[HOW TO] [NO JTAG] unbrick / debrick hardbricked Samsung Galaxy S3

still having trouble? New guide by request


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dreamwave

Senior Member
This should work on all Qualcomm Snapdragon based Samsung galaxy SIII's, if it doesn't, PM me the model and I'll try and find a solution.

WHILE THIS IS VERY LIKELY TO WORK FOR ANY BOOTLOADER/MODEM/FIRMWARE BRICKED PHONE, THERE IS NO UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE THAT THIS WILL WORK FOR YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION, THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT THERE ARE SOME BRICK STATES THAT THIS WILL NOT WORK FOR, but in my experience, almost all cases can be resolved by rewriting the sdcard with correct partitioning.

Disclaimer out of the way, let us begin.

Needed Materials and Files:

EDIT: if you have another phone or know someone else with the same phone have them run this and the output will be a debrick image you can use: busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/backup.bin bs=1M count=200 if it does not work then change the last number (count=) to something larger and try it. If you create an image please upload it so I can put it into a repository I'm creating


16GB or 32GB class10 microSD card
A hard bricked Samsung galaxy S3 US Cellular
The debrick image for your device:

[[Here is the drive image for a folder containing all the debrick images that I currently have uploaded, more will be coming: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B612qYHFMILfWUlMTTEwdUstcXM&usp=sharing ]]
If you have any images that I missed, please send me a link or, better yet, upload them to drive, make them publicly shared, and share them with me at dreamwavedevteam@gmail.com, I will put them in this folder for all to use

US Cellular R530: ftp://sdbruington.us/d2usc/SCH-R530_ALIVE_MJA_200MB_16GB.bin
Sprint L710: http://www.mediafire.com/download/23...ph_l710.img.xz
AT&T I747: http://d-h.st/iEy
T-mobile T999: http://www.mediafire.com/download/gr...k_SGH-T999.img

---I did not upload these images, I have simply collected the links over time, please thank Cnexus for his help in finding these and
---helping me to originally unbrick my S3

Your computer
A card reader that will accept the card (another phone will not work as this is an image, and it needs to repartition the SD card)
Either a partition editor (I've heard that you can use dd or something on linux, but I haven't tried) or this: View attachment win32diskimager-v0.9-binary.zip
A wall charger (computer charging isn't as reliable)

Procedure:

1. Take the sdcard and insert it into your computer
2. Download the mentioned image and the software to put it onto the sdcard
3. Use your computer to pull the data already on the card onto your computer hard drive, as the sdcard will be wiped when the image is put onto it
4. use the software that you downloaded earlier to burn the image to the sdcard
5. Remove the battery from the SGS3
6. insert the sdcard into the S3
7. Put the battery into the S3
8. The S3 may boot automatically, or you may have to manually boot it by holding down the power button for 5< seconds
9. If the update that bricked your phone also messed up /system, then you'll have to coerce Odin mode to shove a stock firmware image to your phone, though I've had more than just SOME trouble with that in the past (in other words I haven't been able to get back to stock yet...), if you simply had a radio update or something go wrong, then proceed to the next step.
10. Do a victory dance with your phone in your pocket not the repair bench, or on second thought, make sure you don't drop it, don't create another problem. :p
11. After that, you can just use your device normally with the sdcard in it without worry of bricking it, though it will not be able to boot if you remove the sdcard;
the only known method of getting it to boot without the sdcard is reflashing stock firmware, which completely wipes the phone and resets everything back to complete stock. Also, Odin mode has, at least for me, objected when I've tried to flash the stock image back onto it, and even if Odin mode was sure of working, backing up ~16GB of data isn't a fast process, especially with the most reliable means being ADB. If you try to flash a stock image and it fails, your device will almost definitely come up with a version of dmode when you try to turn it on with the sdcard (still bricked otherwise) that says something about Kies update failure, the only way of correcting this that I've had success with is flashing an image that won't do much, such as the same recovery that you already had, over odin mode from that special dmode, as while that won't correct the actual brick, it will at least make you able to boot from the sdcard again. I will provide links to the stock images in a little while, once someone gets that far, as I will have to find all but the one from the US Cellular version.
I am currently looking for firmware images that will only flash the bootloader/modem, if anyone knows of an odin file that could do that, please let me know as soon as possible, in the meantime, I will try and create an update.zip that will flash the necessary files; as most bricks are likely cause by an update.zip that was meant for a different device, I am very confident that it can be fixed with another .zip file.---Stay tuned!


