An evil storage elf that eats music and pictures - G3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have a one and a half year old LG G3. Since warranty covers for two years, I decided not to break it by rooting it or whatever. I'll do that in six months.
The phone has served me well for the most part, and I did my best to keep it malware free. I only installed apks from Google Play store (with exception of installing eduroam apk need for my colleges wifi to work - which was from a safe source, of course). However, lately, strange things started to occur. I thought I was going crazy at first - there were pictures that I took, that I knew that I took, that just aren't on the phone anymore.
Finally, the obvious answer has come to me - the devious storage elf must have took them for himself.
Also, the little bastard has been crippling my music collection. And in most devious way imaginable. Instead of deleting the whole albums, it left an average of first 6 songs in each folder. Some albums went from 20 to 3 songs, while others managed to end up unscathed.
I have to note that I do have a SD card in my phone (a 32GB, for collective device storage of 64GB), about as old as my phone. I also believe that all the missing data has gone missing from the said card. But I'm not sure. Some pictures might have been in the phone memory. Never thought I'd have to keep track of it.
My first though was that my SD card failed, but seriously, what the hell. How does a card fail and not only delete only some files (okay, that is entirely feasible), but delete all but the first six song in each album (and we are talking over 30 albums here, so it's not a statistical oddity). The other culprit could be the phone (which I totally wouldn't mind if the warranty could get me a new one). But it's an LG, it's a good brand.
Which leaves us with the obvious choice, which is the evil storage elf that eats music and pictures. I don't know what I did to wrong him, but reasoning with him did not help. I need a method of disposing of the tiny twat. I considered shooting him, but that might damage my phone. Do these elfs like analog data as much as digital? I thought I might leave some physical pictures near my phone and squash the beast when it pokes it's ugly head out. Or should I do poison? How do you poison a picture? Should I download some pictures of Donald Trump to my phone? Or would that outright break my phone (crack the screen)?
P.S. In all seriousness, my phone is malfunctioning exactly the way I described, if you leave out the mystical creatures. Files are going missing (again, I'm not sure if it was in a single batch or gradually), and are doing so in some weird fashion. Most of my albums only have the first six song left, others just gone (I checked with file explorer, they are not gone from cache, but gone gone). Honestly, the best thing I could hear is that I could get my device replaced with a new one, but I doubt it's going to happen. Something went wrong, and it might again, so I'd really like to identify what it was and fix it to make sure it doesn't happen again. Also I'm sorry if the elf story wasn't amusing to you.

Karlovsky120 said:
I have a one and a half year old LG G3. Since warranty covers for two years, I decided not to break it by rooting it or whatever. I'll do that in six months. ...
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Click to collapse
Are you running any app like Link2SD or similar?
You may test with another SDcard and check the behaviour it takes. Also I recommend re-formatting your SD.

I'm not running any apps that manipulate storage.
I could test it with another card, but since I can't force the error to happen or not happen (e.g. recreate the exact conditions, I don't know what triggered this) I can never be sure or do any reliable tests. I would have to stick in (a considerably smaller) card and just wait for it to fail or not fail. For how long would I have to wait to confirm it's the card?
But I really doubt it's an SD card failure since the deleted songs were all on the same range (e.g. from seven to twelve), and never at the start of the album. I'd expect more erratic behavior if the card had failed (random stuff deleted, or card not working at all). This seems too neat to be an error at a hardware level. Especially when you consider the fact that I copied all that data on one go some time before on a blank card - all of the data was probably physically adjacent on the chip making this kind of failure even more unlikely.

Related

SD Card Randomly Appears Empty

Hey, I've had my Evo for a couple weeks now, and have recently started experiencing an issue that has been since happened quite frequently - the SD card will randomly appear empty, and I won't be able to add files to it. The only way to get around this, it seems, is to reboot the phone.
