I am a die hard Android and HTC fan boy and when I see a problem I try my best to help bring it to light and resolve the issue.
Issue 1. involves a rooted Mytouch 4g with Cyanogenmod 7 installed.
The process I used was .gfree Everything went smoothly and the phone has worked wonderfully for over a month. A couple of days ago I noticed a bunch of failed auto updates on the phone. Last failed auto update was Skype. So I rebooted and the failed auto updates restarted and finished correctly. I think. The next day I went grocery shopping. After using the calculator for about 30 minutes it crashed and I received a FDW launcher stopped responding forced close. This happened about 6 times. On the last time I noticed I had a sms message,went to read that the FDW launcher crashed again,but also took out several widgets and the main system. Shutdown and restarted. This time I was in the dreaded bootloops (which ironically I was reaching for fruitloops as that happened) I pulled the battery and tried to recovery in clockworkmod recovery. (power + volume up button) I noticed two things. 1. That was one of the failed updates apparently as I had the new Clockworkmod 5.0.2.0 update which comes with Cyanogenmod 7 7.1.0 I'm supposed to be on 7.0.1 (haven't updated yet,and thought I was not on auto update for that reason) This is also when I noticed the dreaded E: can't mount /cache/ error. crap!!!! selected power down and restarted the process. Only I opted to stay in hboot. There I noticed the nightmare of PD15IMG.zip not found. holy smoked salmon. I'm screwed After pinging,binging and googling I found alot of other people with this issue over the past several months. I also notice some muggles with the issue (muggle = non rooted folks) Ok after alot of research I found that HTC used two different factories to manufacture the MT4G I unfortunally had the bad one. There are two different eMMC chips each one came from a different factory. My chip M4G2DE is considered a bad one, especially if you rooted your MT4G with the gfree method. Tho other chip SEM04G is from what I researched is considered the more stable of the two. What concerns me is the muggles i.e. those who have not touched there MT4G roms and left it the way it came is being affected by the bad eMMC There is a poll going on over at the XDA Developers to see which chip has the most issues concerning the radio updates,and it looks like M4G2DE is the culprit. Here is the stats to my MT4G Which is rooted and had a custom rom on it.
Rooted with the gfree method
Custom Rom is Cyanogenmod 7 7.0.1
Hboot:
GLACIER PVT ENG S-OFF
HBOOT-0.85.2007 (PD151000)
MICROP-0429
RADIO-26.03.02.26_M
eMMC-boot
Oct 11,2010,12:44:14
Clockworkmod Recovery v5.0.2.0
PD15IMG.zip updates failed.
1 bootloader -- fail-pu
2.boot
3.recovery
4. system
5 userdata
6 splash1
7 tp
8 tp
9 radio_v2
10 radio_cust
partition update fail!
update fail
press <power> to reboot.
When I was using ADB on my pc, I noticed I could not read mmcblk0 the error was unable to read MBR. I think this means the master boot record is corrupted which is probably why I get 1.bootloader fail-pu when trying to update PD15IMG.zip
My challenge to the engineers at HTC is to either help us geeks in recovering from these soft bricks or at least isolated the bad eMMC at the factories before they get into the market and flooding calls centers with RMA's As I bought my MT4G on ebay I have little recourse. Hopefully I can find a replacement motherboard with the more stable SEM04G eMMC chip. We feel as a geek I have an obligation to the muggles who need all the help possible to resolve these issues. If you a person who has not rooted this phone and are having the PD15daig.zip not found problems or are just stuck at the first splash screen/reboot constitantly i.e bootloops. please say so here.
Usually when things go bad, its when your in the process of flashing and updating. My issue happened during normal operatinos.
Thanks HTC for a great phone and I hope bad chips are discovered in future HTC Android phones before they are shipped out. Since bad eMMC chips don't usually flaked out unless flashed, there is no feasable way to QA them in the factory. This is where geeks and power users can help.