yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Epic 4G General] ragnarokx:
I suppose we won't be seeing you around here anymore then - see you on the flip side, and good luck with stock =P
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
No, I was getting a specific pop-up with INTERNAL ERROR or UNKNOWN ERROR.

I would still be careful. ODIN'ing back to DI18 in MY case did NOT fix it.
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
Did u odin your phone back to di18 md5 tar or just flash through cl0ckwork?
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
Very true, but until this point, I had NEVER had a phone go into a truly unrecoverable state that would need the manufacturer to fix it.
[Epic 4G General] jayh214:
That's right, all u gotta do is report it stolen/missing pay $100 and theyll send u a new phone NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Sell the other phone on craigslist for parts for $100 to get your money back
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
ODIN from the DI18 STOCK tar.
[Epic 4G General] spf2722:
What the hell?
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I didn't want to spend the $100. In this case I got an understanding manager and all will be fine on Wednesday when the new one gets here.
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
Thanks for the concern but ive never heard this happening and also on the tv a droid2 blew up in someones ear does that mean never use a smart phone or always worry. Maybe it was a hardware issue or a software problem specific to that epic.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I'll be around, just not rooted :)
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
Except whoever buys the phone can only activate it on cricket or metro never on sprint again.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
The manager had seen it on other phones as well. This is the first time I've seen it, but can believe that some of the leaks or other S/W can change things in low-level NVRAM that we don't know or understand, and can NOT fix ourselves.

I'm just trying to warn folks, and show that it IS possible to get into this state.
[Epic 4G General] jayh214:
Or they can use it for parts
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
I had a blown speaker on my epic that was rooted and they ordered me a new one and asked me how I could help them root their phone lol
[Epic 4G General] BeerChameleon:
All three of my update options just keep loading like this
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
What rom is that is that 2.1?
[Epic 4G General] BeerChameleon:
Cool!!! if i worked at sprint i would want to root my phone too if i didnt know how and i would ask them in return for a new epic...

Also my sprint people over here dont even know anything about developing or anything everyone has a damn blackberry! Some of them dont even know what hotspot or internet sharing is.
[Epic 4G General] BeerChameleon:
ya 2.1 why do u ask?
[Epic 4G General] Alcon1198:
Wow, I wouldnt sell it .I would learn off of it, First i would do some real intence reading , get the phone working again .then learn more and start porting gingerbread to it or whatever comes out next, The phone will be pretty good for testing.
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
Looks cool
[Epic 4G General] BeerChameleon:
Thank u its stock rom with emotionless beast theme, mobile ap and noonls kernal. as said to and linked to in my signature.
[Epic 4G General] SubnetMask:
From what little I know of these phones and other android devices, I find it hard to believe that rooting the phone or applying the DK17 or DK28 updates would cause this problem with no way for you to fix it. Heck, even an iPod can be recovered if the FW gets totally borked provided there's no hardware problem. As far as I know (maybe I'm wrong), when you flash a phone with ODIN, you completely erase the entire flash, so no trace of the mod should remain within the "normal" flash (doesn't mean there isn't some other small flash chip that can retain some history of what has been flashed to the phone). How else could they develop new software for the phones without using the EXACT same thing they're going to deploy it to? If you develop SW for a "special" device, the possibility exists that it won't work as intended for "normal" devices. My guess is either there was something else wrong with the phone to begin with (one of my friends that has an Epic had to take his first one back due to bad home/back/menu/search buttons and said that one in five Epics have something wrong; maybe part of the flash ship had a mfg defect that made part of it "weak"?), or something hardware went bad.

I have more experience with tuning diesel trucks, and the newer Duramax engine controllers DO log the last 10 calibration flashes made to the controller, but tuning them won't make them commit suicide. Likewise, I could belive the android phones can somehow log what's been flashed to them, but I doubt they'll commit suicide from using "non-official" builds.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
Yes, it's possible the phone had other issues, BUT Sprint CAN tell if it's EVER been rooted. It's data that's sent to the network (what version, etc).