At first I thought my MicroSD card that came with the phone was defective, so I got Best Buy to exchange it today, but it just started happening again! My phone is rooted and running the latest RvU ROM, if that could have anything to do with it. Does anyone have any help, or is this just a hardware problem? (If it is, I'll just exchanged the phone at Best Buy, since I'm within my 30 days.)
Thanks!
vonStemmington said:
Hey, I've had my Evo for a couple weeks now, and have recently started experiencing an issue that has been since happened quite frequently - the SD card will randomly appear empty, and I won't be able to add files to it. The only way to get around this, it seems, is to reboot the phone.
At first I thought my MicroSD card that came with the phone was defective, so I got Best Buy to exchange it today, but it just started happening again! My phone is rooted and running the latest RvU ROM, if that could have anything to do with it. Does anyone have any help, or is this just a hardware problem? (If it is, I'll just exchanged the phone at Best Buy, since I'm within my 30 days.)
Thanks!
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Click to collapse
Same thing for me. I tried Baked Snack and now Fresh 0.5.3, both have the same issue. Rebooting seems to work for a short time, but it always fails when I'm using programs that access the SD a lot such as the Gallery app or the Camera. As long as I stay clear of those it seems to hold up a bit longer, but I've had it fail while using Astro File Manager too.
When I was running The latest stock OTA I had no issues. I posted a similar question in the threads for both ROM's with no response yet. Because of that, I was beginning to think I had a bad card too.
I don't want to go back to stock. I just can't understand why this keeps happening.
Glad to know I'm not the only one.. I just wish there was some resolution to this.
I contacted HTC and they said it wasn't a known issue with the phone, so they said I should go to Best Buy and exchange it. So maybe our SD slots are just defective?
I have this problem too. It empties every day it seems and I need to reformat the SD card just to get it working again. It erases all my pictures and video and is very frustrating.
It seems to happen most often when I am taking a picture or going into Gallery, but has happened in other instances as well.
I hope HTC releases a solution that addresses this.
Also, it tells me in the notification bar that the SD card is damaged or unsupported file type or something along those lines.
And for the record, I am running a stock Evo.
i welcome u guys to my world.i been having the problem since day one tried everything and nothing worked.fully rooted,new radio,tried few roms,formated SD card,put in a new SD card and still that random SD failure.i reboot about 3-4 times a day and its really irritating.im afraid i might brake my evo one day or jus claim for a new one.
GHOST99K said:
im afraid i might brake my evo one day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is how I feel
I'm tempted now to go back to stock and verify, but I never had a single issue on my phone until it was rooted. However, it's possible that the problem was there and I didn't encounter it.
If I take that step and find that it is still an issue on the stock OTA, I will most likely try to get the card replaced or have the phone if it persists after a new card.
It's very inconvenient and makes the camera pretty unreliable. Plus I am a field tech, and I store .pdf's on the card for different devices. If the SD is frakked I can't be sure I can get to important paperwork in the field.
It's not the SD card.I have already reformated the SD and even put a new 16gb SD card but same issue everyday.
Sent from beneath the earth using XDA App
It's definitely not the SD card. I've formatted it, gone to Best Buy and had the SD card replaced, and used a different SD card.
It could be the ROMs we're using, but I've got a serious problem with this phone if using a rooted ROM does this.. And few other people are experiencing the problem. That leads me to believe it's a hardware defect.
My suggestion jus get your phone exchanged ASAP.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Yeah.. I've contacted Best Buy and they'll let me know when they get their next order in
Unfortunately I am am outside my 30 day exchange period so I cannot do that.
Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but custom ROMs is not the issue. I am stock and have had my phone since launch morning (June 4) and today, for the first time, my SD card contents disappeared. I was changing wallpaper when the default wallpaper kept coming up as the wallpaper. Note that the when selecting a wallpaper, the gallery showed all my images (cached?) but when I went to Gallery, nothing was there. I pulled the battery to reboot and now the SD card contents are back.
