S7 - Camera failed - Flashlight in use by another application

[Bittsen]

A couple months ago my Snapchat app stopped rotating the camera when I tried to place text.
I uninstalled and reinstalled Snapchat and nothing got better.

About a month ago my camera stopped working and I got the "camera failed" message. While diagnosing noticed the flashlight app had a half working icon (light blue) and when I pressed on it it said the flashlight was in use by another app.

I tried everything I've read online about rebooting into safe mode, clearing the cache partition, etc. Nothing worked long term. I could get the camera and flashlight back for a few cycles but then it would stop again.

I did a factory reset and still, nada (although I did install everything from a backup before testing.

I replaced the SD card.

I deleted a few apps and the flashlight started working again.

Today I tried to reinstall Oreo and when using ODIN, I got a fail.

I also tried installing from the SD card, and it also failed.

I've only used ODIN one other time, a long time ago, so I'm not 100% sure I'm doing it right. Same with the upgrading from SD card.

It seems that there are a lot of people on the internet having similar issues.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Rukbat]

Back everything up (Backing up an Android Device) then reflash the stock ROM ([Samsung] How to flash Stock ROM via ODIN).

 

[behines]

I fought with this for several days and finally learned what's going on.

The short summary is that firmware downgrades are not possible.

More detail: From what I've read, this is a problem for Qualcomm-based devices. It may not be an issue for Exynos-based devices.

What happens is this. Anytime you update firmware, the current firmware "level" is permanently burned into the device, using a feature called "fuses". The fuse value can never be decremented, only incremented.

The bootloader will only allow you to burn firmware with a revision level greater than or equal to the current fuse level.

In your case, the firmware you are trying to burn is level 4, based on this digit: G930AUCU4CRE4

What I noticed in my case (Verizon phone), the firmware level jumped from 4 to 9 in April or so, and is now at 10 (as evidenced by an "A" in the version digit). So when I try to burn it I see an error message in red on the phone that says something about "Fuse 10 > binary 4". Checkmate.


Here is a thread with more info. There is a slim chance that carrier-unlocked firmware will allow a downgrade. So you'd need to burn that, then try to downgrade. But,if your case is like mine, the carrier-unlocked firmware would need to be at least V10.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s7/help/downgrade-bootloader-despite-efuses-t3756096)

I have a hunch that one reason they jumped from V4 to V10 simply to leapfrog all other versions out there, to prevent modding or downgrading of any sort.