---Don't forget, that thanks button won't bite your finger off if you push it:fingers-crossed:

If any of the links are not fully functional, PM me to let me know, and if you have the link to another debrick image for another device, send me the link so I can include it here!:D

Please note: While there is a similar procedure for Xynos based S3's, they apparently require a physical modification that requires an amount of soldering, so it is most likely best for them to simply take them in for Jtagging and then just not brick them after that. :(



EDIT: here is the link to a full youtube tutorial that I made, just for those of you who like watching a video instead of getting lost in a written guide:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RTAbLBVfMI

EDIT AGAIN: I'm sorry about both of the mediafire links being down, I will try and find some more and upload them to my google drive, along with the others just to make sure they exist somewhere safe.I'm downloading the images now and uploading some that I already have, they will be available in this folder (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B612qYHFMILfWUlMTTEwdUstcXM&usp=sharing) on google drive and will be available by email upon request
here is a sprint image that should work, sorry I haven't tested it http://www.mediafire.com/download/231uhy6l80jx74n/debrick_sph_l710.img.xz
for the t999 4.1: https://www.copy.com/s/xSAswQZbhQX8/t999_debrick.zip for the t999 4.3: https://www.copy.com/s/7ICfKXMC3ccr/T999_4.3_debrick.zip
I know this is becoming a mess of links :p but here is a link to an xda post that has t999 variant images http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2439367
here is a sprint 4.4 debrick image: http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23329332407591176

If you want to get your phone to operate without an sd card in there for every boot, stay tuned, I'll have a guide to return to stock soon, though a quick google search shouldn't be that hard if you're desperate

I will clean up this guide in a little bit but currently I have school and such to attend to so it may not be immediate

I know this is getting unwieldy but (big thanks to youdoofus) I have a way to completely debrick and fix it so it doesn't require even the sd to boot.

"Restoring stock bootloader
1) You were able to boot into the ROM
2) Plug your phone into a computer and use MTP mode
3) Move the debrick file onto your internal sdcard (/sdcard/debrick.bin)
4) Disconnect your phone
5) Open up a Terminal Emulator on your phone and input this code

Code:
su
dd if=/sdcard/debrick.bin of=/dev/block/mmcblk0


6) Reboot"
Of course this should be modified for the different versions and types of debrick image as some are img, some are bin, I think there might even be an ISO hanging around somewhere


EDIT: As of October 10th I'm working on a tool that will get an image directly from a stock rom/tar and put it on the SDcard. This is pretty complex so it will probably take a little while, but it should make it easier to get images if all that's required is a stock tar.
 
Last edited:

derget1212

Member
Mar 5, 2014
12
1
I've followed all these guides and haven't had any luck. I did use a CM 4.4 rom and some people are saying i need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working again. i'm on an i-747. can you help?
 

polobunny

Senior Member
Oct 25, 2011
6,223
2,312
Montreal
I've followed all these guides and haven't had any luck. I did use a CM 4.4 rom and some people are saying i need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working again. i'm on an i-747. can you help?
You don't need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working, you need a debrick.img of the correct bootloader. If you bricked your phone by flashing an older bootloader after upgrading to the 4.3 bootloader, then you need a debrick.img with the 4.3 bootloader.
 

derget1212

Member
Mar 5, 2014
12
1
You don't need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working, you need a debrick.img of the correct bootloader. If you bricked your phone by flashing an older bootloader after upgrading to the 4.3 bootloader, then you need a debrick.img with the 4.3 bootloader.

how do i find out the correct bootloader? i was using this rom http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2518998 for a couple months and randomly got hard bricked yesterday. any help is greatly appreciated.
 
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polobunny

Senior Member
Oct 25, 2011
6,223
2,312
Montreal
how do i find out the correct bootloader? i was using this rom http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2518998 for a couple months and randomly got hard bricked yesterday. any help is greatly appreciated.

Explain your situation. Randomly bricked is very vague. Did you flash anything? Do you remember doing anything? It's important. Phones don't go and "randomly brick" unless of a HW problem, and to either confirm or eliminate that possibility we need more details.
 

derget1212

Member
Mar 5, 2014
12
1
Explain your situation. Randomly bricked is very vague. Did you flash anything? Do you remember doing anything? It's important. Phones don't go and "randomly brick" unless of a HW problem, and to either confirm or eliminate that possibility we need more details.

Like i said, it was totally random. My phone froze and rebooted yesterday. It got to the Samsung logo so i thought everything was okay. I fell asleep and woke up to a bricked phone. After all of my attempts, I got one debrick.img to show something on my screen and it shows "BOOT RECOVERY MODE". Odin sees my phone and tries to fix the PIT and the Bootloader but it always fails. From what i gather, it seems to be a hardware issue.
 

polobunny

Senior Member
Oct 25, 2011
6,223
2,312
Montreal
Like i said, it was totally random. My phone froze and rebooted yesterday. It got to the Samsung logo so i thought everything was okay. I fell asleep and woke up to a bricked phone. After all of my attempts, I got one debrick.img to show something on my screen and it shows "BOOT RECOVERY MODE". Odin sees my phone and tries to fix the PIT and the Bootloader but it always fails. From what i gather, it seems to be a hardware issue.

Whoa whoa there, if your phone still boots in either recovery or download mode, then you don't need to use a debrick.img.

If you have a custom recovery, you can flash your custom rom. If you don't, you can flash a stock ROM using ODIN in download mode.
 

derget1212

Member
Mar 5, 2014
12
1
Whoa whoa there, if your phone still boots in either recovery or download mode, then you don't need to use a debrick.img.

If you have a custom recovery, you can flash your custom rom. If you don't, you can flash a stock ROM using ODIN in download mode.

It is hard bricked. Without the sd with a debrick.img installed, I get no response at all. And I've tried all the i747 debrick.img files I could find here with no success.

I can get to boot recovery mode with one .img I could find but boot recovery os different than recovery mode. It's essentially useless and Odin doesn't like it.
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
Like i said, it was totally random. My phone froze and rebooted yesterday. It got to the Samsung logo so i thought everything was okay. I fell asleep and woke up to a bricked phone. After all of my attempts, I got one debrick.img to show something on my screen and it shows "BOOT RECOVERY MODE". Odin sees my phone and tries to fix the PIT and the Bootloader but it always fails. From what i gather, it seems to be a hardware issue.

It really sounds a lot like the BRICKBUG to me, anyone know how to tell if a chip is insane without it working? And did you have the 4.3 bootloader? If you got that you should have been safe, but if you didn't then the kernel may have burned out the chips from the "bug" (it really doesn't seem too much like a "bug", more like an issue worthy of recall)
Sorry I don't know exactly what's wrong off the top of my head:(
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
It is hard bricked. Without the sd with a debrick.img installed, I get no response at all. And I've tried all the i747 debrick.img files I could find here with no success.

I can get to boot recovery mode with one .img I could find but boot recovery os different than recovery mode. It's essentially useless and Odin doesn't like it.