I had the same thing happen with me. I've also experienced other strange things related to the card. When hooking the phone up to my macbook, sometimes files copy and sometimes they don't (to the card). I was thinking it was an app corrupting the card. I've tried large files (100-200mb) and small files (like apks or old video game console roms). It seems that when data is going to the card very aggressively, it doesn't wasn't to copy. What I mean by aggressive is like 2+ dialog boxes of files being copied at the same time.
More often than not, it seems like lots of small files pisses the phone off and it parts me back by bowling the card. Lots of files means hundreds to thousands.
I saw this thread awhile ago but didn't look at it until today. At least I'm not going crazy or even maybe have a bad card. The cards never gave me any problems with the devices its been in for maybe the last 3 years until last week.
I gotta find another card to try. I am using sandisk 16gb. Maybe a different brand? Anyone try that yet?
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I'm doing a test now. I removed the suspect 16gb card from the phone and put in a 8gb card that has never been in the evo ever. I put the 16 in a sd adapter which goes into a usb adapter. All are official sandisk. I formatted the 16 in my macbook as fat32. I am now copying 8557 files to the card which size total is about 6.97gb. After a few minutes, I'm down to 6291 files to go and almost half way finished copying. I have not received one error message or anything that might lead me to believe there is something wrong somewhere. I'm starting to think there's nothing wrong with the card(s). It's the gd phone! I am so pissed now!!!! I keep looking back at the progress window and it's chugging along no problem. I am thinking about something tho. When I was changing cards I noticed that even when the card's lock bar was down, the card could wiggle a little. HMM. I'm gonna get a piece of thick paper and put it on top of the card and see if that helps make the card not want to wiggle as much when the lock bar is in place.
I will report back if I find out if it works or not in like 24 hours or less.
I don't think it makes any difference what rom you are running but I went to the one stock rooted "EVO_1.47.651.1_Rooted_stockrom.zip" one calkulin posted.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=712695
That link is just in case someone stumbles across this post later and wonders what I'm talking about.
So far, so good. I will give progress reports when I'm at work when I'm able to. I hope I may have stumbled across a simple fix to a defect.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I had the issue you guys are talking abou this is what I did to resolve my issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Just got a new SDHC card and simpleroot worked. The SDHC that came with my phone died. I placed a spare in there that was a 2gd regular micro and Hboot would not read the IMG for nothing.
If simple root is not working then it's the Sh!tty card acting up.
Happy ending for me.
vonStemmington said:
It's definitely not the SD card. I've formatted it, gone to Best Buy and had the SD card replaced, and used a different SD card.
It could be the ROMs we're using, but I've got a serious problem with this phone if using a rooted ROM does this.. And few other people are experiencing the problem. That leads me to believe it's a hardware defect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For those who post before reading the thread, I am STOCK and this also happened to me. Battery out/in fixed the issue (for now).
So far I'm going on around 16 hours without the card screwing up. If you wanna try this, get a business card. Pull the card out of the phone. Lay the card on the business card at a corner. Measure about twice as long and normal width. Cut the business card. Fold the piece in half length wise so its the same size as the sd card. If it's too big, snip the non folded end of the paper and measure it so that its the same size as the sd card. Put the card into the phone and make sure its ask the way in. don't force it to hard. Then hold the card down and slide the paper, folded end first, on top of the sd and into the card bay. Make sure the paper isn't sticking out of the card well where the battery would be on top of. Gently push and lock the lock bar down onto the card. If you have to push firmly then the paper is too thick. Place the battery in the phone and put the cover back on. That extra bit of thickness added to the card I think is keeping it from scooting around in the sd card well and judging by the size of the contacts on the card, it wouldn't take much movement to get off the contacts. The folded end under the lock bar and the other end being held down by the battery I think is doing the trick. Just power down before removing the battery next time.
So far, this is working for me and I'm keeping my fingers crossed...
Just another update and bump off the topic...
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I agree the ROM probably isn't the problem, but definitely come back and let us know if the paper helped at all. It could just be that the SD card is loose.. It seems like sometimes if my SD card stops being read, but I leave the phone alone, it'll work again later, without rebooting, which is odd.

