[Tutorial] How to unbrick soft bricked MTK 65xx clone phones [Note 3,S4,S5,HTC One]

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I am not much into creating tutorials but i decided to write this one because i was hit by bricking my 1 week old not so cheap chinese test phone and actually without doing much to it , afterword i realized that little assistance is online about how to touch or manipulate these devices thus i started studying it on my own to attempt to solve the case . so next on i will reveal some secrets discovered by my trials and errors and would love from anybody who would like to add up to please feel free to post more . PS .. I’ll hardly reply to any of those “Not Work! Please help unbrick my phone” technically because i’m not free nor its my thing , i’m just documenting my findings .

1 – Soft Brick Type 1 : Software Crash
Why it happens :
Overfilling your phone memory / installing bad software can get you there / bad battery that keeps powering off the system while running.

Normal Solution :
You hold down Volume+ & Home Button & Power Button and choose “Factory Reset Phone”

However with clone phones you most likely end up with :
a-nothing
b-stupid three lined command screen that didn’t accept any input
c-inverted CWM screen that didn’t work

Hard Solution :
Requirements :
1-Windows (Any Microsoft web supported version , Not XP and less)
2-Internet (Needed for windows to fetch driver)
3-ADB (found in Android SDK , download from here h t t p : / / d e v e l o p e r . a n d r o i d . c o m / s d k / i n d e x . h t m l )
4-Data Cable (one that came with your phone, hopefully they gave you one)
5-Brain (if you can’t catch up with me or feel these are too difficult then i can’t help)
Steps :
1-Install Android SDK to the root of your (C:) drive then Run “Android SDK Manager” from its folder
2-No Need to install anything but “Android 4.4.2 (API19) Library” (Most recent kernel at the time of writing) & “Extras>Android Support Library” & “Google USB Driver”
3-Plug in your phone to your windows laptop via cable and power it
4-Wait for windows to install phone driver (you will notice your phone appearing as “YanOS” phone in windows device manager, although an incorrect name, its the most perfect driver for ADB)
5-Head to (Your SDK Folder Path on C: Drive) then press and hold “Shift” key then right click “Platform-Tools” folder then pick “Open Command Window Here”
6-In Command Window type the following and press enter after each line :
adb shell
su
reboot recovery
7-Your phone will freeze and reboot you into “Android Default Recovery Screen” the display message will say “No Data” printed on the screen else if menu options are loaded skip next step
8-Press “Power” button for menu options to load
9-Scroll down with “Volume” keys till you come to “factory reset device” then press the “Home” button

2 – Soft Brick Type 2 : manipulating system/build.prop
Why it happens :
You think yourself a china boy and believe you can make this phone fly by entering crap into that file.

Normal Solution :
Use CWM or Nand boot managers to re-place backup made of this file accessed by pressing Volume+ & Home Button & Power Button

However with clone phones you most likely end up with :
a-Oh no! it doesn’t come with CWM or Nand pre-installed
b-stupid three lined command screen that didn’t accept any input
c-inverted CWM screen that didn’t work

Hard Solution :
Requirements :
Same as “Soft Brick Type 1” + a working copy of build.prop (see *P.S note down)
Steps :
1-Repeat steps 1~5 in “Soft Brick Type 1”
2-Repeat step 5 one more time where now you have 2 command windows open we will call them CMD1 & CMD2
3-Place the copy of build.prop in the root of your (C:) drive
4-In case of soft bricked system for editing build.prop :
a-Switch to CMD1 , type the following and press enter after each line :
adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount /system
mount -o rw,remount /
cd system
chmod 777 /system/build.prop
mv build.prop build.prop.backup
b-Switch to CMD2 , type the following and press enter after each line :
adb pull /system/build.prop.backup
adb push c:build.prop /
c-Switch to CMD1 , type the following and press enter after each line :
cd ..
cp build.prop /system/build.prop
rm build.prop
cd system
chmod 644 /system/build.prop
mount -o ro,remount /system
mount -o ro,remount /
reboot recovery
5-Your phone will freeze and reboot you into “Android Default Recovery Screen” the display message will say “No Data” printed on the screen else if menu options are loaded skip next step
6-Press “Power” button for menu options to load
7-Scroll down with “Volume” keys till you come to “delete/wipe dalvik cache” then press the “Home” button
8-If Rom is old and wiping dalvik cache is not present just remove battery then re-seat it after 10 seconds then power it , if it is soft bricked still use solution of “Soft Brick Type 1” , you might wonder why we didn’t just use that solution from the beginning , simply because factory resetting your phone doesn’t replace the broken file so the problem will continue .
*PS : (in case of in-availability of working build.prop file yet you know how to fix your changes manually , wait till step (b) then apply first command then download and use Notepad++ on your laptop (found here h t t p : / / n o t e p a d – p l u s – p l u s . o r g / d o w n l o a d / v 6 . 6 . 1 . h t m l Most recent version at the time of writing) to edit the file build.prop.backup that will be found in your “Platform-Tools” folder inside “Android SDK” installation folder then rename it into build.prop place it at the root of your (C:) drive and continue with steps )

3 – Soft Brick Type 3 : manipulating system/etc/vold.fstab
Why it happens :
They give you a quad core clone and only 1 gb of internal memory and 1.5 gb of sdcard0 memory letting you cry from inside to try out “Asphalt 8” so you think yourself a china boy and believe you can make this phone fly by entering crap into that file.

Normal Solution :
Use CWM or Nand boot managers to re-install backup contained in a zip file from SDCard1 of these files accessed by pressing Volume+ & Home Button & Power Button

However with clone phones you most likely end up with :
a-Shit! I already swapped SDCard1 and system is looking elsewhere now !

Hard Solution :
Requirements :
Same as “Soft Brick Type 1” + a working copy of vold.fstab (see **P.S note down)
Steps :
1-Repeat steps 1~5 in “Soft Brick Type 1”
2-Repeat step 5 one more time where now you have 2 command windows open we will call them CMD1 & CMD2
3-Place the copy of vold.fstab in the root of your (C:) drive
4-In case of soft bricked system for editing vold.fstab :
a-Switch to CMD1 , type the following and press enter after each line :
adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount /system
mount -o rw,remount /system/etc
mount -o rw,remount /
cd system
cd etc
chmod 777 /system/etc/vold.fstab
mv vold.fstab vold.fstab.backup
b-Switch to CMD2 , type the following and press enter after each line :
adb pull /system/etc/vold.fstab.backup
adb push c:vold.fstab /
c-Switch to CMD1 , type the following and press enter after each line :
cd ..
cd ..
cp vold.fstab /system/etc/vold.fstab
rm vold.fstab
cd system
cd etc
chmod 644 /system/etc/vold.fstab
mount -o ro,remount /system
mount -o ro,remount /system/etc
mount -o ro,remount /
reboot
d-remove then re-seat battery after 10 seconds
**PS : (in case of in-availability of working vold.fstab file yet you know how to fix your changes manually , wait till step (b) then apply first command then download and use Notepad++ on your laptop (found here h t t p : / / n o t e p a d – p l u s – p l u s . o r g / d o w n l o a d / v 6 . 6 . 1 . h t m l Most recent version at the time of writing) to edit the file vold.fstab.backup that will be found in your “Platform-Tools” folder inside “Android SDK” installation folder then rename it into vold.fstab place it at the root of your (C:) drive and continue with steps )