So, after reading on Slashdot about the hot new Opera Mini web browser I just HAD to go and try and download it. To my Samsung i300 Palm phone. Which is conspicuously missing from their supported devices page.
I should have known better.
I mean, I already HAVE a graphical web browser on my phone (albeit a somewhat crappy one that was supplied as a replacement for the version of Blazer that originally came with the phone). So it’s not like I really NEEDED this software from Opera. I kind of thought, well, they have another Palm device (the Palm Tungsten C) listed, so maybe my phone will work, and well, Opera is pretty cool, right? And maybe their new browser will be better than the one I’ve got right now…
So, I dutifully browsed to the http://mini.opera.com address using my phone’s browser. I clicked the link to download the application. I clicked Yes to say, yes, I really really want to download this. And thats when, once it got mostly through downloading (I think…) things went TERRIBLY WRONG.
As in, now, my phone won’t boot.
It’s bricked. As in, I can’t even HARD RESET (due to another issue, totally unrelated to this of course, the fact that the ONE KEY on my phone that DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE is the freaking UP key, the specific key that you NEED to press in order to DO a hard reset. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
So, now I’m waiting with the battery taken out, hoping that it will run out of it’s internal reserve of power that lets it remember things so that it will forget everything and play nice again so I can resync it with the lappy.
This is the error message that I get when I try to boot the phone, happens during the Initializing Phone… sequence:
Fatal Alert
TapiClientGlue.c, Line:112, null pointer use.
Reset
Let this be a lesson to you — sometimes, even when you think that the rules and “supported hardware” lists don’t apply to you… they do.
Guess it really is time for that Treo 650, huh. And yes, I did submit a bug report to Opera… Might be a good one for their FAQ.
8 responses to “Downloading Opera Mini Bricked my phone (Samsung i330 Palm)”
Well, Opera Mini is an J2ME MIDlet, and runs in a sandbox enviroment so I can hardly see how Opera Mini bricked your phone.
I can also promise you that TapiClientGlue.c sure isn’t part of the Opera Mini source code. 😉
Did you download the PRC or JAD/JAR by the way?
Christoffer,
I just clicked the download button from the website, and I think it said it was downloading the JAD. I looked for a PRC installer for Palm but didn’t see one.
I agree with you that it wasn’t the Opera code that bricked the phone, more the act of trying to download it / use it as supplied on the Opera site. The problem was definitely Palm-related and probably has a lot to do with the phone I was trying to use.
P.S. The phone is now un-bricked thanks to a restore of from the desktop. I would still like to try the Opera Mini software but I can understand if they don’t take the time to release a version for an old Palm OS 3.1 phone. 🙂
Ouch, dude!
Oh, I thought the i330 was a modern Palm and not based on PalmOS 3.5. It looks kinda modern on the images…
What JVM is your phone running by the way?
Glad to hear you got it unbricked!
I’m simply trying to connect my i330 to my iBook running Mac OS 10.3.9.
I bought the serial to USB cable, but I want to know if “Missing Sync” is the only way to connect to my computer. You seem to know a lot and I figured you may be able to help.
Brian,
I think that that may be the only way to get it connected. Personally, I’ve been still using a windows laptop for my syncing (which is a pain in the butt) since the software seems to be a little bit better there and that’s what I was doing before I got my Powerbook.
When I had researched how to get it working w/ OS X, the Missing Sync software seemed to be the one that came up most often. Maybe you can get in touch with Palm customer support and see if they have a recommended or supported solution, or if the Missing Sync software is the recommended solution.
What are you still doing with a i330? (I upgraded to a Treo 650 back in August 2005 … after 3 long years of using that piece of crap i330.)
Would you want to buy a replacement i330? I had Sprint PCS service with mine … I guess I should sell it and all the batteries/cradles I’ve got on eBay, one of these days, before they’re completely worthless. 🙂
How do I download the applications to my phone because I want to the an update for the text messaging, Thanks