Help Downgrade Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH-i535 from 4.3 to 4.1.1/4.1.2 Help Needed

downgrading to lower os than 4.3 once its installed most likely will brick your device....you prolly could still root your phone, idont know how havent had to research rooting 4.3 for myself its just the warranty will be void with the new knox bootloader that is installed

You cannot downgrade. It won't permanently brick your phone trying, but it will give you a boot loop, the sort that necessitates reflashing back to 4.3 to get out of.

Once upgraded, you cannot go back.

Could you some help big time if someone could lead me down the right path??

A little background... Brother In Law gave me his Rogers GSIII (SGH-I747M). Phone's locked to Rogers as he upgraded, I'm with Telus (Canada).

I wanted to unlock the phone to use on Telus' network. Got the brainy idea I could do this and off I went googling. (BAD IDEA!). Read that I would have to downgrade to 4.1.1 to be able to unlock, so I downloaded the 4.1.1 from Samsung-updates.com and off I went... Basically ran odin and it kept saying failed...

Went back to Google to ask WTF? And came across a thread saying something about not being able to downgrade from 4.3 (Which was already on the phone) DAMN, should of read that before doing it... DOH!

So now, the phone basically is stuck on one screen and one screen only. (Attached pictures). Yellow triangle with the message saying "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies and try again."

There's also some text in the top left corner of the screen...
Odin Mode
Product Name: SGH-I747M
Custom Binary Download: No
Current Binary: Samsung Official
Qualcomm Secureboot: Enable
Warranty Bit: 0
Bootloader AP swrev: 1

I keep reading people who must be in somewhat of a similiar issue and they are told to go back into Download Mode or Recovery Mode by doing the three button combo (Volume +/-, Home and Power.) But if I press these buttons the phone turns off and then turns right back on and comes back to the exact same screen. Only way to turn the phone off completely is to pull the battery. If I pull the battery and then try any of the three button combos, it just turns back on and goes straight to that same yellow triangle screen.

So, not entirely sure where to go from here... HOPEFULLY I haven't completely screwed this phone before even getting to use it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I've attached some pictures of the screen text if this helps diagnose at all.

I have realized I am not meant to get fancy with my phone at all now... and just would like to revive it to stock.

Like the phone says, plug it into kies and reflash stock on. Had to do this myself with a Note 2 the other day funnily enough.

question... i have the verizon s3, (i535) and i did NOT take the OTA. rather, i flashed the tar.gz file myself using odin for the 4.3 update. does this change whether or not i cant revert to an older OS? i did not take the update. i downloaded and flashed in odin manually.

cyberkeeper1 i would say yes seeing how what the 4,3 and higher os do is install a new bootloader

^yeah me too :thumbup: