Hi guys!
My S3 phone was falled into water for a very short time, but the water indicator remain intact, so it is possible to send to the warrantly. My phone was covered a casemate protective shell so the water cause a very little damage, but the mainboard possible damaged anyway.
The phone isn't booting, i can only enter the downloader and the recovery mode.
I can flash any firmware with odin and custom recovery, but the phone cant boot.
My flash counter is currently at number 5.
There is a way to reset the flash counter using odin or the CWM recovery?
I cant use triangle away app because the phone wont boot, but i can install any CWM zip or odin tar file, or i can even adb to the phone while in the CWM.
Any help will be greatful.
My model is an international i9300 (pebble blue 16GB)
Thanks
You can only use triangle away. Besides, if water damaged it, they can tell - regardless of stickers and will not be covered by warranty. Knowingly trying to claim warranty on an out of warranty damage is fraud.
hand the phone in to service centre .
Flash nothing do nothing say nothing .
Expect to pay if you are very very lucky you may not .
jje
then i have no choice...
Related
Hey Guys.
I recently Hard Bricked my Vibrant while flashing a Custom ROM. It won't turn ON at all.
I am shipping the Phone to Samsung Repair Centre in Texas from India.
I had a talk with the Call Centre where they said that I should just give them the piece without the Battery and Battery Pack and they will only repair my piece and will not Replace it anyhow.
I am fine with them just repairing my piece rather than replacing it, but the issue is that I have only Download Mode available on my piece and the Recovery Mode is Factory Disabled.
My Questions are,
1) Whether they will make the Recovery and Download Mode available back on my Vibrant after repairing it ?
2) The phone is very much off the 30 days mark for the Return Policy to work, so is it still their obligation to Replace my piece with a one that has a Recovery and Download Mode enabled on it if the repairing solution doesn't do the trick ?
3) I am shipping the Phone from India so how should I make sure that the Phone that they have Repaired or Replaced with has the Recovery and Download mode working on it ?
4) Also, in my Country we have a Samsung Galaxy S International available, so is the Motherboard of Samsung Vibrant and the International Model similar for the Service Centre over here to repair it ?
Any Help is appreciated.
Thank You.
ech419 said:
Hey Guys.
I recently Hard Bricked my Vibrant while flashing a Custom ROM. It won't turn ON at all.
I am shipping the Phone to Samsung Repair Centre in Texas from India.
I had a talk with the Call Centre where they said that I should just give them the piece without the Battery and Battery Pack and they will only repair my piece and will not Replace it anyhow.
I am fine with them just repairing my piece rather than replacing it, but the issue is that I have only Download Mode available on my piece and the Recovery Mode is Factory Disabled.
My Questions are,
1) Whether they will make the Recovery and Download Mode available back on my Vibrant after repairing it ?
2) The phone is very much off the 30 days mark for the Return Policy to work, so is it still their obligation to Replace my piece with a one that has a Recovery and Download Mode enabled on it if the repairing solution doesn't do the trick ?
3) I am shipping the Phone from India so how should I make sure that the Phone that they have Repaired or Replaced with has the Recovery and Download mode working on it ?
4) Also, in my Country we have a Samsung Galaxy S International available, so is the Motherboard of Samsung Vibrant and the International Model similar for the Service Centre over here to repair it ?
Any Help is appreciated.
Thank You.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you CAN get into download mode with the Android holding a shovel in a big yellow triangle?
Also, did you ever try flashing a custom recovery? ie- clockwork
Sent from my nuclear powered submarine.
ech419 said:
Hey Guys.
I recently Hard Bricked my Vibrant while flashing a Custom ROM. It won't turn ON at all.
I am shipping the Phone to Samsung Repair Centre in Texas from India.
I had a talk with the Call Centre where they said that I should just give them the piece without the Battery and Battery Pack and they will only repair my piece and will not Replace it anyhow.
I am fine with them just repairing my piece rather than replacing it, but the issue is that I have only Download Mode available on my piece and the Recovery Mode is Factory Disabled.
