Hi everyone,

So, LG is notorious for deleting files the moment their hardware is past support… anything to prevent you from retaining a device when you can be pressed to have to replace it. I have an older device and I have tracked down exactly what is wrong and how to fix it. Some folks have stated it’s bricked, but much research has revealed that this is untrue. I need the stock firmware, but LG’s site download links are all dead.

The device is the LG US730 (LG “Splendor”). The file I need is:
US73011b_03.S11b_03.P15107

If anyone has this or a previous version, I would so greatly appreciate it! I have spent many hours trying to track down the file from a mirror, an archive, a fan site, a site that has firmware backup files… no luck anywhere. I figured it can’t hurt to post a request just in case someone has it.

Thanks for reading, and if you can help, I would be in your debt and happily return the favor if you ever need anything that I have.

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      28 days ago

      Hey thanks for these. Question: Can you think of any reason why the site firmwarefile.com has EVERY goddamn brand EXCEPT LG? Seriously… 9 pages of brands… LG absent. What. The. Strange. Absolute. Fuck?

      • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        Sorry about that, I did not know that was the case with them. Maybe LG has aggressive lawyers?

        • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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          28 days ago

          No idea. I just went through the lgstockroms website… over 1,220 models listed across 52 pages. This one is not fucking there.

          What the hell? I just don’t get it. This isn’t the first time some weird arbitrary-seeming absence has occurred in tech that I’ve seen.

          Years ago I bought a business class Netgear wireless router that offered everything that was at the top of the line at the time. It wasn’t for me it was for a family member. The thing operated flawlessly, performance was absolutely perfect, the management interface was clean, intuitive and sensibly designed.

          It was a little strange because it wasn’t advertised on the business class products listings in my distributor’s catalog, nor in the consumer listings either. I somehow stumbled upon it by accident and ordered it. Price was good and specs were good. Also never had seen it in a store anywhere ever.

          Like a year later I wanted to get this same product for someone who needed that kind of solution. Could not find it anywhere. Could also not find a single trace of its existence. No reference on their website or anything. Like it never existed!

          I called Netgear at the time I was a reseller directly with them, and I had to go through several people to find anyone who’d even heard of it. I explained everything I have written here, and asked why it was like it never existed? This guy says to me “You say it was perfect?” I’m like “Yes!” He says “And it operates with no trouble whatsoever, and it handles everything well, and no need for anything else, and it’s easy to use and doesn’t fail, and has no defects or design flaws, and the software has no bugs?” I was like “Yes yes yes and yes! Why are there none of these around and why is it impossible to find???”

          He responded “Haven’t you already answered your own question?”

          I don’t know much about this LG phone because I acquired it second-hand and rooted it. Then after tinkering for a bit I made a change in the root privileges that it should elevate superuser immediately upon booting. This was apparently a problem and it is now in this unusable state. But I gotta say the little I used it, it seemed fantastic! Performed smoothly, easily rooted, ran really nicely given its humble specs. Maybe this is one of those cases where they really don’t want it on the market because it was too reliable and lacked nothing. I imagine the files I’ve been looking for have been gone for a long time already. This kind of thing happens more than most people know. A brand puts out a product that’s just awesome and nobody would want any alternative for that class of product, and would not need to replace it soon either. That’s not good for business the way business works these days. They rely on their products being just good enough to make it sell, but plenty of hidden awfulness to make sure you’ll need something new soon enough. That’s what makes billions not millions.

          So maybe this is one such item.

  • Auster@lemm.ee
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    29 days ago

    Not familiar with LG’s site so I don’t have any links quickly available. But if it helps, and if you know the link or roughly where in the site the file was, maybe you could try checking Internet Archive, Archive Today, or, if the site has an Australian equivalent, the Australian Web Archive / Trove? Don’t know other page-archiving alternatives, but if you do, I would also suggest checking on them.

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      29 days ago

      They don’t even give you a link to the file directly that you could feed I to archive, they do a query with a code that triggers it to deploy the file. Of course. Because the more complicated and obtuse the better.

      • Auster@lemm.ee
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        29 days ago

        But what if you try to navigate through the archived pages? The lack of direct links is something that also happens in some Microsoft pages, but some times Internet Archive manages to archive such pages anyways.

  • pirat@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    I found this site, pakphones.com with a link for the US730. Right now, unfortunately, cloudflare can’t reach the ul.to host, but if you haven’t tried this one, one could hope it actually works some day.

    I also found a (possibly dead) link at this site, lg-firmwares.com, though it’s cookie, captcha and waiting time protected, and the download doesn’t begin for me right now…

    Your search string also lead me to this forum thread, where I found a relevant filename to look for: LG730ZV8_05.S8_00.P61009.cab

    1-LGExtract -kdz name of flash file with kdz extention(as :LGExtract -kdz US73011b_03.S11b_03.P15107.kdz) 2-result of 1 is a file as: LG730ZV8_05.S8_00.P61009.cab 3-extract [it] by winrar here 4-LGExtract -wdb name of flash file with wdb name of flash file with dll asLGExtract -wdb US73011b_03.S11b_03.P15107.wdb US73011b_03.dll).

    This lead me back to the pakphones blog, where I found these (possibly dead) links to relevant files on this page:

    LG Venice LG730

    Flasher LGNPST Store & Lab.zip

    Firmware LG730ZV8_05.S8_00.P61009.cab [mirror]

    Components & DLL LGNPST_Components_Ver_5_0_20_0.zip LGNPST_GenericModels_Ver_5_0_12_0.zip LG730_120831.rar

    Service Manual EN_LG730_SVC_ENG_120919.pdf

    User Manual RDL-1209-00011_LG730_Boost_UG_EN_V1.0_120925.pdf

    You have probably already seen all or most of this, but maybe there’s some missing puzzle piece somewhere in this information?

    Note: the .cab files mentioned in this post are not URLs, even though (at least my) Lemmy client formats them as that.

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      27 days ago

      This is getting downright creepy. The site androidfilehost has thousands of listings. I go through alphabetically, on page 54 it goes from Spirit to Stylo. Splendor is NOT EVEN LISTED.

      What the hell is it with this phone that its existence has nearly been erased from the internet???

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      29 days ago

      I’ll take a look thank you! Yeah the firmware’s site is where LG support links to and their site is shit. First of all, after two attempts it says you can only download two files per day. It uses IP not cookie so I used VPN to retry but it’s a dead link. The thing actually said to me “You are a spammer” seriously no shitting. Assholes.

      But I’ll look at everything you provided thanks.

      Their captcha crap is fucking atrocious. Sometimes it cannot be done without reloading over and over for like ten minutes until you get a usable image. Captcha is such drek.