Put Jellybean back onto a seemingly useless Android phone?

December 21, 2012 7:44 AM

Took a seemingly bricked Samsung Galaxy Nexus to one of those repair shops. They "unbricked" it, but the thing seems useless. No Play Store on it, you can't set up a Google account... details inside. The shop says they don't know how to undo what they did. A way to salvage?

1. It still has the unlock symbol.

2. Under About Phone it says:

Model: GT_I9250_EUR_XX
Android Version: 4.0.1
Baseband Version: I925TDVKK4
Kernal Version: 3.0.1
se.infra@SEP-66 #1
Build Number: full_maguro-eng 4.0.1 ICL23D 285 test-keys

3. When in Recovery Mode the only options are reboot, apply update from /cache, wipe data/factory reset, and wipe cache partition.

Any way to get this back to running Jellybean or some variant that actually makes the phone useable?

Right now you can't even get contacts and apps on it. You can dial a number with it but it's otherwise useless.

Thanks!

posted by dobbs to technology (9 answers total)

Can you relock the bootloader and use the Rom Update Utility to re-flash?

Google "RUU" and your build number.
posted by hardcode at 7:56 AM on December 21, 2012

This is the website for you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1336

You'll want to be in the Android Development forum for the particular variant you're dealing with. But basically, you'll want to root (though it sounds like this was probably already done, and there are methods/apps that will help you test for root), you'll want to flash a custom recovery, and then flash a custom rom (or stock rom if you're looking to get back to the way things were). There are generally good, step-by-step instructions on how to do these things within the forums.

Alternatively, if everything else is working to your liking and you're just missing the Google Apps, you might just need to flash gapps, which should install the Google branded apps.

I wouldn't recommend you use that particular repair shop in the future.
posted by howa2396 at 7:58 AM on December 21, 2012

You might want to take a look at this specific post on xda-developers which contains information on the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit software, which can be used to fairly easily flash a Galaxy Nexus back to the Google Stock Image.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 8:03 AM on December 21, 2012

Thanks for the answers thus far. I'll go over them all but please keep them coming.

I should have mentioned I'm on a Mac. Most of the solutions I find are aimed at Windows. I'm also aware of XDA but find the language there often incomprehensible.

Gonna try some of these these links and grab some lunch. Back with progress. Thanks!
posted by dobbs at 8:06 AM on December 21, 2012

Alternatively, if anyone knows a reliable shop in Toronto that can do this for me, that's probably safest and best.
posted by dobbs at 8:20 AM on December 21, 2012

Honestly, you should stop futzing around with your Android phone, given your posting history.

That said, there is a Mac version of the "toolkit" for the Galaxy Nexus. It does pretty much everything via scripted steps.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:32 AM on December 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

Sounds like you're missing Google Apps to me (but I'm not sure and you could potentially get yourself into more trouble, which I will not take responsibility for). Find a copy of the .zip file and use 'apply update' (from the bootloader) to install it. Here's a link. Copy this file onto your phone's internal storage. Fire up the boot loader and point 'apply update' to that zip.

However, I'm also going to echo Burhanistan. If you can't back yourself out of a corner with the XDA forums, you need to reconsider if modifying the phone is something you want to spend your time doing.
posted by kookywon at 9:10 AM on December 21, 2012

Dobbs is a smart guy and can handle himself. I hack on Android constantly and still have occasional problems like these. I agree that it seems like he is missing the core Google Apps. Dobbs, I think you want to go back to stock Android (unroot and reinstall stock) and work from there. It looks like the toolkit Burhanistan linked could be the one for the job.
posted by fake at 9:46 AM on December 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thanks, all!

Worked perfectly with Burhanistan's link!

(And thanks for the vote of confidence, fake!)
posted by dobbs at 11:18 AM on December 21, 2012