Google Nexus S Android Phone Suffers USB Death

Today I am a very lucky guy, in spite of the fact that the USB OTG functionality on my Google Nexus S has just vanished. Why does that make me lucky? Well, it doesn't, but luckily I had ordered a second Nexus S that works properly with Canadian HSDPA frequencies on the Rogers network, and it arrived literally the same second that my old Nexus S stopped working. Total coincidence... I think.

Actually, I should be more specific - nothing on the old phone has stopped working except for the USB OTG controller. So when I plug my in my phone to my workstation, I receive "unable to enumerate device on port... " under Linux and "USB Device Not Recognized" under Windows 7. In layman's terms, my phone no longer works as a USB disk. 

Being a clever hacker, I managed to get the dmesg output on my Nexus S, which I hope will be of some use for people at either Google or Samsung. The source code for the Nexus S (codenamed crespo) is available, so I might look into it further some time later. 

In reference to the dmesg output below, 

"The FSA9480 chip is used on some Samsung phones to detect various accessories using sensing resistors on the ID pin of the USB port." [1]

It's likely an authentication chip - there are several vendors that provide something similar. The datasheet is only available under NDA of course. Naturally, I've tried several cables, and several different workstations, to no avail. There are many layers of software and electronics at work (or rather not at work) here, so without some chip documentation / resources, there's not really a way that I can debug this just using the source code of the Linux driver.

But just to clarify - anytime an 'err -6' appears, that corresponds to with -ENXIO "No such device or address", and anytime 'err -5' appears, it corresponds to  -EIO "I/O error", so the outlook is not good. It's likely that the chip in question had a bad solder joint and is not powering up with the rest of the phone, or it experienced a "massive" current spike from my laptop that it couldn't handle.

I believe my device is still under warranty though, so I'll certainly be shipping it back for repair soon. 

The strangest part of this whole thing is that I've kept my phone in pristine condition, which (sadly) suggests that the design quality of this Nexus S was lacking, in spite of what Google has said in various marketing videos. It could also be Fairchild's fault, if in fact it turned out to be an ESD issue. Anything that's connected on the USB should be able to handle 'typical' levels of ESD from a PC's USB pins. 

[ 2066.560942] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x0, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.234132] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.362855] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_irq_thread: err -6

[ 2068.363813] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_detect_dev: err -6

[ 2068.363919] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0xfa, dev2: 0xff

[ 2068.374642] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2068.377227] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.377957] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2068.378051] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_reg_init: err -5

[ 2068.379090] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2068.975317] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.977052] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x1f, dev2: 0xff

[ 2068.978903] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2068.991221] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.992016] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2068.992109] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_reg_init: err -5

[ 2068.993178] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2068.994968] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.003127] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.004982] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x3

[ 2069.006708] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.008463] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.009962] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2069.010054] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_reg_init: err -5

[ 2069.010498] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.012253] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.014000] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x1f

[ 2069.015793] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.035247] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.037069] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0xff, dev2: 0xff

[ 2069.038796] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.041289] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.043017] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0xff

[ 2069.044765] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.048313] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.050040] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x17, dev2: 0xff

[ 2069.051853] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.060308] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.062035] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x13, dev2: 0xff

[ 2069.063858] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.067409] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.068963] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2069.069124] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_detect_dev: err -5

[ 2069.069209] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0xfb, dev2: 0xff

[ 2069.070971] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.091186] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.092983] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x3

[ 2069.094731] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2069.104292] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2069.105018] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2069.105108] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_reg_init: err -5

[ 2069.106102] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2070.150280] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2070.152079] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0xff, dev2: 0xff

[ 2070.153836] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2070.166528] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2070.167026] i2c i2c-7: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

[ 2070.167188] fsa9480 7-0025: fsa9480_reg_init: err -5

[ 2070.168389] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2070.192257] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[ 2070.193986] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x1

[ 2070.195786] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

...

[ 2070.210682] fsa9480 7-0025: dev1: 0x10, dev2: 0x0

[1] http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/13041/how-do-i-make-the-fairchild-fsa9280-fsa9480-fsa880-boot-pin-trigger-samsung-gal

HTC Hero vs Samsung Galaxy

I've been wowing over these two devices approximately for the last couple of months, and decided that it's finally time to make a decision.