For me, I'm staying stock from now on (per my agreement with the manager). If STOCK stuff causes this (possible, I guess), they'll replace it under TEP.

I posted this as a warning. I'm not saying don't root, just be aware that this CAN happen to you as well.
[Epic 4G General] kenvan19:
The sprint guys at my store mostly have epics but recently when I asked them if they had heard anything about the 2.2 update they told me that as far as they knew no such update was coming. Sprint store fail.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
Samsung's Twitter account (@GalaxySsupport) has been saying all along that we'll get 2.2 by the end of THIS year.

I'd be very surprised if that didn't happen. That also means they have until 23:59:59 31 Dec 2010 to get it to all the phones.

I'm gonna be patient with it.
[Epic 4G General] flopez76:
Haha that happened in my city.

And well I'm a risk taker so I'll take a chance with this
[Epic 4G General] Cam3ron1:
The sprint people in the store can not access the information to findout if uve ever been rooted and these things are not logged ur trippin ur not breaking any laws dont be so scared lol.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
They can call a department and find out. Do write Joe if you don't believe me.
[Epic 4G General] KL4V1CL3:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=8568701

I've had this problem for quite a while now, still hoping a fix will come out.
[Epic 4G General] kenvan19:
I think the point was more that unless there was something that looked seriously suspicious would they do that for every instance? My fiancee's Instinct got replaced after the guy played with the keyboard for about 30 seconds (horrible touchscreen accuracy) without ever checking to see if there had been any damage to it.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I think in a case like mind where even a factory wipe didn't bring it back they might.
[Epic 4G General] angelo2k8:
I have the same problem. I went back to stock using odin so many times and tried the whole airplane mode thing but nothing works. I was thinking about taking it back and giving them some b.s. story but I'm just too lazy.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
I worked for a sprint store for 5 years.

That guy is full of ****. If you go into a sprint store and describe your problem to a rep. 97% of the time the rep will just replace it. We were never trained nor told to look for root. 99% of reps would blank stare if you told them you rooted it or say oh well that is probably what broke it.

If the phone looks stock reps are not going to take the time too see if it is rooted and jut replace it.
[Epic 4G General] y2bangali:
The bottom line is there is always a chance of something messing up with unofficial things.. small or huge chance it doesnt matter.. you knowingly TAKE the RISK..
[Epic 4G General] kenvan19:
Good point. My guess is it would honestly come down to the judgement of the rep. Someone who looks like a person who would root would get called on and someone like my girl would not because she doesn't know an Android root from the ones in our backyard and she looks like it.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
Haha welcome to xda?????? Are you kidding me?? Everyone should know this by now...
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
Depends on the rep/mgr. I have a knowlegable manager, and live in a very high-tech town (Austin, TX). I also have high personal integrity and explained to him what happened. If I hadn't been honest he would have told me to pound sand and voided.everything.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
Hahahaha what a liar!!!! No such number or department.

When I was a rep for 5 years I even sent back phones fully rooted and themed just to get a fresh one... no one at sprint cares if your phone is rooted unless you tell them and give them a reason.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
If you wouldn't have told him he would have said hmmm... dunno never seen that before. Did you drop it in water?

Believe me the managers at sprint are cookie cutter ego douches.

They will lie and talk themselves up saying they know everything and have all these departments they can call. Its all bull****.
[Epic 4G General] mmcgrat6:
This thread is the hands down winner for both the "captain obvious" and "redundancy repeater" awards for the year. While this comment might read unnecessarily snarky at first, it must be stated because no one has mentioned the more likely reality. Specifically, this post has everything but Sprint branding attached to it and reads like a hamfisted attempt to control through paternal fear mongering.