Constant "sd card was unexpectedly removed" errors

Ok so this started happening when I switched to unofficial CM9 from this forum. Constant "your sd card was unexpectedly removed" errors. Usually right when I open the camera app, or try to play music. Go figure. Once I reset the phone (doesn't always work) the problem goes away until I leave the phone long enough for it to go idle I guess. First thing I figured was the OS change. So I restored a backup. Same problem. Backed up the sd card and wiped the phone and sd card. Reinstalled CM7.2. Nope. Same problem. Forgot to mention, I had already tried both of my spare 16 gig cards, two of which were from a different manufacturer. One I formatted with my computer, then other I left alone and just deleted the files from it with the phone to rule out my computers card reader going bad. Both had the same exact issues. I even switched to a sense based rom called UKB. Same. Problem. Although this time it seems to be a little better. Worked all day yesterday at least, problem only coming back after the phone was on charge all night. I could live with that but I doubt it'll keep that up all night. I've read just about every forum post on every forum. Loads of people suggesting reformatting without using quick format, formatting with different settings, using various apps that change the cache size. Regardless, none of this was necessary before, and definitely shouldn't be necessary now. I'm a couple months past my warranty or I would get a replacement like I did before when I had headphone jack issues. Really sick of my phones all going bad before upgrade. Maybe if I called they would see that I have not been a happy customer, but a customer nonetheless since like 1998. Who knows. But anyway, does ANYONE have any suggestions? And please don't suggest going to settings and hitting mount. That suggestion is in just about every forum post about the problem and it oddly drives me crazy. Probably because of how obvious it is. That option is always greyed out of course. Thanks in advance to anyone who's willing to help. I always want to smash this phone every time I need to take a picture of something really cool and my phone decides to act up.
Come on guys, nothing?
I'm having the exact same problem, and I'm 100% stock, always have been. I have no idea what's going on, but it's really frustrating, especially because of all my apps I keep on the SD.
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app
lfrench0 said:
I'm having the exact same problem, and I'm 100% stock, always have been. I have no idea what's going on, but it's really frustrating, especially because of all my apps I keep on the SD.
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
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Well the best part? Now the phone doesn't recognize the card at all. This phone has been in a case since purchase. Never been dropped. Has been tested with multiple cards in multiple formats. But looks like HTC is yet another company that designs phones to intentionally break over the course of a year or two. Go figure. Phone is only a little over a year old. Then again the board is older since it was a refurb. First phone had issues with the headphone plug.
alexmawdsley said:
Well the best part? Now the phone doesn't recognize the card at all. This phone has been in a case since purchase. Never been dropped. Has been tested with multiple cards in multiple formats. But looks like HTC is yet another company that designs phones to intentionally break over the course of a year or two. Go figure. Phone is only a little over a year old. Then again the board is older since it was a refurb. First phone had issues with the headphone plug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try unexpectedly inserting the sd card? /s
But in reality, that stinks.
gtdtm said:
Maybe try unexpectedly inserting the sd card? /s
But in reality, that stinks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha that one made me smile. I can just see myself in the dark with one of those long armed desk/work lamps shoving an sd card into my phone and yelling "SURPRISE!" while laughing like an evil villain. This truly has driven me nuts though. I've been stuck on my sad old OG Droid. You know, the one that made android popular but is painfully slow when you're used to a phone overclocked to 1.5 ghz. Even with this one at 900 mhz (all it can handle with a standard voltage kernel without crashing) it often freezes up multitasking. Navigation takes a good couple minutes to fully load a small route, and it simply isn't gonna happen if music is playing.
