[Android General] Donphillipe:
Xposed still not working

I won't use a phone without these tools so at the moment I am still using my old Blu Studio with Android 5 that has the cracked screen and it is getting more and more cracked and harder to read. From time to time I pull my new unused BLU STUDIO XL 2 out of the closet and go a few more rounds with it. I've searched high and dry for the FlexorFliece fellow who claims to have it working and can't find him on any other blog or forum and he doesn't respond to messages but I just don't see how he got the Xposed suite working on this phone. I just spent three 14 hour days working on it as of today and got so frustrated that I reflashed the stock ROM on it and set it back in the closet again to try again another day, perhaps waiting like last time for a few more releases of the respective apps and modules to try again.

Now with several iterations of installing Xposed I've gotten the "green light" from Xposed Installer menu saying that it's installed and working and with the latest release which I think I recall is Magisk 17.1 and Xposed seamless SKD23 at release 89.3. This is actually quite funny that the light is green with Xposed Framework indicated as active from the Xposed Installer menu. You can then start searching for and downloading modules from the Xposed Manager and eventually the "green light" will go red while none of the Xposed modules will ever work, green or red light. At least the red light finally gives you a real indication.

I've loaded versions of Magisk all the way back to V14 and Xposed seamless (SDK23) back to 87.3 and the results are always the same. I'm either in a boot loop on a bad try or on a good try I'm showing the green light on Xposed but with no module working and reaching a threshold of about 6 Xposed modules loaded, then the light finally turns to a red one saying it's not installed or working.

I tried Flex or Fleece's technique of adding the Magisk version (from its repository of Magisk modules), the busybox and the ADB/Flashboot modules as a prerequisite but that didn't do a thing.

Now here's some odd things about this phone and even getting it to a good point to experiment with it.

I've found if I start with a fresh flash of the stock ROM or the phone in any condition without USB Debugging on, for example if I start with a powered down phone and hold the VOL-UP and POWER button at the same time, I can go to the stock recovery to select boot to bootloader option. (Release the POWER button slightly before the VOL UP or you'll boot the phone instead.)

Next I move to the PC and begin fastboot commands:

- get the ADB command window up by bringing up Windows file explorer with the name of the ADB folder visible and while holding SHIFT I then right click on the ADB folder and select "Open command window here" which opens a "DOS prompt" with the adb files in the directory. It's assumed I have pre-copied the new recovery image recovery-TWRP-3.1.1-Vampirefo-studio-xl-2.img to the same directory (folder) as hosts the adb.exe and fastboot.exe. Here I go back up to Windows File Explorer open the folder containing ADB/fastboot and rename this image to a shorter name. (Could use the DOS rename command but the syntax is too long and too easy to make a mistake.) Here I have renamed it to simply recoveryTWRP.img

Now then on the PC command window I enter ....

fastboot devices (to check that my USB is working OK)

fastboot oem unlock (to unlock the bootloader)

fastboot flash recovery recoveryTWRP.img (recovery-TWRP-3.1.1-Vampirefo-studio-xl-2.img that's been renamed)

fastboot reboot (to reboot the phone)

The phone may not boot after a flash or after and adb/fastboot interaction if the USB cable is not unplugged when done, so be aware of that.

Now if you are fast, you can go ahead and hold VOL UP at the moment the phone begins to boot and at the moment you have completed the fastboot series of commands. As soon as you see the TWRP recover manager you can release the VOL UP and be patient while the TWRP Menu appears.

Note now that you won't be able to use the SD card you may have randomly installedwith TWRP unless you have initialized it via Settings on the phone where you have under Storage option, set the SD card type to be "portable storage". If it's not formated and initialized by this phone, TWRP won't let you select it.

Quirks seen here include a failed install with unable to mount errors on the TWRP console trying to root, that is unless you have actually initialized the phone and set on Developer Tools and turned on USB debugging. (Sounds crazy but that's what I am seeing.) So basically that's what you'll find. ALso this verion of TWRP on this phone will not mount USB storage as with TWRP on other BLU devices I've tested, so copy all l your potential zip files to install as well as your apks you plan to side load (e.g. Xposed Installer and Magisk Installer apk files to the SD card prior to loading TWRP and finding that the files are not on the card or in the phone storage yet.

Other caveats are, with USB debugging off, each time you plug in the USB cable and want to upload files to the phone, when you go looking for the files in Windows device manager you will see a blank white screen appearing like there are no files on the deivce. What you have to do is slide the phone messages up and down a few times (perhaps dragging down from the top if it's not on the main screen) and finally the small window will appear on the phone where it asks for USB Charging only which you can tap and change it to USB Media and at that point you can see the SD card and Internal Storage for the phone in the respective Pc window where you can drag files into the phone's folders from the Windows PC. Otherwise with the phone having USB Debugging on you are supposed to be able to set it permanently to USB Media but you actually can't set it permanently. If you do research you will see online articles claiming that with Developer Options enabled and USB Debugging on, that setting the option just above the green "input" word on the Developer options screen allows you to set USB Charging to USB Media and it should stay permanently. Well stay it does on the menu but the function itself does not stay. Here each time you plug the phone in with the USB cable you will be curious why you cannot access the phone's storage because you believe the menu in Developer options that says it has been set to USB Media. Yes, it shows that way but you still can't see the storage on the PC. What you have to do each time you attache the phone with a USB cable then is go to Developer Options (shortcut would be to click on the info bar stating USB Debugging is enabled and when you arrive at Developer options, page down to just above the green "input" word and then temporarily set the option from USB Media to one of the other options, then set it back again to USB Media and you once again can see the phone's storage on your Windows computer.

And all this work and dealing with quirks is required before you even try to root by using SU or Magisk zip files and attempting to install then via the new TWRP recovery image you installed and gain access to by rebooting and holding in the VOL UP button to access the TWRP menu.

Otherwise the best performing ROM I have found is BLU_S0270UU_V6.0.04.02_GENERIC but when I went looking for it just now, the only place I can find it is now with the new toll-booth controlled need.rom repository. Yes I now see that needrom.com has now started charging to download the zip recovery modules we all uploaded there for free. What a sneaky bunch of #$#R)!!! Also, the spamming of Google has made searching for ROMs and any information about rooting a phone all but worthless. For example when I searched for BLU_S0270UU_V6.0.04.02_GENERIC which I believe is the latest ROM. I know there is a V8 floating around out there that I loaded but just in setting it up, the layout of the screen first went crazy and then the wireless log-in gave problems and then and finally the turning point was that the camera or video wouldn't work, so I gave up that version of the ROM. Anyway, searching for the ROM resulted in 5 full pages of search results with every website on every page saying they had the rom to download but in fact none of them did. I got directed from everything from purchasing female teen clothes, to sports gambling sites to unending surveys to you name it. What a vast wasteland it is out there these days. Unless Google does something to stop this technique where every website says they have a hit on your phone model when all they do is to stuff your search argument into a page of generic randomly generic diatribe, one day we will no longer be able to use the Internet to find things, or certainly it will take more time while weeding through all the disinformation.

Now