[Dash 3G, Snap General] luptonma:
Bricked by password utility

Maybe this deserves it's own thread but I may have found a way to brick an HTC Ozone by setting and removing the password.

I got the phone 4 days ago and after messing around with the installed applications and finding some of them lacking I looked at alternatives. First I installed a version of Keypass for WinMo6.1 smartphones (the beta version since the older version doesn't support smart phones) and the basic functionality seems to work fine. Then I then I tried to install Opera Mini but there appears to be no JVM on this phone so the install file was not recognized by Windows. Then I tried UCWEB and ended up uninstalling it after a few frustrating moments trying to get it to open any page other than the UCWEB home page. So I removed UCWEB and installed Skyfire. Unfortunately I didn't install the latest version and foolishly clicked on the update button when Skyfire started up. The update feature appears to be broken and it leaves you with a Skyfire that won't run and won't uninstall. After a few hours searching for solutions and trying various options I gave up and did a hard reset from the OS. This appeared to work fine and since it was late I went to bed. I should mention that all of the 3rd party apps were installed to a 2GB micro SD card and that I took the card and SIM out when I did the hard reset.

The next day when I powered up the phone I got a screen with colored bars, which I remember reading was a boot loader screen. The phone had appeared to reset properly the night before but I didn't do more than scroll through the home screen before powering it off with the end button. From the boot loader screen I had to pull the battery to shut down but when I powered it up again things seemed fine. I installed the Google maps application (highly recommended), downloaded and installed latest version of Skyfire and installed the Google search application and everything seemed to be fine. I decided that I should try out the password lock feature and set an eight character alphanumeric password with two special characters and two capital letters. I used it for the rest of the day to surf the web, send some texts and plot driving paths with Google maps. I found the password lock a bit annoying but never had a problem unlocking after the device went into standby or after I shut it down. That night I downloaded a couple of largish (150 MB or so) MP3 audiobooks from netlibrary.com but couldn't play them with the included Windows Media Player. Despite having MP3 extensions WMP wouldn't open them and clicking WMP from the start menu appeared to do nothing. Then I tried to re install Keypass and got an insufficient memory message. I deleted some photos and a short video I'd taken with the phone software and did a soft reset (power cycle) but no joy. Unable to play my MP3 files or install keypass and getting the occasional memory warning I decided a hard reset was in order but waited until the next day.

The next morning, after the phone had charged all night, I decided to remove the annoying password lock and then shut down and restarted the phone in order to verify that the problems I'd had the previous day still existed. I navigated to the Security settings and unchecked the box about password protection then powered off the phone. When it came on again it asked for a password. Annoyed, I hit the soft key under the "UNLOCK" notification and keyed in the password I thought I had just disabled and got a screen that said "Alert The password you typed is incorrect." I'd seen this a few times before since my thumbs are not optimally sized for the keyboard so I entered the password a few more times taking care to get it exactly right. It seems that my password has been removed but the requirement to enter a password has not. I tried a blank password but it won't take one it just reiterates the UNLOCK prompt. I have the password written down, it's also a variation of one I've used a lot in the past, and I'd used it successfully dozens of times the previous day so the likelihood of my having "forgotten" it is pretty low. I called Verizon and after they suggested entering a blank password I tried again and reported the failure. Their only suggestion was a visit to a Verizon store to "re flash" the phone which I assume means reload the ROM image.

I found the hard reset suggestion below and tried it. I assume the DOWN key is the bottom D-Pad key and the SEND key is the green bracket key with the microphone icon to the left of the D-Pad. I tried holding the DOWN and SEND keys and hitting the power key until the HTC logo came up and the phone buzzed briefly and I tried holding the keys down until the phone booted to the UNLOCK screen but nothing changed the boot sequence. So I guess my phone is bricked and I'm on my way to the Verizon store shortly to see what they can do. I also noticed that the phone occasionally emits beeps for no apparent reason at random times while entering the unlock password. Also, there is an Alert message behind the UNLOCK icon that says "Alert There is not enough free space to download message. Please free up some space". I wonder if in my efforts to download a few hundred megabytes of MP3 files (audio books) I managed to clog the memory and that I can't unlock the phone because there is a memory logjam of some sort. While downloading the MP3 files I did have to kill Internet Explorer from the task manager a couple of times as it seemed like the download had hung and I couldn't find the downloaded file anywhere on the storage card or in system memory. I haven't installed anything to system memory and with a 2GB card I don't think I've come anywhere close to filling it up. I had about 500 MB in files on the SD card at one point but I deleted the extra install files and some other stuff I'd downloaded. When I put the SD card in a USB reader hooked to the PC I see 378 MB of files with 1.46 GB of free space.

I'm pretty convinced that the OS is buggy (it is Windows after all) and that I need to avoid the password utility and downloading large files until I figure out what the safe combinations of activities are.

Assuming they can resurrect the phone or give me a new one I'll try to set and clear my password at the store and see if that reproduces the problem.

Meanwhile I'd be interested in any sort of hardware based hard reset procedure that works with the Ozone since holding the green SEND button and Down D-Pad key while powering up does not work in this situation. Perhaps the fact that I can't power down and I have to remove the battery to shut the thing off is a problem but I would expect a hardware reset to work no matter what the state of the software is, even if the memory system were full of garbage. I guess designers have gotten away from dedicated reset buttons but software based hard reset mechanisms seem doomed to failure of the sort I am experiencing.

I'll report back my experience at the Verizon store when I get back. I suspect they won't be able to do much other than give me a new phone since I can't get the Active Sync software to even talk to the phone in this state. Maybe they have a lower level software tool to unbrick me; we'll see.

Max L.