HOWEVER, I decided to try again. Dinc2 recognized a card again. Not sure why. Whatever. So because the card works even temporarily, I flashed a new radio and am now downloading unofficial cm10 and all that good stuff. Gonna flash everything after triple wiping, then I'll wipe cache again after flashing everything. Just maybe that new radio and lots of murdering the wipe button, it shall survive. It just doesn't make any sense to be a hardware problem since it's only intermittent when the sd card is suddenly active after not being accessed for some time. I can sit there taking pictures and video for hours while playing music. But once the screen is off for 10 minutes and I go look at those pictures, the sd card is suddenly removed. I'll keep you updated. Downloads are complete. Muahahahahaha
So I did end up flashing CM9 instead, because CM10 was just too buggy for my liking. However I used the newest kernel available. It was in the unofficial CM10 forum post.
Radio seems to have fixed the problem though. SD card hasn't unmounted once. We'll see how it works out over the course of the day but it copied all my music over wifi last night, finished at about 2AM, then sat there until I woke up at 6 completely idle. Picked it up and went straight to gallery, and it loaded pictures. Took a snapshot with the camera, then played a song. Everything looks to be in order. I flashed the radio that was apparently in the leaked ICS developer update.
Disregard the suggested fix I posted prior. I mean if you have the problem you can try it... since it seemed to fix it for a day. But it's right back to it again. Downloaded and installed ukb evolution 2.1, and it did the same on that as well. So I guess I live with it for the time being, never buy an HTC device again, hope like crazy a moto device lasts longer, and fork over the scam of an extra year of warranty when I upgrade. Really, what kind of world do we live in where we have to spend money for a company to stand by their product for longer than a lousy year? When standard contracts are for two years, it leaves an entire year where the device can just stop functioning properly, like this one, and then you're stuck paying 600 bucks for a device that cost HTC maybe 100 bucks to make. And even at that ridiculous cost, it still takes two iterations of android before they even suggest that they might update the device to the older version, over three years after launch. Awesome little fact, if the one year warranty restarted when I got the phone replaced in the first place for an issue with the headphone jack, I would still be under warranty. But nope, it wasn't replaced with a new device, but someone elses phone that was then fixed and then sent to me. I still hate that I can buy a brand new phone, and get a used one in return because these companies refuse to build a phone without trying to design it to die at the end of it's "useful" life. People will pay to upgrade if they want to. If the phone barely lasts the full two years if that, someone in their right mind simply wouldn't buy from them again. My original droid was out of warranty by 8 months when I had it replaced TWICE. Why? Because I had it replaced 5 times before that for headphone jack problems. Only reason I didn't buy another moto phone was because they decided to lock down bootloaders for good, while HTC was announcing that they were becoming dev friendly and unlocking their devices. Customers always get screwed. Alright end rant. Sorry guys, extremely frustrated.
I had the same problem on the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro, FWIW. Probably unrelated.
Same here with a 2 year old dinc2. SD card works fine as far as the phone is awake. Works fine in other phones and computers either...
Every 6-12 months, I have this problem and it's blindingly frustrating. As it turned out, my MicroSD card was starting to get tired, and swapping it out with a brand new flash card from Staples resolved it completely. Just like the OP, I had two used 32GB MicroSD cards -- one of them an expensive high-speed Sandisk -- that reported no errors under Windows or CWM. Installing it in my DInc2 (CM10), it would run for a while, but then just decide to unmount.
It may sound illogical, but try purchasing a new, inexpensive MicroSD card (I bought another Sandisk) and see if the problem goes away permanently.
- Dave
I tried two different sd cards on two different roms - cm7 and evervolv and the cards kept dismounting about twice a day. I then turned on "protect sd card" under developer options on evervolv rom. I don't know what it does but haven't had the problem for about a week. It might be a coicidence though. Will see...
fixed
surfthesummer said:
I tried two different sd cards on two different roms - cm7 and evervolv and the cards kept dismounting about twice a day. I then turned on "protect sd card" under developer options on evervolv rom. I don't know what it does but haven't had the problem for about a week. It might be a coicidence though. Will see...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same problem for monthes. I had gone through all the efforts to fix it. finally I found a clue.
On the back cover, there are two pairs of pins which supposed to connected to the terminals on the phone, which are not connected well. so I bent the springs up a little bit and made connection well. (be very careful not break the springs). then SD card show up right away. It's being working for days and no more problem.
hope it helps everyone.
sd card issue
Same issue with my HTC incredible s.....phone not in warranty....plz help guys.....
