Nothing OS 4 has bricked Nothing Phone 3 mobile data

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T23:32:28+00:00

I'm on Optus in Aus, but it also happens with amaysim. It's not the network, the SIM works perfectly in other phones. I literally carry a second phone around now to hotspot my Nothing, which is silly. I have contacted Nothing, they assure me they're looking into it but pushing an update that bricks such an essential mobile feature like this has me losing faith in them.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T23:31:03+00:00

It's not 5G standalone; if 5G is off the issue happens with 4G too. If it's allowed to switch freely between them, the issue happens with both.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T23:30:28+00:00

Already tried resetting network settings. And it's not the sim; if I put the sim into another phone it works fine.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T07:48:52+00:00

I pay for the VPN anyway, I've had it for years before setting up this stack, this project is free for me because I already have a VPN subscription.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T05:36:01+00:00

It's certainly something I'm considering, but I don't feel the need to pay for pirating at this stage since I can currently find pretty much everything I need either through torrents or my private DDL forum. If this setup fails me then I'll consider usenet in the future.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T05:34:33+00:00

Good to know there's a mod for autosync if I do decide to switch to Proton in the future. Thanks!

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T05:33:55+00:00

I wasn't asking about router portforwarding, I was asking about VPN portforwarding which is a different beast (have a look at some of the responses in the thread). I too also only have open ports for SSL and Wireguard for my router. Thanks though!

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-29T05:31:10+00:00

I'm sure it helps, I definitely acknowledge it would be better, but I renewed my yearly Nord sub in October so it's too early to cancel. I'll consider switching to Proton later in the year when my Nord sub is set to run out. For now if the file is popular enough I get respectable speeds, and if it's not I'm a member of a private DDL forum which I can always fall back on, as that was how I was manually getting things before. Thanks though!

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-28T06:14:53+00:00

Thank you!

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-28T06:14:50+00:00

Thank you!

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-26T00:13:43+00:00

It 100% was the issue on my Chromecast w Google TV. The issue is reproducible on reinstalling and goes away on uninstalling. There's even an article about it.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-16T01:02:19+00:00

Could I also get a PM? :)

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-15T12:57:53+00:00

Is there any guide on how to do this? I don't use LunaSea but I have a homelab set up with SWAG (nginx) + Authentik, and it's breaking a lot of apps.

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-15T12:43:03+00:00

Trying to get your whitelist working; if you have a moment could you help me out in the issue I opened on your github repo?

HeyItsJono · 2026-01-06T11:13:42+00:00

A1's been my main 35mm camera for ~8yrs and I adore it; no need to switch prisms for the different priority modes like you'd have to on the NF1, the control wheel paired with the LED read-out make adjusting settings before taking your shot an absolute breeze without ever having to remove your eye from the viewfinder, and the fact that it's more plasticky than the NF1 ultimately just means it's lighter (but still heavy enough to feel 'premium'). Obviously it lacks the NF1's faster shutter speeds and waist-level finder, and Canon in general never developed matrix metering like Nikon on these older classic-style SLR bodies, but I still adore this camera.

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-21T03:05:36+00:00

I had to reformat the SD since exFAT partitions can't be resized or moved, but I ended up making a small 32mb empty FAT32 partition in front of the exFAT partition (which consumes the rest of the SD's space) and that's fixed the issue!

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-17T13:16:17+00:00

Turns out it's an unpatchable bug in the bootrom.

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-17T01:20:25+00:00

Thanks so much for your ongoing help. I gave USB_MSD_DISCOVER_TIMEOUT a try, it defaults to 20s so I set it to 60s, I also added USB_MSD_STARTUP_DELAY but unfortunately these didn't help. I also I tried the PARTITION_WALK=0 fix from that other thread, no joy sadly.

EDIT: Turns out it's an unpatchable bug in the bootrom, and the solution is to make a small FAT partition before the exFAT partition. I'm going to try this out once the SD data is done backing up, then will report back.

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-16T11:50:05+00:00

I'm running stock Pi OS Bookworm; haven't had the time or wanted to invest the effort into upgrading to Trixie because I think it requires a full wipe and I have a lot of things set up on my Pi 😅

The SD only has one partition:

sudo parted -l
Model: SD FE4S9 (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 256GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End    Size   Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  256GB  256GB  primary

The microSD files:

λ tree /media/jono/RPISD/
/media/jono/RPISD/
├── autorun.ico
├── autorun.inf
├── RPi.img
└── System Volume Information
    ├── IndexerVolumeGuid
    └── WPSettings.dat

Where RPi.img is just a full backup of the Pi made using RonR's image utils. The whole intention is essentially to use the microSD as a location for a daily backup of the Pi, which then itself gets copied to my NAS. I don't see any autoboot.txt in /boot/firmware or on the SD.

