Samsung Intercept Froyo update bricking phones, Sprint techs being told to fix or replace

by Dustin Karnes on Dec 18th 2010, 11:56am
tagged Android, bad, fail, froyo, intercept, Samsung

According to an inside source at Sprint, the new Android 2.2 update for the Samsung Intercept that was released yesterday may be causing more harm then good. From what we’re hearing, the update is bricking phones left and right. If it happens to you, our source says you can take your device up to a Sprint store, and they’ll do what they can to get it fixed. If they can’t get it fixed by means of software updates, techs at Sprint are being told to go ahead and replace the broken Intercept with a new one.

Our source also mentioned that it would be a good idea to stay away from the Froyo update in general for now. Once Samsung acknowledges that the update is bad, you can bet that they’ll be coming out with a new version that will smash these bugs.

Any of you Samsung Intercept users out there having issues with the Froyo update? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks Robert!

» See more articles by Dustin Karnes

Categorized as Android Manufacturers, Android Phones, Android Software, Android Updates

Anand Raj

I updated yesterday and its’ working out fine.
Art

Three Intercepts in my household. Two updated just fine, one bricked. You can get into recovery, but nowhere else. Sprint will order replacements, yep.
Intercept

It bricked my wife’s phone. Took it to the store and they replaced the phone. Updated that phone with no problems. So far it is awesome. Runs a lot better than it did before.
Some_mezzo

Mine definitely got bricked today. Glad to hear it works on some phones though. ^_^
Evilicious

got mine this morning. overall, things seem to be working fine, and in some cases better, but now I can’t get the stupid thing to sync with facebook (either my calendar or my contacts list). guess I’ll run by sprint tomorrow and see what they can make of it
Kathy

Bricked my phone. It had to be replaced. The trouble was that the Sprint store mixed my phone with someone else’s phone. I fielded all her calls all am. She got my calls and my SD card. I have not gotten my SD card back! Too much aggravation for a simple update!
http://www.myhypemedia.com/ Matthew

Does anybody know if there is a way to manually update? My roommate got the update on his intercept but mine won’t seem to do it for some reason… Is there somewhere I could download it from on the internet?
Lori

Downloaded the upgrade flawlessly. Noticeably faster response time now which is nice. Haven’t had a chance to check out some of the new features. It has a much needed convenient task manager feature to manage applications to easily turn them off when not using them. Greatly improved voice search with expanded features, and wifi hotspot app that I have discovered so far. Several other little glitches have also been fixed.

The only downside I have noticed is that the number of open windows is limited to 4 when browsing. I used to be able to have 8 or 10 open at once with the previous froyo.

Have to close a window before it lets me open a new one and is pretty inconvenient after only 4 windows.
Rhonda

I updated yesterday and it deleted all my “grouped” contacts! So basically, everyone that I call regularly has been deleted. Nice going!
http://talkandroid.com Doug

Got my update on the 17th. Numerous new features that I like, only glitch I’ve found is that the built-in browser keeps resetting itself if I open it directly. If opened from google search, it does fine.
hunter

i have been through three sprint intercepts this week, every single one has the same problem, this is bs, i recomend staying away from the phone in general, theres no service ever bluetooth swtches off and on during calls which drops them also, speaker phone comes on randomly calls get muted, worst phone ive ever owned
Amber

My battery has gone from okay to crap. I did have half to a fourth of the battery left when I went to bed and it now lasts barely 12 hours, and that’s with making one phone call and minimal texts/other phone usage.
pashinatone

Mine updated no problem. I am very happy now. It works way better than before. Only problem I have is my contacts number don’t show up when typing numbers to call. I have to type in complete number or use call log or contacts list to dial out. Besides this I am very pleased with my update.
David

Any word on when the Virgin Mobile version of this phone will receive the update? 2.1 runs like syrup on it..
PRoPAiN!