Some says its software ...some hardware....all assumptions.....
tc truly sucks.....camera sucks...music sucks.....overpriced.....etc etc.....but wen u pay
Such a lot of money u expect something good....such an awesome name HTC INCREDIBLE ...incredible ma a$*..
Somebody plz help....
This is incredible 2 forum...but just busting your balls....try a new SD card
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app
My dinc2 started with this problem about 3 months ago. I was running the psychochilly cm10.1. Then I decided to try the miui v5 ('alpha'?) rom which had a known bug that the SD card won't Mount. After about two minutes, it crashed, so I just decided to restore my psychichilly backup. Thenextday i noticed that the sd card was unmounted several times when I wanted to take or look at a pic. I found that if I took my otterbox off, along with the back plastic and tapped the back of the phone near the bottom on the edge of the table gently it would magically recognize my SD card. Not too long after it would pop up that 'SD card unexpectedly removed' message. So. Whether it's hardware or software related, I'm not sure. But I'm thinking hardware. On the other hand, I had to use the tacoroot method to s-off. Maybe an effect that took a whole year to happen. Either way I think the only way to fix this issue, besides reflowing the motherboard around the SD card slot, is to replace the motherboard, which I just might do. Kinda itching to flash the new PAC.

Is it possible to recover data from a truly bricked phone?

I used these searches before compiling this thread;
"how to recover data from a bricked SGN"
"data extraction from a SGN that will not boot"
"removing the HD from samsung galaxy nexus"
These searches did not yield results that replicate my situation. The only search that resulted in many entries were for people with "bricked phones" that (at least somewhat) responded to input. I associate the term "bricked" with a phone that does not respond to input, or show any indication of getting power.
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Nexus on verizon wireless. It has been rooted and is running a custom ROM by...AOKP i think. I had some assistance each time I rooted and updated my ROM.
Here is my problem, what caused it,my troubleshooting steps, and what I'm trying to do. My phone was partially submerged in water for an unknown amount of time. The battery and SIM were removed and kept in a water proof container within an hour of submersion. The water damage indicator stickers (on both the battery and the phone have not been triggered). About 24hrs later, the phone was placed in a zip lock bag with 4 desiccant silica gel packs where it will remain for the next 24. Per vzw's tech support, I tried to power the phone on using the charger and the battery removed. No change. Verizon was not advised of the partial submersion, only the non triggered water damage stickers. This phone is under warranty and a replacement has been shipped. I confirmed that my contacts are backed up to google.
The reason for this post is, I have close to 30GB of pictures and videos that I stored on this device's "internal SD" that I want to recover. Looking through the searches I mentioned above, it sounds like this isn't so much a separate card, but more of a partition on the phone's HD. I have been told by vzw that neither their branch office tech support, nor their recovery/diagnostic team that analyzes returned phones has the capability to remove and return this data.
If someone here has hardware experience with cracking open a SGN and swapping the "internal SD card" I would greatly appreciate any information available for this task.
if it cant turn on, you cant retrieve data.
Zepius said:
if it cant turn on, you cant retrieve data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well..OK. I'm not ready to give up just yet. When my desktop PC's power supply failed, the PC was unusable, and didn't indicate power. I swapped that out and it now it works fine. This seems like it could be a similar situation. I at least want to exhaust every option I have before throwing in the towel.
Those 30GB contain hundreds of pictures of the first 2 years of my kid's life.
It seems to me that data recovery should still be possible if an replacement power source is utilized. Maybe more than just the power source has failed. Maybe every other hardware component in my wet phone has failed. But maybe, that "internal SD" is recoverable.
If anyone here knows what the "internal SD" looks like, and has successfully swapped one, I'll risk it. I know I can't trust vzw with such a task.
I realize this is a developers forum, and I'm asking for hardware failure advice. If anyone can refer me to a different forum that is more specialized to my specific task, I'll gladly take my trouble there.
