Samsung Galaxy S2 won't boot to main menu, and has seizures. - T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989

I'm having a huge problem with my T-Mobile Galaxy S2, and not it won't even completely boot up. The issue had already been around, but never this bad. Usually, when I would use my phone, it would just randomly reboot on it's own. Now, I can't even get to the main home screen or menu. When the battery is inserted, the phone will automatically try to turn on. I'll get the Samsung screen, then the "Samsung Galaxy SII Android 4G T-Mobile screen", then the phone will glitch for a second, black screen, and it'll almost have a seizure from then on. When I say that, pretty much what happens is that the screen will go black, and it'll pulse with vibrations. It'll vibrate, stop for two seconds, vibrate some more, etc. That's all it'll do from there on. It won't try to turn on when I hold the power button, and the vibrations won't stop until I take the battery out. There is no water damage, and there's just normal wear on the phone. I've had the phone since the drop, and for the most part, it's been great until now.
The phone is not rooted, and I have not installed anything crazy. Come to think about it, I didn't really even have too many apps installed on it to begin with. The phone is under warranty, so I had T-Mobile send me a replacement. My main issue now is that I have content on there that wasn't on my SD card, but on the internal hard drive that I find extremely important, and want to keep. When I connect the phone to my computer, nothing comes up because I didn't "connect" it to the computer as you normally would have to do from the phone, before the extra drives pop up on the computer. Without getting into the main menu and manually connecting the phone to the computer so that the drive will pop up, what can I do?
I've tried taking the battery, sim card and memory card out, letting it sit for a few hours, and plug it back in, but it does the same thing. The battery isn't bad, because it plugs into the replacement phone that was sent to me, and works just fine. I've also plugged into my additional batteries, and it does the same thing. I can't do the "hard reset" where you hold volume up & down, then the power button because what happens is the phone will restart itself before I can get to that point. I tried it when I was on the phone with T-Mobile, and the associate at one of the retail locations tried when I went to get a loaner. I've tried hooking up the phone to the Kies software, but it won't recognize the old phone. It will recognize the new one with no problems though.
I am in no way am I well versed with the process of flashing it or installing different things on the phone. I just used it casually for phone calls, texts, web, and an occasional game or app. I'm just stating this so that if there are any specific tips that anyone could recommend, please if possible, explain in a bit more depth, because after I posted my title, I found the related threads, and most of the steps that were recommended to others that had problems sound a bit foreign to me. I just really want to recover the photos and documents that I had on the phone before I send it back to T-Mobile.
These are the threads that I've somewhat referenced so far:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1948094
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1457458x
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1813866
I can't seem to find anything with the same symptoms as my phone though. If anyone could let me know, that would be great. I just really want to get the content off my old phone, it's just extremely important to me. I'll be waiting on any replies. If you need and more information about what the phone is doing, or what I should try, please mention it. I will try to update this as I get replies, since I am supposed to send the phone back pretty soon. Thank you in advance.

You have a stuck or broken power button. Stick a toothpick or something into the power button whole and take out any gunk if there is. If that doesn't help, then you have a broken power button and you have to get your phone fixed.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium

So from what I understand your phone does not boot up to the home screen at all and you are trying to recover all the files from the internal storage? I've been in the same situation as you, although, with my previous android (Samsung Captivate) and I know how hectic this situation is...
If you can enter recovery mode still without the phone restarting itself and if you're willing to flash a custom rom that should help you get into the home screen to recover your files, as it shouldn't remove anything from the internal storage (just as long as you don't format the internal storage/system in recovery).
The phone 'seizure' you are experiencing may also be caused by physical damage, such as the internal memory becoming defective (hopefully not the case).
You mentioned that you can't turn on the phone with the power button and the phone only turns on when you place the battery... that's the same thing that happened with my old phone and it turned out that I had to disassemble the phone and clean/replace the power button. After that the phone turned on like normally again, however, I had to flash a new rom for it to properly boot up.
As a last resort, if you can enter 'Download Mode' via button combo or usb jig you can use Odin to flash a stock rom. However, the files you originally have in the phone will be removed, which you definitely do not want. But at least your phone will possibly work again.
At the moment, I don't think there is any way to recover the files you need from the internal memory without being able to boot up the phone to get it connected to your computer. If you do manage to boot to the home screen, but can't connect your phone to your computer. You can always do a wireless transfer to a cloud based storage such as Dropbox (you can use the android app) and just transfer your files from your phone through that.
I hope I am of some help to you, if I find any other solutions I'll let you know. Good luck!

