# Root and Warranty



## shawn haz root

I understand that the warranty for the phone is voided when you root however if you have a hardware issue it should still be covered. My question is, has anyone here had root, experienced a hardware issue and was successfully able to have it repaired/replaced under warranty?

Also, does anyone know if anyone's working on a way to restore the phone to default and reset the mechanism in the bootloader that says you've flashed anything? Is that even possible?

I've been searching around and I haven't found the answers to these 2 questions. I'd like to root my girlfriends phone and flash a custom kernal that under volts the cpu and remove some bloat. The battery on this is worse than my rooted Thunderbolt with a Rezound battery.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I've been following the development on this phone for a few months and just wanted to give Knightcrusader some props for the work he has accomplished on this phone. Without him, none of this would be possible today!


----------



## Cheetohz

I never got the warning that anything was flashed. I am successfully back to stock aside from the fact that I still have CWM installed. Does anyone have the stock recovery that I can push via odin/heimdall? Or is there another way to get the stock recovery back?


----------



## Skylinez

Cheetohz said:


> I never got the warning that anything was flashed. I am successfully back to stock aside from the fact that I still have CWM installed. Does anyone have the stock recovery that I can push via odin/heimdall? Or is there another way to get the stock recovery back?


http://rootzwiki.com/topic/11183-eh2-full-factory-odin-restore/

you download this and you remove the ".md5" and you open it using a program like 7 zip and you get the recovery.bin and flash it using heimdall with this command

"heimdall flash --recovery recovery.bin"

and it should work.. my phone got soft bricked and i used this to fix it. if you need more help please reply because im telling you this completely from memory so if you run into problems ill answer!


----------



## p_025

shawn haz root said:


> I understand that the warranty for the phone is voided when you root however if you have a hardware issue it should still be covered. My question is, has anyone here had root, experienced a hardware issue and was successfully able to have it repaired/replaced under warranty?


My old phone, the Motorola Devour, once turned into a giant bowl of BootLoops. Understand, this was after I had rooted but before I understood the idea behind SBF flashing or recovery mode. I took it into a Verizon store and they shipped me a new one, no questions asked. Then again, it's a pretty generally accepted fact that phone sucked ass.

As to hardware issues, I would hope people would realize fairly quickly that a cracked screen isn't going to be caused by rooting the phone. Any sane device manufacturer will realize this and fix the problem the user is having, not the one he's not.


----------



## shawn haz root

Bump. Anyone?


----------



## djphrost

shawn haz root said:


> Bump. Anyone?


To my knowledge, although we are able to return to stock rom and kernel, but the flash counter will still show on stock boot. From some of the forums on the charge, there might be a way to reset this counter with some samsung devices, but I have yet to find a way to do so on the Strat. My Strat is open for fun, lol but the wife's is stock so SHE can deal with Samsung. To my knowledge Samsung can and will deny claims if bootloader is modified, but I could be wrong too. good luck to ya


----------



## shawn haz root

djphrost said:


> To my knowledge, although we are able to return to stock rom and kernel, but the flash counter will still show on stock boot. From some of the forums on the charge, there might be a way to reset this counter with some samsung devices, but I have yet to find a way to do so on the Strat. My Strat is open for fun, lol but the wife's is stock so SHE can deal with Samsung. To my knowledge Samsung can and will deny claims if bootloader is modified, but I could be wrong too. good luck to ya


Thanks, yea I wont touch my girlfriends phone either until there's a fool proof was to return it to stock should she have a problem. But isn't it VZW who is handling the claims? I'll keep my eyes open and hopefully someone comes up with a way to reset this.


----------



## djphrost

shawn haz root said:


> Thanks, yea I wont touch my girlfriends phone either until there's a fool proof was to return it to stock should she have a problem. But isn't it VZW who is handling the claims? I'll keep my eyes open and hopefully someone comes up with a way to reset this.


I think it's Protect Cell who handles their claims with big red, I have never had issues with any of my previous HTC or Moto devices, however with the samsung custom boot counter, I'm sure that you would have to have physical damage before they would decide not to check if flag is set or not. Again I don't work there, lol but we all would just love to know how to get around that crap


----------



## imnuts

Anyone have a picture of the flash counter? I've never seen it on the Charge, Fascinate, or Continuum, so I can't imagine that it would be there on the Stratosphere.


----------



## dwitherell

imnuts said:


> Anyone have a picture of the flash counter? I've never seen it on the Charge, Fascinate, or Continuum, so I can't imagine that it would be there on the Stratosphere.


Yeah it threw me for a loop when I saw it. There's also an initial warning screen that comes up when you go into DL mode that gives you the big scary warranty-void do-at-own-risk spiel. There are ways to get around this counter issue before the counter changes (*here's* a pic of what it looks like - near the top), but I haven't heard much on the get-that-to-zero front. My gut says it would likely not be that big of an issue, but I can see how it could be unsettling for those wanting to "truly" reset back to out-of-the-box stock.


----------



## Skylinez

Hey I am looking at my flash counter it has 6 Counts.... i think its because i had a failed cwm flash and stuff but i would love to reset this. Also dwitherell could you look into something. When trying to go into download mode from my home screen by long-pressing the power button it just sits their saying "Downloading..." and doesn't actually go into download mode? i know this is the wrong place to be posting this bug on my phone but thought it was appropriate for this conversation lol


----------



## imnuts

dwitherell said:


> Yeah it threw me for a loop when I saw it. There's also an initial warning screen that comes up when you go into DL mode that gives you the big scary warranty-void do-at-own-risk spiel. There are ways to get around this counter issue before the counter changes (*here's* a pic of what it looks like - near the top), but I haven't heard much on the get-that-to-zero front. My gut says it would likely not be that big of an issue, but I can see how it could be unsettling for those wanting to "truly" reset back to out-of-the-box stock.