Thanks for reading,
Jef
you're assuming 1 thing. the nand that houses the storage is in good health. When water is introduced, you have the unknown factors of what it does to circuitry.
im sure there is a ifixit teardown showing where the nand is. The problem is its soldered to the mainboard of the phone. You might be able to unsolder it, but thats a stretch.
Zepius said:
you're assuming 1 thing. the nand that houses the storage is in good health. When water is introduced, you have the unknown factors of what it does to circuitry.
im sure there is a ifixit teardown showing where the nand is. The problem is its soldered to the mainboard of the phone. You might be able to unsolder it, but thats a stretch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much Zepius. I googled "ifixit teardown samsung galaxy nexus" which lead me to a page (that I'm not able to paste here as a new user).
which is exactly what I was looking for. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm assuming the nand is in good health, just wishful thinking.
Anncoco - sorry, I don't remember what I did with this. It's been about 4 years, and this was 3 phones ago. I think I had some of the photos backed up somewhere else, enough that I never went to the trouble to disassemble the Nexus. From my notes - I remember the phone did not indicate it was getting power when plugged in.

G4 Bootloop Questions

Hi. I recently bought a g4 without much research. Now i see that a lot of people complain about that bootloop problem. The good news is that it hasnt happened to me (yet atleast) but i kinda worry for it so i wanna ask some questions. Is there any way to prevent it from happening? If it happens, what can i do to repair my phone? When it happens, does it wipe all my stored data (phone contacts, photos etc) or everything is safe and the phone just refuses to get started? Is there any other info i should know about that issue? Thanks in advance
Hi. The problem is that it is likely to happen to every G4. It's bad, but true.
In fact, you should be lucky to not happen this to you.
There is probably no prevention against this. But after it happens to you, you can try to put the phone to the freezer for about 30 minutes to recover the most important stuff from your phone like photos, video, SMS, etc.
And because it is HW problem somewhere between motherboard and something else, you will lose your data because your motherboard will be changed as same as everything what's integrated on it.
Odesláno z mého LG-H815 pomocí Tapatalk
kouzelnik3 said:
Hi. The problem is that it is likely to happen to every G4. It's bad, but true.
In fact, you should be lucky to not happen this to you.
There is probably no prevention against this. But after it happens to you, you can try to put the phone to the freezer for about 30 minutes to recover the most important stuff from your phone like photos, video, SMS, etc.
And because it is HW problem somewhere between motherboard and something else, you will lose your data because your motherboard will be changed as same as everything what's integrated on it.
Odesláno z mého LG-H815 pomocí Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the bootloop happens then what should i do? Do i need to go my phone to a (tech) store to be fixed? And if it happens and i finally repair it, is it possible to happen AGAIN?
Yes, you need to go to a tech store and let them fix it. And as I read, it is possible to happen again. I have my motherboard changed just once and I hope it won't happen again, but it is possible.
kouzelnik3 said:
Yes, you need to go to a tech store and let them fix it. And as I read, it is possible to happen again. I have my motherboard changed just once and I hope it won't happen again, but it is possible.
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Omg what a problematic phone.. Okay and i got 1 more question. Im ok with the 32gb internal storage of the phone, but im now considering buying a card (its called sd i think) to move my photos there. They will be safe there, right? If so, do all do the same thing or theres better and worse ones?
Yes, true. This phone is great anyway except these problems.
Dont worry to buy SD card, but be careful of its speed if you are recording FHD/4K video or if you are (like I do) listening FLAC music. If so, you will need SD like I have which is about 60/15 down/up stream. And if bootloop happens and you have your photos etc on the SD card, they will be safe, as you said.
Thank u my friend. Now this topic can be locked or whatever, i dont have any further questions for the moment atleast.
