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Polaroid Snap Touch Firmware Corrupt

Hi,

I bought a Polaroid Snap Touch 1.0 from Zinc (second hand at a pawnshop). After updating the firmware, it got corrupted and all the menus are either invisable or show garbled data as the menu/option buttons (hexadecimal). I tried updating manually via the firmware zip and an sd card, but it either does the same thing or says s/w update failed.

What are my options? I have a CH341A programmer if someone can point out the flash chip. I can dissemble it as well to post picture of the device and mainboard.

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Hey, sounds like your Snap Touch firmware update went sideways — unfortunately, that’s pretty common with these older Polaroid models. When the menus start showing garbled symbols or hexadecimal-looking text, it usually means the firmware flash got corrupted (either mid-update or due to the wrong version being used).

Here’s what you can try:

  1. Reinstall the firmware cleanly:
    • Reformat your SD card to FAT32.
    • Copy only the official firmware files to it.
    • Make sure the camera battery is fully charged before updating again.
    • Don’t rename the firmware file or remove the battery during the process.
      Sometimes a clean update cycle fixes the corruption.
  2. Manual reflash (using your CH341A):
    Since you’ve got a CH341A programmer, you can go deeper and reflash the firmware directly. Open the camera, find the SPI flash chip (usually an 8-pin IC labeled something like “25Q32” or “25Q64”), and connect your clip to it. You can then dump the current firmware and flash a working image if you can find one online or from another working device.
  3. Double-check firmware versions:
    Polaroid uses hexadecimal versioning, which can be confusing. For example, MM31.00AD.B00 is newer than MM31.0081.B06 — even though it doesn’t look that way at first glance. You can confirm which one’s newer by converting the hex parts to decimal with a quick tool on hexcalculator.org.

If you’re willing to open it up, post some clear photos of the mainboard — especially the area around the memory chips — and folks here can help point out the right chip to program.

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2 Comments:

Thank you so much for this answer. I do have a programmer and I know how to use it. Unfortunately Polaroid/snap whatever has gone defunct it seems and it's kind of hard to find the firmware but I believe I did find a copy somewhere. I will report back if this works. Thanks for the tips, you seem very knowledgeable,

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Any update on this issue is much appreciated as I face the same dilemma. The firmware for Snap Touch version 1 is easily available (Snaptouch-1.0-Firmware-2.08) but the it fails consistently. Any luck with CH341A programmer? If so, I'll give it a shot. Btw, the firmware is split between two files and it seems the .bin file is the bootloader and the .brn file is the actual firmware.

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