David: read elsewhere (unconfirmed, and can’t find source atm) that a VM support tech said VM was shooting for January.
Dan

Bricked mine in no time flat new phone on the way.
4 days with a loaner phone sucks.
AJ

Mostly went okay, lost some of my contacts. Anybody know where some of the extra fields for contacts went? I used to have birthdays and anniversaries in there and after upgrade, poof, no longer. Still getting used to the new features, some are good, some are crap. Added a lot of Sprint features and took away my little notepad feature .
thomas

this update wiped out all my contacts on the phone. i do a backup to my sd card…thank god! otherwise this update deletes your contacts. nice job testing this before you released SPRINT. (sarcastically)!
Daniel

Prior to the upgrade, the phone was very slow to respond and internet was always messing up. A battery pull had to get done almost every day. Now, after the update, the phone responds better and internet is faster. Some contacts were lost, speed dial was erased and I can’t find option to link with twitter and facebook.
vicky

My daughter and my phone received the update fine, but it didn’t go well with my husband. My husband went to the sprint store and they have to replace the phone and on top of the inconvenience, they are charging him a fee…..
tara

Ok so now that my contacts got deleted I fail to be able to link those google contacts to the phone contacts which is a new feature that absolutly sucks. I can’t out ringtones in for specific people. Also how do you sync the phone with google? HELP!
Lauren

If only my phone had totally bricked, someone at Sprint MIGHT have been able to help me tonight. Unfortunately, my phone seems to work (somewhat) on some things but either no longer works or cannot find other things.

In complete frustration, I went in to the Sprint store for help. I was told (ya’ gotta love this) that I shouldn’t have let myself get talked in to buying the Intercept in the first place because it’s been nothing but problems for Sprint.

He apologized that he couldn’t fix my phone or let me exchange it since I’m 12 days past my 30-day trial period.

Sprint says fix it or replace it? Maybe Sprint should let their people in their stores know.
chuck o’connor

I feel like the phone is running better over all but it deleted my notepad which I had a lot of information on. Is there any way to find it?
Superlativity

I wasn’t aware that all of my Memos, along with the memo app itself, would be erased. I didn’t lose my contacts, but a bunch of them became unlinked and I have to manually link them all over again. A bunch of my picture names got mixed up, and if I had a picture that was set as a contact and the name got changed, then it unset itself as the contact icon too. And I can’t sync with facebook. A lot of the features I don’t even need: I had an app that gave me five homescreens and onetouch access to my phone and contacts, and I’ll never use my phone as a hotspot because I’m not paying $30 a month for it. And I still have no live wallpaper!! Not happy at all with the way this was rolled out.
Superlativity

Oh, and it is now only letting me assign ringtones to some contacts, but not all. Now that the groups feature is gone, I have to re-assign any ringtones that were formerly grouped, and it’s not letting me. Fantastic.
Brad

The Froyo update did wonders for my intercept however it murdered the gps so sprint navigation and google maps with navigation do not work. It cannot lock onto a GPS signal, also any other GPS apps won’t work. Damn!
jesse pena

downloaded update and erased my memos and memo icon, deleted speed dial and gave me direct dial which puts a contact icon on the screen for everyone to see, gives me “message not sent” error and sends message anyway. Took it to Sprint store and after waiting for an hour, told tech I wanted it converted back to original version, said he would fix it. When I picked an hour later they said the diagnosis was fine, everything worked fine. But it still had the 2.2.1 version. Emailed corporate office and they said they were sorry for inconvenience and told me to go to another sprint store.
Kevin

@ Tara and Superlativity

I have a VM phone and don’t have froyo yet, but I was noticing that I couldn’t add ringtones to every contact. I think you can only add them to “Phone” contacts and not “Google” or other contacts. So to add a ringtone you need to create a new contact (I think all you need is a name) and save it to “Phone” and then link it with the other contact. Kind of weird and stupid but it works.
Norm

I got the update the Saturday after it came out and the phone worked great for 3 days. On the 3rd day the phone died to the point it would not even power up. Sprint’s attitude was we’ll fix/replace the phone at OUR convenience. Nice attitude Sprint.
ekid

here are the bad points I’ve noticed after installing 2.2

There is no way you can assign speed dial, if anyone knows how, please publish here.

on phone keypad, I used spell person name and it(2.1) was bringing up related entries – very useful feature, now with 2.2 it is gone. not sure why Google is taking away such a nice feature!!

