Galaxy S3 stuck in Bootloop

The_Ogre

The_Ogre

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This is the wife's phone which she's had for about 4 or so months now. Its rooted, but with the original firmware.

I've tried everything I could think of, but to no avail. Google doesn't offer much help either.

As soon as I insert the battery, the phone boots up - note, I'm not pressing anything. It displays the Samsung Galaxy SIII splash screen for about 2 seconds then the screen goes blank and the process just repeats itself.

I cannot get into the recovery screen (V+, menu, power), as, as soon as the android logo gets displayed, it reboots again.

I can't get it into download mode either because the same thing happens, it reboots while Odin is busy trying to recognize the device.

Anybody here experienced anything like this before?

She bought this phone from her mother, who bought it in Thailand and the ol' lady thinks she lost the receipts, etc. :(
 
Looking at this thread

http://en.miui.com/thread-7467-1-1.html

Remove SIM, Remove memory card, remove Battery, and keep it aside

In desktop/laptop Open SP tools, Change recovery img to the desired one in the stock files, open scatter files.

click firmware upgrade, Connect the Phone now. See that it says, you should get the green round pop up window once done.

Let us know further.
Click to expand...

Have you tried something like that?
 
Thanks, now to figure out a way to get this so called "scatter file"
 
YingYang said:
Thanks, now to figure out a way to get this so called "scatter file"
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's all new to me as well so you're gonna have to do some research :) But it does seem like you should be able to revive it without necessarily having to turn it on.
 
S1ght said:
Unfortunately that's all new to me as well so you're gonna have to do some research :) But it does seem like you should be able to revive it without necessarily having to turn it on.
Click to expand...
No, you've been more than enough help already. I'm a bit tired now so I'll do it either tonight or tomorrow at the office (lazy friday FTW :p )

Anyway, I should perhaps mention it did the same thing on Saturday, but I took the battery out and forgot about it. I only realised on Saturday evening that I hadn't replaced the battery, as soon as I inserted it, the phone was back to normal.

I'm thinking that perhaps I should leave the battery out for a few hours and maybe I'll get lucky to get into recovery mode
 
YingYang said:
No, you've been more than enough help already. I'm a bit tired now so I'll do it either tonight or tomorrow at the office (lazy friday FTW :p )

Anyway, I should perhaps mention it did the same thing on Saturday, but I took the battery out and forgot about it. I only realised on Saturday evening that I hadn't replaced the battery, as soon as I inserted it, the phone was back to normal.

I'm thinking that perhaps I should leave the battery out for a few hours and maybe I'll get lucky to get into recovery mode
Click to expand...

Well normally with boot loops you'd go into recovery and wipe the dalvik cache and what not, so perhaps leaving the battery out discharges it nicely and has the same effect?
 
S1ght said:
Well normally with boot loops you'd go into recovery and wipe the dalvik cache and what not, so perhaps leaving the battery out discharges it nicely and has the same effect?
Click to expand...

+1 recovery mode is your first stop in that situation
 
As mentioned, that typically happens when a new ROM is flashed when the previous one's cache and Dalvik cache was not cleared. To be safe, when the phone works again, you need to do a factory reset and install everything from scratch.
 
Update:

Leaving the battery out overnight and inserting it this morning has no effect on the issue. It's still boot looping.

However...

I have managed to find a way to prevent it from getting stuck in the loop. I connect it to the PC via USB and insert the battery. I then hold down Vol-, Menu, Power. As soon as it displays the warning for Download Mode I pull the battery.

I then get to press the Vol+ key to proceed to activate Download Mode.

I'm now looking for ROMs which are already in .tar format. Every ROM I get are in .zip format and Odin, for some arb reason, does not accept zip files :(
 
I should also add, that I've tried to pull the battery when I notice the android logo to indicate it going into Recovery Mode, but then the phone just dies. I think the window of opportunity to pull it just at the right split second is too small
 
YingYang said:
Update:

Leaving the battery out overnight and inserting it this morning has no effect on the issue. It's still boot looping.

However...

I have managed to find a way to prevent it from getting stuck in the loop. I connect it to the PC via USB and insert the battery. I then hold down Vol-, Menu, Power. As soon as it displays the warning for Download Mode I pull the battery.

I then get to press the Vol+ key to proceed to activate Download Mode.

I'm now looking for ROMs which are already in .tar format. Every ROM I get are in .zip format and Odin, for some arb reason, does not accept zip files :(
Click to expand...
You need to unzip the rom files yourself. Inside the ZIP you'll find the .tar file. Then you open that file with Odin
 
YingYang said:
I should also add, that I've tried to pull the battery when I notice the android logo to indicate it going into Recovery Mode, but then the phone just dies. I think the window of opportunity to pull it just at the right split second is too small
Click to expand...

I've found that pulling out on exactly the right time is quite difficult
 
Pakka said:
You need to unzip the rom files yourself. Inside the ZIP you'll find the .tar file. Then you open that file with Odin
Click to expand...
Hauw! I have two ROMs here on this machine and neither have any .tar files inside. All I see is two folders META-INF and system, and boot.img and file_contexts
 
Update:

I eventually gave up on this phone and took it to a pakistani owned shop close to me.

The guy took one look at the phone and told me its a hardware issue and there, in front of me took the phones mainboard out and put it in another phone. The issue persisted.

He then told me to come back the next day because he either needs to replace the board, which is almost the price of the phone, or he's going to try and replace the IC that's causing the issue.

I was skeptical because I wasn't sure how he'd solder such incredibly tiny joints, etc as its usually done by machines.

I went back the next day and he handed me the phone and said "Give it a go boss" and I couldn't believe when it booted up with no issues.

Total cost was R280. :D

So if any of you guys have any expensive phones with hardware problems, give these guys a go! :)
 
YingYang said:
Update:

I eventually gave up on this phone and took it to a pakistani owned shop close to me.

The guy took one look at the phone and told me its a hardware issue and there, in front of me took the phones mainboard out and put it in another phone. The issue persisted.

He then told me to come back the next day because he either needs to replace the board, which is almost the price of the phone, or he's going to try and replace the IC that's causing the issue.

I was skeptical because I wasn't sure how he'd solder such incredibly tiny joints, etc as its usually done by machines.

I went back the next day and he handed me the phone and said "Give it a go boss" and I couldn't believe when it booted up with no issues.

Total cost was R280. :D

So if any of you guys have any expensive phones with hardware problems, give these guys a go! :)
Click to expand...
Wow! I'm impressed.
 
YingYang said:
Update:

I eventually gave up on this phone and took it to a pakistani owned shop close to me.

The guy took one look at the phone and told me its a hardware issue and there, in front of me took the phones mainboard out and put it in another phone. The issue persisted.

He then told me to come back the next day because he either needs to replace the board, which is almost the price of the phone, or he's going to try and replace the IC that's causing the issue.

I was skeptical because I wasn't sure how he'd solder such incredibly tiny joints, etc as its usually done by machines.

I went back the next day and he handed me the phone and said "Give it a go boss" and I couldn't believe when it booted up with no issues.

Total cost was R280. :D

So if any of you guys have any expensive phones with hardware problems, give these guys a go! :)
Click to expand...

I think this guy just reflashed the firmware.... By the way you can get original Odin flashable ROMs on www.sammobile.com
 
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