I have done, on three S3's now, the same mistake that many have probably done, especially according to all the threads on various sites I have seen. And whatever that mistake is - I still don't know what I have done to cause it - none of the solutions actually work.
I am refering to Bricking my phone, or partially. In my case the phone won't boot properly and will not get past the Samsung logo
The problem I found with all the other threads and solutions is that they all assume:
So I fixed my S3 and I am sure this will work with ANY device, S3, S4, S5, Sx???? or make. It did assume a second working model and that the phone could at least read a SD Card.
Hope this helps someone.
I am refering to Bricking my phone, or partially. In my case the phone won't boot properly and will not get past the Samsung logo
The problem I found with all the other threads and solutions is that they all assume:
I am not an engineer or Android, or any other type of programmer - at all. I simply follow instructions, so whatever I did had to be simple. :)
- You can access the phone via a PC, but as you can't boot the PC drivers do not install and it is not recognised, so Odin, and the fantastic Android Toolkit do not work
- They are very complicated or even very risky.
- And I have yet to find one that works.
So I fixed my S3 and I am sure this will work with ANY device, S3, S4, S5, Sx???? or make. It did assume a second working model and that the phone could at least read a SD Card.
- I simply booted my working S3 in to Recovery, in my case TWRP
- Made a backup by going in to "Backup" but JUST selected the "BOOT" Partition (I did notice the EFS option too, and that is another problem users have - another day)
- "Swipe to Back Up"
- I then used "Advanced" and "File Manger" to find the backup and copy it to the SDCard.
May even be able to rename it BOOT IMAGE, but not tried that.- Shut down
- I now Booted the faulty S3 in to Recovery
- Backed up the Phone as above (I did this to create the BACKUP folder for TWRP): "Backup" selected BOOT partition to backup, "Swip to Back up".
- Then used the "File Manager" to find the BACKUP folder, within which is another folder with a long name (4df159e030809f25 (eg)) within which is "THE FAULTY BACKUP", probably called something like "2015-01-30-08--37-18 omni_19300-userdebug4.4.4 KTU...". Take a note of the name of the file or delete it.
- Shut Down
- Insert the SDCard
- Reboot in to Recovery again
- Again going in to "Advanced" and "File Manager" find the new backup on the SDCARD and copy it to the location where the faulty backup was/is located. Probably: inside SDCARD - TWRP - BACKUP - 4df159e030809f25 (eg)
All should now reboot in to the OS of your custom ROM.
- Then go into "Restore" again
- Select the good file and restore it - "Swipe to Restore". If the file does not appear it is because it is in the wrong location. there is no browse facility in TWRP Restore, sadly.
- "Reboot"
Hope this helps someone.