GPS sucks…it shows 2 mile away and navigation is not reliable at all, it just searches GPS signal for more than 1 hr if you find my location while driving…very bad. I used to get accurate info with 2.1

still finding bugs, is there a way to go back to 2.1? or how soon we can get all fixes for 2.2?
Ashley

Mine worked at forst and now wont even turn on, my mom’s worked fine though.
John

No Speed Dial
Can’t turn down phone past vibrate (to shut off ringer to silent only)
Brandi

After having the phone for a month I jjus got the update. After downloading it I never have a signal, Phone wont come off of sleep mode [pushing the red button doesnt turn on screen], assigned ringtones dont work, when a text msg comes in it doesnt make any sound so I constantly have to check to see if I have a text,Battery life got murdered,Phone randomly turns off, sometimes it doesnt ring at all when ppl call so the missed call icon just appears out of nowhere. This phone is terrible.

got it as a replacement for the Moment and its a rip off. a total down grade from the moment. I paid for a Moment and they gave me this POS. Thanks sprint, will be getting the early termination and switch to Verizon or AT&T
Amberleigh

Have had this Intercept since August. Was s l o w online and would only have data svs for the 1st hour or two it was on… then a re boot would bring it back. Froyo update day before yesterday.. worked really well for about 30 minutes then crashed my device & overheated ect. Random crashes and overheating X3 yesterday and twice today. 7 bat pulls in the last three days because it just freezes & crashes! Totally FUBAR! DRAINING bat life. Google can not connect. Says I am logging in with the wrong password. I didn’t change anything, that is just how it loads now. Contacted tech support & explained my issues. They gave me an e tkt # and sent me to my Sprint store. They are mailing me a new phone. 0_o Hope it works! Gl every one.
Amberleigh

Also.. the day before the update my clock was way way off. Random buggy goodness! Yum yum!
http://around. RUDI

ITS NOT SPRINTS FAULT. its an update, Brandi. POS is the person who made the update for your phone. why didnt you just read forums before you got your update installeD? or bought that phone.”??>> this has been goin on since begining of DECEMBER! so why blame the carrier? they didnt make the phone, they didnt make the update. they sold you a phone not knowing of the problem themselves im sure. just like me i heard of this today from a friend. so what did i do? i looked into it!
A

Found a solution to lost contacts:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/message/248613#248613
Susan

The update deleted 90percent of my contacts. All of my contacts that had been transferred from my Blackberry. Ones I had entered into the android manually were still there. Any I had grouped were deleted.

Did ANYONE do a check on this update? I can and will blame a service that allows an update that damages a phone to go through. If I pay my service over $90 a month they should be doing basic testing procedures before they let it go through. They certainly shouldn’t have continued to roll out a known problem for over a month.

I wasn’t asked if I wanted to do the update, I wasn’t informed I needed to do a backup either. The update automatically loaded.

My gmail account was supposed to have been set up to update my contacts list automatically, I went to a Sprint store to make sure it was done properly. I did this because I have a ton of business contacts on my phone. If I hadn’t been told this was going to happen I would have loaded the app onto my computer as I had with my blackberry.
raw

wow this phone is junk on my 3d one its so aggervation
to deal with sprint was on phone for a hour with them they will do nothing for me if the phone is bad they will give me another one but the problems are all the same with each phone i have 5 lines with sprint and a preferd customer which dont mean jack had the update done today so far no problems and took care of all problems that i had before we will see what happans in the next few days.bad enough it is my wife phone and have to hear about everyday lol epic 4 g is the only way to go
Destiny

I had a million issues with my intercept before the update… Lag, dropping network connection, slow responses, screen going black, dropped calls… It was the worst phone I ever had!