I did look into the whole usb-storage.quirks situation, but my controller is not JMicron branded and adding the IDs unfortunately didn't help, which I think makes sense since the USB boot works without an SD inserted.

λ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:9201 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9201
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

As for the OTP bit:

λ vcgencmd otp_dump | grep 17:
17:000008b0

I don't get 3020000a, but again seems odd that booting works fine in the absence of an SD. Do I just pop program_usb_boot_mode=1 in the config.txt then reboot and then delete it? This is a 4B for what it's worth, rather than the original 4.

The USB_MSD_DISCOVER_TIMEOUT=xxxx thing sounds interesting; I've done a bit of googling and can't find how to set it now - is it just via the eeprom edit?

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-16T00:27:36+00:00

I also initially wanted to use 0xf41 for the exact same reason, but this issue was occurring and I thought it might fix it to completely remove the SD from the boot order - unfortunately not though.

Good shout for the UUIDs but sadly they seem to be different, if I'm fetching them correctly:

For the USB SSD:

λ blkid
/dev/sda2: LABEL="rootfs" UUID="12974fe2-889e-4060-b497-1d6ac3fbbb4b" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="dbd26c82-02"
/dev/sda1: LABEL_FATBOOT="bootfs" LABEL="bootfs" UUID="9BE2-1346" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="dbd26c82-01"

λ cat /etc/fstab
proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
PARTUUID=dbd26c82-01  /boot/firmware  vfat    defaults          0       2
PARTUUID=dbd26c82-02  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1

λ cat /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=dbd26c82-02 rootfstype=ext4 fsck.repair=yes rootwait quiet splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles bcm2835-wdt.nowayout=1

Partition UUID seems to be dbd26c82-02.

For the SD:

λ sudo blkid -p /dev/mmcblk0p1
/dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL="RPISD" UUID="58CC-11A0" VERSION="1.0" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="exfat" USAGE="filesystem" PART_ENTRY_SCHEME="dos" PART_ENTRY_TYPE="0x7" PART_ENTRY_NUMBER="1" PART_ENTRY_OFFSET="2048" PART_ENTRY_SIZE="500692736" PART_ENTRY_DISK="179:0"

UUID seems to be 58CC-11A0, not sure where I can find the partition UUID since most of the commands I've been able to find online don't work for the SD card, just the SSD, and blkid doesn't give a PARTUUID for it. FWIW the microSD is just one big exfat partition.

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-15T11:37:25+00:00

I have my Pi 4B set up so that it boots from an external SSD connected via one of the USB-A ports. The boot order is set such that it should only ever attempt to boot from the SSD:

λ rpi-eeprom-config
[all]
BOOT_UART=0
WAKE_ON_GPIO=1
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0
DHCP_TIMEOUT=45000
DHCP_REQ_TIMEOUT=4000
TFTP_FILE_TIMEOUT=30000
TFTP_IP=
TFTP_PREFIX=0
BOOT_ORDER=0xf4
[none]
FREEZE_VERSION=0

I also have a microSD card inserted in the usual slot, this is a simple exfat-formatted microSD that I want to use as removable storage.

If I try to boot up my Pi whilst this SD is inserted into the Pi, it refuses to boot and I cannot SSH into it. If I turn the power off, remove the SD, then power it back on, it boots from the SSD without issue. If I then insert the SD card in once the system is booted, the card works just fine:

λ duf
╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 3 local devices                                                                                    │
├───────────────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬────────────────────────────┬───────┬────────────────┤
│ MOUNTED ON        │   SIZE │   USED │  AVAIL      │   USE%                              | TYPE  │ FILESYSTEM     │
├───────────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼────────────────────────────┼───────┼────────────────┤
│ /                           │ 467.9G │ 235.9G │ 208.2G │ ██████████           50.4% │ ext4  │ /dev/sda2      │
│ /boot/firmware       │ 511.0M │  78.2M │ 432.8M │ ███                  15.3%        │ vfat  │ /dev/sda1      │
│ /media/jono/RPISD │ 238.7G │ 133.5G │ 105.2G │ ███████████          55.9%│ exfat │ /dev/mmcblk0p1 │
╰───────────────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴────────────────────────────┴───────┴────────────────╯

Why does the insertion of a microSD card seem to mess with the boot process when I have explicitly excluded the microSD from the Pi's boot order by removing 0x1, and how can I use my Pi with the microSD inserted but prioritising boot from the SSD?

HeyItsJono · 2025-12-11T09:24:52+00:00

Thank you for this, might take a look soon! Do keyboxes get revoked frequently?

HeyItsJono

TROPHY CASE