LG Optimus L9 P769 Smartphone: Root, CWM, Remove Bloatware

Slowing down was Big Weed’s smartphone, a 2 year old LG Optimus L9 P769, V21D, from Wind Mobile in Canada. Bought for $200CAD unlocked, it only works with Wind, not Bell or Bully Red. Texts were being dropped and were glitchy. The phone obviously had some software issues. Big Weed was very hesitant to touch her phone, lest we damaged it in any way. When we did do something we did soft brick it, so there was valid cause for concern. Anyway it is now rooted, has the ClockWork Mod recovery manager, a T-Mobile V20D rom, and has been debloated. The phone runs better and faster than new.

Rooting and an unlocked bootloader allows you to change roms, meaning you can load any Android OS you wish. This phone is a pain the arse because it comes with a locked bootloader. Unlocking the bootloader has been done by matthewstice, Oct 26 2013, but not without much pain, which involved going from the stock rom V21D to V20D (T-Mobile) to V20E (European). The V20E transition will reverse the screen (you’ll need a mirror) and there will be much screen flickering. Using V20E, which does not have a locked bootloader, you can then unlock the boot loader. Once unlocked you can then flash the V21D. That’s a lot of risk.

We only wanted to debloat, which needs root and CWM. There is a side load that can be done with a locked bootloader. While you cannot load any rom you wish, with CWM you can still load P769 roms that are specifically used for locked bootloaders. As there is no official CyanogenMod rom for the L9 P769, there are limited roms available anyway.

Root: Tried LGpwn [ROOT][JB] New Easy Root Method For Jellybean to root. It successfully completed but when we downloaded and installed SuperSU it said we did not have root, so it could not install.

Then tried Cydia Impactor [TUTORIAL]Root LG L9 with Cydia[all versions/easy][4.0.3][4.1.2] to root. It ran well. Then installed SuperSU without problem. Installed Busybox x by Robert Nediyakalaparambil and installed.

ClockWorkMod Recovery: Did the CWM install by Artas, [LOCKED BL/Jellybean support] LG Optimus L9 Recovery Installer | v1.5.0.0 27.04.13. Booted into CWM and did a Nandroid backup. Rebooted and got the error message “Unfortunately the process com.android.phone has stopped”, then a white Encrypting screen with a single button “Reset Phone”.

We were stuck. No matter what we did the phone would not boot. We could get into CWM recovery, LG S/W Update mode, and the Encrypting screen. We tried the offline flash kdx, but the phone would not connect to the PC. After much thought I found a CWM recovery image from a poster TableChair, on xda-developers. I removed the sdcard from the L9, put it into another phone and loaded up TableChair’s T-Mobile V20D CWM recovery backup, reinstalled the sdcard into the L9, booted into CWM and recovered. It booted, the phone and texting worked. We then tried a CWM recovery restore with our original backup and it again failed with an Encrypting error. We then reloaded V20D.

Now that I have recovered the boot. I could offline flash the original Wind Mobile V21D, but would lose the root and CWM. Since V20D works, we decided against going back to the original. Factory kdx for V21D

Deleting Bloatware: The instructions say to use a tool called “Root Explorer”, an app in the Google Play store, but I found a different way. Boot up your Windows machine, enable USB debugging, put phone into update LG software mode, open the Fast Boot folder, Shift and Right click, then “Open Command Window Here”, then type “adb shell”. You now have a terminal to your phone. I followed these instructions to change permissions to rw. Here is a cross-reference from XDA-developers, wo do the same thing. You will need to know unix terminal. After “su”, type “mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system”, then “cd /system/app”. From here you can rename your bloatware from .apk to .apk.bak using the mv command. This way you can undo your changes later. For example, “mv Bloat.apk Bloat.apk.bak” will remove the app Bloat from your phone.

I found the easiest way to keep track of the apks is to start with the complete apk list. Create a second list, and as you rename some apks, move them to the rename list and off he original list. This way you can track what is still installed on the phone and what has been disabled. Once renamed the app usually immediately disappears, but rarely it will take a phone reboot, or even rarer, you start the deleted app, the phone says the app is not there, then the app icon disappears. You may need to delete the cache, extra installs and stop the process, then the app will disappear.

