yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
Yep. As I already mentioned I see two possibilities here:

1. Finding the JTAG port and reflashing the internal sd card using a JTAG Programmer (RIFF Box for example)

2. Finding the sd card chip, desolder it, reprogramm it, resolder it.

I already repaired a harddrive by replacing the circuit board and desoldering / resoldering the flash rom chip from the broken one to the new one.

Doing this on the phone shouldn't be any big difference.

The question is, if the internal sd rom chip of the photon q does - similiar to the CDMA chip - does only have about 10 pins and is therefore pin compatible to a real sd card and behaves like a real one so it can be read and written using SPI or SDIO. In that case rewriting the bootloader will be very easy using an arduino or if only SDIO works, a STMF4 microcontroller for example. If there are hundreds of pins on the chip it meight be too hard till impossible.

The Problem is, I just don't know where the flash chip and the JTAG pads / pins are exactly placed nor the pinout of the JTAG. That's where I need your help. If nobody knows, I will post another picture with all metal covers removed.

It is definitely softbricked since I screwed the partition table of the rootfs so I don't think a working battery will help here. Anyway I will try making a factory cable and look what happens then.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] schmandroid:
OK,

Some earlier phone chargers (Sony Ericsson etc) were 3.5-3.9vdc, if you use one of these, you may get it to power up - the phone 'may' require more power on startup than the adapter can supply though, so a bench supply may be the better option if this is the case. Try it & see.

If you are gung-ho on electronics, then you'll probably have something lying around.

Swapping SMD bios chips etc is a quick way around bad flashes & locked bios. Been there, done that. Sounds like you are familiar with TSOP etc, seeing as you are discussing JTAG etc???

I have acquired a few phones that won't power on (including these), & poor (dead) battery volts is usually the culprit. The batteries won't charge from the phone charger due to the battery internal protection ccts exceeding the lower limit, but if you have a multi-chemistry charger they can be revived by directly connecting to the power terminals & then they often work well.

This is also a good reason to not let the phone self discharge as a way of rebooting when things go wrong. People are doing this, & it is not ideal for this reason.

Try the power adapter & report how it goes.

By the way, there is already an image of the mobo showing what is under the shields. Look at cornholio's thread on the sim mod to find it.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
I am doing all of my electronics works on a hackerspace so I have more than enough of equipment i need. (bench suppy, oscilloscope, rework station) I also may get a bus pirate if I ask someone there.

I will try powering it up using a bench suppy but I assume the screen will just remain black. But I will let you know as soon as I tried that.

I wouldn't call me an expert but I already did some simple TSOP works.

May I use any Li-ion charger? I have a HTC Desire Z / (HTC Vision or G2 in the USA) which has a 3.7V battery but photon Q has only 3.6V so I am afraid killing the battery when charging it using the HTC.

I had no choice. I bricked the software when I was at home. Since I have no T5 screwdriver there I wasn't able to remove the battery so the battery just got discharged on the bootloop.

I will do. Thanks for that info, I found a tomographic scan of the whole phone made by ikv:

I already PMed him for sending me a higher resolution version of that picture so I may find the sd card IC.

When reading cornholio's thread I also found out the reason why my sd card actually wasn't got detected in recovery mode:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=35151506&postcount=194

I indeed removed some SMD resistors while removing the CDMA IC so that seems to be the real reason while the SD card wasn't detected.

I just wonder why it still got detected by adb then o_O

Whatever, knowing that the resistors are connected to the sd card IC will make it very easy to find it by a multimeter.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] schmandroid:
I have a T-MO G2 & a NAM DZ, started with the G1. HW keyboard is king.

The G2 charger should work fine, the batteries are the same tech.

I have a universal charger that I program cell chem, size & number into. If you can't get your hands on one of these, but have a desktop charger you could jumper the terminals across to charge. Alternatively, you could jumper across the charged G2 battery to the PQ & power it up.

Yeah, this is a drag.

I thought your pic looked a bit too clear of devices around there!

This is what I meant by going in too hard before understanding the phone & components well - it is kinda hard to find all the info sometimes tho.