My Questions are,
1) Whether they will make the Recovery and Download Mode available back on my Vibrant after repairing it ?
2) The phone is very much off the 30 days mark for the Return Policy to work, so is it still their obligation to Replace my piece with a one that has a Recovery and Download Mode enabled on it if the repairing solution doesn't do the trick ?
3) I am shipping the Phone from India so how should I make sure that the Phone that they have Repaired or Replaced with has the Recovery and Download mode working on it ?
4) Also, in my Country we have a Samsung Galaxy S International available, so is the Motherboard of Samsung Vibrant and the International Model similar for the Service Centre over here to repair it ?
Any Help is appreciated.
Thank You.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So let me get this straight...
I'm assuming u rooted the phone b/c you must in order to even attempt to flash a custom rom...
So you want to send a rooted phone in for repair??
Its very hard to brick the vibrant....u probably have a soft brick....did u try Odin to restore your phone back to stock?? Try that before sending it anywhere
Sent from my XDA app cuz I'm stalking your mom....
Mr. Apocalypse said:
So let me get this straight...
I'm assuming u rooted the phone b/c you must in order to even attempt to flash a custom rom...
So you want to send a rooted phone in for repair??
Its very hard to brick the vibrant....u probably have a soft brick....did u try Odin to restore your phone back to stock?? Try that before sending it anywhere
Sent from my XDA app cuz I'm stalking your mom....[/QUOTE
Sounds to me like he probably doesn't know about odin.
Sent from my nuclear powered submarine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for Reply.
No, Guys. I know what Odin is.
The phone is Hard Bricked. That means nothing will show up on the screen to do anything at all. It is a well known issue and it is very much possible with your phone too.
From what I have read on the forum, the USB doesn't work due to some bootloader corruption and thus you will not be able to try anything on your phone and Wires need to be physically soldered onto the Motherboard to flash the bootloader and Stock ROM.
I want to enquire about the issue of whether Download and Recovery Mode which comes factory disabled in the newer Vibrants, be enabled by Samsung itself ?
Thanks for your Help.
ech419 said:
Thanks for Reply.
No, Guys. I know what Odin is.
The phone is Hard Bricked. That means nothing will show up on the screen to do anything at all. It is a well known issue and it is very much possible with your phone too.
From what I have read on the forum, the USB doesn't work due to some bootloader corruption and thus you will not be able to try anything on your phone and Wires need to be physically soldered onto the Motherboard to flash the bootloader and Stock ROM.
I want to enquire about the issue of whether Download and Recovery Mode which comes factory disabled in the newer Vibrants, be enabled by Samsung itself ?
Thanks for your Help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you heard from Samsung yet as to how much the repair cost will be? I have to send mine there after a Kies update killed by boot loader (the most common reason why a Galaxy S won't show any signs of life and only way to truly brick them). I had a local repair shop jtag it before Kies killed it again, but they couldn't fix the hardware lock.
I got it to a point like that as well. Even when I plugged it in to charge and such, nothing happend. I was still able to ODIN it though. What I had to do was just the battery pull method of putting it into download mode (pull battery, sim and sd cards, open ODIN, connect phone to pc, pop in battery while holding volume buttons) and it worked for me.
Like others say, it's really difficult to hard-brick Vibrants. If either primary or secondary bootloader has been corrupted, you shouldn't have Download mode. Try search more and find out what others did to get out of such situations. You should be able to flash away UNLESS your internal SD card has been fried/messed up. The repair will probably cost you ridiculously large sum of money. Samsung will probably replace internal SD memory (I think it's MoviNAND flash memory module) and flash new firmware. But again it will cost money. I would do everything I can possibly think I can do before sending it off to repair centers.
