yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cougar214:
That's the best part. I forgot to mention that one! I DID tell them all of this and then asked to speak to her manager. Another "I can barely speak English" rep comes on the line and even she is arguing with me that we voided the warranty because we removed the battery that is non removable! I was so pissed at this little scam I told them to F^&K off and hung up on them. That's when we came home and I reset the phone to factory. Oh and I also removed their little piece of sticky tape under their "non removable battery"......lol. But to answer your question, no, there is NOTHING on the phone OR in the reading material that points to a non removable battery. Not even the sales rep that set up the phone made any mention of it. In fact, their phone came in a box with two packages, one with the phone in it and the other with the battery in it. This manager rep proceeds to tell me I can find this info somewhere on their website for the phone! SO, as yo can clearly see, this IS a scam by Virgin Mobile to get even more money out of poor people.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
If you have all this logged you should save it and report it. Maybe the Better Business Bureau should know about it, since I don't know where else it would go. Perhaps the FTC. Either way this is a scum move and should be known since this has potentially far reaching implications
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cougar214:
I have none of it logged. All I have is my and my wife's word as to what was said on this phone call to their customer service line. I could put in a complaint with the BBB, but if too many people are just taking the hit, because it is just $5 bucks, and not enough complaints the BBB won't investigate. I do know the garbage nature of this phone they are handing out is all over YouTube so I'm sure eventually Virgin Mobile will come into someone's crosshairs. The only reason we got this phone is because we have one cell phone and no home phone. So we needed a phone at home with grandma so should something happen to one of the kids while mom and I were out, grandma could call us and 911 if necessary. I will be looking into other options because I do know there are more out there.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
This is a pain because of how sprint/virgin is. If you had a GSM carrier like T-Mobile I'd recommend BLU phones since they're insanely cheap at best buy (feature phones for 911 or other calling are like $20, plus insane battery life compared to smartphones) but they aren't compatible with Sprint's CDMA. Unless maybe their 2G network runs on GSM, in that case a flip phone would probably work alright. Call them up and ask them about their 2G network, see if its GSM compatible or not
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cougar214:
I'm not locked to sprint( this piece of crap UL40 is but not my main cell). Our main cell is on Straight talk. I was looking into those Blu phones. They do look pretty nice for the features they have. I am avoiding getting a basic flip phone because 1, they're getting harder and harder to get and 2, a "smart phone" is easier to set up for one click emergency calls. I just put a new shortcut to my main cell and 911 on the home screen and poof, my mom or one of the kids need only hit a big icon on the screen to call us or 911. But I think the real issue with this UL40 is the OS. This phone is a cheap 1 ghz/1 gb ram phone and they put Android 7.0 on it. These lower specs cannot handle this OS.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
Around black Friday this year Best Buy had an unlocked BLU phone running Oreo for $40 unlocked. I think it was called the C40. It isn't sprint compatible but it should work with straight talk. I think it basically had basically the same specs as the UL40 but it comes running with Android Go, so performance should be noticeably better. And on top of this, I BELIEVE (pretty sure but not positive) since it is an unlocked BLU phone it *SHOULD* have an unlockable bootloader and should be relatively easy to root. And as we all know, root = less bloat = better battery and performance. Perhaps this is an option for you guys if you really want a smartphone

EDIT: Got it right here. Open box should land you right at $40 full price. Comes with android Oreo GO edition so slightly more optimized for low end crappy phones, and since it ships with oreo it has to run project treble so perhaps GO ROMs will work if the bootloader is unlockable

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/blu-c4...-phone-unlocked-black/6287901.p?skuId=6287901
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cougar214:
That's a nice little phone. I'll have to look into it. As for unlocked bootloaders, this is why I like T-Mobile phones. T-Mobile doesn't lock down their bootloaders nor do they lock down their 4G tethering. My main cell is T-Mobile and even being on Straight Talk with it I can still tether. Which is a nice thing to be able to do when my toddler has the Kindle in the car and is being cranky. I can tether my phone to it and he can watch mickey mouse videos or something to quiet him down. But I think what I'm going to do is after Christmas we are gonna take any and all Christmas money we get from relatives and put it towards another phone. I'm thinking used off E-Bay as I have had great success with E-bay used phones in the past.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
Yeah 40$ root for a 5$ phone lol
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
Trying root thru Dr.fone I came along a cracked version... it's currently at 67% and no prob.. I'll post an update if it works or not.