Yeah - I knocked off a few smd's there trying to fix a failed sim on my first PQ. Cornholio fixed it up & fitted his sim reader, but I haven't really used that PQ, I'm using another one that I sim reader modded after following his tut. He's a clever phone guy.

*People do need to check the fit of their back chassis after doing a sim reader mod though, I had to trim up the one from cornholio a bit more so there was no pressure/flex on the reader. This may have something to do with the reported sim rego dropouts etc. This isn't criticism, just a heads up, sounds like he's flat out doing them. I can post a pic of what I did to seat the reader & cover etc if anyone wants.

Replace the smd's etc around the sim tabs, get your phone hooked up to a full battery or PSU, cross your fingers & hit the power button. What's the worst that could happen?
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
I asked some clever physics guy, and he told me the 0.1V overvoltage of my HTC G2 may kill the photon Qs battery, so I better look for another solution. Maybe I wait until I got another working photon Q and charge the battery using the original charger. I can't use the photon anyway until I fixed the partition table.

I will ask some people in my hackerspace. I am pretty sure someone could borrow me a universal charger.

I tried powering it using a laboratory power supply but after I pressed the power button it just consumed about 0.05 Ampere @ 3,3V and screen remained black. When holding the down button while pressing the power button the power consumption resulted into 0.00 Ampere (phone did just switch off)

Yep, it's realy hard to find infos for the photon Q since only a few nerds wanna have it. It's not mainstream like the Galaxy S3 for example. In Germany QWERTY phones aren't realy asked so the photon Q is not selled here at all. :(

It's a shame for the worldwide coolest slider mobile phone available! But that's not stopping me finding out how to do it.

Yes he definitly is. I PMed him and he was able to tell me where the flashrom I am looking for is located. :)

It is under the big Metal cover on keyboard side:

The physics guy I was talking to did also notice, that one metal cover can just be pulled of, without the need of desoldering. It seems to be the cover of the main CPU and I got a bit surprised when seeing this:

A Samsung 228 K3PE7E700D - XGC2 processor? I thought It's a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4? WTF?

I mean the Phone is not slow but could you confirm this by checking what kind of processor is installed on your phones? As I already mentioned no soldering is neccesarry for that, you can just remove the cover by using your finger nails.

I wish I ever get that far making decisions of how to place a sim card reader. :(

But sure, please post it, I wanna see. :)

If it was that easy...

Well, maybe I will still need some time of research especially on a JTAG solution but I already found out that the pinout can be found out by trail and error using a JTAG discovery mode. My current results are looking very promising. I am still in contact with Cornholio and maybe we find a solution soon so stay tuned. :)
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
False alert. What I detected there is just the RAM: https://chipworks.secure.force.com/catalog/ProductDetails?sku=SAM-K3PE7E700D-XGC2

So the biggest chip doesen't automaticly mean, that it is the CPU. :)

I still wonder, why the RAM is the only chip which is accessible without desoldering the metal cover!? :rolleyes:
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] schmandroid:
I see you reply, but challenge the advice of the 'clever physics guy'.

The G2 battery is actually "0.1vdc" higher than the PQ. The G2 is 3.7 & the PQ is 3.8.

This is

actually irrelevant

though, as both cells are Li-Ion, so the cell chem dictates the voltages & what the phone will run on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

"Lithium-ion is charged at approximately 4.2 ± 0.05 V/cell except for "military long life" that uses 3.92 V to extend battery life. Most protection circuits cut off if voltage greater than 4.3 V or temperature greater than 90 °C is reached. Below 2.50 V/cell the battery protection circuit may render the battery unchargeable with regular charging equipment. Most battery circuits stop at 2.7–3.0 V/cell."

The battery protection cct is what will stop the battery charging through the phone, & why a universal charger will often revive it. (what I said before).

This is why I recommended trying the G2 battery, it will also power it up. Same tech, so directly compatible. P.S. I know a fair bit about battery tech.

I would try the bench PSU at 3.8vdc & see what happens before launching into any further reviving attempts, but it's up to you. check again with your physics guy - he will concede if he understands the chemistry & tech.