However, since the update I have not had a single problem! It works like it’s supposed to and even though I will never buy another samsung phone, I’m very happy this fixed the problems I was having!
Kyle

Really happy with the speed of the phone thanks to the new update. That part is great. But it is annoying that the browser resets and closes web pages. Also, I can’t see pictures on websites. I’m looking to move and checking out apartments on craigslist and none of the pictures will display.
Clayton

The Samsung Intercept is a terrible phone with 2.1 with 2.2 it actully worked good for the first 30 days or so too late to exchange it now do not buy this phone if Samsung actually cares about their reputation they will remove it from the market and provide a different phone to its owners
notsobusymom

Lost all my speed dials. They aren’t even in my contacts list anymore! So now all the people I call the most aren’t in my phonebook. Ridiculous. Do like the new “call” and “end call” buttons since I was always check-disconnecting people in the past.
nate

i updating back in december and it worked kinda better but not really sometimes the screen would be jumpy and wouldnt work and now i took out the battery and now its stuck on the samsung logo
Wadya

Latest tweet from Virgin Mobile USA regarding Samsung Intercept Froyo upgrade:

We know you have been asking for specifics on when VM will be getting the update to Android Froyo 2.2….it will be available about 3/25.
24 minutes ago via web

virginmobileus on twitter.com
zach

I got the intercept back in jan. Worked great when I first got it. Bout a half hour after I had it it updated to 2.2 by itself and since the phone has been junk. I lost track of how many times I’ve had to pull the battery cuz it freezez. Apps crash all the time. I got the phone bcuz it was free an now I see why. The list of problems goes on and on and its not even like I have low memory. I have like 50memory open. I don’t have the money for a new phone either. Any ideas?
Elias

i need help the same trouble happend to me my cellphone has been brick is there a solution it virgin mobile going to replace the phone for me please help can virgin mobile fix’it for me or replace my device with a new one… please help..
Abe

updated. ok, phone is laggy and slow and my gps doesnt work anymore and been having the same problems as zach since the update
ebony

i did the update this morning and it took my toolbar away now i cant shortcut to wifi or unmount my usb im trying to see how to get it back.
jdj

VirginMobile’s Intercept: notified of an update to 2.2Froyo this morning, so began the update process. update to Froyo failed w/ the ! in the triangle. The modem.bin file failed to install. Fell to the samsung recovery menu and rebooted. The update package was erased. Checking for System Update says the phone is up to date – on v2.1update1 Eclair! If I get the update notice again I’m backing up the update package to the SDCard before starting.
carol

I tried to do the update today. My screen froze with a white triangle graphic with a big ! in the middle; beside it was the green android creature. I had to remove my battery. When I put it back in, I got a screen that gave an option to reboot. I did this. My phone works, but I’m pretty sure the update did not “take”.
How do you check for that? Under settings, the firmware version shows 2.1-update 1 and the build number still has the word “eclair” in it.
jimmy

@carol: Try going into Setup->About Phone->Update Android and see what happens.
Dodi

I read the info before I did the update…it said that it wouldn’t save the memos…so I copied & pasted into a word document & saved that way. After the update, I got the ColorNote app (FREE) – works even better that the memo app that was previously pre-installed.
I thought I had lost a lot of my contacts that were grouped too…but you have to go into your setting & choose to show your individual google group contacts.
Lots easier to pick a ringtone for each contact. Just have to show options on each contact.
Overall…I love the update! So many more functions that before. And now especially love the ability to save (most) apps to my SD card.
Katorris Jackson

I have the samsung intercept and I have had one phone crash and another phone update and then crash and got locked into the airplane mode. Now I can’t do anything. So I got bricked twice and now I may have to get another replacement.
Jasmine Johnson

The update worked ok for me… I literally just bought the phone got all my contacts in and then updated it.. umm not happy lol. It says I have NO contacts. But in my messaging it shows their names and pictures and even when they call it shows their pictures under the names I had for them, like Noodles or ***Papa. Almost like my contact list is still somewhere in my phone… anyone?
Roman

I took my phone to them 3 times. I could not be fix and they would not replace my phone.
Sam

Well, my phone is acting rather weird. Plug it in to charge…and charges fine…shows the battery going up and everything…However phone WILL NOT turn on…its driving me nuts