Thanks for welcoming me to your forum. Longtime flip phone user; Android flips since 2019.
I recently bought a TCL FLIP Go. It’s very similar to the FLIP 2. I found this stene.xyz page for downgrading from KEKA to KEFH firmware. However, from what I have been able to learn from a r/dumbphones thread, my goal is going to be to downgrade from LF91UM10 to LF8SUM0, assuming I want to stick with FLIP Go firmware. Am I thinking this through correctly? Does…anyone have any idea how I can get a copy of the LF8SUM0? Thanks!
Update: The “S/W” version is printed on the box. I found one on eBay labeled LF8SUMS0 (not LF8SUM0 — maybe that’s a typo?) from 2023, so I pulled the trigger on it and am crossing my fingers that it was never updated. Hopefully I can rip the LF8SUMS0 software and make it available to the community. Pointers appreciated.
There’s another one from 2022 labeled LF8CUMC0.
Can you explain what you are trying to do i am not sure i understand?
USB debugging is disabled in the current software version. So I’d like to load the older software onto my device.
would this also be a way to unlock the phone?
Remove the carrier lock, you mean? I don’t know.
Sometimes people say a phone is “locked” in a different sense, i.e. that you are prevented from sideloading and therefore unable to unleash the native potential of the device. That is what I’m trying to achieve.
nah i mean carrier lock if you could figure out which partition this is stored…
Well, we’ll see. I’m going deeper down this rabbit hole than I had bargained for, but I guess more knowledge and control will pay off in the long run.
The software versions you’re mentioning belong to the 4058W (Flip Go from TMobile). If you want, I have the stock firmware backups of both LF8SUMS0 and LF91UM10. I don’t remember if the latest software version for that phone blocks enabling ADB through *#*#33284#*#*, but I’m guessing you tried already and it didn’t work.
Forget about stene.xyz. NeutronScott’s neutron.img works fine to enable app installation. Once you have app installation enabled, you could just bluetooth an APK over to the phone of any app of your choice to enable USB debugging (I personally install AnotherTerm and run su -c settings put global adb_enabled 1).
In regards to your confusion of the different spellings of the software versions for this phone, the only 2 I’ve seen are the ones I listed above. They could be spelled with at least the first 4 characters (that’s how they are in build.prop), or up to all 8 characters. I’ve never seen LF8CUMC0, but it could be that it exists.
If you need any help, feel free to reach out.
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I appreciate the info very much, and will certainly try it—and reach out for help if needed. Thank you!
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I’m trying to follow NeutronScott’s instructions. I’m on a Mac and I don’t see why the Linux instructions wouldn’t work, but I’m having Python trouble.
Try this autobooter from Lionscribe
Both mtk-bootseq.py and autobooter.py have the same line, “from serial import Serial” which gives me the error “ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘serial’”. I don’t have the knowledge to troubleshoot this, unfortunately.
Thanks, I know that much, I’ve googled this issue up and down the web, and tried a lot of stuff, especially installing and uninstalling and reinstalling pyserial every which way. No luck. In the future I’ll give it a shot with a Windows or Linux machine. But for now I got my hands on a LF8SUMS0 and will hopefully have better luck with simpler solutions.
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Well despite the box being labeled LF8SUMS0, the device was already updated to LF91UM10. Sigh.
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My method should work either way
This program runs now (I finally succeeded in installing pyserial!), but I can’t find the port. There’s definitely nothing that looks like “tty.usbmodem14200” in my Mac’s /dev/ directory.
Update: No luck on MacOS. I ordered a Raspberry Pi, which, it’s kind of dumb to have to do that, but it’s still cheaper than most phones. Fingers crossed!
What’s wrong with Windows?
I don’t have a Windows machine.