[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shimishim:
Hi,

Background story. It's long, and I am supposed to be brief, but maybe the stages I have been through trying to solve this matter (due to mishaps in upgrade process perhaps?) - so I'm giving it in full. Sorry in advance. I will note that I have done tens of Google searches on this problem, and the common denominator between all my findings were bugs in Custom ROMs such as CyanogenMod etc - where they have fixed it later. But I did not use any custom ROM, only original Samsung ROMs (at least as advertised). My device in Odin mode still claims to have an original Samsung FW, so I am guessing that assertion is correct?

So here goes.

I have been using 4.0.3 for quite some time. Then Samsung released an OTA upgrade, which failed to me during the reboot phase. I had a hunch (really a hunch, no proof), that this is somehow related to the fact that my device is encrypted, a feature that I have enabled after it was first supported, when I upgraded from 2.3 to 4.0.3 (OTA...).

Long story short, I tried to decrypt the device using the same menu I used to encrypt it. You would think that this would work, right? Well, it didn't. Just like the install, it got stuck at the very beginning, rebooted again, and the system was back as before (no data lost).

Last night, I felt lucky (oh, I was wrong), and tried the Decrypt again, probably the 10th time I'm doing it. This time it got stuck differently, eventually rebooting and giving me the 'swipe to unlock' screen (instead of 'enter decryption key'...). I though 'cool, it unencrypted the device...'. Wrong. After the swipe, got a blank screen. After some time, when I realized the thing is simply stuck, I rebooted through the power button.

Then I got Samsung's S changing colors... forever. Waited hours to no avail.

So I said, OK, let's try to just upgrade to 4.1.2, as this is what I wanted to do in the first place... at first I downloaded the "latest firmware" as advised by sammobile.com/firmwares/#firmware - which was from "Taiwan" and flashed it in download mode with Odin 3.0.7, by clicking on "PDA", selecting the MD5 file, seeing the verification was a success, and clicking "Start". . That seemed to work, and passed the "stuck S" stage, however I got a request for some password... in Chinese... couldn't really understand what it means, so:

I downloaded the I9100XWLSJ, which I understood is the latest for a European country (so I assumed it will be in English), which also succeeded the same way, and now I could understand the question - it was asking for my decryption password. I did actually guess this what the Chinese said, but alas, my decryption password did NOT work. And so it didn't on the English version as well.

I gave up my data. Went into bootloader, and wipe/factory default. Restart. Welcome to Android 4.1.2.

All seems to work well (OK, couldn't test the camera...), except for... the SD Card! It simply refuses to mount it as "USB Storage", as has always been. I tinkered with it for many hours (and even rooted my device for the first time...), and this is what I can say:

* The SD card is seen by the system, as external. Even though the SGS2 does not have an external SD port (unless I'm blind?). With a file browser, I can browse to it, play files from it, etc.

* Android seems to insist on using the internal card for everything. Opening the gallery. Opening the Camera. etc. Thus all those features currently do not work for me. I am merely guessing here that this is the reason, because apps say things like "Turn off USB storage before using camera" - as if the mountpoint is busy. And also - like I said - previously it was "USB Storage", for the best of my memory...

* The SD card seems to be mounted on /mnt/extSdCard or /storage/extSdCard

* The mount point /storage/sdcard0 seems to exist, and is symlinked from /mnt/sdcard, FWIW

* The SD Card is 8GB, from an old Nokia N85 phone

* Formatting the SD Card from the SGS2 didn't have any noticeable effect.

* A different SD Card [32GB] from an SGS3 running 4.1.2 shows the same symptoms

* I checked out /system/etc/vold.fstab, and in there I can see that:

# internal sdcard
{
ums_sys_path = /sys/class/android_usb/f_mass_storage/lun0/file
secure_format = enable
discard = enable
supported_exfat = disable
}
dev_mount sdcard /storage/sdcard0 11 /devices/platform/dw_mmc/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0 encryptable_nonremovable

# external sdcard
{
ums_sys_path = /sys/class/android_usb/f_mass_storage/lun1/file
android_secure_containers = enable
}
dev_mount sdcard1 /storage/extSdCard auto /devices/platform/s3c-sdhci.2/mmc_host/mmc1

Questions:

* Is my assumption correct, that this should be mounted as /storage/sdcard0? If not, and extSdCard is correct behavior, any suggestion why any app that needs the SD card says it does not exist, even though it's accessible to file explorers?

* If it is correct, any idea WHY this is happening, or, a workaround?

Much obliged!

-- Shimi