[Android General] prince.d.emperor:
BootLoop:

“Bootloop” is a very familiar term for smartphone users whatever OS they use, but it is definitely more familiar to Android phone users. Android being an Open Source operating system, is open to third party modifications. If you have a basic or advanced knowledge of Linux coding, you can develop a custom ROM or a modify a system file of your Android phone. Such openness has opened vistas for our great developers to cook ROMs, mods and hacks. It has enriched our experience with our phones at one hand, and posed a few problems like bootloop or a bricked phone in rare cases.

Most of phone- freaks like me spend their days doing nothing but trying almost all custom ROMs and mods available out there to tell other what is good for them. In doing so we often face a bootloop but that is not to say that only the third- party ROMs and mods are responsible for the problem. In most cases, however, it is some incompatible file imposed from outside that hinders the system files to work normally, resulting in a bootloop.

Thus, bootloop is a situation where the Android smartphones refuses to boot normally. There’s something wrong with the Android device, which is preventing it from completing the boot cycle and is stuck between the boot animation and the unlock screen. Bootloop is mainly caused when system files interfere with each other, causing instability, and crashes at the boot sequence.

While getting a bootloop on an Android phone is not a serious concern for an advanced user, it is surely enough to make a newbie or a noob tremble a little. Very often an average user begin to wonder if his phone is bricked or dead. In the present article I shall try to share with you some solutions that might help you recover your Android device from a bootloop.

Precautions to Avoid and Prevent Data Loss:

Bootloop is definitely one of the most undesirable situations a smartphone user can get into. It is shocking enough to make a new or basic user believe that he/she has bricked the device. It is true that in most cases you can recover your device to normal state but if you take precautionary steps, you could avoid it. Prevention is always better than the cure!

However, precautions cannot guarantee that you device is bootloop- proof. Therefore, it is also necessary that you always keep your phone’s data backed up. Remember, if your device gets into a bootloop, there are 90% chances that you will loose all your data, apps, settings and files stored on the internal SD of your device.

Things to be taken care of:

Before installing any stock or custom ROM, do not forget to confirm that it is made for your device and, more important, the same model number.

Before installing any custom Kernel, mod, patch or ROM, do not forget to backup your ROM. Also backup your phone’s apps, games, contacts, messages or any important data to an external storage-memory card, USB storage or your computer.

Avoid installing apps from outside Play Store and only those that are compatible with your device.

If your device is not rooted, you can use the official PC Suite from your device manufacturer.

Possible Reasons of a Bootloop on Android Device:

The reasons for getting a bootloop on your Android device might be anything. If you wish to know the reason why your Android phone is stuck on the bootloop, you need not type your problem on the Google search box. Just calm yourself for a while and think what you did just before. It could be anything! Here are some major reasons why your Android device is caught in a bootloop.

After installing an official or custom ROM

Flashing a wrong ROM or Kernel

Running an incompatible app or game

Wrong Permissions fix for an app or file

Installing a custom mod or theme

Most often we face a bootloop just after flashing a stock or custom ROM over an old one. This might be a major factor behind the bootloop issue on your device. Suppose you have flashed a new version of firmware over the old version. Your old data still remains on the device and the new firmware will use the Dalvik Cache from the old ROM that might not be compatible with the new system files and it will result in a bootloop. It mostly happen just when your device tries to reboot after you have flashed a stock or custom ROM. If this is the case, here is the solution.

If your device is on stock firmware, that also means it does not have a custom recovery like TWRP/CWM installed in it. Then do these steps:

1. Pull out the the battery of your phone, wait for about 30 seconds and reinsert it to its place.

2. Boot your device into ASR(Android System Recovery) mode. The method involves a hardware key combination and varies from one phone to another. For Samsung phones, for example, the key combination is Volume Up+Home + Power keys. The tablets which generally have no Home button, you can enter the Recovery mode bypressing and holding the Volume Up + Power keys simultaneously.

