Need advice on mess with S3 update ....

vax1170 said:

Hello all,
Short story, wife had the 4.3 OTA nag popup, accidentally hit 'ok' and pulled battery before unit booted.

I thought maybe I could avoid the 4.3 OTA by flashing CWM via heimdall. I followed the CM directions for d2vzw at wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_d2vzw, basically I did the following:

heimdall flash --ABOOT aboot.mbn --no-reboot
heimdall flash --BOOT boot.img --no-reboot
heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery-clockwork-6.0.4.5-d2vzw.img

However when I try to boot into recovery mode, I get the android character with spinning globe. I only saw the picture long enough to pull the battery.

Any suggestions on this on? It looks like the confirmation for OTA sets something, and it appears that whatever I did above either was wrong, didn't happen properly, or is ignored at this point. If I boot back into download mode I still see custom binary no, and current/system binary official.

I would like to get this to CWM and CM 10.2, but suspect it is too late ... can anyone tell me how to work around this, or should I just bite the bullet and reboot to see if the OTA updates at this point?

Thanks for any help you can advise on ....

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vax1170 said:

No not quite. I don't see the last few lines. My eyes are a bit old but what I see is only:
ODIN MODE
product name: SCH-I535
custom binary download: no
current binary: Samsung official
System status: Official
QUALCOMM secureboot ENABLE

And nothing else after that (just the green antroid graphic and 'downlaoding....')

Thank you for the fast response

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vax1170 said:

Sorry I wasn't clear ....
I believe the phone already had the OTA software downloaded and staged for install. It was popping up that nag screen that asks to run the update. My wife pressed 'OK' on that and as the phone shutdown and brought up the 'samsung' splash screen, the battery was pulled.

It was after this that I attempted to follow the CM directions to flash the older bootloader and CWM. However I don't think it was successful.

After running the procedure, I attempt to boot into recovery. I am expecting to see the usual CWM menu, however I don't. I get the android with the spinning globe in the belly. I am thinking, the flash with CWM didn't take, and the OTA is now attempting to install.

If possible I would like to flash CWM and then load up CM 10.2 from an internal SD card I've prepared.

Let me know what you think .... thanks!

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vax1170 said:

Thanks.
Is there anyway to tell for sure if the bootloader is the new one?
Fortunately I have 2 other S3's I can compare against. One is a 32g S3 with OTA 4.3. The other is a 32g S3 I picked up preinstalled with CWM/CM10. The hosed up phone is a 16g S3.

Can I pull something down from these phones with heimdall to check/compare if the 4.3 bootloader is there?

If there is no way to tell, then perhaps I'll reboot it and see..... thanks for the help,

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vax1170 said:

Am I correct in assuming that the 3 heimdall statements I executed above should have resulted in CWM coming up when I do the up-home-power?

The CM instructions for d2vzw are not clear if you really need to let heimdall reboot the phone between each step. I was trying to avoid a full reboot as I expected the OTA to take over if I did.

Perhaps I should reboot it; if it boots up into anything, at least I can sell it ....

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vax1170 said:

So it looks like it is bricked to some degree. What might you advise to undo this?

When I power the phone up I see the usual Samsung galaxy logo, then the screen goes black with pulsing blue LED.

If I boot into recovery, I see the android with spinning globe for about 60sec, then the dead android with red triangle, and phone resets.

If I boot into download mode, it still comes up with the same messages I indicated above. It looks like the boot loader is not new. I can connect with heimdall and print-pit, so something is still alive here.

What is your best advice here? At this point, I don't think I care if it is put back to stock 4.1.2 or upgraded; booting and working with anything is fine.

Thanks

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vax1170 said:

Looks like flashing the 4.1.2 stock image worked, device boots now!

There was somewhat unexpected behavior however, I don’t know if this is interesting or not. I followed the usual directions to use Odin to flash the full MF1 stock rom; this took about 8-10 min to complete.

On reboot, I saw the tiny blue message at top, and the phone appeared to start in recovery mode, at which point the android graphic with spinning belly globe came up. The progress bar went the full length (no error) and phone rebooted. Phone seemed to reboot fine with typical Samsung and LTE logos. When the phone came up, I was surprised. After unlocking the screen, I got a pop-up indicating that the phone update failed. I then found that all my old data was still available; wi-fi passwords, apps, account syncing, etc. everything. I was expecting the device to be wiped clean with the flash - but maybe I misunderstood. Download mode still seems to report the same messages as before (so it looks like it hasn’t been locked). Needless to say, I hit airplane mode and disabled WiFi, and the phone is not activated, so there is no ability for it to pull the OTA again. If it makes any difference, when I flashed this phone it had no SIM card, and it also had a new 1gb SD card I left in there which was populated with CWM and CM images.

Some summary details to anyone who is interested:
- Phone was running stock 4.1.2 MF1, it received the 4.3 OTA package and was popping up the request to update. Accidentally hit ‘ok’ and phone started reboot sequence to apply update. On phone startup, battery was pulled to prevent update.
- Attempted to run the CM 10.2 d2vzw procedure to flash older bootloader and CWM using heimdall. Transferred just fine, but this didn’t appear to work. Upon entering recovery mode, the android graphic comes up and attempts to do something, but fails.
- On reboot, the phone has pulsing blue LED; bricked
- ODIN’ed the stock 4.1.2 image back, and phone is un-bricked, pops up message on failed update, and all previous data is retained.

If there is any other information from this that could be useful to developers let me know. The phone will not be put back into service for some time, and I can transfer off or adb anything someone might find interesting. Just let me know and I'll try to retried and post here.

Thanks for the help!

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