Anyone know about the recovery menu? Bricked phone trying to clear cache.

[wutDhellman820]

I'm on a Note 3, but these forums seem more active & the recovery menu/option should be the exact same between the two phone
I was hoping someone might know more here.

I read it was safe to clear the cache option in the recovery mode to speed up my phone. Did that & my phone is bricked
When I start the phone, it gives me these message
"Process system isn't responding
do you want to close it?"

Then I get a bunch of messages one after another saying stuff like
unfortunately, Media Storage has stopped
unfortunately, Settings has stopped etc...

The screen is black outside of those messages. & never boots


Is there a way I can fix this without doing a hard factory reset?
I don't want all my apps & contact info to be deleted.

When I go to recovery mode again, I can select these options


-reboot system now
-apply update from adb
-apply update from external storage
-wipe data/factory reset
-wipe cache partition
-apply update from cache


PLEASE tell me one of them will fix my phone?

 

[Clocks]

1. Your phone is not bricked.

2. You can try a factory reset. You'll lose everything on your phone so back up anything you don't want to lose first if you can.

 

[natehoy]

Hmm, that's an odd one. Clearing the cache should not cause any of that to happen. I'm wondering if the cache somehow got corrupted and not wiped.

None of the "update" options will help you. They are all if you have a downloaded update file.

Have you tried wiping the cache partition again? Also, how many times have you tried restarting?


If all else fails, a factory reset is a pain but you shouldn't lose much if you have things set up correctly.

If you are logged into a google account, your contact information should be on Google. Go to gmail.google.com and log in, and you should see all of your contacts there. Apps can be downloaded again easily, but of course some do not save settings on an external server so you might lose some of those settings.

Pictures can be uploaded automatically to Google's servers if you set that up.

 

[wutDhellman820]

Have you tried wiping the cache partition again? Also, how many times have you tried restarting?


If all else fails, a factory reset is a pain but you shouldn't lose much if you have things set up correctly.

If you are logged into a google account, your contact information should be on Google. Go to gmail.google.com and log in, and you should see all of your contacts there. Apps can be downloaded again easily, but of course some do not save settings on an external server so you might lose some of those settings.
.

Tried wiping the cache partition again, did nothing.
Went ahead & did factory reset :/
Does the Play Store has a option to show a download history of apps?

I also only saved my contacts on my phone, I don't think I ever logged in to gmail.google.com to sync the data, can I still recover it?

 

[beh]

Yes, the Play Store does keep a list of apps installed on your phone. Open Play Store and click the Menu icon and then My Apps. A list should appear with tabs for All and Installed.

 

[natehoy]

I also only saved my contacts on my phone, I don't think I ever logged in to gmail.google.com to sync the data, can I still recover it?

Since your Play Store question has been answered perfectly, I'll focus on this one.

From the phone, no, there is no way to recover contacts from a wiped phone. However, depending on your carrier, and whether you logged into or created a Google account from your phone, someone may have a backup of your data for you.

AT&T, for example, offered to back up my contacts for me when I first set up the phone. I opted not to since I already have all of my contacts in Google. Samsung did the same thing.

If you logged into or created any accounts (carrier, Samsung, or Google), it's possible that by simply logging into those accounts again your contacts will be copied back to your phone.

If you didn't do it last time, now is a really good time to do it. On setup, just create a Google account and log in to it. I chose Google because you can then move those contacts to any Android phone, and even go on the web and export them to a file where they can be imported into anything.