Related

a very strange hard brick

Hi!
First of all i got AOKP + Franco kernel for 2w without any problem and I didn't change any option since last week.
This morning i rebooted it, it switched off and it didn't start again.
I cannot switch one my nexus again since then. I have always a black screen, also if I try to enter in download mode or in the recovery.
I tried to connect to my computer and smt times my laptop see a omap4400 (i'm not sure about the name) but after few second it disappears.
Tomorrow I'm going to the service center... But I have a big doubt:
What the hell happened this morning?
Thanks
Remove the battery for 5 minutes and try again.
If that doesn't work,
Follow this guide:
1. Download the zip file from http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f634...eeeee-1465412/, created by Legija
2. Extract zip to whatever location you're comfortable with (I used Android directory)
3. Open up Device Manager (Hold down Windows Key, press R, the type in devmgmt.msc and press OK)
4. Go to actions menu, select Add Legacy Hardware
5. Choose install manually, then have disk. Browse to where you extracted the zip, select the 'inf' file in usb_drv_windows
6. Choose OMAP, you'll get a popup if on Win 7, continue anyway (driver not signed)
7. Once completed with driver, pull battery out of phone, then plug it into USB
8. Double click omap4460_tuna_hs_pro.bat to start the process
9. Once completed, unplug from USB, put battery back in, and power-up!
10. Extra step - depending on what's been done, it may 'brick' again - suggest to do a restore or a wipe reinstall afterwards to be certain (mine bricked again next reboot)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
biscuitownz said:
Remove the battery for 5 minutes and try again.
If that doesn't work,
Follow this guide:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This, if OP can't reach fastboot.
Sent from my i9250
I'm having the exact same problem. I saw my phone at maybe 10% battery in the AM, said screw it and let it die, woke up this morning and plugged the phone in and nothing. No LED light, black screen, completely unresponsive. I've tried every trick in the book, and the only one that seemed to work marginally even was using a different battery, which got my phone to boot to the encryption screen, but then shut off again. It did that twice, and now both batteries are useless.
I used Legija's program to try and bring some life back to my gnex, even though it's not the international version, just in hopes of getting some of my data back (I have already started the replacement process with Verizon since the phone was insured), but I got no luck there either.
It's extremely disappointing and annoying to me that this phone survived all sorts of ROM installations (I was also using AOKP on 4.1 if someone wants to start making connections), reformatting, tweaking, almost every setting on that phone was modified by me.
Not only that but almost any software or hardware problem I did run into I could solve in maybe an hour, but I let my charge run out and the phone just up and bricks itself? Now, that's just bull****... I would be very curious as to an explanation as to WHY on earth this would happen. Very confusing.
Not to hijack the thread, but my interest here is not restoring the phone to working condition but just seeing if I can pull my data off of it. I wouldn't even be posting here had I been able to have an SD card with my gnex, which I figured was unnecessary at the time I bought it since I knew the space on their was enough for me already, and the added branding of "Nexus" brand which had me under the impression it was maybe stable enough by itself. Not a mistake I'll make again..
Is it at all possible to get the data off of my phone at this point? At least partially? I believe encryption makes it impossible but I'm rather stubborn. Any help would be greatly appreciated..
owlieowl said:
I'm having the exact same problem. I saw my phone at maybe 10% battery in the AM, said screw it and let it die, woke up this morning and plugged the phone in and nothing. No LED light, black screen, completely unresponsive. I've tried every trick in the book, and the only one that seemed to work marginally even was using a different battery, which got my phone to boot to the encryption screen, but then shut off again. It did that twice, and now both batteries are useless.
I used Legija's program to try and bring some life back to my gnex, even though it's not the international version, just in hopes of getting some of my data back (I have already started the replacement process with Verizon since the phone was insured), but I got no luck there either.
It's extremely disappointing and annoying to me that this phone survived all sorts of ROM installations (I was also using AOKP on 4.1 if someone wants to start making connections), reformatting, tweaking, almost every setting on that phone was modified by me.
Not only that but almost any software or hardware problem I did run into I could solve in maybe an hour, but I let my charge run out and the phone just up and bricks itself? Now, that's just bull****...
Not to hijack the thread, but my interest here is not restoring the phone to working condition but just seeing if I can pull my data off of it. I wouldn't even be posting here had I been able to have an SD card with my gnex, which I figured was unnecessary at the time I bought it since I knew the space on their was enough for me already, and the added branding of "Nexus" brand which had me under the impression it was maybe stable enough by itself. Not a mistake I'll make again..
Is it at all possible to get the data off of my phone at this point? At least partially? I believe encryption makes it impossible but I'm rather stubborn. Any help would be greatly appreciated..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So just to be clear... You've been able to get it to boot all the way up to the encryption screen, right? If so you should be able to get into fastboot (Holding down BOTH volume rockers and the power key.) From there you could relock/unlock the bootloader to do a full factory wipe which might solve your boot issue.
As far as the data loss from the wipe, you could then try this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994705
TomBall718 said:
So just to be clear... You've been able to get it to boot all the way up to the encryption screen, right? If so you should be able to get into fastboot (Holding down BOTH volume rockers and the power key.) From there you could relock/unlock the bootloader to do a full factory wipe which might solve your boot issue.
As far as the data loss from the wipe, you could then try this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994705
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was able to get it to the encryption screen with my old battery that had a little bit of charge left in it twice, but it shut itself down on me both times. So now both batteries are useless.. I took it to the Verizon store hoping they would maybe try one of their batteries, but they just called customer service and told me they're just going to replace it at this point.
I have a feeling the charging mechanism is somehow damaged, because when I did get it to the encryption screen I had it plugged into a wall outlet and it wasn't charging at all. So, I can't turn the phone on whatsoever anymore.. if I could turn it on I could solve this problem... but it simply refuses to boot. The closest I came to interfacing with it was the OMAP Flash script, which did work, but didn't fix the problem.
So maybe if I could get the phone working enough to use ADB with it I could get my data back, but not even that seems possible..
owlieowl said:
I was able to get it to the encryption screen with my old battery that had a little bit of charge left in it twice, but it shut itself down on me both times. So now both batteries are useless.. I took it to the Verizon store hoping they would maybe try one of their batteries, but they just called customer service and told me they're just going to replace it at this point.
I have a feeling the charging mechanism is somehow damaged, because when I did get it to the encryption screen I had it plugged into a wall outlet and it wasn't charging at all. So, I can't turn the phone on whatsoever anymore.. if I could turn it on I could solve this problem... but it simply refuses to boot. The closest I came to interfacing with it was the OMAP Flash script, which did work, but didn't fix the problem.
So maybe if I could get the phone working enough to use ADB with it I could get my data back, but not even that seems possible..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the phone isn't charging then there's something wrong with the USB port. One way to test that would be to use a battery charger. Also, try a different cable. I've had issues with a few different cables that for whatever reason started to not fit properly in the phone.
If you're USB port has gone bad then you'll need to either A) Always use an external battery charger. B) Get a replacement. C) Fix it yourself (Good guide here: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repairi...+LTE)+Micro+USB+Charge+Port+&+Main+Mic/9641/1 )