Everyone who uses the resources generously made available by and for this community knows there are risks involved - ie a f*'d up beyond any repair (FUBAR) handset. The cautionary notes about TEP and "big brother will know what you did last summer" might work for juvenile intellects, but are insulting to the level of intellectual sophistication required to use the dev knowledge effectively. What really is happening is a situation where the corporation is losing proprietary control and the revenue from exclusivity. One need look no further than the voicemail upgrade trial offer for what is essentially Google Voice to see this in action.

If the original poster truly is someone who didn't quite figure out how to use the tools properly or navigate the nuances of the TEP system (ie calling in your phone lost/stolen), then I apologize for insulting you and applaud your return to the safety of the stock firmware provided. But I don't believe this to be the case. Therefore, I suggest recognizing the evolution of technology and adapting to the conditions spawned by the social media revolution, or become the next dinosaur to face extinction. The innovations of this and communities like it won't stop because progress and change have, are, and always will be unstoppable.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I work in the tech industry. I am not a youngster. I posted to make folks aware. If y'all don't like it, too bad.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
Wow. Thank you for this post. Exactly what I wanted to get across! But with way better writing.
[Epic 4G General] knx2:
Basically you are telling the folks here something like this.

**WARNING driving a car is dangerous!! If you take risks you may wreck your car.

Xda-developers is about testing and developing. Risk is well known here.
[Epic 4G General] Ranger093:
That's a crop of ****, by using Odin it litterally wipes your phone clean, it bypasses all caches. Your manager is an idiot and is living on a high horse. My sister even works at Sprint, they can't do this. Nor would they bother.
[Epic 4G General] jUgGsY:
The point you're missing, and the point everyone has been trying to get across to you is this. We all know the risks involved in using any piece of knowledge posted in these boards.

Devs don't post things such as, "I am NOT RESPONSIBLE if you brick your phone, kill your cat, blow up your computer, etc.. etc.." for "****s and giggles." If you look in nearly any thread in the Development section(s) of ANY of the device forums, and not just the Epic's, you WILL see some sort of disclaimer resembling this.

Simply put... It's old news pal.
[Epic 4G General] snovvman:
"Tech industry" =/= Technical (not nearly)

Technical =/= Truly technical (as in, really know your s#it) (again, not nearly)

Truly technical =/= Good common sense, rational, etc. (surprisingly, this is hard to come by)

I challenge your store manager to prove that a device was rooted after odin.

I also challenge your tech-industry experience and wisdom to question and analyze your store manager's claim, and come up with your own, rational conclusion.

Generally, "hard bricked*" would mean that the phone doesn't power up at all. To this I would agree that it is irrecoverable by the end user.

"Soft bricked*", that is, the phone powers up, you (or someone here) can generally fix it.

It is not a matter of not liking what you wrote or your intended warning, it's the fact that the information is not accurate....

* These are not my terms, read them here at XDA.

One more thing: All the store managers in my local area (Los Angeles) are entirely clueless. They may sound VERY knowlegable to the average consumer. Compared to a phone geek or a "very technical" or even "technical" XDA person, most Sprint Store managers (even techs) are weak at best.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
30 years (I w as born in 1957). I work for a fortune 25 tech giant. He spent 90 minutes trying to revive this phone. I've done everything from mainframes to mini computers to today's micro processors. System programming, application programming, network and database admin and programming. I do know about hard vs soft bricked. I never used the bricked word in any of my posts till this one. I do,know that y'all might not know everything that the phone sends on the network (nor do I), but what the manager told me makes sense from a network security perspective. Believe me or not, your choice.
[Epic 4G General] celsius0010:
Chill with attacks.. We don't need twenty guys comin in here saying it's old news, its obvious, etc etc.. The info that you can brick a phone is old as shyt and well known (so is the reply that it is old news), but the scope of his situation and his predicament is not old news. It is obviously put here for the new guys not someone who has been flashing roms for 4 years such as myself.