EDIT: If it is your cellular carrier accepting your phone for examination and think that the cause is hardware malfunction, the carrier will REPLACE your phone. If you are not sending it to your carrier, however, and you are sending it directly to Samsung repair center instead, they will most likely incur repair fees. Not sure 100% but Samsung must be able to tell if you've ever flashed custom firmware and flashing custom kernels and ROMs void manufacturer's 1 year warranty. And this will probably be true unless you flash a stock ROM before shipping it, but this is ironic and according to you doing so is impossible. Try Odin JFD again!
sharkethicx said:
I got it to a point like that as well. Even when I plugged it in to charge and such, nothing happend. I was still able to ODIN it though. What I had to do was just the battery pull method of putting it into download mode (pull battery, sim and sd cards, open ODIN, connect phone to pc, pop in battery while holding volume buttons) and it worked for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I take it yours wasn't hardware locked then. It's interesting that you were still able to get Odin to recognise the phone when it wasn't showing any sign of life. Were the lights turning on?
jaetm83 said:
Like others say, it's really difficult to hard-brick Vibrants. If either primary or secondary bootloader has been corrupted, you shouldn't have Download mode. Try search more and find out what others did to get out of such situations. You should be able to flash away UNLESS your internal SD card has been fried/messed up. The repair will probably cost you ridiculously large sum of money. Samsung will probably replace internal SD memory (I think it's MoviNAND flash memory module) and flash new firmware. But again it will cost money. I would do everything I can possibly think I can do before sending it off to repair centers.
EDIT: If it is your cellular carrier accepting your phone for examination and think that the cause is hardware malfunction, the carrier will REPLACE your phone. If you are not sending it to your carrier, however, and you are sending it directly to Samsung repair center instead, they will most likely incur repair fees. Not sure 100% but Samsung must be able to tell if you've ever flashed custom firmware and flashing custom kernels and ROMs void manufacturer's 1 year warranty. And this will probably be true unless you flash a stock ROM before shipping it, but this is ironic and according to you doing so is impossible. Try Odin JFD again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm trying to find out exactly how much Samsung would charge to repair a screwed up boot loader caused by a Kies update. The device was flashed to stock prior to the update; however, there is a TiBu folder on the internal sd. The Samsung agent I spoke with opened a support ticket and said it would be repaired under warranty as long as nothing was done to the device to void the warranty. I'm trying to decide whether to have it jtagged and still have it hardware locked, or take a chance and send it to Samsung for a proper repair, fixing the hardware lock and boot loader.
I just got a new Galaxy S II, its not been even a week. Should I root my phone ? Since rooting will void my warranty, will un-rooting it get me back my warranty?
One of my friend has rooted and then un-rooted his phone but the yellow exclamation is still there. So scared to root it.
shantanuthatte said:
I just got a new Galaxy S II, its not been even a week. Should I root my phone ? Since rooting will void my warranty, will un-rooting it get me back my warranty?
Yes providing you flash a stock rom and remove the warning triangle and custom rom counter .
One of my friend has rooted and then un-rooted his phone but the yellow exclamation is still there. So scared to root it
Thats due to them not reading the instructions .
Why do you want to root no point rooting for no reason .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
unrooting will not get rid of yellow triangle. You have to flash back to stock kernel and you can use a usb jig to remove the counter
I read about the USB jig, You add a 301k resistor to pins 4 and 5 of microusb connector, but all it does is puts the phone in download mode. So how do I reset the counter?
And moving towards more common question. Is it advised to root the phone coz i'll be needing just the root access to compile stuff on-the-go (mainly c/c++ files) and ofcourse access to system folder. But I'm scared of voidin the warranty of such a costly phone, coz incase if it does, i'm screwed....
No, pressing VOL DOWN + HOME + PWR (pwr btn for approx 3 secs) puts the phone into donwload mode without resetting the ROM counter.
The USB jig does the same AND resets the ROM counter.
So in simple terms, if you needed to send it away for a warranty repair, you would put the phone into download mode with the USB jig before uploading a stock firmware.
There are other ways of removing the yellow triangle without the jig. The jig is ONLY required for resetting the ROM counter.
