I have a Sony XA2 with iodéOS for over four years now and I have always been happy with it.
But now I have a problem:
The phone is stuck in a bootloop. It boots until the iodé-logo apprears, then it shows the logo for about 30 seconds and then the phone restarts again and again. It still reacts on the volume and power buttons, so I can open the recovery menu or switch off the phone of. But I don’t want to do a factory reset since I don’t want to lose all my personal data on the phone. The problem occurred without any apparent cause. My supposition is that the phone’s memory is full.
Does anyone have an idea what I could do to restart the phone or to save my data?
I have tried the soft/hard reset as descriebd in the link by pushing the power and the volume up button together for two minutes and then I have restarted the phone.
Unfortunately it didn’t help and the problem of the bootloop persists.
Does anybody have other ideas of possible solutions?
If you can boot into the recovery menu (is it TWRP?), you might try opening its File Manager and moving whatever you can to the microSD card or a USB drive, or deleting stored items you don’t need. Maybe also wipe the Cache while you’re in the recovery menu. Then see if you can reboot into the system.
If that doesn’t help, you might try a dirty flash of the build. Theoretically, that should preserve all your data and settings.
If you still get the boot loop, I think you’re looking at a factory reset. I’m no expert, though, so you might want to get more advice.
@math1as to clarify what @Taurus-II means by “dirty flash” this would be using adb sideload image.zip from Recovery without performing a “Factory Reset / UserData Reset”. This is the way that LineageOS users need to upgrade to new major versions, for example.
If you need more clarification on how to try this we can be more detailed in our explanation of the steps to follow, let us know.
There is of course risk it still won’t boot, but as you are facing no other solution (if you can’t use TWRP to enable adb to copy files off the device, for example) it may be time to try a “dirty flash”. As noted in email, sorry again for the problem you are facing.
Or, if you already have the image on your microSD card (either from an adb sideload or just copied and pasted to the card), to “dirty flash,” you can just go directly to “Install” in TWRP, select the image from the microSD card, and when it’s done, observe the recommended “wipe” dialog. Then reboot and see how it goes.
I always keep the image file on my card in the phone, in case I need to reinstall when I’m nowhere near a computer.
I think my recovery menu is not TWRP and I haven’t found a possibility to open the file manager in the recovery menu. Is there still a possibility to use TWRP for me?
As for the “dirty flash”, it would be great if you can give me a more detaild explanation of the steps I have to follow.
I don’t have yet the adb sideload image on my sd card.
In the past, I have replaced an installed recovery (Lineage) with a different recovery (TWRP); it just takes the place of the old one. You do this by using fastboot from a computer, with the phone connected in fastboot mode. You’ll need the particular version of TWRP recommended for your device.
After that, you can disconnect the phone, boot into TWRP, tap “Advanced,” then “File Manager.” From there you can explore the file system, including the directories you would see when booting into the OS (on my Sony it’s named, unintuitively, “sdcard”), and the external storage (named “sdcard1” on my device).
Note the menu item “Up a Level,” which moves you back in the file system after you open a sub-directory.
Move or delete what you wish, then reboot to see if the boot loop is fixed. If that doesn’t work, download the iodéOS build for your phone on your computer (if you don’t have it already), copy it to the phone’s microSD card, then boot into TWRP, tap “Install,” choose the image from your external storage (called “sdcard1” on my phone), and swipe to execute. When it’s finished, you’ll see a message to accept about wiping cache and, I think, Dalvik. Accept, then choose Reboot (into System) from the main TWRP menu.
If nothing above helps you recover from the boot loop, you’ll likely just have to do a factory reset, with your data lost. But hopefully you will have salvaged some of it by having moved what you could to the microSD card.
@rik Any recommendations or corrections to what I’ve written?
Thank you very much for your suggestion. That seems quite promising. I am still trying to do it as you said. But my pc doesn’t recognise my phone so far. Probably it is a driver-problem. I continue to look for drivers that work…
Make sure the cable you’re using is suitable for data transfer, not just for charging.
Sounds like you’re using a Windows machine. I use Linux Mint, and only needed to install adb and fastboot without searching for any drivers, so I don’t have any experience looking for them. Maybe a Windows user can give some guidance there.
Finally I managed to install TWRP on my XA2. Thanks again to Bellini who helped me a lot with the necessary drivers.
Now I have entered the file manager. I can see there the directories sdcard and sdcard1 for the external storage as Taurus-II told before. But while I can browse the folders and files of the external storage of the sd-card without any problem I see all the folders and files of the internal storage of my phone with strange names like “8GeAk3jwOi4QCP4PbsoQzD”. It seems all encrypted. Is there a way to decrypt the files?
No, there was no screen to enter my security code.
I typed the command in TWRP > Advanced > Terminal, it gave me only a list of all the folders with teir encrypted names. In the sdcard directory the folders are still encrypted.