---------- Post added at 03:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:26 PM ----------

Tried uni Android tool 9.0.1 no luck btw......:mad:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
96% fingers crossed...:fingers-crossed:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
No go....:(
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
I was able to back up the build.prop for the ans ul40!!! Anyone know how to use it to some how either gain access to the boot.img and or root permissions??? Was using UNI Android tool 9.0.1 :p
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
UPDATE!!!!! I was able to unlock the bootloader using Uni Android Tool 9.0.1 proof...in the pic!!!!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
For those disbelievers
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
The process... For unlocking the bootloader.. first u need uni Android tool 9.0.1.. And up I'm assuming.. After enabling usb debugging open the Android section. In there you will find rebooting options,select that option in there u will need to tick "adb reboot edl" or ... In cmd/powershell run "adb reboot edl. Once your in edl mode go back to the left and select Qualcomm. In there you'll find a section called bootloader. Select it. Make sure your device is recognized in Port settings. From there select internal loaders and tick "msm 8909”. Then click unlock bootloader. And your done..

---------- Post added at 12:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:52 AM ----------

I was also able to extract efs and build.prop.. idk if it's possible to extract a boot.img.. looking into it

---------- Post added at 01:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:54 AM ----------

Hey bro was able to unlock the bootloader among other things.. any chance you could extract the boot.img and send it to me.. I'm trying to create a free root.

---------- Post added at 12:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:07 AM ----------

I mean who in their right mind would spend 40$ on a root?For a phone that literally is 25 bucks on the best day of its life!!!!!! Then again.... all the time I spent on figuring it out.......Priceless;)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
Check your PMs, if you'd like I can work with you to get recovery/root on this thing (if its legit and the program actually did unlock it)

You can either reach me through my google hangouts email that I sent you, or I've just established a chat on telegram to facilitate easy sending of boot images/recovery images/other large files that would be difficult to directly share through XDA

MOD EDIT: LINK REMOVED
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Matthew702:
Fasho.. tho only reason I believe it actually worked. Is cause when I went to unlock it again.. it stated it was already unlocked... ?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] 5ubtle:
Thank you jasonmerc

Thank you jasonmerc for trying to help the poor souls over at community.virginmobileusa with this ANS UL40 phone. Your posts have, however, been deleted.

I would like to link the community.virginmobileusa thread here, but I have too few posts here at XDA to post links.

The mods at the VM forum will repeatedly delete any post which contains instructions to root their phones. You are not the first to post such there. The only reason that I know what you posted is because I have a subscription to that VM thread, and I get a notification email which contains the reply contents when a reply is posted. The notification email goes out immediately after a reply is posted (before a mod can delete the post).

Another interesting read is how a woman was almost killed, in part because an ANS UL50 would not operate:

I would like to link the community.virginmobileusa thread here, but I have too few posts here at XDA to post links. Look for a thread titled "UL50 is worse than the UL40", in the "Android Devices" forum.

I made a reply to that thread, and my reply was deleted.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
I tried linking the telegram group and they deleted both of my replies. What a bunch of wimps. If you can, since you came from that VM board, try spreading the word yourself in a discrete manner that won't get you deleted or banned.

And its no problem at all. When I hear about things like adware, and potentially spyware, being put on a phone that's given out to disadvantaged individuals who are lower income en-masse, I wanted to see if I could step in and do something about it. Especially when Virgin Mobile, Assurance Wireless, etc. don't want to address their own problem. THEIR OWN PHONE HAS MALWARE AND THEY REFUSE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

I think at this point its only fair that they let us discuss rooting the thing, considering the malware mentioned above that they refuse to fix themselves. Oh and also, don't even try contacting ANS, the one and only email they link on their website doesn't work

EDIT: Holy crap there's a UL50 now? Put me in contact with someone who has one, I gotta know about this piece of junk ? maybe we can unlock it the same way that was mentioned before
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sukihelps:
jasonmerc, I too want to thank you for your selfless help to all sufferers of ANS UL40 ANXIETY SYNDROME...and I also tried to find your post at VM to thank you, and couldn't...didn't know it is their policy to delete posts related to rooting...seems downright malicious, doesn't it? Especially when so many of their customers/victims are elderly and in poor health and dependable access to medical help is critical...so thanks again, I look forward to reading more of your posts, and I'll try to sneak in more links at VM. Sincerely, "Suki" (my username at VM) :)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
Sneak in whatever you can please. They refuse to fix this problem, so we'll give it our best shot. I can't guarantee we will come up with a solution to this, but I feel like we're very close and the chances are looking pretty good that this will work. Regardless though, spread the word far and wide.