P.S. do I sound like I know what I'm talking about?
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
Sorry, I didn't want to offend you. I don't know much about batteries and since they can explode when handling them wrong and I don't want to hurt myself I am just realy careful, I hope you understand that.

Well I think you are right. Tomorrow I will try it again with a full charged G2 battery. Will go to sleep now. ;)
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] schmandroid:
Hey its cool - no offence taken. Sometimes a little more weight is needed to back up advice, & I'm just sharing what I know. It also pays to double check free advice.

I'm not discounting that there may be other things wrong with your phone, but I would personally get the basics sorted first.

Good luck with it!
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
I tried using 3,8V but it still just consumes 0,04 Amps and screen remains black, whatever I do. I know where the NAND flash is located but it's BGA:

Desoldering it shouldn't be a big problem. I could read and write it when soldering it to a CF reader but that would be realy hard work. Even if I would manage to write the correct data to the chip I'd have to resolder it and I'd may destroy it on the whole process.

The best thing is finding the JTAG pins, because it is also the most reproducable method for other people. I'm sure it is located here:

There are some tutorials how to find the JTAG pins. There are exactly 7 pins I have to discover, so I will try my luck with that.

Buying a broken water damaged phone, desoldering the CPU and finding the JTAG pins by measuring on the CPU pads may also work if I fail at all.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] arrrghhh:
I have one if you want it. Glass is cracked, phone is water damaged.

Edit - although the phone seemed to function perfectly fine, even with the water damage... I was able to FXZ it back to stock etc. However, I broke the glass trying to take the screen apart (with hopes of drying it out, haha).

So what you're buying is a mostly functional Q with broken glass and water sticker sensors shot.... assuming you buy it ;). PM me.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] schmandroid:
400mA is quite a load, I expect the phone is running to some degree.

That port under the battery looks like the most probable factory sim programming/testing connector, deciphering that may unlock all sorts of possibilities.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
Ah no, not 0.4A, it's just 0.04A. The phone just goes directly into QDLOAD mode. It may be possible using QPST to upload a working bootloader but I didn't found a version which supports the 8960 chipset yet. The newest version I was able to find is 2.7 build 402.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] Skrilax_CZ:
Your phone is not booting because of secure boot and will not boot unless you restore EMMC. Sadly, there is not much you can do. Usually, since security is on, JTAG (btw. it's 14 pins) is disabled, and even if JTAG is enabled and you ID the pads, you will have a load of job to initialize everything properly (for OMAP3 the script has over 1000 lines of register writes / setup, before you can write to RAM (to which you write the data & flashing util) and QC might have customized it. There may be USB boot enabled (may require swapping a resistor), but no schematics available, so not a real go either. I'm afraid the only option is to get a new board.

About Samsung 228 K3PE7E700D - XGC2: It's a PoP package. CPU is right under the RAM.
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] coon42:
Sounds realy complicated and any affords finding JTAG may lead to nothing. :( Is there any way finding out if JTAG is disabled and may it possible to reenable it by swapping a resistor, or is there some kind of Fuse in the CPU?

One way could be buying a completely broken phone and doing some research on the circuit board for finding that resistor. Softunbricking the Photon Q seems quite impossible. I wonder why it works on so many other phones.

Ah good to know. So the outer pins are RAM and inner pins are CPU?

Whatever, I think I will just buy another phone and replace the mainboard. Maybe some day some clever guy will find out how to do it. The only working solution here seems to be the EMMC desoldering / reflashing / resoldering method which is also nearly impossible to do successfully without having the required experience and the right tools for BGA soldering, so I will just give it up for now. Maybe I continue searching later if I got more experience in mobile phone electronics stuff in general.

Thanks for your help anyways. ;)
[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] Dhoine:
Where you take this pic?
[Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note II] lkctd8:
Just some background... Completely stock and not rooted. I was getting 3-4 hours of screen on time with wifi and gps on at all times so I never turned them off like I did on my old phones (unless I was using them). Lately my battery drain has been awful. I haven't downloaded any new apps since this started. Anyone having these outcomes? Thanks!
[Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note II] MikeyLee:
Turn off Location Services for Google search and that wont run
[Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note II] tvwebguy:
I downloaded an app called Greenify that seems to be helping a lot. 24 hours is all I've had it running, but, I thought I'd throw out that idea.
[Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note II] lkctd8:
I don't have any settings enabled for Google in general... Looking at the "Google settings" in my app drawer.
[Fuhu Nabi 2] gnomebrew:
A week and a half ago I used aicjofs' nifty Nabilab v2.3.3 on my niece's Nabi2 (v1.9.37). I had a driver problem but was able to take care of that using the pdanet drivers as recommended in the thread. NabiLab then worked like a charm. I used the "Install Root, Recovery and Gapps" option.

Everything functioned great for about 9 days and then the Nabi2 wifi issue appeared. The selector stays in the off position and will not turn on. I saw a Linux based fix in another thread that was mixed in with instructions about rolling back the Nabi to stock. However, our Nabilab install was in Win7 64bit and we'd also rather not end up back at stock -- the rooted and Play-capable Nabi was terrific for adding to FUHU's limited stock of good kids games.

I'd be grateful for suggestions on the best way to correct the wifi issue on a Win-7-based NabiLab-applied root, recovery and gapps. We hope to retain (or at worst re-apply) the root/gapps. Thanks!
[Fuhu Nabi 2] aicjofs:
The wifi issue has plagued the Nabi 2 since the beginning. If you search you will see 100's of post on Facebook with people with the issue(That's where Nabi runs their support mostly.), usually stated as wifi not working and or MAC address unavailable. The official solution currently is to do a factory reset and update to v2.0.5. I personally have never had the issue and I wish I did because there has to be an easier fix then a factory reset. The factory reset has to be wiping some data that we could shortcut without wiping everything else. It could be the wpa_supplicant.conf or the entropy.bin in /data/misc/wifi, or perhaps a com.android settings that is messed up. A permission issue where the wifi user in system group isn't set right, or the read write. I always thought that the key might be in the ramdisk init files(the key to tracking it down not so much the issue itself) as the issue was happening back in the beginning when people were running mismatched kernel/ramdisk in the early patches. Regardless it's hard to guess at what it is without seeing the device.

So as to what you do...I suppose you have a few options. Use TWRP to flash back the original Nabi ROM that Nabilab backed up for you, or do the factory reset. If you want to keep what you have you use something like titanium backup or similar program from play store, back up your apps and then do one of the above, then restore everything from titanium backup. It's happened to a lot of people, both with stock and modded Nabi's. When you are done go to v2.0.5 it seems much better at the wifi issue. Since you are forced to wipe the tablet either way, you can do no harm it trying this app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wahtod.wififixer&hl=en

Sorry I wish I was more help as there has to be a shortcut to all this but most people rather then digging deep into it just do the reset and restore their apps, and we never get enough data to figure it out. Now that 2.0.5 has made the issue better there is even less troubleshooting of it. Also everything in Nabilab will work on 2.0.5. except the lockscreen modding tool.
[Fuhu Nabi 2] gnomebrew:
Resolved

Aicjofs,

Thanks so much for the reply. The Nabi is now back in action.

Following your advice, I started by giving Wifi-Fixer a try. No joy. I then backed-up user apps to USB with Titanium before rebooting to Recovery Kernel and attempting a restore from my initial TWRP backup. None found! Ugh. I'm not sure if I did something wrong or skipped a step while setting it up two weeks ago. On to Plan B: NabiLab Full.

I downloaded your NabiLab Full (I had used Lite during setup) in order to restore from the included Nabi image. This worked well and resulted in a mostly stock Nabi (I say mostly because the image includes phantom media listings that need deleting). After that, I could reboot to the Nabi/Android system just fine, but trying to load Recovery Kernel from the boot menu would fail, giving me just a dead android icon. I re-installed TWRP from NabiLab without issue.

I OTA updated to 2.0.5, rebooted to TWRP to make a pre-root backup image, and then used NabiLabs to once again root and install Gapps. Finally, as you suggested, I used the previously mentioned Titanium backup to restore non-system apps/data. 'Cept for a few minor settings like wallpaper & folder names it was back to the Nabi my niece remembered.

