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Help Did I brick my S3 (Tmobile)

B

Bittsen

Newbie
Short version.

Galaxy S3 Frankenphone (aka MUTT) operating on T-Mobile.

My batteries were reporting wrong and I needed to reset my batstats so my S3 could relearn what a battery is and what it's supposed to do.
I needed root access. No biggie. I've rooted my phone before.
Well, I downloaded a TAR file and using Odin I went to root the phone.

It FAILED!

Now I have a phone that sits there, forever, saying "Downloading" waiting for me to feed it.

Kies recovery was no help.
No, I was a maroon and didn't back up my system first.

Is it bricked? (prolly not, right?)
Is there a place where I can upload the OS again?
If I do upload the OS again am I going to lose all my data in my phone?

Thanks for any help.
 
Hey will system not boot? (either pull the battery or hold in Power until it reboots :beer:
Don't worry, even if it won't boot it isn't dead. The s3 is near impossible to hard brick :thumbup:
 
I have it idling at the "downloading" screen.
I have been searching everywhere for a place to download the OS to bring it back to life but there's so many black holes to wade through.
 
Bittsen said:
I have it idling at the "downloading" screen.
I have been searching everywhere for a place to download the OS to bring it back to life but there's so many black holes to wade through.
Click to expand...

So it won't boot? You can safely come out of the bootloader and try Booting system :thumbup:
Best place to find stock firmware is sammobile.com/firmware. You have to register to download but it's all genuine firmware.
If you're on 4.3 then DONT try to flash anything less than that.
In Settings, Developer Options, enable USB Debugging :thumbup:
 
funkylogik said:
So it won't boot? You can safely come out of the bootloader and try Booting system :thumbup:
Best place to find stock firmware is sammobile.com/firmware. You have to register to download but it's all genuine firmware.
If you're on 4.3 then DONT try to flash anything less than that.
In Settings, Developer Options, enable USB Debugging :thumbup:
Click to expand...

I'll give sammobile.com a try. I swear I've tried 15 different websites that say they have the firmware and all I need to do is 1) Fill out a quick survey. 2) wait 2 hours for my "free" download. or 3) A dozen fake download buttons sponsored by googleads.

As for USB bugging, etc. That ship sailed. I can't get the phone to boot to anything other than the download (bootloader) screen.


I've read a stock rom requires the custom rom count to be zero. Right now I show 6.
Is this going to be an issue?
 
Nah that's only for over the air updates. It will work fine. I know guys whose counter must be in 4digits and they sometimes Odin back to stock to fix thongs :beer:

*Things :D
 
OK, cool.

It looks like I might, finally, have a file in about 35 minutes.

Do I just upload this with the PDA setting in Odin? Or is there going to be more to it?
 
Yeah just do that with the pda box checked/ticked. Don't touch anything else.
Do you have Samsung Kies installed on the PC? Installing that is an easy way to get the Samsung drivers onto the pc (make sure Kies isn't running when you use Odin. The two programs hate each other lol. Good luck :beer:
 
SWEET!!
Thanks for the help. I now have a functioning phone again, with JellyBean.

I didn't even lose any settings or anything.

Thanks for all the help.


P.S. I ordered a jig just in case I actually hard brick it next time.
Not like it's a big deal cuz I'm planning on getting the S5 in a few days.
 
Well, I've rooted it before just fine so I don't know, for sure, what happened this time.
Now that I've read so much about Jelly Bean messing up the ability to root the phone, I'm still a little heistant.

I suppose it boils down to making sure I have a good rom to upload.

I will be looking into rooting Jelly Bean though since I now have a clean recovery rom.
 
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