With that said, I doubt he was being truthful to you OP. I was just on the phone with a BofA cust. serv. manager who swore my issue couldn't be escalated any higher. When he refused to give me the number, I made him wait while I got it off GetHuman.com; and then I offered it too him for future reference, of course he declined to take it. Point is, if it was my job or if I thought it was my job to tell people not to root I would say the same thing. If Sprint could spot root I'm guessing they would use it because almost everyone who roots has a free hotspot app whether they use it or not. Cross checking excessive data users with root users would be simple if what he said was true. And Sprint would net a great deal of $$$ by cutting data and forcing hotspot subs..
[Epic 4G General] snovvman:
I am much younger than you. Since we are comparing d*ck size, I am the Chief Information Officer for a 30+ billion-dollar organization, with staff of 50, that includes mainframe sysprogs, analysts, developers from COBOL to C++, network engineers, DBAs, all supporting a very heterogenous IT operation that includes Big Blue to servers and desktops. None of them nearly begin to understand what I know about phones. Even if I try to educate them tomorrow, they just won't "get it". It's not in them. My sysprogs are very good at maintaining the MVS environment, but it does not mean that they are technical when it comes to phones or technical at all...

It is not a matter of believing. You have some of the most experienced phone guys here telling you it's not true, but YOU, sir, are not beliving it. We can all chime in and say that it is not possible to detect root or "what you have been running", and maybe your phone was in fact repairable. How about considering that *may* be possible??
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I know it is possible he was bs'ing me. I didn't get that impression, and I have a pretty good bs detector. I've also had the "you can't go any higher" stuff pulled on me, and I know there is always someone higher, but policy is policy.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
Sure, it's possible. I dont think so. Have you ever looked at all the data thats on the management plane of the network traffic? I know I haven't. What he told me makes sense.
[Epic 4G General] snovvman:
Off topic but must chime in on this. I had a terrible experience with BofA. Found numbers for their Executive Office/Executive Services (search on web). They easily escalated my situation and followed up to resolve.
[Epic 4G General] snovvman:
Most people are not lying when they tell you what they know. It what they know to be the truth. Perhaps they heard it from someone else they believe to be an authority. The issue is, most people don't begin to "know what they don't know".

For a frog stuck at the bottom of a well, the sky is round and that is all there is to the world...
[Epic 4G General] cbpagent72:
Please go away. I believe sprint told you that they can always tell; however, I would like to see them prove it. If you Odin your phone you are erasing everything and re-imaging the memory/hd. It is sort of like Dell tellin you they can tell what software you ran after you reformatted your hd, they can't nor wil they waste the time.
[Epic 4G General] richse:
I think the OP's store manager is full of crap, but technically your analogy is wrong. Data recovery is absolutely possible after a format. I have personally retrieved data following a format. The only way to wipe a HD really clean is to generate random data over top of the sectors you need wiped, delete it, rinse and repeat at least 7 times. There are plenty of programs that can do this for you as well. Sorry for the off topic but I felt the need to chime in.
[Epic 4G General] KaL-EL3038:
This is not true sorry

ok here is my two cents....this is coming from a guy who it took a whole month before deciding to root!.....this prl update errot is not because of rooting or leaked roms....i had this problem comming out of the best buy store trying to update everything before i left and as i soon as i got this error i went back into the store the guy said sprint was having problems...a week later i called sprint cause i was having the same problems and the guy did something and it fixed it a week later i tried again same problem....so this is either an internal problem or sprint problem but this is not cause of LEAKED ROMS
[Epic 4G General] k0nane:
On whether or not it's possible for Sprint to dig up data after a complete Odin wipe may be debatable, but I lean toward supporting the "yes, they can" side. Sprint has been, for - as far as I can tell - a while, since the Moment at least, been including Carrier IQ in Android ROMs. Carrier IQ - which you can get more info on here (browse around there) is highly invasive, to the level of being spyware. It tracks signal data, application usage, and much else - its services and libraries are tied deeply into the system, to the point that killing just the client (not the server) will destroy the battery meter.

