Recovering a bricked uleFone Be Touch

mdabar

Hi all,

Recently my brand-new Be Touch was suddenly bricked, I don't know why but it was unresponsive to everything... they screen just didn't wanted to show anything even when I connected the charger or plugged it to my laptop.

I tried all the instructions I found (there are really a lot of just googling "recover bricked phone"), even the official instructions to flash a new ROM (http://ulefone.com/download/betouch.html) But again nothing... screen completely black.

I tested the battery with a multimeter and it appeared to be full charge.

Finally when I had already contacted the seller for a return, I found a very old post (2013) about recovering a bricked device using Ubuntu (I'm using Linux Mint).

So I had SP Flashing Tool open (not doing anything special because it didn't detect my phone any longer) and in the Options -> Connections -> "with battery" marked.


SP Flashing Tools configuration

The USB cable was plugged and the battery on its place.

I pressed "Power + Home" buttons simultaneously for around 30 seconds. It's real, I had tried before for around 10 seconds and nothing happened... and arriving to the 30th second suddently the screen brighted once, showing for an instant a 0% battery and went down again... Hope was back


Press and hold both buttons for 30 seconds with the USB cable connected to PC

I left the cable plugged for some minutes before touching anything. When I pressed again (5min) the percentage was still at 0% but the screen response was faster. So I decided to boot the phone and it started
It was connected and still showing 0% battery. It started as on the 1st boot, asking me for everything, but everything working. I wait for around 10 minutes and... the battery was still showing 0% :-/ I decided to turn it down for a faster charge.

I left it around 45 minutes shut down to reach the 15% of battery (fast charge they said!) after that it started charging a little bit faster, I waited until 100% before turning it on.

Once at 100% it booted well, restored my config and everything seems to work well again.

Today I have tried (after my brother's recommendation) a battery repair app (there are a few free on PlayStore, I took the one called Repair Battery Life because was the one my brother was using), and it has detected around 10 deffective units on the battery :-/ (someone in red) but after clicking on "Fix it" and wait for some minutes it everything appears OK now. So I will pay more attention to it working and the battery from now on.
I don't know if all that story was caused by the battery... but at least my Be Touch is back

Some screenshots of battery recovery:






PS: if you find this info useful, I would appreciate if you click on "Thanks"

T-Bird

I just can't help thinking this is a strange post. It just seems out of context to me. Too convenient and not real.

mdabar

Well, I just share my personal experience after recovering my device from a bricked status.

If you use Google+ you will see that I was participating on the community for that phone trying to find a solution. We were a few discussing. -> https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101042871463456334581

When I could recover my phone, and I share the news on the community, they asked me to shared the full details, I though it was interesting to share also here.

Rgds

T-Bird

Bricked?

mdabar

Sorry maybe I went to stright to the point.

Smartphones are much more advanced that old phones, so we can do a lot of things. That's because they have a full operating system.
Alike on our PCs, it can happen that we modify something... or some application or action we execute modify something in that operating system and then our smartphone doesn't work properly.

In that case we already start talking about "bricked device" because it's useless, so it's like having a brick...an expensive one :P

It can be Soft Brick when for example the phone starts directly onto the recovery menu, or when the phone stays on the logo, or it just reboot all the time without passing the logo screen. Soft Brick is "quite easy" to repair.

Then there is Hard Brick (it was my case), when the phone directly doesn't do anything, not boot, no logo... nothing. There are a lot of instructions that you can find in google (https://www.google.com.tr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=recover%20bricked%20android&es_th=1) and I don't go to repeat and then I explained on my 1st post, what worked for me.

Regards,

T-Bird

Sorry, I understand what bricked is, I was questioning if your phone was actually bricked. It initially seemed to me that you were using the bricked theme for an excuse to advertise a battery repair app. However, I see you have the post on your blog and a few other forums. I guess I got it wrong and you just like to genuinely share information. If so apologies for being cynical.

mdabar

My mistake then, I didn't know about the existance of those "Repair apps" until my brother (who had previous battery problems) showed me, he installed that app on my phone, although I guess there will be a few more similar. I just put the screenshots to show where the failure were and how it acted. You're right about the app promo. I'll edit the post to avoid confusions.

I must say that I'm still doubting if it actually fix the problems... hehe I guess I will know with the time.

Anyway, for me the important message is the process to unbrick. The battery question is just because in Google+ discussion someone suggested that my problem could be due to hardware failure and the battery was one of things to check.

Rgds,

T-Bird

To be honest, I wouldn’t do anything to that phone if it was bricked. It’s only new and doing anything to it could cause a warranty problem.
You should still go with your initial plan and contact the seller. Problem is that you may encounter quite a few communication problems with your seller if they are outside Europe. They will probably advise that you send the phone back to them at a cost to yourself. They may also charge an “administration fee” if you choose a refund option. I purchase quite a few products from China and am aware of the risk if something goes wrong. However so far so good as I have been able to fix them myself with anything that has gone wrong so far (mainly by my doing by messing with roms etc).

There are many variations of this model with a lot of the same features. I almost opted for the Elephone P7000 myself, but some of the reviews are not too favourable.

Not sure about the battery app, I came across them a few years ago. Graphics look good, but I find it hard to understand how an app can do anything to cells within a battery. Perhaps I’m probably a bit ignorant in this area.

mdabar

Completely agree with you. The seller is in China (evident) so sending the item would be costly and very long time process... another seller already told me "may be 1 month for coming, then test and probably another month for return"

I have done that with the other item because I won't be using it.

About the battery... maybe it's just psycological, but why not trying? I though that a software failure on the battery can cause a malfunctioning. Anyway, it's the typical application i won't have permanently. I can use it... once/twice a year? haha