Essential Phone - Test and unlucky Hard Brick

/e/OS Devices Essential
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1

Hi /e/ community,

I was very interested in testing this android system, and i followed the process at:
https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/wiki/en/wikis/device/mata/install

But i was stuck in the middle of a Flashing Firmwares step, and since now my Essential Phone does not start, it is like a hard brick (no leds during charging, no recovery/fastboot start with power + volume button > 60sec). Maybe i have installed wrong driver or using bad usb-c cable when I was doing this process, i don’t really know what happened.

I made some research on the net and find this program of Qualcomm Flash Image Loader (QFIL), I succeed in being in communication with my “dead” phone that response with the Qualcomm driver, but i do not have the necessary programmer path (o other files) to reflash correctly my phone and make it start again.

Do you have a solution? Or know something that can help me ?

Thank you in advance,

2

@rhunault any suggestions from your side to resolve this.

3

I am in a similar situation with an Essential that I picked to flash /e/ on. The guy that sold it to me said the phone just needed to be re-flashed but it is soft bricked. I get the ‘You’re device is corrupt. It can’t be trusted and will not boot.’ screen. Luckily I didn’t pay much.
I tried contacting Essential but they said they could not fix it.

For now… it is a nice looking brick. I might search for a used motherboard and try my hand at a repair. I’m just hobbyist so it would be a good learning experience.

4

Some bootloaders don’t allow Android downgrade. Might this be the case?

5

No, I downgraded from pie to nougat when I got /e/. So it can’t be that.

6

Thank you for yours responses. I think also that can’t be the downgrade, on the Essential web site they have a tuto explaining how to flash previous build.

I was in contact with them, and asked about this files for QFIl :
They do not have access to whether those files would be available in the future & and they can’t repair bricked devices :s

7

@Alex1 just to understand the issue better please can you share some details

8
  • I was on the latest : February 2019 Release | Pie 9 - P Release 7 - PQ1A.190105.014
  • I followed these steps, unlock (both partition) bootloader and flash the build mentioned, but i had an error and repeat several time the flash-all.bat (like i remember ~"Invalid spare file format ")
  • Never installed /e/ before on this phone
9

I just find this article :

I don’t know if this might be helpful
“Service Programming
It allows you to save the service programming data to file and flash the same service programming on multiple devices”

10

Were you able to re-flash your phone with QPST Flash Tool? My Essential has been sitting around collecting dust. If there has been no success, maybe I should just buy a new motherboard.