I have a nexus 5x which is now outside the warranty. On my holidays it died completely.
Tried freezer nothing. So tried with an heat gun, but I guess the temperature was a bit too high so some small chips displaced on the board mostly capacitors [the really small ones]. Can also be that some chips are fried then.
So now the phone it totally unresponsive [no charging lights and no boot]. I would like to retrieve the data that I have on the phone, but the only possible way to me is the hardware way:
Can the emmc chip swapped to another working phone mainboard of a good nexus 5x [it is a 32GB version]?
Did you find a way to recover your data?
Related
Hi all,
the wife's HOX died suddenly, won't turn on at all, wont recoginse being plugged in into either the wall or the PC, no lights, nothing.
Unfortunately she has taken a number of pictures of our 5 month year old son on it, which obviously we would like to have back!
I'm competent with taking the phone apart and putting it back togther, however what I want to know is how the Samsung Flash chip is connected to the mainboard.
I can see black glue around the outside of it, but I am unsure if the underlying pins are also soldered down.
My intention was to razor blade the glue away and then buy a knackered (but working) HOX and transfer the chips over.
Obviously I wouldnt be able to do this if the chip is soldered down. I have monkey hands when it comes to soldering things.
Is anyone able to offer any insight?
I've had a google and read the datasheet for the specific chip, but it says nothing about how it is connected.
Thanks in advance.
ucof said:
Hi all,
the wife's HOX died suddenly, won't turn on at all, wont recoginse being plugged in into either the wall or the PC, no lights, nothing.
Unfortunately she has taken a number of pictures of our 5 month year old son on it, which obviously we would like to have back!
I'm competent with taking the phone apart and putting it back togther, however what I want to know is how the Samsung Flash chip is connected to the mainboard.
I can see black glue around the outside of it, but I am unsure if the underlying pins are also soldered down.
My intention was to razor blade the glue away and then buy a knackered (but working) HOX and transfer the chips over.
Obviously I wouldnt be able to do this if the chip is soldered down. I have monkey hands when it comes to soldering things.
Is anyone able to offer any insight?
I've had a google and read the datasheet for the specific chip, but it says nothing about how it is connected.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really can't see this being successful, sorry. I'm fairly sure the chip is soldered down, and the chances of damaging the chip are very, very high if you want to try and get it off.
If the phone didn't come into contact with water a JTAG recovery might be possible. It may not get the phone working again but it could get your data back. Alternatively companies like DriveSavers have an excellent reputation for getting data off flash chips, but it'll cost you in the region of $400 - $1400 (I got a quote a month or so back, when I thought my HOX was finished.)
I really wouldn't recommend trying to remove the chip though. You could do irreparable damage to the chip, which would render it completely unreadable.
ucof said:
Hi all,
the wife's HOX died suddenly, won't turn on at all, wont recoginse being plugged in into either the wall or the PC, no lights, nothing.
Unfortunately she has taken a number of pictures of our 5 month year old son on it, which obviously we would like to have back!
I'm competent with taking the phone apart and putting it back togther, however what I want to know is how the Samsung Flash chip is connected to the mainboard.
I can see black glue around the outside of it, but I am unsure if the underlying pins are also soldered down.
My intention was to razor blade the glue away and then buy a knackered (but working) HOX and transfer the chips over.
Obviously I wouldnt be able to do this if the chip is soldered down. I have monkey hands when it comes to soldering things.
Is anyone able to offer any insight?
I've had a google and read the datasheet for the specific chip, but it says nothing about how it is connected.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try first change the battery to see if the phone will start again it is the cheap way and most secure
de4life - thanks, I've had a quote for data recovery from Kroll. They want £95+ to look at it and provide a list of what can be recovered and then between £195 and £395 for actually recovering it for me. Far too expensive!
As for JTAG, there's been no water damage whatsoever; I've had a quick Google and it says this is more for Routers. How could I do it to my phone? Im not fussed about getting the phone working again, just want the contents of the flash storage back.
Thant - alas, the was the first thing I tried. New battery has made no difference. Which is annoying as her old Desire Z showed the same symptoms, we bought a new battery and its works again. She's currently using that until we decide what to do.
ucof said:
de4life - thanks, I've had a quote for data recovery from Kroll. They want £95+ to look at it and provide a list of what can be recovered and then between £195 and £395 for actually recovering it for me. Far too expensive!
