Help Bricked!

[Quboid]

I have an international SGS3, unlocked on Vodafone UK. It's 9 months old, has the latest software update as of a couple of months ago plus root - and yesterday, it became a brick.

It was asleep, charging, with the red LED on. When I unplugged it, the LED stayed lit and it wouldn't turn on or respond at all. I tried taking out the battery, which of course shut off the charging LED, but it still won't boot. The LED doesn't come on when charging. I can't get any response from it; I've tried removing the Sim card and MicroSD card just in case. I've tried switching it on into recover mode (Home + Vol Down + Power). There's nary a whisper from it.

I'd noticed it had been running a bit slow for the last couple of weeks. Nothing drastic and probably not relevant.

 

[Frisco]

Hello Quboid. Sorry to see you're having a serious issue with your S3.

Whenever I see a report of a change like that, unresponsive device in this case, while charging, I wonder about the condition of the system and even the charging apparatus (cable, charging block, charging port, battery and contacts). You mention only a "slow down," but that could have been a hallmark of what you now see..maybe and maybe not.

Some devices struggle to operate when they have no charge in the battery. They have all the appearances of a "brick." I'd check into that prior to entering into one of the many un-bricking regimens that are around. You may only need a new cable or battery. Test this by acquiring a new charging cable, then if no joy, a new battery. If still no joy, check out these things:

How to Unroot &/or Unbrick Samsung Galaxy S3 (All Versions) - YouTube

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1916796

There is some work to be done, carefully and slowly of course. It's been done many times before with that device, and more methods, tutorials and instructional videos are around than you can imagine. Users here will chime in about success they've had with this or that method, so please be patient: it's fixable.

 

[jhawkkw]

If you have the red led light, and no response, this might be the infamous sudden death syndrome issue that has plagued many I-9300s. Maybe one of our members with that version can chime in and confirm or correct my diagnosis.

 

[Quboid]

The charger is fine, it charges my old phone and my tablet. That video just seems to be about unrooting your phone, I don't know why unbricking is in the title. The guide is a little scary, not sure I'm up to opening the phone up and shorting things, plus I don't have a Linux machine lying around.

 

[Frisco]

The charger is fine, it charges my old phone and my tablet. That video just seems to be about unrooting your phone, I don't know why unbricking is in the title. The guide is a little scary, not sure I'm up to opening the phone up and shorting things, plus I don't have a Linux machine lying around.

Good to eliminate the charger, etc. We just used that XDA link to unbrick an S3 this past week.. it was a true black brick and everything went fine, although he did have to start over twice.

Jhawk mentions a problem that's come up frequently with the I9300.. if so, remedies are around for that too, and as he says we'll hear from other users in this area about that.

 

[Shotgun84]

It does sound like the sudden death bug however there should've been a fix in the latest firmware and kernels so if you were up to date that could point towards something else. Which firmware/ROM, kernel and recovery where you running at the time? Does download mode work?

 

[Quboid]

Download mode doesn't work. I don't know what versions I was running. It was all pretty much stock software except for root (which I applied via Odin), but I hadn't looked for updates for a few months.

 

[Shotgun84]

Which method did you use to root? Cf-root?

 

[Quboid]

Which method did you use to root? Cf-root?

Yes, I uploaded CF-Root-SGS3-v6.4.tar to it via Odin.

 

[Shotgun84]

Cf-root doesn't have the sudden death fix so it's looking like that's the problem. Unfortunately the only solution I'm aware of is a motherboard change. Samsung have been good with fixing handsets with the bug so you shouldn't have any problems getting it sorted under warranty

 

[andybog]

Cf-root doesn't have the sudden death fix so it's looking like that's the problem.

Sorry for a bit off topic, but, I was thinking of rooting my I9305 via the cf-root method but I don't want to open my phone up to the sudden death syndrome problem as im currently on the latest version 4.1.2. If I root now via cf-root could my phone be vulnerable?

 

[Shotgun84]

As far as I'm aware the i9305 isn't affected by the sudden death bug. I would still use the cf auto root method though as it's more up to date and is bug free.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1957273

 

[Quboid]

Cf-root doesn't have the sudden death fix so it's looking like that's the problem. Unfortunately the only solution I'm aware of is a motherboard change. Samsung have been good with fixing handsets with the bug so you shouldn't have any problems getting it sorted under warranty

I rang Samsung today, they'll repair it for free (assuming that is the problem!). The guy I talked to mentioned that it's probably the motherboard and that they've had others with the same symptoms. It will take a couple of weeks so that sounds like an excuse to upgrade!