Hello! I was planning to sell my S3 because I got an S4. So after wiping the memory of the S3, it rebooted but it froze while starting up. So I held down the power button for a few seconds to restart it hoping it would work fine. But when it turned on, it immediately went to a screen that said "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again." I can't go into Recovery mode on the phone, all I can go into is download mode. I tried to do a Emergency Firmware Recovery using Kies, but it didn't work. It either stayed at zero percent after downloading what was needed to update or it worked fine for a while until it showed up some error (I hate Kies with a passion). So I have no idea on what else to do. If I can't figure it out, I was just gonna sell it at a kiosk at the mall and just get whatever money I could get. **OH and my S3 is not or has ever been rooted.**
Please help! Thanks!
EDIT: My android version is stock TouchWiz 4.3 by the way!
I could be off base a bit but I think you have a few options, standard disclaimer applies here if you Bork your phone worse than it is now by any thing typed below it is your fault not mine, I give fair warning of risks involved.
A) go to best buy have them flash whatever they can (this is the latest tech support info from samsung) perhaps they can fix it and you will still be official with warranty bit 0 in Grey letters,
there is very little risk involved with this option you might get into a car accident on the way to and from best buy.
B) intentionally hard brick your phone, use the SD card Debrick method, flash custom recovery such as twrp or cwm, flash a rom, bootloaders, modem and kernel. This method is not very safe, not 100% guaranteed to work nor recommended for an average user. There are significant risk involved and it will show warranty bit 1 in red letters when in download mode and it will also display flash count and custom instead of official this will also disable knox, root the phone and maybe other things I forgot about.
There is alot of risk involved here proceed with caution.
C) send/take the phone to a jtag service spend about $50 and the phone will still be official with warranty bit 0 with knox intact. There is a possibility that the phone cannot be recovered using this method so there is a low risk involved.
I recommend you use option A) go to best buy and let them try to work their smoke and mirrors. Then if that doesn't work try option B) because why not try to recover it yourself for free at home to save some money over option C) and if you are considering option C) they should be able to recover the phone so that removes most of the risk of option B) .
GOOD LUCK
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
---------- Post added at 02:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:20 PM ----------
Btw you should try to sell it on
www.swappa.com it is a great place to sell phones and it is endorsed by xda as our official market place to buy and sell, you can get between $200 and $350 on there depending on condition and buyers.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
