What's the difference between kitkat and "software"?

[pbassred]

Over the last 6 months, my S4 mini kept freezing, requiring me to factory reset a number of times - increasingly frequently, until a couple of weeks ago it died. After a couple of days, the repair place said that they were waiting for a new board. After a few more days they said it hadn't been the board. The realized that it was "software" .

Is there software on my phone other than Android? Can this be still be broken even after a reset - perhaps a firmware eprom that can get corrupted?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Firmware is software: Firmware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Android OS is all software, as is the rest of the firmware on the device that runs the show. That software can get corrupted sometimes, so that's probably what the service people were referring to.

 

[pbassred]

I don't get it. I do a factory reset (to jellybean?) it then downloads and installs the latest OS (kitkat). The new software overwrites and replaces the factory OS. If the only software on the phone is kitkat, how can replacing the software (again) fix my recurring freezing problem?

Or is the Samsung repair center B.S.ing me?

P.S. My PC has a BIOS EPROM which is generally unaffected by my version of windows software so in that case a bad BIOS could upset the PC. Firmware is code but not soft.

 

[B. Diddy]

This is getting beyond my technical scope of knowledge, but I believe it's possible for firmware to get corrupted, so re-flashing it can sometimes correct an issue.

 

[hallux]

I don't believe a factory reset actually reverts the OS to the OS that shipped on the device. I believe a factory reset only deletes all the user data and retains the OS in fully-updated form (save for Google apps that have updated through the Play Store). So if the OS install got corrupted, that corruption would remain even after the reset.

 

[B. Diddy]

Correct, a factory reset won't reinstall the OS. Re-flashing the ROM would, though.