Can't boot and no root

[RuLEoF2]

I've been trying everything I could find to root my wife's HTC Rhyme and nothing works. I tried flashing a custom RUU and now, I can't boot the phone at all. It just hangs at the white HTC screen.

The only thing that I've been able to do successfully is unlock/relock the bootloader. This is my wife's phone and I really want to root it so that she can have the benefit of being able to completely backup everything. However, at this point, I just want to get the damn phone to work again.

PLEASE... anyone with a fix for this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[BBEgo]

Best thing to do when searching for stuff for this phone is to use the Rhyme's codename: Bliss
Try googling this - HTC Bliss RUU

 

[BBEgo]

Maybe this link will light your way.
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/09/26/ruus-for-both-the-htc-vigor-and-bliss-on-verizon-leak/

Sadly, this phone just never took off the way we all hoped it would. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that it is a 3G phone. But the biggest problem was not catering to the target demographic - women.

The Rhyme was a great idea that was botched by poor execution, and a general lack of understanding of what women really want.
Yeah, they like the small form factor cuz it fits in their adorable little hands. They like the cute color. They loved the docking station. We all do! I wish every phone came with one! Earbuds were a good idea, but they should've been custom purple iBeats buds instead of those crappy sounding things.

But here's where HTC blew it: Women want products that just work. They don't want to wait, and they hate when apps crash. The phone is painfully SLOW, due to outdated hardware choices. It's basically a purple Incredible! The Incredible was a GREAT phone... 3 years ago! And the Incredible didn't have Sense 3.5 to bog it down. HTC wanted the Rhyme to have the latest version of its UI, but they made that call at the expense of the user: Women. And the part they missed is that women don't care if they're running the latest version of Sense. They just want it to work, and do what it says it will do.

It crashes all the time, and sometimes the Rhyme just decides it doesn't want to post her comments to Facebook (which, to be honest, makes up about 50% of the average woman's daily activity on a smartphone!).

What HTC ought to do is release the Incredible 4GLTE that just came out, only in PURPLE, and call it the "Bliss" (original codename for the Rhyme), and give it all the same stuff that came with the Rhyme. That phone would've killed! The girls would flock to it.

ICS is supposedly coming to the Rhyme and the Rezound at the end of the month. Let's hope they optimize the software a bit so our ladies get a little more life out of this failed experiment.

 

[RuLEoF2]

HI BBEgo... Thanks for the reply.

I found the site you linked to in my initial searches and used the RUU application which failed every time. Not sure why other than it said that the bootloader version was wrong.

I just found a post on XDA that explains how to extract all of the RUU image files from the application where I can then flash them one-by-one from fastboot. I figure that its worth a try. I've only gotten a couple replies on this through 5 different forums so I'm willing to try anything at this point. The phone is worthless as it is now so there's not much to lose.

I'm going to continue working on this. I'll update if I find something that works, or the damn thing becomes completely FUBAR.

But please... if you or anyone else have other suggestions, I'd be all too eager to give them a shot.

Thanks again!

 

[RuLEoF2]

********** UPDATE **********

I got it to boot-up normally.

I used the method explained here to extract the boot.img file and flashed it in fastboot.

I still have no recovery though. I really want to root this phone or at least get a recovery on it that I can create nandroid back-ups with.

 

[BBEgo]

Dev support is nonexistent for this phone. I read somewhere about a CWM style recovery for it, but that was a while ago.

Maybe you should PM Con over at XDA (in the Rezound and Nexus Forums) and see if he'll port a version of his custom recovery called TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project) over to the Rhyme. Or, If you can get Amon Ra onto it, that particular recovery has a feature that'll install SU and root it for you. Good luck!

Whatever you find, plz post your results. I'd sure like to know if there's any way to polish this turd of a phone.
Thanx!

 

[RuLEoF2]

Help me out... who is "Con"?

 

[BBEgo]

Help me out... who is "Con"?

He goes by con247 on XDA

Google TWRP con247 for more info.

 

[RuLEoF2]

Cool. I'll send him a PM.

Thanks.

 

[RuLEoF2]

He goes by con247 on XDA

Google TWRP con247 for more info.

con is working on a port for me. Very cool guy. Thanks for the lead!

UPDATE...

I was able to install an RUU with an update utility. I immediately tried rooting with zergrush which seemed to work. The phone actually had root until my first re-boot. Now the phone is stuck in a boot-loop. I have two utilities for RUU versions. I've flashed both of them at least three times each but its the result is the same every time. The phone boots normally the first time, then goes into loop on the next restart. Could be something wrong with the RUUs or maybe I'm doing it wrong. I don't know.

One issue that has popped up during this adventure is that I noticed that when I re-lock the bootloader in fastboot, I get an error message. It goes something like...

(BOOTLOADER) Lock Successfully....
FAILED (unknown error)

However, when I go back to bootloader, it says **** RELOCKED **** at the top. Maybe whatever is causing the "unknown error" is also interfering with the re-lock procedure. It may not be truly re-locked.

I really just want to get this phone back to stock condition so that it works like it should.

Please... Any help with this would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[BBEgo]

Once you unlock the bootloader, it's normal for the phone to say Relocked when you lock it again.

 

[RuLEoF2]

I fixed it. No root, but it's working and back to factory condition.

I used CWM recovery to format all partitions (data, system, cache, devlog, etc.) as well as the sdcard. Once that was done, I relocked the bootloader and ran the RUU. This time I went through the entire setup process for the phone (activation, market account, WiFi and so on) without rebooting first. After the setup, I rebooted and I started normally. About 20 minutes later, I got an android OTA update of some kind and now its fine.

Not sure why setting up the phone would make a difference, but formatting the partitions and going completely clean-slate is probably what did the trick. Something must have been stuck in memory from the first failed attempt and it was corrupting the following attempts in some way.

I'd still like to root it, but anyway... it's fixed and my wife's is glad to get her phone back. Happy ending.

Thanks to all for your assistance.