Both the Samsung Galaxy and the HTC Hero use the same SoC (who isn't?) - the Qualcomm MSM7200A, a 528 MHz ARM1136EJ-S core, using the ARMv6 ISA. The MSM7200 includes a 3D acceleration unit and a Qualcomm DSP, making it very suitable for any multimedia application. I do believe that the 3D acceleration unit still lacks full support under Linux/Android (much like the OMAP3530/PowerVR). Both handsets have a 5MP camera, although no secondary camera for video calling. They both have 802.11b/g, bluetooth, etc. The display on both devices is 320x480 pixels. Major differences are that the Galaxy has several more buttons (e.g. volume control), much more internal storage space, and a very power efficient AMOLED display, while the Hero sports the new Sense(R) UI, integrated Adobe Flash, more RAM, and multi-touch support.

I thought I would summarize. For those who would like to see a detailed comparison of the two devices, check out this link from pdadb.net .

	HTC Hero	Samsung Galaxy
RAM (MB)	288	128
Flash (MB)	512	7630
Connector	ext-USB (mini-USB compatible)	micro-USB
Battery (mAh)	1350	1500
Display Depth	16-bit (65-thousand colours)	24-bit (16-million colours)
Display Type	Transflective TFT (standard)	AMOLED (very low power)
Multi-Touch?	YES!	NO!
Price (€)	485,97 (Amazon.de)	476,98 (Amazon.de)

So far, I have not had a chance to examine either of these devices in any detail, but from what I have read, the Hero does support multi-touch. Until now, most sources have stated that the Galaxy does not support multi-touch. However, that might only be due to the fact that Android did not support multi-touch in software until the Hero came out. Perhaps the Galaxy has hardware support for multi-touch. Who knows with any certainty? I've read that the Galaxy actually has a capacitive touchscreen, so multi-touch does not seem that far off. The Galaxy also lacks Google-branding, which (aside from lacking some cover-art) means that software updates are not transferred over the air. Rather, updates must be performed manually with a USB cable, which some users might actually prefer.

Let's start with the Hero. I like that it has a large amount of RAM a great UI that supports multi-touch. The RAM will come in handy for streaming media (i.e. video) and fast context switching (Android's OOM process killer will not be called as frequently). As for multi-touch, I think you would probably agree, that there really is no alternative for pinch-zooming in the browser, or easy photo rotations. Now, the Galaxy - the fact that it's missing some RAM has been somewhat accounted for with the built-in 8GB of storage. As far as the screen goes, AMOLED spells very low-power (I love it) and still supports a true-colour (16million level) display. That will make it excellent for viewing any type of video or looking at photos. However, if the Samsung hardware truly does not support multi-touch, then I would be quite disappointed.

I have to admit, that I'm still sitting on the fence about this until I know with any certainty that the Samsung does not support multi-touch. Originally, I was thinking that the Samsung would be the best choice, without a doubt, but now I'm really considering how the extra RAM in the Hero might be beneficial. In terms of permanent storage, the Hero has more than enough, and is expandable with a micro-SD card anyway. On the other hand, the Galaxy could easily host a few operating systems on-board, or perhaps my entire collection of (decent) mp3s. This decision would definitely be easier if I knew for a fact that the Galaxy hardware did or did not support multi-touch.

Samsung i7500 Galaxy from O2 Germany

I thought I would post a link I found to a PDF on O2's website that states what the price of the Samsung i7500 with Android. The flyer says that it will cost 367€ without a contract.

Check it out here. Some updates are on the O2Online.de blog, saying that it should be available either this week or next.

I hope I won't be out of luck if I ask for it with an english UI :)

Update: Nooooooo.... I was just checking out a youtube video preview of the i7500 and discovered a horrible design decision on the part of Samsung. In spite of having designed the  device with a 3.5mm audio jack (thank you Samsung!) they used one of those super annoying, hard-to-find, flat USB jacks.

The flat USB jacks are horrible and tend to break quite easily. It's also not saving any space as there is a huge 3.5mm jack directly beside it - the whole point of the flat USB connectors is that they're supposed to be used when thickness is an issue.

Read this, and just know that I'm shaking my head 'no' right now in disappointment.

Incidentally, has anyone found out of there is a regular Mini USB connector with the same pinouts as the flat type? I wouldn't mind just soldering out the old one and putting in a standard Mini USB jack.