THANK YOU for your advice and for making and supporting NabiLab.
[Fuhu Nabi 2] aicjofs:
Glad it worked and she is back in business and happy! Oh, that current back up you made of v2.0.5... Copy that TWRP folder to your computer :D
[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sandarosy:
Dear friends

I got a WiFi problem since few days,, My phone can not detect WiFi, it will give the message (WiFi turning on ) then no WiFi connected.

I changed the ROM twice but it showed the same problem again.

my other devices can detect the WiFi easily ( It is not a network problem).

My phone is GS2 I9100 GT,, Android 4.1.2

Baseband I9100XXMS2

Kernel 3.0.31- 1069234 dpi@DELL237 #3 SMP PREEMPT

Build XWLSN V4.0

Turkbey Rom V4.0 S4 Edition

I appreciate any help :D:D:D

Thank you
[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] scultor:
Does your phone get hot when you turn on Wi-Fi?

Your Wi-Fi turns on? Or stay in an intermediate state?
[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] smd0806:
Check this BAT500 and other Wifi related failures:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1935338

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2299615

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2342139
[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sandarosy:
I had flashed the official ICS

I9100XWLSW Download (Thanks To SamMobile!)

Base Firmware: I9100XWLSW (4.1.2)

Region: Europe

Country United Kingdom

Carrier: Unbranded

Build Date: 15 May 2013

Modem: XXMS2

CSC: XEULS5

Change List: 1211311

I need to install official Modem to overcome this problem,, so, what modem i will choose ? and from where can i download it?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] PeterW:
Hi,

I've just upgraded my O2 Xda II mini to the latest ROM (1.11) and found a problem.

Previously, I could end a GPRS session by tapping on the icon at the top and then clicking on the "Disconnect" button in the dialog bubble.

On the latest ROM, the "Disconnect" button has gone from the dialog bubble. It's simply not there any more.

I called the O2 Helpdesk and they have not had any other reports of this, and simply told me to hold the red "end call" button. While this works, it also backs me out of application I have open and active, which is a nuisance.

Does anyone else have this problem?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] shamus:
Yes you are right my MDA Compact came with the latest rom from factory and I was wondering why there is no disconnect button...? now I can see that it's common problem in 1.11 made by some mistake or something.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] waiting4u:
I guess they remove it because of the "GPRS connection problem" as I used to have problem on GPRS re-connection (after disconnected), however, after upgrade to 1.11, the problem no longer exist !
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] PeterW:
Thanks for your responses, Shamus and waiting4u.

I posted a message on the Mtek forum in Australia and one user there has the latest ROM and does not have this problem. Maybe it only happens to upgraded minis as opposed to new ones that came with 1.11?

Would really like this back. O2 support was no help and didn't even know it was a problem.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] shamus:
But this is obvious stupidy always on GPRS connection drains battery as a charm, I omitted the problem by installing SPB Gprs Monitor but disconnect shoud be implemented in system. M$ stupidy is enormous :evil:

PeterW mine MDA came with 1.11 it wasn't upgraded!!!
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] PeterW:
Hi Shamus,

In that case, it must be a stupid Microsoft oversight. I checked my colleague's Xda mini this morning - he is still running 1.03 ROM, and he does have the disconnect button. Very frustrating. :evil:
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] shamus:
this little fine proggy finally makes me happy :D

http://www.gb-soft.cz/XDAII/product_gprs_tweak_en.htm
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] PeterW:
Thanks Shamus! Will give it a try. :D
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] PeterW:
Yes, it works well and gives me back the Disconnect button. Thanks again.

:D
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] shamus:
No problem :D
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Anthony825:
Just curious how many people here have toyed around with the app "Light Flow". I've been testing different settings for a couple of weeks now, but I wonder if there is a way to make the LED brighter? I set the numerical to 255 like it suggested but it didn't really change much. Is it safe to go higher or could I burn out the LED on my S4?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dtanov:
Hi,

I have followed the instructions from Cnet in order to root my phone.

When I download GalaxySim Unlock, it says Unable to read NV data.

Any advice on how I can unlock my phone?

Best Regards