As for JTAG, there's been no water damage whatsoever; I've had a quick Google and it says this is more for Routers. How could I do it to my phone? Im not fussed about getting the phone working again, just want the contents of the flash storage back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First thing's first, if you do go down the data recovery route try to avoid companies that charge any type of analysis fee. Kroll are a well known company but I've not heard much good things about them. I went through an extensive search of companies when I thought I'd killed my HOX and found DriveSavers were the best in terms of reputation, and they don't charge a fee to look at the phone. They are very expensive though, perhaps more so than Kroll, and you have to send the phone to the States which is daunting and costly in of itself (I assume from your £ quotation that you're UK based?).
It's good that there's no water damage. It's difficult to say what can cause the motherboard to suddenly stop working like that, but it's unlikely there has been a serious short circuit that could have affected the memory chip. Have you tried dissembling the phone completely and putting it back together? It may sound ridiculous to even try it, but when one of my older phones suddenly died I managed to get it working by taking it apart and then just putting it back together again. There are a lot of connections within the HOX motherboard framework that could easily have come loose. You might already have done this, but just a thought.
In terms of JTAG, it can be done on mobile phone motherboards with the right equipment. It's usually used for soft bricked phones to reset the software back to its original form if it's been corrupted, but I have seen cases where hard bricked phones were brought back to life using this method, including the HOX. It's not really something you can do at home (not cheaply, anyway) but there are companies that provide this service. One of the more popular services is here: http://mobiletechvideos.mybigcommerce.com/htc-one-x-jtag-brick-repair/ - I believe they post on here from time to time as well. Again, based in the States, but significantly cheaper than data recovery and as far as I've heard very professional. I don't know of any mobile phone JTAG services in the UK, though they probably do exist.
Keep in mind the data chip on your phone is likely fine. Even if the motherboard has stopped working, the memory chip itself is unlikely to be affected and will still contain all of your data - albeit in a scrambled form. If you send it out to companies then they can potentially damage the chip beyond repair, if you go down the route of sending the phone out to repair/data recovery companies I would urge extreme caution. If it's still on the chip the data itself isn't going anywhere. Take your time and make sure you're sending your phone to the right people, because one false move and your data is gone for good.
So I did what every phone owner dreads, I forgot my phone in my pocket and went swimming with it. I was swimming with it for about 5 minuets until I noticed it when I noticed it I immediately took the back cover off and unscrewed everything and put all of the components in rice and then put the rice and my phone into a vacuume chamber. I left it like that over night and found that the water killed the battery. So I ordered a new battery and stick it in my phone and surprisingly i turned it on and if started booting. After it turned on I noticed that out said it had no service, but other than that all of my sensors and hardware all work. I know that it is not the Sims card reader that is broken because it can still give me the sim card information when I put it in my phone. Could this be the antenna, or something else?
Could be so many things. You can check that your antenna is making good contact but it's also likely one of the radio chips fried.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Any idea where would the antenna connectors be?
Not on this phone. Maybe someone else does. There is usually prongs on a back door that need to make a connection.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
So I cleaned all of the contacts with alcohol but to no avail. If it is one of my radio chips that is fried could I get a new motherboard?
kerfun said:
So I cleaned all of the contacts with alcohol but to no avail. If it is one of my radio chips that is fried could I get a new motherboard?
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Click to collapse
Replacing the motherboard is usually close to the cost of buying a new device from what I've seen.
I recently upgraded my phone to android N when it came out a few days ago, so I decied to see what would happen when I put my sims card back into my phone. When I put it in my phone it showed that I had a few bars but didn't say anything like 4g or LTE. So I tried to make a call and it still doesn't work.
Is it still a hardware issue?
Ok here goes nothing. A friend of mine had her home broken into. Long short of it they stole her tablet. Since it was locked and they could not get into it the completely destroyed it. There is no hope of any repair. The reason she needs the data is her daughters pictures and video is on there before she passed away. I did manage to salvage out the main board of the unit. It was mostly in tact with a few chips knocked off due to the impacts. The emmc chip on the other hand is in untouched condition. The board is even cracked in a few spots. The model on the board looks like SM-T217S. The Emmc chip itself has the markings of Samsung 401, KLMAG2GEAC B002, HMKP009V. I called around to a few data recovery places and they want 300 plus to do it. Is there any other way than desoldering the chip from the board and wiring it up to a micro sd card adapter to recover any files?
Pay the recovery service. You wouldn't have any of the support circuitry needed for the memory chip to work and would probably permanently lose the data. They are professionals and know exactly what to do in this situation., you don't.
Pay the Man...
Hi, I just bought mine Nexus 5x few weeks ago, and 1 day after I started hear about the hardware bootloop problem. It made me scared.
I started searching about the problem and, until now, the conclusion about the problem is the phone gets heat and melt the solders of processor. That's a "comum" problem in LG phones, LG G4 have the same problem.
"-Ok, but, what causes that?"
My opinion, as lay, it is caused by cheap USB-C Cables and/or wall adapter. Fast charger adapters can also be a big problem. (Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/buy-usb-c-cable-wont-destroy-devices/ and https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/in-response-to-the-type-c-cable-discussions.412344/ ) USB-C transfer a lot of power through it, accelerating the process of charging and, consequently, making phone hot. The poor solder who LG's did on the phone start to get melted with the time.
Prevention you can take:
You can make this test in first of all:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/help/diagnosing-soon-to-bootlooped-phones-t3543830
1- Use only the original cable and wall adapter who comes with the phone
2- Buy only well constructed USB-C cables (maybe it means expensive one, but you will expend more money buying a new phone than a good cable)
3- Keep control of phone's temperature with some app ( I use Cpu Monitor) and never let it exceed 45°C/50°C. If the phone reach this temperature, turne it off immediately (more recommended) or enable battery saver mode.
If the phone suddenly get heat and turn off:
1- DON'T TRY TO TURN ON! Wait until it gets more cold and than try to boot. If it boot, try to make a backup of you important things.
1.1- If the phone is in warranty, send it back and they will send you a new one.
1.2- If not, go to step 2
2- You can try to fix at home. Here are some links:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/help/rld-fix-red-led-death-t3541536
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=i6eu7OK_4t8
3- If it don't work, you can take the phone to someone who works with this and ask for him to make new solder for the CPU.
If anyone know more tips or even solutions, please, contribute to the thread.
**sorry for eventually grammatical mistakes**
Bad quality soldering is really a common problems. Most of my mobile devices - especially notebooks - died because of this. I guess everybody had the problem once where a laptop get bluescreens more often with time until he finally refuses to boot up. Usually, damaged solder connections from chips to the mainboard are the cause for such problems. The solder connection degrades due to thermal and mechanical stress. With time, more and more micro-cracks are emerging with the result that the electrical resistance is increasing. Thus, signal transmission is distorted and bluescreens or crashes occur more regularly until the device dies.
In fact, a thermal treatment can help! The idea is to melt the solder to gain a reflow of the solder which repairs the micro cracks. Although there are semi-professional reflow ovens available on the market, you wouldn't buy one just to repair one device. But you can try do this by using your oven in the kitchen, a hot hairdryer or (if available) hot air gun. The best procedure (independing of the used heat source) is to disassemble the device, detach the battery (!) and if possible remove plastic parts. If these parts can not be disassembled, you can protect them by wrapping them with aluminium foil (it will reflect heat radiation and thus prevent fast heating of these parts). The best case would if you just have the small mainboard with the soldered chips on it. The start the thermal treatment: turn your oven to max. temperature possible, wait until its pre-heated and put the device into it for around 2-3 min. This time should be sufficient to remelt the solder connection (and repair them) and short enough to overheat the plastic parts. If it didn't work, try again with about 30 s longer duration. If you use a hot air gun try to apply the hot air stream only the soldered regions. Usually you can see if the solder gets hot enough. If its working with a usual hair dryer? I dont't know..
I used the kitchen-oven procedure many times and sucessfully revived many notebooks...
My Nexus 5X started bootlooping after like 2-3 years of use. I tried everything up to limiting the cores, no dice. My last resource was using my heat gun to either fix any bad solder bumps or thermally shock the thing. Oddly it worked, it no longer boot loops, but now backlight is dead. I have tried even a spare screen from another 5X, which i know works, and no dice, so i know it is not a screen/backlight issue. Any recommendations? At least i need to just get the data off the phone and disable all the authenticators on it before moving to my new phone.
Starbomba said:
My Nexus 5X started bootlooping after like 2-3 years of use. I tried everything up to limiting the cores, no dice. My last resource was using my heat gun to either fix any bad solder bumps or thermally shock the thing. Oddly it worked, it no longer boot loops, but now backlight is dead. I have tried even a spare screen from another 5X, which i know works, and no dice, so i know it is not a screen/backlight issue. Any recommendations? At least i need to just get the data off the phone and disable all the authenticators on it before moving to my new phone.
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Click to collapse
You could very well be experiencing the notorious Nexus 5x hardware bootloop bug -- an issue due to the actual soldering points on the logic board which negatively affected thousands of Nexus 5x and LG G4 devices. LG is fully aware of this factory fault, and has actually been sued in civil court for their alleged handling and unwillingness to correct it. But, I'm only asserting a possibility.