If you want to help us test some things (or anyone else who's reading this) please join the telegram group above. We want to use that because it's easier for us to quickly share prototypes/test builds of whatever we want to test out. Of course, when everything's finalized we will post the final instructions/files back on here though
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] azuremoonbeam:
will you keep us without telegram in the loop if something comes of this?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
As of now there is nothing to say, other than we have successfully unlocked the bootloader on someone else's UL40. At this point I am trying to pull the boot and recovery images to make a dirty TWRP port. This is proving to be easier said than done though, without root privileges and a proper recovery to boot to pulling images is kinda tricky and we need to find a way to do it with what we have
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] the Doctor:
Per the forum rules, you may not use XDA to direct our users to your social media accounts:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tailstwilight:
Discord or add me to Telegram

Can someone add me to the Telegram or make a Discord Server for this???
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kalynn101577:
They lied to u

Ummm, they didn't stop sending this phone out cuz I literally got the same effed up phone TODAY!! Now I'm trippin cuz this phone ain't gona work, I mean idc if it looks generic so long as it friggin works but from the reading I've done it surely doesn't... Does any1 know of any tips or tricks to make this phone run properly, or better?

---------- Post added at 04:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:27 AM ----------

How do you get the stock firmware?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
Unfortunately getting stock firmware is difficult. While a bootloader unlock was found, that doesn't help us in this regard. That means you'd be able to flash a modded boot image to get Magisk working, but in order to get a stock boot image to mod we need root access... But we can't get root access without a modded boot image... But we can't pull a boot image to mod unless we have root access... As you can see its a never ending cycle here

The other option is to read partitions from the phone in EDL mode but that requires very special software I don't have the knowledge to operate or money to purchase

So if any of you were wondering why we went quiet after finding the bootloader unlock method before, this is why. We seemed to have hit a brick wall as of now and have no new ideas or progress to report for now
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kalynn101577:
???

I don't understand how they r deleting posts on a public forum??? Don't we have, like, free speech in the constitution? IV read through every post in this forum and the whole thing makes me sick... Sprint, virgin mobile, mods, malware, al40... The whole effing thing is a scam it seems under the guise of helping low income individuals participating in a GOVERNMENT FUNDED program. It's not right, and there seems like no way out of the pit.

But the point to this reply was really to ask if yall trying to get in touch outside of this forum y not private message each other with yr email, yr fb, yr phone num, or any other info to communicate that u Wana give? I'm assuming mods cant delete pm's? Or like the girl said she gets the reply in her email B4 they delete it, well reply to 1 of the ppl yr wana talk to n then they'll get it in their email it won't matter what the mods do? Or am I totally missing something?

---------- Post added at 05:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:03 AM ----------

How much is software? Post that n what it's called n u nvr know some1 might buy it for u...
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
We used to have a telegram group going but I've since left that because everyone else went inactive. Not blaming them or anything, after all we pretty much ran out of ideas at this point anyway.

And I've recently run across someone else that's knowledgeable with that "special software" who helped us out for a different phone. I sent him a message about this phone here, waiting for a reply. If someone like him were able to pull a boot or recovery image from this phone for me, I could have either a Magisk rooted boot image or a dirty-ported TWRP image up on here for you guys pretty quickly. Then of course with root privileges you could deboat till your hearts content and make the phone semi usable. Or you could block that Chinese adware they found on it too...

Of course that's assuming this phone's fastboot mode actually allows you to flash images when the bootloader is unlocked. I think I remember having trouble with that before but if/when the time comes we'll have to see
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
I wonder if a boot image can be extracted from a QPST backup. I'll try it when I get the time.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
This sounds similar to what I was told privately by someone else I know. Please let me know if it works, if we can get a boot image out (and the patched for root) we can do a whole lot more with this thing
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ₥ike_grips:
another friend, another fone..

wow, this topic has more deleted posts than Hillary Clinton's email servers.

friend broke his ifone 9 or whatever. he gets this ul40 from obama. I'm interested because I've never seen a ANS fone. and its 7.1.1. ? i get time with it off and on as he plays games and such.

fastboot commands FAIL in 0 sec or less or hang

(fastboot reboot Completed succassfully but didn't actually reboot to OS)

no vars found yet.

adb device name is 494

adb installer v3.0 said it was a qualcom device

yeah, very limited info rn only played for a minute or two. but i took a funny pic of MU util.hiddenreciver blah

fyi cyanomod file man is freeware. and assurion just used it. this is better than Trackfone usa not including a user file man for the lg fuel l34c

will get yins a boot.img or a dump of the dev/block/

partitions asaic .

* cic customer name, namespace, Device maker

cicqa , cicqa , GOOGLE, GALAXY NEXUS ?

cic hostname was blank . it's now cicqa

what do cic stand for?

can UL40 has root?

why fastboots lie?

and many more, next time..
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
I've tried putting it into EDL mode, but it doesn't seem to work properly.