Thanks a lot.... building the jig.... Will give out soon....
FLASH COUNTER ....what exactly it is??? n why it is increasing every time we flash??? does we really need to care for it?? sorry for newbie quest..
thanks in advance..
It's a counter that tells how much times you've flashed custom stuff. If you have a counter different from zero it means that your warranty is voided. Anyway, you can get a usb jig from ebay to reset the counter to zero in case you need to get it to zero. So you shouldn't worry too much about it.
thanx bro...i was just wondering what is the limit of flashing ??? i mean at the max i can flash upto this much times...
It counts the number if times you flash non-official firmware or kernel etc.
It increases only when you flash a non-official firmware or kernel etc.
You don't really need to care for it. Unless you find your phone bricked one day and there is no way of reviving it and you decide to go to samsung service center and he says get lost you have installed non-official firmware.
This involves bricking the phone (not likely unless you actually decide not to read and do something foolish) samsung galaxy series is one of the less likely phone to be bricked.
This involves you actually going to the service center you may as well read more on the forums here and there will be a solution to your problem.
This involves the person in the service center to know that he is not to accept phones flashed with non-official firmware. If more people read and flash then less bricked phones, then less trips to service center, then less chances the technician knows this.
So moral of the story read more and stop asking things that are already explained like what is flash counter.
I don't believe there's a limit. The counter will just keeping adding up untill you reset it (if you do reset it)
you can flash 1 million times.
hmmm...got it..thanx for quick replies friends...
Suspecting the counter is a signed integer, there will be absolutely NO problems up to 2,147,483,647 flashes.
After that it'll either still be fine until 4,294,967,295 flashes (if the "signed" assumption was wrong) or just overflow and show funny stuff like "Custom Binaries: -1" or reset back to zero by itself.
/geekpost xD
How to check the flash counter????
asirigaya said:
How to check the flash counter????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just go to download mode.
(VOLUME-DOWN + HOME + POWER while the phone is off)
hey guys,, is there any solution to reset custom counter softly without usb jig??
soMeee said:
hey guys,, is there any solution to reset custom counter softly without usb jig??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not yet.
/10 char
soMeee said:
hey guys,, is there any solution to reset custom counter softly without usb jig??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jigs are crazy cheap on ebay. I got one for < $3.
so, where is the software using in usb jig,, which we can use without using jig
Nope. Probably never will be.
Edit to add - There is no "software using in usb jig which we can use without using jig". You switch the phone off, plug the jig in the usb port on the phone & it resets the flash counter/changes Custom Binary Download to "no" & changes the Custom Binary to "Samsung Official" when the phone is in download mode. No software required.
Do a search on eBay for "Samsung Galaxy S2 jig" (without the "").
does it cancel the warranty? if I go to Samsung services and my cus. counter counted 1 unofficial ROM??
soMeee said:
does it cancel the warranty? if I go to Samsung services and my cus. counter counted 1 unofficial ROM??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search. Read.
No.
EDIT: No. If you need it, you already voided your warranty. The jig is a tool to get your phone back to the state where your warranty is still intact. You could find that yourself, if you used the 'Search' button and read the threads you find there. Or hell, Google even. Seriously, XDA isn't a place for this kind of crap.
The information is in the forums, if you want it->READ THE FORUMS.
If you go to Samsung service, and they see that your custom counter is set to 1 then your warranty is void. The jig resets this counter to 0.
The moment you flash custom roms or kernels on your phone you void your warranty, yes. And yes, if they see the counter at 1 or showing anything other than Samsung Official in download mode, they more than likely will not fix it under warranty.
However if you are able to put stock firmware back on your phone, get rid of any apps that might give whomever fixes it a clue that you've rooted it, and use a jig to reset the flash counter, there's a fair chance (not 100% tho mind you) you might be able to have it fixed under warranty.