We (ACS) made progress in rooting out Carrier IQ with SyndicateROM Shuriken and Xtreme Kernel 1.0.1, but we didn't get it completely removed just yet. We did, however, kill the 'iqmsd' service, which, if you run 'getprop', you can see automatically starts on all devices NOT running Xtreme Kernel.
[Epic 4G General] Top Nurse:
If your trying to catch the pennies falling through the cracks...

I teach the sales guys at the local Sprint store how to make these babies go! However, I know for a fact that they wouldn't waste their breath if the Epic in question was either on warranty or the customer had a fix/replace policy. It just isn't worth their time when they could sell a phone or two while having an argument with a customer. ;)

Now to be on the fair side I have always wondered if there was a flash counter in the hardware somewhere that *might* be accessible somehow. Of course if I can't get it to boot up then I seriously doubt anyone else could either as we all have the same tools outside of the factory staff.
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I do have TEP.
[Epic 4G General] Top Nurse:
So do I and if I felt the need to use it I would go to a different store so I didn't cause any ethical problems with my local sales and tech staff. Actually the local service center probably have the capability to ODIN phones and may even have proprietary factory software laying around. However, I think we would have "heard" about this before now.

Thank you though for giving a real life example of what "can happen" if your unlucky or don't have the technical savvy to pursue this kind of "hobby." :)

I also like water cooling computers. :D
[Epic 4G General] lrosenman:
I do NOT work for Sprint, fwiw.
[Epic 4G General] XtaC318:
You're the only one to ever report this problem; so it sounds like YOU did something wrong.

This is a community meant for hackers/devs not the everyday user who doesn't know jack **** about programming.

Yes; dk17 was leaked with a warning about it having a radio issue.. enough said you were warned. Its your fault for stepping out on the edge.

And dk28 was released OTA to tester phones; I highly doubt there's a radio bug so it was only involved in dk17.
[Epic 4G General] styles420:
So does your local pimple-covered, high school aged Radio Shack employee...

That's an extremely vague statement that doesn't prove anything. You sound more and more defensive with each post - if you're really just trying to help the community with a warning, why are you taking it so personally when we're all saying, "Yes, we know, there's a risk involved" instead of praising you for this "new" (translation: decade-old) information?

And I can guarantee that if Sprint could determine what we have on our phones, they would have either eliminated their unlimited data packages many years ago (as would all of the other service providers), or they wouldn't still be bothering with the $30/month mobileAP BS.

Finally, the federal government actually had to rule on the issue of modifying our phones, and the Supreme Court ruled that we own the hardware and can therefore do as we wish with regard to the software running on it.
[Epic 4G General] Quicksand Jesus:
Sooooooooooooo.........

You jacked up your phone beyond repair.

You took it to the Sprint Store

They replaced it with TEP

Sounds good to me!! FWIW my Samsung Moment stopped getting the PRL and profile updates and it was all stock. In that case it was covered under TEP.

So since the Sprint guys were so smart, what did they say the fix for the broken PRL and Profile updates? I'm going to go with a hardware problem.
[Epic 4G General] Silent25r:
I'm removing any and all hacks/roots from my device if I can get it to boot up. I've done this at least 20 times. First smart was the htc touch pro loaded with hardware problems. Second was a samsung moment, which had even more problems. A think a few reps checked for a root on my devices. They never said anything to me about it.

Getting data like a root when it's overwritten on a phone is not cheap. It would be stupid for sprint to attempt that. They would lose more money than they could save.
[Epic 4G General] Mogrove42:
I actually work at a Sprint repair store... and all the depot cares about when we send the phone back is that it's stock. If we get a customer with a bad software, we either re-write stock DI18, or just brick it and say it's DOA lol... It all depends on the technician and what side of the bed he woke up on. My phone is rooted, on 2.2, as is our instore demo.
[Epic 4G General] styckx:
To be fair. Any device read/write memory is prone to failure. Did the entire device fail? Probably not. What likely happened is that section of memory was defective and had an extremely short life cycle. A few formats and writes later probably just progressed its inevitable failure a lot sooner.