Need Help Recovering Internal Memory Files

Okay so my T-989 has slowly been dying, RRs, freezing randomly, SD card unmounting on its own and not working for days, Power/Lock Button goes haywire and now my screen is shot. So yeah, I battery pulled it, put the battery back in, booted up my phone and the screen stayed black but with two orange lines at the bottom of the screen. I can press the power button, feel it vibrate, the touch buttons light up, I can email myself and my phone will vibrate, so I know it works, I just cant see anything on the screen. I opened it up and EVERYTHING inside was intact, nothing broken, corroded, etc. I dropped my phone in a full cup of soda in January, pulled the battery out quick, put it in a bowl of rice in my pantry and a day later it was perfectly fine. It started with the problems I mentioned above like end of March/Beginning of April. Now I can't exactly say what caused my phone to start messing up, it could have been the soda, could have been that I've dropped it about 1000 times (Mechanics school, working in construction, partying, longboarding, etc LOL) or could be all of the above. So now my problem is, I have a expensive paperweight that still works but I can't see anything on the screen and it has many of my important files in the internal memory. Me being the impatient and hot headed person that I am, i got so pissed when I realized I don't have a phone anymore, I stabbed it... Now its safe to say I only cracked the glass, the phone still boots up, vibrates etc.
I need help recovering my files that are in the internal memory (Pictures/Videos from October till now, saved documents, etc). My computer recognizes my phone when its plugged in but obviously I cant enable Mass Media/Storage on my phone since i cant see the screen. I don't know of any way to bypass that option, and without that my computer won't show me my internal storage. Idk if this'll help, but its on AOKP, with CWM non-touch recovery version 5.x(i know it started with 5 but I don't remember the rest). I've tried mounting storage via recovery but nothing happens, I'm not even sure if I'm selecting the correct option. I don't wanna keep trying to do that cause I don't wanna mess anything up.
And I guess this also means I'll be leaving this awesome community of Devs, friends, fellow nerds and noobs. Idk what my next device will be and I don't even know when I'll be getting one (I'm actually starting to pack/get ready to move from NYC to Dubai). I always said I would only retire my T-989 if I got the chance to switch to a Note 2 but I guess I'm retiring it without a choice.
BUMP. Anyone? My LCD is shot but the phone works (boots up, etc) and i really just need to find away to get my files saved in the internal memory.
You can pull the files using adb on your computer. Check this thread for more info on how to do it.

