[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] JonyLelo:
A Gnote GT-N7000 Saga rooted GB Issues and Questions

International Galaxy Note purchased last year new from an ebay vendor in Hong Kong Rooted GB issues.

Sorry for the long post, but I felt that the background is essential. This is my first forum post ever.

When I received the unit last year it was sealed and never opened. According to the packaging It was made for the India market, but set up with an official stock rom for the Hong Kong market because it had on it the stock Gingerbread 2.3.5 designed for Hong Kong, and when I first started it up it defaulted to Chinese, and the time zone defaulted to Hong Kong,

Then later it upgraded itself to the Hong Kong Gingerbread 2.3.6 OTA.

Then this year it upgraded itself to ICS 4.03 over the air without incident.

Then in July it started upgrading itself OTA to ICS 4.04 and bricked (softbricked?) during the official Samsng OTA update.

Samsung Canada would not honour the warranty, so I had it repaired in Toronto by an independent service center, who had JTag. He put it back to Gingerbead 2.3.5.

It then upgraded itself OTA to GB 2.3.6.

Shortly afterwards it started a USB Dance when it thought it was plugged in even though it was not. This would toggle back and forth, so I could not connect to Kies.

After some research on XDA there were 2 possible problems.

1/ Samsung had a system App made by Vlingo Voice Talk which would get into a loop after an accidental doublepress of the home key, and I could not disable this universally disliked app, unless I had ICS or a rooted phone.

2/ The USB port was dirty with pocket lint, and shorting, making the device “think” a USB cable was plugged in.

Since the phone was in a dance (it thought the USB cable was connected when it was not) and I could not connect to my PC either through drivers alone or Kies, I spent some time cleaning the USB port. This was successful using a sticky goopy product called Cyberclean, but it took a few days, for the phone to get out of this loop.

Since Samsung stopped offering ICS updates OTA for this phone most probably due to their brick bug, I eventually (after the USB port was cleaned and stopped shorting), was able to connect to Kies where an ICS 4.0.4 was offered.

The Kies Upgrade went smoothly, and I thought I was good to go and immediately disabled the Samsung (Vlingo) Voice Talk app.

But then I noticed I could not connect to the internet using my dataplan. But could connect very well over WiFi only. All the settings APN’s etc. were good and the carrier confirmed my data was not stopped by them.

OK more research on good old XDA, on flashing just a modem. The latest ICS modem was LRK and I discovered that ICS modems can be used with GB and visa versa.

But first I checked Kies if there was an update, and since there was none I used PC Odin 1.85 and flashed new modem firmware LRK.

The flash was successful but I still could not access cellular data, only wifi data.

Then I came to your thread about rooted GB, and your excellent explanation, so I decided to downgrade away from the brickable ICS.

All went smoothly except I could not see the picture or your alternate site hosting the picture of the Odin screen, so after extracting your downloaded stock but rooted GB rom I wasn’t sure where to put the file in Odin so I placed it in PDA.

The flash went smoothly, and I could now access cellular data, but could not type anything into the system as all keystrokes using the Samsung querty keyboard printed on the screen as null null null. I had to wipe cache as there was old software processes looping around.

More research and after *#1234# I discovered that I had an unknown CSC, in other words had no CSC as this was not flashed?

I also noticed that with your rooted GB rom I still showed my ICS Phone/Modem as unchanged and it still was LRK the latest official ICS.

More XDA research and although some contributors said they could not type with any keyboard including Swype, and that they had to cut and paste to enter their email addresses in order to get into the market and download 3rd party keyboards, I could use the Swype keyboard.

So I tried to flash only the CSC, and Odin showed Green success, but my system still showed no CSC.

OK I plan to stay in your rooted GB, for now until Jellybean, or Samsung actually fixes the “broken” and brickable ICS.

My phone modem seems to work OK using the latest ICS LRK release.

My specific questions are as follows;

1/ When I flashed your 2.3.5 rooted GB, how come that the phone/modem did not change? And how come I had a blank CSC.

2/ How can I flash a CSC? And where would I get this file? Do the files have to be from a set?

3/ Can I safely use the CWM now on the system to upgrade to GB unrooted 2.3.6?, or will I brick my device.

4/ Is there another recommended stable 3rd party rom, equivalent to JB or ICS. The key word here is stability. My local JTag tech said to stay away from Samsung ICS, because it is faulty.

5/ Why do you think my cellular data not work with ICS 4.04 but the same mode software works well with your rooted GB 2.3.5?

6/ Any other suggestions?

Thanx

John (JonyLelo)