Saturday, June 04, 2011

Droid "Gingerbread" Update Bricks Phone, Hard.

I ran the Droid "Gingerbread" update on my phone last night.

Others in my office had complained that it required them to redo their account settings manually. I ran it anyways figuring I could easily reestablish the account if necessary and looking forward to some improved security and allegedly better functionality. So figuring that was the worse that could happen I ran the update from the settings feature on the phone.

The update downloaded, I executed it, it ran and after some time I got a red Motorla icon and then nothing.

After about 45 minutes, I took the battery out to reset it and on reinstalling the battery I get the start-up screen including rotating eye, it takes me to the home screen, gives about 5 seconds of functionality, and then locks, hard.

Touch screen does not work, pressing the power button blanks the screen and on pressing it again the home screen disappears, leaving only the top indicator showing the time (which freezes and does not change), the 3g , bluetooth and connection bar symbols, not pressing the power button results in the same black screen with top bar. The phone will not receive calls or work in any fashion, and the time indicator freezes at the time it bricks.

Removing the battery for up to 45 minutes does not change the result, it always starts with a white M with a red background, does the eye roll, goes to the home screen and locks, and every reinsertion of the battery results in the same effect leading to the bricking.

This sucks and I'd strongly advise anyone with a Droid to not run the Gingerbread update until Google announces they've un-screwed up (a more angry word would be used but this is a family-friendly blog...) this upgrade.

You'd figure that Google could handle an upgrade on Droids given that they're all running the same operating system and are on the same Motorola phone hardware but No....

Perhaps Google could issue an appropriate warning with the update:

"This update that we produced and delivered to you may turn your phone into a brick, with less utility than a brick as it doesn't offer a lot of structural support when mixed with mortar. Would you like to continue y/n?"


If anyone can offer some help or suggestions on backing this out, or doing some other reset procedure, it would be appreciated.

1 comment:

Murphy's Law said...

I hate to say "I told you so" but your over-reliance on technology and electronic felgercarb is going to be the death of you some day. Good, solid rotary-dial phones like the old Bell System used to make don't do this sort of thing to you and they last a lot longer. Find one on ebay and ditch the...whatever that thing you're talking about is.