If you get ANY response at all, then the debrick image is doing its job; what you need is a stock image, I'll try to find a link for you to use. Try using Kies or something, alternatively, as if you have the serial number you can apparently flash it quite cleanly, all data on the phone will be lost though, as it effectively wipes the eMMC.
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
This image gets you in the clear if the ONLY thing screwed up is the boot partition, meaning modem/firmware/bootloader, it does NOT get you fixed if you got your rom F***ed up, and do not expect it to, this will get you into dmode so you can use odin or something like fastboot to flash a /system image or a FULL stock rom if you want to get your bootloader fixed without the SD card being in all the time.
 

derget1212

Member
Mar 5, 2014
12
1
If you get ANY response at all, then the debrick image is doing its job; what you need is a stock image, I'll try to find a link for you to use. Try using Kies or something, alternatively, as if you have the serial number you can apparently flash it quite cleanly, all data on the phone will be lost though, as it effectively wipes the eMMC.

if anyone can find the correct debrick.img i need to use, i would greatly appreciate it. I have tried Kies and Odin without success. They can see the phone but seem not to be able to access it. I can't flash anything via odin or get to the CWM recovery or download mode. this is a really weird screen i haven't seen before.
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
if anyone can find the correct debrick.img i need to use, i would greatly appreciate it. I have tried Kies and Odin without success. They can see the phone but seem not to be able to access it. I can't flash anything via odin or get to the CWM recovery or download mode. this is a really weird screen i haven't seen before.
Is there any way at all to get into dmode? What is windows recognizing it as?
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
I've followed all these guides and haven't had any luck. I did use a CM 4.4 rom and some people are saying i need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working again. i'm on an i-747. can you help?

If you bricked the /system partition AND the boot partition you will need a stock rom as well, just use Odin or something if possible after using a 4.3 image, a 4.4 image is more or less the same as a 4.3 as far as I know, I mean I bricked mine after using cm11 by flashing the wrong rom, it's just that the rom you tried tried to flash a 4.1 bootloader, and thus tripped the eFUSE or something in the Knox bootloader, what you need is a 4.3 unbrick image, as 4.4 didn't really change the modems/bootloader from 4.3, and the unbrick image isn't really that much more than a collection of pieces from the boot partition that are used as an autoboot by the phone when the eMMC fails to load properly.
 

halfdead1993

New member
Feb 5, 2012
4
0
This is pretty neat..
does it always work?
It's nice to have such a recover method whenever something like this happens to you.
 

dreamwave

Senior Member
This is pretty neat..
does it always work?
It's nice to have such a recover method whenever something like this happens to you.

I believe it will work on basically anything, as in I haven't seen a case that can't be cured at least somewhat by this, I think it works like an alternative boot, as if the bootloader on the eMMC is corrupted, it seems to remove the boot flag, thus making it so that the phone does not detect a bootable partition, the unbrick image has a partition layout mirroring the one that is supposed to be on the phone, so it is used as the boot partition but then redirects control back to whatever is on the eMMC after the bootloader, think of it as a liveCD on windows, just one that hands control back to the system after it has gotten past booting the BIOS.
 

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  • 46
    This should work on all Qualcomm Snapdragon based Samsung galaxy SIII's, if it doesn't, PM me the model and I'll try and find a solution.

    WHILE THIS IS VERY LIKELY TO WORK FOR ANY BOOTLOADER/MODEM/FIRMWARE BRICKED PHONE, THERE IS NO UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE THAT THIS WILL WORK FOR YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION, THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT THERE ARE SOME BRICK STATES THAT THIS WILL NOT WORK FOR, but in my experience, almost all cases can be resolved by rewriting the sdcard with correct partitioning.

    Disclaimer out of the way, let us begin.

