Old phone – new problem

Whilst I wait for another Android firmware version to download, I can pass the time by writing this.

I dipped my toe into the mysterious world of firmware upgrades on Samsung phones and have managed to brick (technical term) my test phone. This all came about because I had been using a very old Galaxy SM-J320FN hand-me down as a back-up to my iPhone. It was useful as an alternative to IOS but 8G was a bit limiting so I decided to upgrade (cheaply and after a lot of research) by buying a second hand J7 on eBay for about £90. Seems like a good deal when a new S10 costs about £900.

It’s a nice phone, the SM-G610F, with Dial SIM and 32G and a micro-SD slot. However it came with United Arab Emirates firmware and Android 6.0.1 and an older kernel and security patch level than the old J3.

So, how hard can it be, I thought, to upgrade the software? Quite hard as it turns out. I’ve discovered that Samsung phones tend to suffer from “snowflake syndrome” – no two the same. Not only do Samsung make and sell phones for certain regions, or in some cases countries, they also make phones for specific providers. Firmware is very specific to the make and country and whilst my software information with UAE firmware says it is a SM-G610F, the back of the phone describes itself as a SM-G610Y/DS. Impossible to find new firmware for.

Now, I’m not daft enough to risk bricking my new phone but I am daft enough to try upgrading the J3, just for practice you understand. This took me down a route of installing Smart Switch, Odin and Kies. There is firmware for the J3 on Sammobile so I started by downloading that using Odin3 to update the phone. It got to the last step before flashing “Fail”, a situation which has been repeated with the 3 older versions of firmware I have tried.

The phone itself tells me “Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies and try again.”. Unfortunately, Kies 3 dos not recognise the phone. In emergency recovery, it does not appear in the list and attempting to use the initialisation function results in “SM-J320FN does not support initialising”.

I see my 2017 firmware has finished downloading … let me try that…

It failed. On “hidden.img” again.