Looks like I bricked my Samsung Note II - Help anyone?

BenEadir

Hi all,

Long story short is I kept my Note II stock for 18 months until the accelerometer stopped working and other issues prompted me to give it a new lease of life by flashing CyanogenMod which went fine. All was going well with CyanogenMod until the phone app stopped working. To be precise I could still send and receive calls but I couldn't hear the person on the other end and they couldn't hear me!! I confirmed it wasn't a mic/speaker hardware issue by making and receiving calls via Skype.

I then flashed Resurrection Remix but didn't like that so decided to flash Team Electrons DN3(Ditto Note 3) ROM - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2504016 and now I'm proper goosed as in I can't get the phone to boot at all. The Electron guys recommend the TWRP recovery http://teamw.in/project/twrp2 instead of CWM so I now have TWRP on the phone but despite flashing the DN3 ROM several times the phone won't boot past the Samsung logo.

I then tried using TWRP to flash CyanogenMod with no joy whatsoever, the ZIP file simply won't flash.

Diving deeper into the problem I read that flashing DN3 can encounter problems if the bootloader isn't MJ5 so I tried flashing that via Odin 3.07 but although the phone booted into Download mode OK and Odin saw it etc as soon as I tried flashing the bootloader the phone issued a "unsupported version" error.

Now the phone is totally fcuked. All I can get on the screen is an icon with a phone on the left + 2 dots + a yellow warning triangle + two dots + a terminal/screen image with the the message "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again"

I obviously can't select Kies as I can't boot the phone and now I can't even get it into TWRP recovery!!!

Sounds like I've made a right mess of it

I guess I somehow need to flash an entire new Android OS/ROM onto it via Odin which does still recognise the phone although the phone seems to think its an "unsupported version"!!!

Any ROM flashing experts here want to try helping to rescue me????

And I thought my day couldn't get much worse after losing 0-2 to Chelsea!!!

Ben

advertsfox

Start fresh sir, restore to stock 4.4 with Odin 3 and start again. You only need the one file to then root the phone with CWM / TWRP.

http://galaxynote2root.com/galaxy-note-2-tutorials/how-to-unrootunbrick-galaxy-note-2-with-stock-firmware/

I imagine there was issues with bootloader / radio compatibility since CM11 is 4.4. Here's the link to the latest debranded UK firmware.

http://stockroms.net/file/GalaxyNote2/GT-N7100/UK

And here's CWM to flash from Odin3 once your phone has boot into stock 4.4 (to make sure all is functional again). Its quite hard to brick a phone these days. Flash this tar as PDA in Odin3 (don't touch any of the options on the left).

http://downloadandroidrom.com/file/GalaxyNote2/CWM/Note2-CWM-6.0.4.3-GT-N7100.tar

Then once stock is working, CWM is install, copy over your two ZIP files (CM11 nightly and Gapps), run a Nandroid backup and flash the ZIP's.

BenEadir

AdvertsFox rides to the rescue again

Cheers AF, you're the man.

Through pure trial and error late into the night I ended up flashing the 4.4.2 Samsung Note 2 ROM released in France (downloaded from Samfirmware) via Odin and it seems to be working fine. No issues with the phone app yet anyway.

I should still be good to flash CWM via Odin as you suggest, do a Nandroid and then try CM11 again? I do prefer CM to the Samsung ROM.

Ben

advertsfox

BenThere wrote: »

AdvertsFox rides to the rescue again

Cheers AF, you're the man.

Through pure trial and error late into the night I ended up flashing the 4.4.2 Samsung Note 2 ROM released in France (downloaded from Samfirmware) via Odin and it seems to be working fine. No issues with the phone app yet anyway.

I should still be good to flash CWM via Odin as you suggest, do a Nandroid and then try CM11 again? I do prefer CM to the Samsung ROM.

Ben

Haha anytime man

Should be very little difference between UK and France versions, both will offer English as a language regardless.

Yes you should be indeed, flash the PDA, do a Nandroid (which is 4.4.2 stock + root, clean), wipe data and cache, flash your CM11 first, then Gapps, reboot, wait, enjoy

BenEadir

advertsfox wrote: »

Yes you should be indeed, flash the PDA, do a Nandroid (which is 4.4.2 stock + root, clean), wipe data and cache, flash your CM11 first, then Gapps, reboot, wait, enjoy

I'm afraid my Note II and CM are not meant to be

I flashed CWM via Odin, did a Nandroid backup and then flashed the CM nightly + the CM11 Gapps. All seemed good until I was making my 2nd phone call and the old "no sound on either end" issue returned. I was using a bluetooth connection in the car so rebooted but it seems once the app FC's that's it, it will maintain that behaviour until there's a factory reset and a new ROM is flashed etc.

Restored the Nandroid backup and it confirmed success but unfortunatley as soon as it booted up there was a load of gapp process failures etc and that repeated itself on a couple of re-boots.

Decided a Samsung bird in the hand is worth two CM ROM's in the bush so I went back into CWM, did a factory reset, wipes cache, wiped dalvik ache, formatted the internal storage and wiped the system - to be sure to be sure!!!

Re-flashed the French ROM via Odin just now and all looks good.

The one silver lining is I reckon I could now set a speed record for setting up a phone!!!

Cheers for the help AF. Whilst it's ultimately been a painful process and I haven't been able to get CM working on this phone I have learned a hell of a lot and I'm now on official Samsung 4.4.2 before 99.9% of Note 2 users in the country. Thats not a bad thing is it??

Cheers,

Ben