[TUT] Downgrade/Unbrick Ville S4

This should work on the S4 version of the HTC One S. I do not recommend trying this on the S3 version..
Nobody is responsible for the outcome of your phone except you. You know the possible risks and you took them
DO NOT ATTEMPT UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS OR KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING

DO NOT ATTEMPT UNLESS YOU HAVE LINUX INSTALLED.. Ubuntu 12.04 or higher preferred - 32/64 bit!
You can use a livecd or wubi. No virtualbox

This guide assumes your Bootloader is unlocked, You have Recovery Installed, and USB Debugging is ENABLED. Please enable USB debugging before continuing

Creating the brick

Prerequisites: killp4.. included in the unbrick package
unbrick package: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40181085/ville.zip
A backed up p4!


*MAKING A NANDROID BACKUP WILL DO NOTHING FOR YOU.. BUT I DO RECOMMEND HAVING ONE AT ALL TIMES*

1. Place killp4 on your /sdcard

2. Download terminal emulator on your phone if it isn't installed already

3. Open terminal emulator and type the following
COPY bakp4 to a SAFE location ON YOUR COMPUTER and UNMOUNT your USB storage

4. Kill your phone
5. Reboot your phone. The charging light will no longer be on, and you should be stuck on a black screen.

Enumerating your partitions

Q: What does enumerate mean?
A: Prerequisites: Ubuntu 12.04 or higher. 32/64 bit
unbrick package: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40181085/ville.zip
A null p4 or the bakp4 you acquired earlier.
a null p4 is included in the unbrick package if you didn't save your backup.. you will need to hex edit your IMEI into this file. the offset is 0x21c, it's after 11111111, which is the SuperCID

1. Open up 3 terminal windows

2. On your first window, type
3. Now, hold power down on your phone for about 10 seconds*,OR until you see (QDL mode) disappear and let go, Then go to your second window and spam
*On the HTC One X you have to hold power for 10 seconds, on the EVO 4G LTE it is ~30 seconds. This number may vary
You should go from seeing this..


to seeing this...


4. Make note of the following.
for me, my devices was listed as /dev/sdb, yours may be listed as /dev/sdc or even /dev/sdd.
make note of /dev/sd*4 and /dev/sd*12

5. Make sure Linux sees the phone
You should see "Qualcomm USB modem converter detected" as the last line of the output. If not, you can unplug and replug the USB cable or run...

to reload the driver

6. Reset the driver
7. create the block device
8. Open a third Terminal window and navigate to where you stored the ville folder. I saved it to my desktop, so my code is
9. Now we restore the hboot.. replace /sdc12 with your device location that we discovered in step 3 and 4
You can hit enter at all of the prompts here. If it stalls at "Waiting for /dev/sdc12, hold the power button down on your phone about 10 seconds, or until your see "Qualcomm. Inc. Gobi Wireless Modem (QDL mode) disappear from your terminal window, then release it. 10 seconds or less after you do this, emmc_recovery will see your phone and proceed. Flashing Hboot will take several minutes, as it has to load data in ~23K chunks followed by a reset after each.

or you can open a new terminal window and run the following command IF AND ONLY IF the phone doesn't reset out of QDL mode
10. Once that is finished. We have to reset the qcserial driver again.
11. And then recreate the block device
12. Now we restore the original mmcblk0p4 that you should have saved as "bakp4"
13. Again, if it hangs, hold your phone's power button for about 10 seconds, then release. This file will flash very quickly (it's only 1K) and once it completes, you'll immediately notice that your charging light turns back on. You should see "Qualcomm, Inc." or "Qualcomm, Inc. Gobi Wireless modem (QDL mode) disappear from your terminal screen.

14. Press the thanks button for yarrimapirate. As these are his tools/methods


special thanks to
beaups (for helping me understand how to enumerate the partitions)
18th.abn (for getting me the 1.09 hboot and also agreeing to help me)
and yarrimapirate (not only for the scripts which he made for the Evo 4G LTE, but also agreeing to help me in this project and buying a one x with his own money)