Phone won't boot - think it's the power button - HELP!

I'm not 100% sure it is the power button so I wanted to run the situation by the forum, but also because this was my son's first Christmas and I have all his videos/pictures on the internal memory ... my priority is really trying to get those. I could really care less if I had to buy a new phone.
So here's the situation ....
Phone was fully charged and I came into work. Had already been listening to a podcast, sent a few text message, etc. I looked over at one point and the screen wouldn't come on. Tried pressing the power button multiple times with no luck. If I removed the battery and put it back in, it would power on briefly and then shut off.
Device only briefly comes on when I first put the battery in. If I'm quick I can try putting the phone in download mode. It gets to the initial screen and then powers off. Sometimes it is there a few seconds longer than others.
I mistakenly tried this and didn't even have the power button in and it still went to the download mode, so THAT is why I'm thinking something is wrong with the power button. It's as though it is permanently pressed.
I read a few threads and watched a few youtube videos but I'm not really getting a clear answer. I've taken the phone apart and the button is NOT pushed in. I can press it and it seems fine (besides it not doing anything). I did try also hitting it a few times as some videos suggested and it didn't help?
Anyone have any thoughts on a next step?
Edit: in case this is important, it is rooted, running moar v6.x, zerolemon battery. i realize the case may have been the initial culprit so at the moment it is back to a stock battery and case.
lawlhai said:
I'm not 100% sure it is the power button so I wanted to run the situation by the forum, but also because this was my son's first Christmas and I have all his videos/pictures on the internal memory ... my priority is really trying to get those. I could really care less if I had to buy a new phone.
So here's the situation ....
Phone was fully charged and I came into work. Had already been listening to a podcast, sent a few text message, etc. I looked over at one point and the screen wouldn't come on. Tried pressing the power button multiple times with no luck. If I removed the battery and put it back in, it would power on briefly and then shut off.
Device only briefly comes on when I first put the battery in. If I'm quick I can try putting the phone in download mode. It gets to the initial screen and then powers off. Sometimes it is there a few seconds longer than others.
I mistakenly tried this and didn't even have the power button in and it still went to the download mode, so THAT is why I'm thinking something is wrong with the power button. It's as though it is permanently pressed.
I read a few threads and watched a few youtube videos but I'm not really getting a clear answer. I've taken the phone apart and the button is NOT pushed in. I can press it and it seems fine (besides it not doing anything). I did try also hitting it a few times as some videos suggested and it didn't help?
Anyone have any thoughts on a next step?
Edit: in case this is important, it is rooted, running moar v6.x, zerolemon battery. i realize the case may have been the initial culprit so at the moment it is back to a stock battery and case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's the power button take it to sprint and and they should fix or replace...especially seeing as its a known issue.
http://i.imgur.com/qrByUGN.jpg
lawlhai said:
I'm not 100% sure it is the power button so I wanted to run the situation by the forum, but also because this was my son's first Christmas and I have all his videos/pictures on the internal memory ... my priority is really trying to get those. I could really care less if I had to buy a new phone.
So here's the situation ....
Phone was fully charged and I came into work. Had already been listening to a podcast, sent a few text message, etc. I looked over at one point and the screen wouldn't come on. Tried pressing the power button multiple times with no luck. If I removed the battery and put it back in, it would power on briefly and then shut off.
Device only briefly comes on when I first put the battery in. If I'm quick I can try putting the phone in download mode. It gets to the initial screen and then powers off. Sometimes it is there a few seconds longer than others.
I mistakenly tried this and didn't even have the power button in and it still went to the download mode, so THAT is why I'm thinking something is wrong with the power button. It's as though it is permanently pressed.
I read a few threads and watched a few youtube videos but I'm not really getting a clear answer. I've taken the phone apart and the button is NOT pushed in. I can press it and it seems fine (besides it not doing anything). I did try also hitting it a few times as some videos suggested and it didn't help?
Anyone have any thoughts on a next step?
Edit: in case this is important, it is rooted, running moar v6.x, zerolemon battery. i realize the case may have been the initial culprit so at the moment it is back to a stock battery and case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe this will help you: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2369125. i had a verizon s3 which wouldn't even turn on until i tried this (steps were a little different since it was a verizon one and not sprint). here are the verizon steps: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2581166.
you may be able to use the win32diskimager in windows to create the sd card instead of linux. i have also heard the SD card needs to be the same size as the phone. 16GB phones means 16GB Class 10 SD Card. 32GB phone means 32GB Class 10 SD Card. I used a SanDisk card from best buy. probably the best $15 i ever spent lol. i used the sd card to boot the phone. then reinstalled stock recovery and bootloader. thsi didn't affect the actual ROM (didn't take away root on 4.3 jellybean). Good luck!
Try a dirty flash. Can you get into recovery? Flash moar again. Or try nandroid and to external SD and transfer to computer to see if u can collect the files you're trying to get back

