January 28th, 2012 3 min to read

How To Fix: Bricked Dell Streak 5

Category : Cellular
  • Have you rushed out to get the ‘new’ Gingerbread ROM [Android 2.3.3] onto your Dell Streak 5?
  • Did you experience a stuck or fixed Dell Logo for greater than 5 minutes without loading?

You have come to the right place because I experienced the exact same problem with my Dell Streak 5 when attempting to flash Gingerbread! It took me a few days to un-brick my phone but finally I am back to a functioning phone – without Gingerbread 2.3.3 though but at least it works!

This walk-through hopes to guide you through the process to get your phone back into working order again.

Like any other custom modifications and walk-through, I guarantee NOTHING. If your phone is still bricked/not working after attempting this walk-through then I would suggest trying some other methods [websites, forums, reflash, etc.] to attempt to get it working again. I’m assuming here that you already know how to use fastboot and run recovery so that is all left to the wayside.

[How To use Fastboot for Windows 7 x64: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/4551-guide-making-fastboot-work-on-64-bit-windows-7-systems/ , http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Streak_5/Flashing_Guide#Setting_up_fastboot_for_windows , http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Streak_5/Flashing_Guide#Flashing.2FUpdating]

Let’s begin!

  1. Find out what current version your phone has. Mine was GAUSB1A134700
  2. Unfortunately, there isn’t any recovery for this version as you can see here : http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Streak#Official
  3. Let’s get an updated 00 region ROM since we had so many issues trying to flash region 14 (407/Gingerbread)
  4. If you don’t have it, get the Version 360/Region 00 ROM
  5. Download the Recovery file – http://mirror2.streakdroid.com/manii/360/recovery.img
  6. Download the PKG file – http://mirror2.streakdroid.com/manii/Streak_360_17397_00.pkg
  7. You should already know what to do with those files, if not, reference the above section about how to fastboot
  8. Once those are installed you should be good to go with Version 360…In my case NOT! The phone went into factory recovery mode or something like that (a white screen that reinstalls the factory settings [GAUSB1A134700])
  9. The phone would then reboot into Factory Recovery Mode – http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Streak_5/Flashing_Guide#Entering_recovery_mode_on_phone
  10. From here I was still able to flash Version 360 and this flash allowed the phone to start to the home screen 🙂
  11. But then we have another problem! The capacitive touch lights would flash every so often without rhyme or reason. Well, the reason is because when you check the Settings -> About Phone you will see that the Baseband Version is GAUSB1A134700-US but the OEM Version is GAUSB1A136000. This little discrepancy is why your phone is flashing so lets see if we can fix it
  12. We need another download and that is the amss.mbn file which can be found here for Version 360 http://mirror2.streakdroid.com/manii/360/ (if you have another version or want to prod around the main page is here – http://mirror2.streakdroid.com/manii/)
  13. Take this file and we need to use fastboot http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Streak_5/Flashing_Guide#Entering_fastboot_mode_on_phone – once more to get this file onto the phone
  14. In your cmd prompt of Windows, we use the following command : fastboot -i 0x413c flash amss amss.mbn- [i used the following post http://forum.pocketables.net/showpost.php?p=72758&postcount=13]
  15. After you run that command then reboot using fastboot : fastboot -i 0x413c reboot
  16. Give the phone at least 1-2 minutes before throwing in the towel – after 30 seconds or so mine booted into the home screen and a check of Settings -> About Phone showed that both the Baseband Version and OEM Version are GAUSB1A136000

I was about ready to sell my bricked phone on eBay or Craigslist but continued with patience through the processes over and over again until finally I was successful and have my ‘one of a kind’ phone back in working order and now a few steps upgraded 😉

I hope this guide helps someone out there that is having troubles with their Bricked Dell Streak 5 after trying to flash Gingerbread 2.3.3!

Comments (1)

  • avatar image
    Jensheen February 9th, 2012

    I registered just to let everyone know that this fixed the problem with my bricked dell streak after a failed update to gingerbread. Just exactly follow the steps and you should be good to go. Thanks Marlon T. !