So I became acquainted with the “Blue Ring of Death” on my old (and Maire’s current) K850i; the phone doesn’t power on, with the screen staying black, the blue ring on the camera coming hard on, and the keyboard lighting up.
Not a thrilling sight.
A little Googling took my to an initially rather unpromising discussion which explained that:
- The K850 is notoriously unreliable and BRODs under all manner of circumstances and firmware revisions.
- The Sony-Ericsson Updater tool can’t fix the problem.
- Sony themselves can’t, either, and will typically take your phone and fail to fix it.
- There are a number of payware unlocking/reflashing tools that can.
The last was rather irritating. Not because I begrudge the people who developed Davinci or the other such tools, but because this is a perfect example of an anti-feature: like most mobile phones, the K850 is so locked down that when it blackscreens and becomes unusable, not only can I not fix it, neither can Sony, and I need to spend extra money to buy a third-party tool to rescue it.
Fortunately a little more reading about the place provided my salvation: the A2 Uploader, which works with a variety of Sony-Ericsson phones, including the K850i; and TopSony for the images needed to make it work. Download the latest firmware, reflash the filesystem, and then upload the customisation files and lo! The phone works (sans all the on-phone data, but you do make backups, right?).
So, phone restored for free. Hell, A2 Uploader will letme rip the obnoxious Vodaphone branding (useless menu and button items) out of my C903). Win, right?
Well, in one sense, yes. In another, though, not really. This whole thing is a parade of antifeatures:
- SE (and other phone manufacturers) don’t want anyone developing other tools to work with their phones, and go out of their way to make it difficult for third parties to help me, the phone owner, customise the phone I own.
- SE don’t want to allow me to up or downgrade to avoid buggy firmware that makes the phone crap itself. I can only get firmware and filesystem images from third parties of questionable legality.
- I can’t customise my phone to get rid of crapware (Facebooks apps and other rubbish).