[q] help!!!!!!! Samsung galaxy s2x reset itself

My phone is really starting to piss me off, I have had this phone for about 2 years now and this is the THIRD time this has happened, me and my girlfriend are pissed off about it, the problem is that my phone has a sticky power button where it will think I'm holding the button but I'm not. When my phone decides to turn off from this problem and vibrate every 3 seconds, I just hit the power button and it restarts, I've dealt with this for about a year now. During that time, my phone has booted up and went to the welcome screen (if I were to boot it up for the first time). Why the hell is this happening??? This erased ALL my apps, wallpapers and what not, but the thing is...my SD card contained all the apps, because I was scared that my phone would do that again, and it did. When I try to go into the settings, I see that my internal memory, SD, and USB storage still have memory in them, as if nothing happened. Shouldn't I be able to get everything back without a problem if that's the case? Please help guys, I really don't want to lose all my apps and game data and everything....
There are many threads about fixes for power buttons. Do a search.
Or, buy a new phone. S2's are quite old now.
But many have fixed their power buttons. Just read up. If it can't be fixed....I'd give up on it.
For me I tried all the tricks and suggestions. The fix was ultimately to plug it into a car charger and the issue went away and the phone would boot again.

Weird bricked GT-I9195 stuck on black screen after Samsung logo

So, unluckily today i find myself here lookin' for help with my phone. I had already took a look on other brick threads, but i can't find an appropriate answer to my problem.
I'm (i was) running lineage-14.1-20170602-nightly, i had ne0zone75's TWRP 3.1.0.0-0, and that's how the brick came in a strange way; i was simply on XDA Labs app browsing the forum, when i received a call. I've answered, and when i shut off the call the phone shut off immediately after. I thought it was a reboot, but keeping pressed the power button didn't switched on the phone anymore. So i've tried to remove the battery and re insert it after some minutes, but the only thing i can get is the screen with the samsung logo that goes all black after 5 seconds. I already had other bricks due some errors of mine in the past, but this time it's really difficult.
1: I can't access recovery mode. Ow, how i wish i could.
2: I can access download mode, but after that i reach the ODIN MODE screen with the details of product binary, KNOX, ecc. the phone shuts off again.
3: If i keep the power button pressed, the phone doesn't starts. It only starts if i replug the battery in, but after some seconds it shuts off again.
4: How could a call as another mess up the whole phone?
5: I didn't installed nothing new from at least a week... yesterday an automatic update of the Play Store took place, but except that nothing has been changed. Nothing of nothing! No settings, no apps...
What could i do? Installing Kies with Samsung drivers could help me flashing a stock rom for example? Because at the moment, there isn't too much that i can do with the phone in this state... I hope this little jewel won't have to become a stone to be thrown away. Any help would be great, and really appreciated. Thanks in advance...
Things has got worse. Now my device doesn't starts at all; no vibrations, no signs of life, nothing. I've tried even to put it for 6 hours in my refrigerator, because i've read that the cold temperature could be helpful to fix some broken contacts on some component, but i'm losing hope 'bout it. I supposed that at this point is something hardware-based and not software, because it's just impossible that a call like an other one could be the cause of this hard brick... The only thing is that if connected to my PC, it is being showed as QHSUSB_LOAD. I'll try some methods that i've seen in other forums, like softwares that tries to fix this, but i think that i'll be forced to buy a new device. Neither an usb-jig could help me to force the download mode if the phone is dead in every aspect... the only thing that i still didn't understood, is if a debrick.img on my SD card (sadly i've read that a microSD class 10 with at least 16 GB is required, and i don't have one) could help somehow on a situation like this one of not. Still no one could advice me with some tip, guys
Edit - feel free to close this thread, I have another phone now

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