I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S i9000 off Ebay for about 30 euro. Here is the story on how to go about getting something the is slightly dodgy to perfect working order. I'd like to thank 091 labs, Paul, Grooby and all on XDA-developer forums in advance
Buying a brick
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| Soft brick screen |
I figured it would be broken in some way (all it said was a crack on the "Menu" button) but I realised after turning it on that it was soft bricked ("Phone - ! - Computer" on the screen). The only
method of fixing this problem is to get the phone into download mode and flash a new ROM onto it. People have released several software methods of unbricking but I opted to avoid downloaded shitware and built a jig.
Getting "Jig"gy with it
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| Micro USB pin out |
A jig is the male end of a micro USB with pin 4 and 5 (ID and GND) connected with a 301kΩ resistor (± 1% = ± 3.01kΩ). They are usually used by lab and engineering technicians who are building, testing and debugging these phones in the R&D and production stages. When the technician bricks his/her phone they plug their own version of a jig in and go on to fix what they've broken. The general public get access to these after hacker (the original meaning for hacker being "someone who reverse engineers something to see how it works, not the Hollywood, crack into a computer and "stealz mi stuff" hacker, the proper name for those is "cracker") or a tinker'er plays around with the technology long enough to eventually find a jig that works
You can use a 300kΩ resistor + a 1kΩ resistor or 3x100kΩ resistor and a 1kΩ resistor (in fact any combination will work as long as they are in series and not parallel). Connections 1, 2 and 3 are left unconnected. Within a matter of seconds the phone will start in Download mode
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| Bottom view |
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| Top View |
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| Success!!! |
We have the technology!
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| Loading new ROM |
Once in Download mode you can then connect the phone to your computer and (via Odin 1.7) load your new ROM. We got Android IceCream Sandwich (sounds nom!) and then downloaded and app called Go Launcher for a slicker finish.
Where's mah keys!?
The final step for my new phone involved unlocking it from a network it was locked to... to this day I still don't know which one it was locked to. I searched online and one of the best programs (and the one responsible for unlocking my phone from the original network) was the "SGSII (And SGS1) Network/Sim Unlock Code Generator" by Grooby on xda-developers.com . All it needs in the phones nv_data.bin file and if you have a strong enough computer (requires a GPU) it will crack out your unique number. I had a tiny bit of trouble at this stage but a quick email to Grooby and he sent me a solution right back! Awesome guy and awesome program!
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