3. In the Android System Recovery, scroll down to “wipe cache partition” option using the volume rockers and select it using the power key.

4. When you have wiped the data/factory, go back to the main menu and reboot the device by “reboot system now” option.

5. If the device is still stuck on Boot animation pull out the battery again and repeat the above steps. This time also “wipe data/factory reset ” and then reboot device.

The bootloop problem should be fixed now.

If you have a rooted device with CWM recovery installed in it,and your phone is caught into a bootloop after flashing a custom ROM or mod, do as follows:

1. Pull out the battery, reinsert it after 30 seconds and boot the device into CWM Recovery: Volume Up+ Home + Power keys simultaneously.

2. Go to “Advanced”

3. Choose “Wipe dalvik-cache”

4. Now go to “Mounts & Storage”

5. Choose “Wipe/cache”

6. Reboot your phone

The bootloop should be gone now. If it still persists, do this.

1. Boot the phone again into CWM Recovery

2. Now go to “Mounts & Storage”

3. Choose “Wipe/data”

4. Choose “Wipe/cache”

5. Then reboot your phone.

Now the phone should reboot normally. Next time when you install a ROM, follow the instructions prescribed by the developer. Be more attentive to the warnings before experimenting with any third party ROM or mod. Always ensure what you are about to install is meant for your device.

If the Above Methods Do Not Work!

In case you are not able to get your device come out of bootloop, your final option should be to install or restore a previously backed up ROM by putting the device in recovery mode, or to install the official firmware/factory image to your phone your tablet.

Xposed Framework and Modules

Customization and flexibility lie at the core of Android and it is this potential that draws more and more people to it, making it the most loved platforms for mobile devices. I see Android as an assertion of freedom against some other major operating systems like iOS and Windows Phone. At the same time, it must be admitted that this liberty comes tagged with a check and can be experienced by only those who are adventurous in nature. An Android device in its maiden state is just a little better than devices from its opponents, but once rooted, its leaves all others far behind.

I do not mean that customization is not possible altogether on an unrooted phone or tablet. You can install 3rd party launchers and icon packs and decorate your home screens with a variety of widgets. However, the range of such type of personalization is limited to a certain level. By rooting your Android device, you get the key to unlock the whole next level of customization. If you have root access on your device, you can flash custom ROMs and mods to achieve not only true customization, but also improve its performance significantly not possible otherwise.

What is a Custom Framework?

In case you have a rooted device but you do not wish to install custom ROMs or mods, or a custom recovery is not available for it, there is yet another way of tasting the custom flavors of Android. And this can be done by installing a custom framework on your phone or tablet. All such frameworks modify the system.bin file replacing the original codes with those of the custom framework. The hacked system core then starts allowing changes imposed via custom modules. The best part of this whole business is that you can customize your device with stock firmware.

If you are not new to Android, you must have heard about some custom frameworks for Android like JKay, Xposed, 3Minit, etc. Developed by XDA member rovo89 is most popular of all its peers because of its potential and compatibility with almost all Android devices with Android 4.0 or above that house an ARM processor within them and are rooted.

How to Install Xposed Framework:

Download the latest Xposed Installer app. “Installing a custom framework” might sound a little geeky and complicated task to most new users. On the contrary, Xposed Framework can be installed very easily like a simple APK. All you have to do is to download the Xposed Installer app and install it on your device. Then open the app, select FRAMEWORK and tap on the “Install/Update” button. The app will ask you to grant

root permission, do it and wait for a while till you get an on-screen confirmation that the framework has been installed on your phone.

Now you have a custom base framework that can change the way you use your device with the help of compatible modules. Xposed Framework will not add any functionality to your device that can be used individually. Just search for Xposed modules and then you will be able to customize your device in various ways. The module files for the framework come as simple APK files and can be installed normally.