Just for the record: if your G4 does suffer from the bootloop at some point, there are no "local shops" that can fix the problem, it's something that only LG itself can resolve. The best you can hope for is registering the G4 with LG under your own name, picking a date of purchase like September 15 2016 or something (note that if that were the purchase date it would have factory warranty until September 15 2017), and if it does end up dying at some point before the warranty would expire (based on the date you entered as the date of purchase) then you might be able to get LG to replace the motherboard (at their expense including the shipping both ways) by contacting them through their online chat support service if and when it becomes necessary.
There has never been a conclusive answer as to why the G4 (and the other LG devices) suffers this problem but it's believed - note I'm saying it's believed and that's based on some sound principles of how and why phones can and do die - to be heat-related and also related to a manufacturing defect aka they used pretty crappy solder in the manufacturing process on the assembly lines.
The belief is that when the G4 and the other devices run very warm like when using 4K video recording or playing a game for an extended period of time or perhaps running device benchmarks in a loop for stress testing that the SoC (the Snapdragon 808) heats up enough to where the solder points holding it to the actual motherboard become softer and develop micro-fissures which are literally small breaks in the connections and after multiple such heat-up cool-down heat-back-up-again cycles that the small micro-fissures become larger and eventually they become large enough to prevent the proper flow of electricity aka electrons.
Think of pavement on roads. In the summertime that pavement heats up and it expands (literally) and then as night comes on it cools down and contracts, then the next day it heats up again and expands, then cools, over and over again - over a period of time that heating up expansion and cooling down cycling causes cracks in the pavement, and as vehicles drive over those cracks it'll cause chunks of the pavement to break off, more and more all the time which is how the classic pothole develops.
Same principle with the G4 and the other devices suffering from these bootloop issues (again that's the belief). Why LG let it happen for so long across multiple devices (some G3, a whole lotta G4, some G5, some V10, and even a V20 or two have been reported, and of course the Nexus 5x too) is beyond me but it's not relevant anymore. There's a class action lawsuit against LG (I'm part of it having owned several G4's that did bootloop and I currently have yet another G4 that's working fine so far) so maybe it'll get resolved at some point. LG has repaired all the G4's I've had issues with and I fully expect them to do it again with this F505S I currently have if it dies.
Anyway, that's some background on the issue. If the G4 you have dies, nobody is going to be able to repair it except LG so, go to LG's website (in your country) and then register it in your name (you'll need to create an account if you haven't got one already) and the use the info/IMEI to get it properly registered, say you bought it in a carrier store (unless it's an H815 then just you got it from LG direct), pick a date sometime in the latter part of 2016 as noted and see what happens.
Good luck...

SD card issues AFTER root...

Hey fellas,
This is very strange. I used my phone for a couple of days prior to rooting, I listened to a couple audio books and a fair amount of music. After I rooted the device, now my phone thinks the SD card is getting removed and plugged back in every couple of seconds. I cant even copy a 5mb mp3 file off of it before halfway through it will get unmounted (and then remounted). Any ideas? I have taken the card out, put it in two machines, formatted it, checked it for errors on both and neither computer has a hard time with it....
I am getting quite frustrated here...
Well does anybody at least have any suggestions to where I can start to look for whats going on? I am in the process of wiping my device and starting over
Hell-Razor said:
Well does anybody at least have any suggestions to where I can start to look for whats going on? I am in the process of wiping my device and starting over
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This has been a problem with a lot of S8+ for quite a while. If you Google it you will find blogs and chatboards with loads of information on the problem back to around June of this year. Seems like Samsung doesn't really care about it looking at the conversations going on. They know about the problem but haven't made any fixes for it.
My S8+ does this occasionally also. I have to remove the sdcard and reseat it in the holder and put it back into the phone. I saw several posts of using a older/slower card. I got an older 32gb type 6 card and it worked MUCH better than my class 10 cards.
I also have the problem of my computers not being able to moves files to or from my phone related to the sd card problem. This has happened before and after rooting my phone.
I know this isn't much of an answer, but resetting your phone back to stock isn't going to fix it. We need Samsung to do something to repair the problem. Good luck.
Take care,
OneofTheRabble

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