Source
r/essential•
Rod750

Nearly got an Essential PH-1

Question

I got a halo grey off ebay, it arrived to me on the other side of the world and on startup it had some rather serious issues with the simcard (not recognising), wifi (won't find networks) and bluetooth (hangs - unresponsive). Plus the Essential setup screen would often hang. It had a warning on startup about the phone not being safe (unlocked bootloader or something?). It had Android Pie on it so maybe the seller did some kind of flash. The phone was glorious to hold in the hand though. The seller will accept the return. I'll be $USD120 into shipping which makes the loss worse.

So it'll be rather a fleeting affair with this mysterious beauty! I did read on another forum somewhere that jumping two OS's - like Nougat to Pie - will cause issues such as what I experienced. Is this anyone else' experience? I've never flashed phones or anything like that.

Posted Jul 28, 2019, 9:48 AM UTC · edited

18
erpvertsferervrywern•

I would start with a factory reset. Then go through startup as though it were a new device.

Might just save you $120

3
Rod750OP•

Thanks yeah I have attempted the recoveries on the Essential website including the fastboot reset method: https://support.essential.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011974574-Reset-your-phone-from-Fastboot-Mode

1
WeakEmu8•

That warning just means unlocked bootloader.

Try to flash an older ROM, say Nougat, just to see what happens. Could be a bad flash

2
Rod750OP•

Thanks. I've submitted a support call through to Essential to see if downgrading to N and back to O and P will work. I found that the phone has a bogus wifi MAC address (02:00:00:00:00:00) which, from googling around, seems to indicate corrupted files. I did a "OTA" recovery with July 5th Pie. The phone had this latest version of Pie on it when I received it.

1
redgnuserPH-1 Black Moon•

Essential probably won't reply, but yes, it will work. Flash NMK24B OTA version (download from Essential website), relock the bootloader (which will wipe the device again), then boot and update the system (you'll have to update a few times to get to the latest stable version, which is currently PQ1A.190105.090). And you're good to go.

1
alphinexBest (& most beautiful) Phone ever made.•

I would find it interesting, if you solved all problems with your new essential after these 2 days :) ?

1
Rod750OP•

No happy ending here. I did hear back from Essential support and they told me I had a Sprint demo phone (SKU: LDUPH1BMSP). I did a ton of searching about these demo phones and reflashing but nothing was appearing about this MAC address thing I found. I had emailed the seller about it and asked for advice about flashing to fix it but just got approval to return it. I was running out of time to return it to the seller, I didn't want to risk doing anything to the phone so I sent it back this morning. I suppose the seller does the flashing or gets someone to do it and they didn't test this one properly before sending it to me. It was a beautiful phone though.

1
alphinexBest (& most beautiful) Phone ever made.•

Wow, a Sprint demo phone. Looks like you got a very rare exemplar.

2