Deleting apps must be done carefully, as any deletion can destabilize your phone. I research each app to understand what it does before I disable it. There are so many posts that list a bunch of apps to remove, all without descriptions of the app. Apk names are often not descriptive enough. For example, Velvet.apk is Google search.

T-Mobile Rename/Delete List
411AndMore.apk T-Mobile 411 and more
AccessT-Mobile.apk T-Mobile My Account
AmazonShopping.apk
BonusApps.apk T-Mobile bonus apps
Books.apk Google Play Books
com.mobitv.client.tmobiletvhd.apk T-Mobile TVls
CallerTunes.apk T-Mobile Caller Tunes
CMAS.apk Commercial Mobile Alert System, emergency alerts
DrmService.apk Digital Rights Management
DrmProvider.apk DRM Protected Content Storage
ECID-release.apk T-Mobile Name ID
EmailWidget.apk Email Widget
FaceLock.apk Unlock your phone by face recognition
FavoriteContactsWidget.apk
Gamebase.apk Gamebase
Gmail.apk Gmail
Hangouts.apk Google Hangouts, new for V20H
LGCalculator.apk Simple calculator
LGDrm.apk LG Digital Rights permission
LGEmail.apk Email
LGFOTA.apk LG OTA updates
LGSmartcardService.apk Smartcard Service
Lookout.apk Lookout Security
Music2.apk Google Play Music
MobileLife.apk T-Mobile MobileLife
Magazines.apk Google Play Newsstand
MediaUploader.apk Picassa Uploader
MLT.apk LG Marker Less Tracking, logging/spyware
PhotoAlbumWidget.apk Photo Album
PlusOne.apk Google+
QuickMemo3.apk Quickmemo, for small memos
Slacker.apk Slacker Radio, radio over the internet, requires wifi
SmartShare.apk LG Smartshare, streams movies to tv
StickyNotesWidget.apk Sticky Note Widget
Street.apk Google Street view
TagGoogle.apk Google NFC functionality
Talk.apk Google Talk
talkback.apk for blind and visually impaired
TeleNav.apk Scout
Upsell.apk When you’ve used up your T-Mobile tethering max, they upsell you for tethering
Videos.apk Google Play Movies
VisualVoicemail.apk T-Mobile Visual Voicemail
VpnDialogs.apk Part of VPN system
WAPPushManager.apk Tethering connectivity
WapService.apk
WeatherWidget.apk Weather
WildTangent.apk Games
Zynga.apk Zynga games

Keep List
AppBox.apk LG Application Manager, shows all T-Mobile apps running
ChromeBookmarksSyncAdapter.apk Google Chrome
ChromeWithBrowser.apk
gba-service.apk Generic bootstrap architecture for user authentication
GoogleTTS.apk Google Text-to-speeh Engine
LocMgrPD.apk Google Maps, Local
LocMgrPT.apk
LocMgrProvider.apk
MediaProvider.apk Handles ring tones, etc
MemoWidget.apk Memo Widget
MusicWidget.apk small Music player
Phonesky.apk old Google Play store, backup installer
RichNote.apk Memo app
Stk.apk SIM toolkit
Velvet.apk Google Search

Unknown
AAT.apk Automatic device test
MLT.apk LG Marker Less Tracking, spyware
VoiceSearchStub.apk

Diagnostic screen: dial 3845#*769# source

T-Mobile is asking us to update V20D to V20F. From reading, this OTA update will certainly fail and soft brick the phone. The most recent T-Mobile version is V20H, so even if the V20F ota updated, which it would not, we’d have to upgrade again to V20H.

Upgrade to T-Mobile V20H issued Sept 2014: I did a nandroid backup of V20D and transferred this to my PC. I then found a V20H CWM recovery image and transferred it to the sdcard. CWM wipe of system, data, dalvik, and then restored the V20H. Then did an advanced restore of only the data (apps, data) from the recent V20D backup. Everything booted really well. From the start the phone was really laggy. I debloated the above 48 apps, and the phone was again very fast and responsive. Hurray for the debloat.

Links
[Guide] Removing System Apps to Gain Speed-Battery Life-Free Ram / APP LIST HERE !!!