Via the Qualcomm tool, it reboots into system, and via ADB, windows treats it as an unknown device despite me having the Qualcomm drivers.

I'll try again later via Ubuntu.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
If you use a tool called UAT, that can put it into EDL mode. If you read back you'll see someone mentioning a bootloader unlock they did that supposedly worked--this was done via EDL mode in that UAT toolkit I mentioned. I say supposedly because we haven't actually made any images to flash and test it yet, but according to the toolkit it said it was able to unlock it all. Go back to his posts, I believe he should have instructions and stuff there for doing it
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
Attempting to put it into EDL mode via Ubuntu also yielded no results. I disassembled it to see if I could find anything, but it seems it is a one-off phone. I searched the product number that's on the board (which also happens to be on practically every other part of the phone including the backplate), and found something that may help us.

https://fccid.io/2ALZM-UL40/RF-Exposure-Info/Test-Report-SAR-Part-1-3408437

According to this, the company that made it is "Great Talent Technology Limited". Good luck finding them though.

Edit: Did a little further digging, and it seems that "Great Talent Technology Limited" is a red herring. It's made by Unimaxcomm (aka UMX), a subsidiary of Jinlong Electrical and Mechanical Co., Ltd.

http://www.unimaxcomm.com/en/S701.html

Also, from their "company profile" page: "...Unimaxcomm has a strong combat team..."

I'm gonna get corporately assassinated, aren't I?

Just checked their technical support page. I don't know what I expected:

[IMG="Error 404: Technical Support not found"]http://i.imgur.com/YiiPwKV.jpg[/IMG]
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
FCC documents show that they're making an L51 soon.

---------- Post added at 11:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 AM ----------

Looking around Unimaxcom's site, they don't appear to have an email address listed.

Requesting source code by mail is going to be pretty slow, and the experience over the phone isn't going to be very great either (assuming any of us can call internationally in first place).

That only leaves the contact email used for the FCC documents, which I'm pretty sure isn't supposed to be used for things such as requests for source code.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
Why am I not at all surprised it's some unknown company with absolutely no hope of getting any source whatsoever

Our only hope at this point is just root access for people, at least they'd be able to debloat the thing and block any adware. Even then though we'd still need to pull a boot or recovery image to modify, which it sounds like you tried to do but didn't work out too well. If you ever have better luck with that though let me know
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
It's possible that I may have better luck after unlocking the bootloader. For now, I've sent an email to the one address I did find, and we'll see where that leads.

If I can't get the kernel source that way, I'll report them for their GPL violation. They probably won't care, but it couldn't hurt.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jessefivey:
hey i made an account to follow this thread. i live in detroit and i see people in public using the UL40 or L50 every single day. seems like the current go-to for lifeline providers, which is concerning to me because it ships with malware/adware and possibly a backdoor to install more periodically, based on my experience. the security implications of some company (assurance? "ans"? the manufacturer?) having a botnet of free cell phones is pretty upsetting.

i have the UL40 and the L50 currently, though the L50 is a replacement and assurance is waiting on me to send one of them back. both shipped with adware and redirect my browser to ad popups whenever i open it, and additionally give me full-screen popups sometimes regardless of what app i have open. this is after disabling all the obvious and not-so-obvious malware apps that the system lets me disable, so i assume there is also something malicious built into the firmware.

i don't know the first thing about rooting phones but this phone makes me want to learn because it's so frustrating to use. i've read the thread and realize it might be hopeless for this phone, but if anyone figures anything out at all i think it could help a lot of people.

alternatively, if anyone knows a lifeline provider to switch to who uses a phone that has a known root, i'd love to hear that info!

EDIT: does anyone know if there's a connection between the LG L50 and the ANS L50? Superficially they do look similar; is it possible that there's a root for the LG that's compatible with the ANS?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
Safelink uses refurbished phones that may be a little older, but much better, and without the adware.

As for the L50, I'll look into it but it's unlikely. As for root, most rooting is done via Magisk, for which we need the boot image.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jasonmerc:
The L50 from LG isn't related at all, it was released in 2014 and has different hardware in it entirely (Mediatek instead of qcom) not to mention older android as well. Seems like our only option for root is pulling a boot image, and apparently that's not possible with our current toolset we have access to here (I don't have the phone myself so I'm just following guys like zoomer who say they're working on it)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zoomer296:
I've found a website for American Network Solutions that isn't completely useless. For some reason, it isn't indexed on google:

http://www.americannetworksolutions.com

From their website:

"We are the bridge between American and Foreign companies. (When did china become the spirit world?) We assist American companies to find suitable markets to export their products, and assists foreign companies with importing their products. We are instrumental in obtaining funding through private investors, researching for local, state or federal grants, and securing government opportunities."