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Just survived a scare, the SD Card in my phone became unrecognized and I was worried that I lost all my camera photos. So my phone died when I was at work so the phone shutdown. When I got in my car I left it on the car charger for just a little while and then tried to turn it on. Apparently I didn’t wait long enough because just as the Android OS booted up the phone died again. Side note, a car charger doesn’t charge a phone faster than it can drain it with the screen and all the antennas on. Later when I got home and charged my phone long enough the SD Card came up and unrecognizable and Android asked if I wanted to format it.

After a few searches and several unsuccessful suggestions I remembered that I have a program, MiniTool Partition Wizard, that might do the trick.  It has an option to scan and repair a partition.  So I ran the scan with detect and repair option selected and it discovered that it was formatted for FAT32 and that the “/” link was bad.  It did some repairs and the presto my SD card was recognizable by Windows 7.  I plugged it back into my phone and life is good again.  I think I’m going to make sure a backup is done tonight…

Dilbert

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I just got a new phone.  After working really hard on my Evo shift I just couldn’t take the slowness anymore.  So I upgraded to a huge phone, the Samsung Note 2 on Sprint.  I’m still not too sure this is the phone for me as I’m worried about the size of it.  I almost bought the phone from Best Buy, but they were out of the titanium version and would have to mail it in.  So I decided to get it through Costco.  From Costco they had it as the same price, but covered the $36 upgrade fee and gave an additional car charger, case, and screen protector.  The phone was also mailed and it took about a week for it to come in.  Once I got the phone I charged the battery to full then went to work transferring phones over.

Samsung Note 2

Prepare for Transfer

In order to do an easy transfer from my old phone I did a Titanium backup of my apps. More specifically:

  1. Go into the Titanium Backup * root app
  2. Select Menu -> Batch actions ->Backup all user apps + system data

This should backup all the SMS messages too, but just in case it didn’t work is used SMS Backup & Restore

Rooting

I have the root version and really want to keep root on my phone.  Though at this time I have no desire to flash any ROMs or add a different recovery, but still want to get the OTA updates from Sprint/Samsung.  So I followed the directions posted on the XDA forums.  At the time of writing this post the VPALJC was the most current ROM.  I’ve copied the steps I followed, pretty much exactly as listed on the forum, so that I can recall what I did in the past.  I suggest reading the forum as it has a better chance of being kept up to date, whereas this post will be a simple moment in time.

Steps I followed to root and still maintain OTA updates.

  1. From your computer do the following
    1. Download Odin
    2. Unzip Odin
    3. Download the SPH-L900 (Samsung note 2) drivers from the Samsung’s site. Click on the Manuals & Downloads tab at the bottom and then on Software for the latest driver.
    4. Move the driver exe to the ODIN folder
    5. Download the mrRobinson‘s version of the firmware, VPALJC, from root66_SPR_L900VPALJC.7z
    6. Unzip the file and place into the ODIN folder
  2. From the phone
    1. Put the phone into download mode.
      1. Turn it off
      2. Then hold vol. down + home + power
      3. Choose accept to go into download mode
  3. From the computer
    1. Start the ODIN program
    2. Then in the PDA field and select the firmware file, root66_SPR_L900VPALJ1.tar.md5
    3. Leave Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time checked.
    4. Click start and wait for it to download the files to the phone, below is the message log I saw
    Enter CS for MD5..
    Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..
    Please wait..
    root66_SPR_L900VPALJC.tar.md5 is valid.
    Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..
    Leave CS..All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 0)
    Added!!
    ID:0/003> Odin v.3 engine (ID:3)..
    File analysis..
    SetupConnection..
    Initialzation..
    Get PIT for mapping..
    Firmware update start..
    boot.img
    NAND Write Start!!
    cache.img
    hidden.img
    modem.bin
    param.bin
    recovery.img
    sboot.bin
    system.img
    tombstones.img
    tz.img
    RQT_CLOSE !!
    RES OK !!
    Removed!!
    Remain Port ....  0
    All threads completed. (succeed 1 / failed 0)
  4. When done let phone reboot and the phone is rooted
  5. I haven’t used or tested this yet to retain root privileges through an OTA update
    1. ,Get OTA Rootkeeper from the Google Play store on your phone
    2. Open OTA Rootkeeper and click “Protect Root”
    3. Then after you receive a notification for an OTA update you should go into OTA Rootkeeper and click something to re-enable root.
      1. Since I haven’t had to use this yet I don’t know what I will have to click nor do I know that this will work as the notes in the app say “Useless with: Samsung phones updated with KIES or Odin and older devices using YAFFS filesystems only, and device flashing entiere system partition”
      2. I suppose I’ll cross this road when I get to it.

Well after things rooted successful the phone restarted and everything worked just fine and root was enabled.

Transferring Apps & Data

Well with things rooted I just needed to get the apps back through Titanium backup.

  1. Move the SD card to the new phone
  2. Download the Titanium Backup * root app
  3. In Titatnium backup do the following:
    1. Make sure the backup folder points to the folder that all the backups were stored in as the phone may not default to the same folder.  Go to Menu -> Preferences -> Backup Folder Location
    2. Next restore the apps with Menu -> Batch Actions -> Restore missing apps + all system data
      1. Becareful to only select the system data that will work with the new phone (SMS, call logs, contacts, etc) especially when switching brands.  I don’t know what will happen, but I’m sure it isn’t good
    3. Next ensure all the apps are link to the Play Store with Menu -> Market Doctor

And once that is done things should be back where they are with the exception that I see that the defaults and some passwords didn’t transfer.  I may unselected some system data that I wasn’t supposed to, but selecting the default apps in some cases isn’t so bad.

Closing Thoughts

Well with all that done, I’m nearly back up and running on my new phone.  I’m switching back to Launcher Pro, but I really like a the Touchwiz calendar widget.  I’ll be searching around the net to see if I can find a way to port it over or if there is an equivalent app.  I was using calendar pad, but I really like the Touchwiz widget.

 

 

 

 

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