To be perfectly honest, if you want to have a 100% chance of having anything that goes wrong with the phone fixed under warranty, do not put custom firmware on your phone. At all. Ever.
in case of me, I bought it from someone on ebay and did not know that till today
I have a few questions, I'll put them up right away so the impatient may avoid reading my boring story. Beneath the questions are my explanation.
1. It seems to me the flash counter only goes up when I flash non-original firmware. I've flashed twice; once to root, then once again to go back to stock. My counter says 1. Am I correct in assuming this, then?
2. My phone came with astrange and, I think, not widely used firmware called XWKG1. Can I upgrade to ICS using any method, ie. will any ICS-ROM work with my phone?
3. Then I can root, and use Triangleaway to reset flash-counter, right?
And if the answer to question #1 is "yes", I could flash back to stock and have no warranty problems?
Backstory:
I - like many others - downloaded some ROM to get root on my phone. That's all I wanted, just root, no custom UI or anything, so I just downloaded something called CF I think? I'm not very knowledgable about all this, so bear with me.
Now the USB connector and battery is starting to get real weird. In short; my phone thinks USB cable is connected all the time; my phone won't start (says battery is too hot) unless I have a charger plugged in; strange driver issues when trying to connect the phone to a PC, the device is not recognized about 80% of the time; battery drains SUPER quickly. And more probably.
Now this sounds like a hardware issue to me, and should be covered by the warranty no matter if I choose to root my phone or not. But I'm worried Samsung may not share my opinion there. I've flashed back to stock firmware I got with my phone (XWKG1 - I bought my phone from a French company operating in Norway called Pixmania, which gave me this strange version), and the yellow triangle is gone. But flash counter says 1. This could be a problem.
I'd send it back to pixmania straight away. I'm in Norway, I've used pixmania abefore, they're quick and helpful, and I'd guess they'll replace it straight away.
To be honest, I can't remember if stock flashing increases the counter or not. Buy a jig anyway, they're cheap and useful.
Don't think your firmware's that strange, pretty sure I had XWKG1 at some point. Old yes, strange no.
Thanks for the answer. So Pixmania won't just send it to Samsung who will reject it? Have you tried sending rooted phones to them? My phone doesn't have any external damage, but it is currently not covered under Samsungs warranty!
Also, don't know if an USB jig would work since the phone's USB-port is so broken.
reking said:
Thanks for the answer. So Pixmania won't just send it to Samsung who will reject it? Have you tried sending rooted phones to them? My phone doesn't have any external damage, but it is currently not covered under Samsungs warranty!
Also, don't know if an USB jig would work since the phone's USB-port is so broken.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, rooted my brother-in-law's SGS last year. He returned it to pixmania because his home button wasn't working, got a replacement within a week. He'd forgotten it was rooted, but pixmania either didn't notice or didn't care.
Assuming you flashed via a USB/PC connection before , it's probably worth the risk to try 2 and 3. Or if you don't want to risk your USB port, try Mobile Odin.
reking said:
I .
1. It seems to me the flash counter only goes up when I flash non-original firmware. I've flashed twice; once to root, then once again to go back to stock. My counter says 1. Am I correct in assuming this, then?
Thats what it is .
2. My phone came with astrange and, I think, not widely used firmware called XWKG1.
Its not strange .
Can I upgrade to ICS using any method, ie. will any ICS-ROM work with my phone?
When ICS is released it should upgrade .
But not if you root or put custom firmware Kies may no longer offer the iCS upgrade . You wil have to flash a stock ICS firmware .
3. Then I can root, and use Triangleaway to reset flash-counter, right?
And if the answer to question #1 is "yes", I could flash back to stock and have no warranty problems?
Yes
Now this sounds like a hardware issue to me, and should be covered by the warranty no matter if I choose to root my phone or not. But I'm worried Samsung may not share my opinion there. I've flashed back to stock firmware I got with my phone (XWKG1 -
Warranty void if custom rom and that included beta ICS warranty void if phone rooted warranty void if custom rom counter above zero .Thats the official Samsung letter to service centres .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse