What happened on Friday

The story that I’m going to tell might give you goose bumps. It certainly did for me!

My phone was running a little slow of lately, and I wanted to do something about it.  Simple thing to do would be do a format (i.e. hard reset) and let the phone deploy the software that is already there in the ROM.

But, then there is this other thing. A new version of the firmware has been out for the phone; version DXID1. It was not an official release though. But the people who had tried it out were saying it was faster than the version I currently have in the phone; DZIA5. Don’t ask me how these version numbers go. Just know that DXID1 is newer than DZIA5.

Then there is this issue. I didn’t get the USB cable with the phone and I was using a cheap generic cable, bought from Pettah. It gives all sort of troubles when I connect the phone to my home PC. If you are LUCKY, it will work once every 10 times you plug it in. But I didn’t have that problem at work. It would work on the first attempt. So I thought, maybe it will not be a problem.

I downloaded the DXID1 firmware. While downloading the firmware, I backed up the data in the phone to the PC. Now I’m all set. It’s time to flash.

I ran the flasher. The flasher detects the phone when it is being booted, so I soft reset the phone. The flasher detected the phone. I hit the start button in the flasher window and the flashing began. First few steps (flashing the boot loader and stuff) went without a hitch. But then, something weird happened.

Before explaining what the weird thing was, let me explain something. When the flasher is writing to the ROM, both the flasher and the phone shows a progress bar each. Both are identical.

The weird thing was, while writing to the ROM, the progress bar in the phone stopped progressing after few seconds. When this happened, there was a longer delay in progressing the progress bar in the flasher to the next notch. To make things even worse, after few more notches, the flasher also didn’t progress any more. I left it for few minutes, but didn’t progress. I was feeling really bad.

I reset the phone and let the flasher do its thing from the beginning. The same thing happened again, but at a different place. Dang!

After few more attempts, I managed to somehow fin ish it. But still, the progress bar in the phone stopped at some place. Anyways, the phone didn’t boot into Windows. It was stuck at the Samsung Logo screen.

I then tried another firmware. This was a custom Windows 6.5 ported ROM. It was a lite ROM so it would have flashed quickly. But NO such luck! Still the same problem.

For my relief, everybody at modaco.com said that if the welcome screen is coming up, I haven’t bricked the phone. Just the firmware is not writing properly. If it does, the phone will work as it should.

I anyway charged the battery because all these tampers had drained the battery life. The phone should have 75% or more battery before attempting a flash…or so they say. Anyway, I managed to charge it fully. Charging worked! Yay!!

I thought over this problem while the battery was being charged. What could have gone wrong? And how is it that the problem comes up at different places? Definitely not a problem with the ROM (because I tried a 3rd one as well with no positive results), and not the memory even (because then it would have given the problem at the same location over and over, for all ROMs)

Everything pointed to the “bad cable”. But there wasn’t a way to check it. Maduranga also hadn’t brought his Omnia cable so I couldn’t check it. *sigh*

Anyway, I came home thinking that maybe I will be luckier at home. I had to install Windows XP on dad’s PC because all these flashers only support XP. I even installed XP in VMWare on my PC as well.

Installed Active Sync and the modem driver on dad’s PC and I was all set to try the flasher. When I plugged the phone to the PC, Windows couldn’t detect the phone. Sometimes it got detected, but was not stable enough to do a flashing…if at all begin flashing. Damn this cable!! I was kinda sure that it was the cable that was responsible to all these hassles!

Guess what? I had a 2nd cable as well, also bought from Pettah. I kept one cable at work and one at home. Both the cables were acting the same way. Dad tried few things on the USB connector end, but it’s not a loose connection problem. I mean, come on….there are only 4 pins.

I had to come to the conclusion that the phone is transmitting some sort of a signal pattern in the data pins for Active Sync to recognize it and kick in. The flasher wouldn’t sometimes show an error when connecting the phone and sometimes wouldn’t show anything. When it gives an error, it must be when it received *some* signal from the phone, but incorrectly. Maybe the signal is very faint and the crappy cable is attenuating/corrupting the signal.

One thing was certain. I needed an original cable! Finding an Omnia in Sri Lanka is harder than finding an iPhone!!! So how can you find a CABLE??? And an original one at that???

Channa told me a place at Liberty Plaza which might have them. The next day (Saturday = yesterday) I went to Liberty Plaza, with the code of the OEM cable written down, and checked few shops. One shop was trying to sell a F480’s OEM cable. But it wasn’t the exact cable. I didn’t want to take the risk. Couple of other shops said that they can order a cable for me at Rs. 2500. But it would have taken some time. I finally came to the shop Channa mentioned, and they had a cable!!! An OEM. It cost me Rs. 2500 though >_> Even on ebay, if *bought*, it would have cost close to $20 with shipping, so it is not a bad deal.

I bought it, came home and plugged in the phone. Voila! IT WORKED!!!. No errors. The flasher detected he phone and started flashing. The progress bar problem wasn’t there either. Everything went perfectly well. And finally Windows Mobile home screen after more than 24 hours! XD.

*PHEW*

However, what I installed was the WinMo 6.5 ported custom ROM. Though the phone worked fine, that ROM had few bugs which made me go back to the new 6.1 DXID1 ROM. Since then, it has been working really well.