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Root [T-Mobile] Galaxy S3 - soft bricked - need help to restore to 4.3 or 4.4... plz help

mavdev

Lurker
Nov 14, 2014
1
0
Long story short - i tried doing a manual kitkat update and I am stuck at the screen shown in the attachment.

As in the attachment, I am able to get to the DOWNLOAD MODE screen by pressing Volume-down+Home+ Power. My question how do i flash Jelly Bean or Kit Kat on this phone - I just want to get back to a working phone.

Here are things I have tried:

I tried downloading a ROM from XDA Developers for my phone (I am not yet allowed to post links here yet), and using Odin (pressed on PDA button and selected image to flash) and I get an error ... the screenshot for the error is also attached.

History - This Samsung Galaxy S3 has an AT&T Jellybean 4.3 image but the phone is unlocked from the initial carrier (AT&T) and being used with T-Mobile now.
z
I sincerely appreciate any help here - this is my only phone and totally unusable right now.

If this is not the right forum, please please redirect me to somewhere where I could get some help.
 

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Try this be sure to follow this

I have an s4 but you can use kies to fix it through emergency recovery or find a rom that is stovk for your carrier and correct for the model your using

Before you open odin boot your phone into downloade mode


Then plug it to your computer and then open the odin software you dhould see in the message box and number like this 009 or 7 added this tells you that odin reconized your phone and is ready to be checked and flashed if you get an error this tells you your firmware your trying to flash is not made for your phone

Be sure that Auto Reboot and F Reset is enabled

Once done youll see the path of the file your going to flash and click start


Depending on how big the firmware is will resilt in how much time is required to fully install firmware

Now once the system restarts do not remove the usb cable till odin on your pc says "PASS" usally takes a min or two to confirm sucsessful boot and install


If tgis doesnt work reboot the phone and use kies to install firmware in emergency mode
 
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If you are truly soft bricked, you can also do one the following:

Choice A:
If you want TW stock firmware, grab the file from samsung mobile site here http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads and flash it. It's been awhile since I grabbed that file but make sure you grab the correct phone model. Mine is a t999L there are different variants of the s3 phone, so make doubly sure you grab the correct one because if you grab the incorrect file you can hard brick your phone, such as with using the international versions, if you use those it will hard brick your phone.

Choice B:
Grab twrp recovery from here http://techerrata.com/browse/twrp2/d2tmo I am using the 2.8.4.0 version, but you can choose which one you want. The files go as follow, .img files are for apps such as mobile flashify, the tar files are what you want to use within odin. I would recommend the odin way but I have used both ways and they both work.
Auto Reboot and F Reset
Once you have the tar file, open odin, look to make sure you have a com in the upper left corner box. Once you do click either the AP slot or the PDA slot, it wil depend upon what version of odin you are using as to what it shows up as.
Uncheck Auto Reboot and F Restet, yes I said uncheck.

Once this is done your ready to just hit start and flash twrp.
After you have flashed twrp, hold down volume UP + Home button + power at the same time until you see a little small blue recovery in the top left hand corner. It comes fast so watch close. Once you see that let go of everything and it will boot into recovery.

Once in recovery flash the rom + gapps of choice, and when or if you get a message saying this phone is not rooted, make sure and hit Yes root this phone. Reboot and you will now be rooted and on the rom of your choice.
 
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