Wow, that really sucks, looks like they used the SGS2 boot/sbl setup. My opinion would be avoid flashing anything in Heimdall/Odin unless absolutely necessary and use CWM for everything. Not that it is a bad practice to start with, but this would make it all the more appropriate.


----------



## dwitherell

Skylinez said:


> Wow, that really sucks, looks like they used the SGS2 boot/sbl setup. My opinion would be avoid flashing anything in Heimdall/Odin unless absolutely necessary and use CWM for everything. Not that it is a bad practice to start with, but this would make it all the more appropriate.


Yeah, the "1" on that image counter was flashing CWM in fact. The counter only increments when flashing (in Odin/Heimdall) kernel/recovery - so that means a crafty workaround for those with a 0 count would be to ODIN a stand-alone rooted /system partition, and then dd recovery. When I was told that I didn't really let it process and just Odined recovery anyway - but its an option now I suppose given the existence of rooted ROMs and what not.


----------



## Skylinez

When i long press the power (not til it turns off) it comes up with the menu saying Power off,restart,recovery,download,and silent mode. Then when i hit Download mode to just boot into it from my home screen it will get stuck saying "Downloading...." and it wont work.


----------



## dwitherell

Skylinez said:


> When i long press the power (not til it turns off) it comes up with the menu saying Power off,restart,recovery,download,and silent mode. Then when i hit Download mode to just boot into it from my home screen it will get stuck saying "Downloading...." and it wont work.


Yeah, that's what it should do. When you go into it through that route you skip the warning screen, and the counter/binary text at the top doesn't show - but you are good to go as far as using Odin/Heimdall at that point.


----------



## Skylinez

dwitherell said:


> Yeah, that's what it should do. When you go into it through that route you skip the warning screen, and the counter/binary text at the top doesn't show - but you are good to go as far as using Odin/Heimdall at that point.


 Thanks alot


----------



## djphrost

Skylinez said:


> Hey I am looking at my flash counter it has 6 Counts.... i think its because i had a failed cwm flash and stuff but i would love to reset this. Also dwitherell could you look into something. When trying to go into download mode from my home screen by long-pressing the power button it just sits their saying "Downloading..." and doesn't actually go into download mode? i know this is the wrong place to be posting this bug on my phone but thought it was appropriate for this conversation lol


lol don't feel too bad, mine is at 9 because I tried a few different things out and dwitherell sent me some goodies to flash onto TS1.4 one day in IRC. Ya the downloading screen is quite different than other devices I've messed with.


----------



## dwitherell

Just to clarify - the only time the counter goes up is when you flash a custom kernel or recovery in Odin/Heimdall (i.e. in download mode). Flashing just ROMs (factoryfs.rfs) in Odin/Heimdall doesn't seem to affect the counter (I believe the same goes for stock kernel/recovery), nor does flashing anything in CWM recovery.


----------



## shawn haz root

dwitherell said:


> Just to clarify - the only time the counter goes up is when you flash a custom kernel or recovery in Odin/Heimdall (i.e. in download mode). Flashing just ROMs (factoryfs.rfs) in Odin/Heimdall doesn't seem to affect the counter (I believe the same goes for stock kernel/recovery), nor does flashing anything in CWM recovery.


Based on this new data, is there some sort of write up or one that can be created to show the process of rooting the phone without affecting the counter and how to revert? If someone could create it or point me to the directions I'd greatly appreciate it.


----------



## Skylinez

shawn haz root said:


> Based on this new data, is there some sort of write up or one that can be created to show the process of rooting the phone without affecting the counter and how to revert? If someone could create it or point me to the directions I'd greatly appreciate it.


 There really is no way to root without affecting your counter... your flashing a custom kernel which affects it. the only way to reset the counter is with a USB Jig which is yet to be made for this phone and i don't even think one has been made for the Charge.


----------



## knightcrusader

Skylinez said:


> There really is no way to root without affecting your counter...


Actually, you can. diwitherell is right - you can flash a factoryfs rfs odin that is already rooted to a stock phone and get root access, and then use it to flash recovery and a new kernel, completely bypassing the counter.


----------



## Skylinez

knightcrusader said:


> Actually, you can. diwitherell is right - you can flash a factoryfs rfs odin that is already rooted to a stock phone and get root access, and then use it to flash recovery and a new kernel, completely bypassing the counter.


Damn i wish i would of know that


----------



## shawn haz root

knightcrusader said:


> Actually, you can. diwitherell is right - you can flash a factoryfs rfs odin that is already rooted to a stock phone and get root access, and then use it to flash recovery and a new kernel, completely bypassing the counter.


If this is the case then I hope someone could update the root process with this method as an option! Would love to see the instructions as I know nothing of Odin.


----------



## DemoManMLS

shawn haz root said:


> If this is the case then I hope someone could update the root process with this method as an option! Would love to see the instructions as I know nothing of Odin.


Details are being worked out on that. Stay tuned.


----------



## shawn haz root

DemoManMLS said:


> Details are being worked out on that. Stay tuned.


Any updates?


----------



## RoyJ

shawn haz root said:


> Any updates?


Wondering the same thing myself....If I could root/flash and bypass the counter that would be great. Never used Odin or owned a Samsung so this is all completely new to me


----------

