Root Another failed 4.4 OTA

[John Bean]

I have a Nexus 4 that was rooted but otherwise completely stock, no system changes at all, running 4.3. Previous OTA's had no significant problems.

When the 4.4 OTA notification arrived I accepted it with misplaced confidence :-(

Anyway, it failed and presented me with the usual dead robot and the word "Error", but on reboot it never got past the Google screen, ending up (eventually) with a dead robot and "No command". No problem I thought, I'll flash a stock image as I had done on my Nexus 7 anyway.

Unfortunately I can't. The N4 does not connect to fastboot at all (no, it's not a driver problem) but I can get an adb sideload connection if I select that option from the recovery menu. That's it, no normal fastboot (or adb) connectivity at all.

Now I know that adb sideload would allow me to install something on the dead N4... but what? I'm out of my comfort zone here without the familiar tools of adb and fastboot, I have no idea how to proceed to a state where I can get the phone up and running.

Help from more knowledgeable hardcore Android users would be appreciated

 

[hstroph]

You're not alone; I'm feeling the same pain in a different thread with flash attempts from both Linux and MS.

 

[John Bean]

Yes, I saw that but wasn't sure if it's the same issue so I thought a new thread was better than potentially polluting yours.

I normally use Linux - the drivers are solid and reliable, unlike Windows - and I thought I could cope with anything. Over-confidence is a very bad thing.

To be honest this is a major cock-up from Google; even Windows update has never wrecked a device the way this OTA has. I'm in the UK and bought the phone from Google, so I'm inclined to give them a call when they open in about an hour and request a repair/replacement from them. At least here they have to honour warranties themselves, they can't palm me off to LG as they can in some other parts of the world.

Meanwhile I resurrected my old Motorola Milestone so at least I have a working phone.

 

[John Bean]

I had a chat to Google support; they authorised a RMA and a new Nexus 4 is on its way. If it has 4.4 on it I'll be happy, but if not it can stay on 4.3...

I'll never trust another Google OTA.

 

[codesplice]

This OTA does seem to be rife with issues. Out of curiosity, have you confirmed that your fastboot binary is from the latest SDK release? I've run into weird fastboot issues in the past when I hadn't bothered to update the SDK.

 

[lunatic59]

I too keep my phone stock with root. When I updated from 4.2 to 4.3, the OTA wouldn't apply until I removed root. It wasn't a big deal to re-root after the update and I assumed it was going to be the same with 4.4. However, when I got the notice, I allowed the update to proceed just to see what would happen. As expected, when the phone booted into recovery (I had CWM touch installed) it gave me validation error, but allowed me to proceed. So, to see what would happen, I proceeded.

It appeared to apply the update but when the phone rebooted it hung up on the new animation screen (the four circles) for over a half an hour, so I figured it was borked. It wasn't a big deal to flash the stock 4.4 rom, though and fastboot worked just fine for me.

In-place updates always have issues. This time they seem to be worse mostly because they permit the update to proceed when it shouldn't.

 

[John Bean]

This OTA does seem to be rife with issues. Out of curiosity, have you confirmed that your fastboot binary is from the latest SDK release? I've run into weird fastboot issues in the past when I hadn't bothered to update the SDK.

It is. It worked fine with the N4 before the OTA and still works fine with my N7 both before and after the change to 4.4.

It isn't that fastboot on the PC isn't working, it's that the phone is not responding to fastboot commands - not even "devices". The only interface I could get was adb sideload, which was unhelpful at this point.

Anyhow it's history and I'm not going to worry about it now that my replacement is already on the way - good service from Google's support people, partly making up for the OTA behaviour.

Google employ a lot of smart engineers but they really need to get their act together on OTA rollout testing. I'm retired these days but in my development job of many years I'd have been fired for building a release that took down a customer's system, and that was working with only a small development team. An outfit the size of Google have no real excuse for the behaviour of this OTA, none at all.