    Needed Materials and Files:

    EDIT: if you have another phone or know someone else with the same phone have them run this and the output will be a debrick image you can use: busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/backup.bin bs=1M count=200 if it does not work then change the last number (count=) to something larger and try it. If you create an image please upload it so I can put it into a repository I'm creating


    16GB or 32GB class10 microSD card
    A hard bricked Samsung galaxy S3 US Cellular
    The debrick image for your device:

    [[Here is the drive image for a folder containing all the debrick images that I currently have uploaded, more will be coming: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B612qYHFMILfWUlMTTEwdUstcXM&usp=sharing ]]
    If you have any images that I missed, please send me a link or, better yet, upload them to drive, make them publicly shared, and share them with me at dreamwavedevteam@gmail.com, I will put them in this folder for all to use

    US Cellular R530: ftp://sdbruington.us/d2usc/SCH-R530_ALIVE_MJA_200MB_16GB.bin
    Sprint L710: http://www.mediafire.com/download/23...ph_l710.img.xz
    AT&T I747: http://d-h.st/iEy
    T-mobile T999: http://www.mediafire.com/download/gr...k_SGH-T999.img

    ---I did not upload these images, I have simply collected the links over time, please thank Cnexus for his help in finding these and
    ---helping me to originally unbrick my S3

    Your computer
    A card reader that will accept the card (another phone will not work as this is an image, and it needs to repartition the SD card)
    Either a partition editor (I've heard that you can use dd or something on linux, but I haven't tried) or this: View attachment win32diskimager-v0.9-binary.zip
    A wall charger (computer charging isn't as reliable)

    Procedure:

    1. Take the sdcard and insert it into your computer
    2. Download the mentioned image and the software to put it onto the sdcard
    3. Use your computer to pull the data already on the card onto your computer hard drive, as the sdcard will be wiped when the image is put onto it
    4. use the software that you downloaded earlier to burn the image to the sdcard
    5. Remove the battery from the SGS3
    6. insert the sdcard into the S3
    7. Put the battery into the S3
    8. The S3 may boot automatically, or you may have to manually boot it by holding down the power button for 5< seconds
    9. If the update that bricked your phone also messed up /system, then you'll have to coerce Odin mode to shove a stock firmware image to your phone, though I've had more than just SOME trouble with that in the past (in other words I haven't been able to get back to stock yet...), if you simply had a radio update or something go wrong, then proceed to the next step.
    10. Do a victory dance with your phone in your pocket not the repair bench, or on second thought, make sure you don't drop it, don't create another problem. :p
    11. After that, you can just use your device normally with the sdcard in it without worry of bricking it, though it will not be able to boot if you remove the sdcard;
    the only known method of getting it to boot without the sdcard is reflashing stock firmware, which completely wipes the phone and resets everything back to complete stock. Also, Odin mode has, at least for me, objected when I've tried to flash the stock image back onto it, and even if Odin mode was sure of working, backing up ~16GB of data isn't a fast process, especially with the most reliable means being ADB. If you try to flash a stock image and it fails, your device will almost definitely come up with a version of dmode when you try to turn it on with the sdcard (still bricked otherwise) that says something about Kies update failure, the only way of correcting this that I've had success with is flashing an image that won't do much, such as the same recovery that you already had, over odin mode from that special dmode, as while that won't correct the actual brick, it will at least make you able to boot from the sdcard again. I will provide links to the stock images in a little while, once someone gets that far, as I will have to find all but the one from the US Cellular version.
    I am currently looking for firmware images that will only flash the bootloader/modem, if anyone knows of an odin file that could do that, please let me know as soon as possible, in the meantime, I will try and create an update.zip that will flash the necessary files; as most bricks are likely cause by an update.zip that was meant for a different device, I am very confident that it can be fixed with another .zip file.---Stay tuned!