How to Install Xposed Framework Modules:

As I already mentioned above, it is the modules that let you customize your device and therefore, you will have to find and download the desired modules and install them separately on your device. Fortunately, the developer has now added the option to download modules right from the app’s interface. Open Xposed Installer and tap on “Download” option. You will now see a long list of available Xposed modules that can be downloaded. Just select the module you like and hit the Download button.

Besides the modules available in the app, you can find more at forums like XDA and others. After installing the modules, do not forget to select them in Xposed Installer. Launch the app, tap on “Modules” and check the newly installed module.

MultiROM:

MultiROM is one-of-a-kind multi-boot mod for Nexus 7. It can boot any Android ROM as well as other systems like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Active, Bohdi Linux or WebOS port.Besides booting from device's internal memory, MultiROM can boot from USB drive connected to the device via OTG cable. The main part of MultiROM is a boot manager, which appears every time your device starts and lets you choose ROM to boot. You can see how it looks on the left image below and in gallery. ROMs are installed and managed via modified TWRP recovery. You can use standard ZIP files to install secondary Android ROMs, daily prebuilt image files to install Ubuntu Touch and MultiROM even has its own installer system, which can be used to ship other Linux-based systems.

Features:

* Multiboot any number of Android ROMs

* Restore nandroid backup as secondary ROM

* Use for example Ubuntu Touch (will be there in future) or Desktop alongside with Android, without the need of device formatting.

Currently, it has been ported to many Android devices !

Brick:

The term "brick" usually refers to the stone, which means: "device can only be used as paper-weight". Taken literally, there's no way to "unbrick".

However, you also find terms like "hard-brick" and "soft-brick" used, which makes the term "brick" less absolute: A soft-brick is something you easily can recover from (count it as a "temporary paper-weight"), mostly by software-based solutions (e.g. re-flash your phone) -- while a "hard-brick" is rather meant in the way the original term points to.

Still, technically spoken, even a "hard-bricked" device could be "unbricked" -- but mostly this is more expensive then getting a new device.

As for the warranty declaration you quoted: For a normal user, it's almost impossible to (hard-) brick his device. Even when flashing a custom ROM, this can rarely happen, as there are many security-layers involved. Almost always you can boot your device into some fall-back mode where it is at least recognized by some "flashing software", so you could simply flash another/the original firmware back. Which means, the risk you are taking is to "soft-brick" your device. A "hard-brick" is quite unlikely with "normal operations" like rooting or flashing custom ROMs.

Brick is a much-hyped word that gets bandied about with-out understanding what it is.

There's two types of brick, hard and soft. Lets go through this to make the distinction clearer.

Hard this is where the handset will absolutely refuse to boot at the press of the power button. Diagnostics: Dead screen, no power. That is the symptom of a hard brick. Reason: This can happen by inadvertently pulling the cable when flashing a ROM or even an update via the handset's supporting software such as Samsung Kies, Sony's PC Companion Suite etc. That is the worst case, that is why in this scenario, always, make, sure that no cable gets pulled unless told so by the supporting software in question. The other way is this, flashing in that manner when the battery power is low. Hence for that reason, it is recommended to have at least 75% of battery power in place prior to doing the update in that fashion. Its known as hard-brick, and requires specialist cables and stripping the device down to the circuitary board to revive it via JTAG cables.

Soft - this can happen through a bad flashing of the ROM in which yields the following. Diagnostics: it has power when the power button is pressed, and/or, the screen comes on. Reason: It can be a user error on this part. For example, failing to clear/wipe the data/cache, can cause Android to go into a boot-loop because of the mis-matches with the Android's virtual machine and the apps installed, or more than likely, a corrupted dalvik cache. The other, is flashing a ROM that is not designated for the handset which can cause the kernel to go into a boot-loop. This is generally easier to fix, but hangs, that is known as a soft-brick.

Review the risks ! !

Customize your Android ;) :)

Hit thanks, if helped :good: