparently the radio version isn't supposed to be XXXXX, and that's why I couldn't flash bootloader.img or radio.img. Also, this is the reason that I couldn't boot my device in the first place.

Obviously I wasn't the only person with this problem. I found a guy that had the same problem as me. He used the command "fastboot boot recovery3101.img", using an older version of CWM recovery. If you used that command, your phone would always boot into recovery, so that you can flash a new OTA.

So I downloaded that older version of CWM, and I tried the same command. And it worked! The home and search button were off and the menu and back button were on! But, still no screen. And the guy that used the same command did have a screen...

I had no clue on what to do next, so I pressed the power button, in the hope that I could boot my device directly into recovery after that. I pressed the power button, the backlight of the soft keys went out... and that was my poor Nexus S' last breath of life...

I tried the resurrector tool after that... "failed to write"...

So, am I really f***ed?

I just can't comprehend that my Nexus S could be dead forever... The hardware is fine, it's just the software that keeps it from booting up! The idea of that is crazy... Certainly with a Nexus S for christ's sake! :p

So, what am I to do? I kinda gave up hope...

UPDATE: SITUATION ATM

1) With AdamOutler's Unbrickable Resurrector I can get into download mode. Sometimes it doesn't work but when I pull out the battery it works again.

Now I can flash every partition with fastboot, except for;

- the bootloader (which is XXKA3)

- the radio (which is XXXXX)

The probable cause for this is the fact that "secure: on", according to "fastboot getvar all". This is

very

weird because no one on the internet has a Nexus S with "secure: on". It is some security for i.a. HTC devices.

When flashing the bootloader or radio, I get the following error:

Using "fastboot -w update image-******.zip":

archive does not contain 'boot.sig'

archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'

archive does not contain 'system.sig'

After that the flash goes fine. When it reboots, my phone is dead again. This is because the radio didn't change with this zip. If there would be a radio in that zip, it would not have worked anyway.

The radio is booted first in android, and because of this I can't do anything (the XXXXX version is wrong). This is probably also why the recovery doesn't work properly (see below). And the "secure: on" prevents me from flashing another radio.

2) With "fastboot boot recovery.img" I can get in the recovery mode. ADB "shell" works, and so does "push" and "pull". The screen is black, though. Even with a very strong flashlight I still can't see anything. I can only see 2 or 3 lines (it is different with each recovery). When I press the volume buttons to scroll, I see no changes at all on my screen.

What I have tried in recovery:

- Installing an OTA zip. I can ADB "push" an OTA zip. I have checked that with ADB "shell". Since I can't see anything I have to guide myself using pictures from CWM menus. But nothing happens. There is no sign that the install worked. The only sign that I'm actually in recovery is that the menu and back softkey are lit up, and that when I press the power button without pressing the volume buttons first, my phone powers off (this is because "reboot system now" is on top of the list in recovery, I guess).

- ADB pushing anything on /sdcard. When I turn off my phone after that and resurrect it again, the file

is gone

. This could be because my memory is dead. But isn't this because the resurrector removes it? Anyway, when I push a file with ADB, it definitely is on my sdcard. Only after rebooting and resurrecting it isn't...

NOTE: Rebooting/booting in whatever mode doesn't work. The only two things I can do are listed above. The moment I plug out my device, I have to use the resurrector again. Because of this there it makes no sense to flash a recovery, since I can't boot anyway. The only way I can get into recovery is by using "fastboot boot recovery.img".

NOTE 2: Recovery.log shows some errors. I will post the whole log soon...

Possible solutions?

A) How can I flash a different radio, despite of "secure: on"?

B) Can we change "secure: on" to "secure: off"? For HTC users this is as normal as "fastboot oem unlock", but there is

no one

on the internet that has a Nexus S with "secure: on".