    ---Don't forget, that thanks button won't bite your finger off if you push it:fingers-crossed:

    If any of the links are not fully functional, PM me to let me know, and if you have the link to another debrick image for another device, send me the link so I can include it here!:D

    Please note: While there is a similar procedure for Xynos based S3's, they apparently require a physical modification that requires an amount of soldering, so it is most likely best for them to simply take them in for Jtagging and then just not brick them after that. :(



    EDIT: here is the link to a full youtube tutorial that I made, just for those of you who like watching a video instead of getting lost in a written guide:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RTAbLBVfMI

    EDIT AGAIN: I'm sorry about both of the mediafire links being down, I will try and find some more and upload them to my google drive, along with the others just to make sure they exist somewhere safe.I'm downloading the images now and uploading some that I already have, they will be available in this folder (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B612qYHFMILfWUlMTTEwdUstcXM&usp=sharing) on google drive and will be available by email upon request
    here is a sprint image that should work, sorry I haven't tested it http://www.mediafire.com/download/231uhy6l80jx74n/debrick_sph_l710.img.xz
    for the t999 4.1: https://www.copy.com/s/xSAswQZbhQX8/t999_debrick.zip for the t999 4.3: https://www.copy.com/s/7ICfKXMC3ccr/T999_4.3_debrick.zip
    I know this is becoming a mess of links :p but here is a link to an xda post that has t999 variant images http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2439367
    here is a sprint 4.4 debrick image: http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23329332407591176

    If you want to get your phone to operate without an sd card in there for every boot, stay tuned, I'll have a guide to return to stock soon, though a quick google search shouldn't be that hard if you're desperate

    I will clean up this guide in a little bit but currently I have school and such to attend to so it may not be immediate

    I know this is getting unwieldy but (big thanks to youdoofus) I have a way to completely debrick and fix it so it doesn't require even the sd to boot.

    "Restoring stock bootloader
    1) You were able to boot into the ROM
    2) Plug your phone into a computer and use MTP mode
    3) Move the debrick file onto your internal sdcard (/sdcard/debrick.bin)
    4) Disconnect your phone
    5) Open up a Terminal Emulator on your phone and input this code

    Code:
    su
    dd if=/sdcard/debrick.bin of=/dev/block/mmcblk0


    6) Reboot"
    Of course this should be modified for the different versions and types of debrick image as some are img, some are bin, I think there might even be an ISO hanging around somewhere


    EDIT: As of October 10th I'm working on a tool that will get an image directly from a stock rom/tar and put it on the SDcard. This is pretty complex so it will probably take a little while, but it should make it easier to get images if all that's required is a stock tar.
    2
    I've followed all these guides and haven't had any luck. I did use a CM 4.4 rom and some people are saying i need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working again. i'm on an i-747. can you help?
    You don't need a debrick.img of a 4.4 to get it working, you need a debrick.img of the correct bootloader. If you bricked your phone by flashing an older bootloader after upgrading to the 4.3 bootloader, then you need a debrick.img with the 4.3 bootloader.
    2
    Like i said, it was totally random. My phone froze and rebooted yesterday. It got to the Samsung logo so i thought everything was okay. I fell asleep and woke up to a bricked phone. After all of my attempts, I got one debrick.img to show something on my screen and it shows "BOOT RECOVERY MODE". Odin sees my phone and tries to fix the PIT and the Bootloader but it always fails. From what i gather, it seems to be a hardware issue.

    Whoa whoa there, if your phone still boots in either recovery or download mode, then you don't need to use a debrick.img.

    If you have a custom recovery, you can flash your custom rom. If you don't, you can flash a stock ROM using ODIN in download mode.
    2
    NE6 Debrick Images

    On a OTA stock upgraded i747M 4.4.2 NE6,

    Root (TowelRoot + SuperSU + busybox),

    Here are the OTA NE6 i747M Bell phone 3 debrick images...

    Created from Terminal Emulator APK:

    su (enter)
    busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/debrick.img bs=1M count=128 (enter)

    I747M_NE6_128.img http://d-h.st/Pl4


    su (enter)
    busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/debrick.img bs=1M count=256 (enter)

    I747M_NE6_256.img http://d-h.st/WoZ


    su (enter)
    busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/debrick.img bs=1M count=512 (enter)

    I747M_NE6_512.rar http://d-h.st/w7g


    I haven't try yet.


    Thank u all
    1
    Need help

    Hi, i really need help, i have been trying to unbrick my galaxy s3, its a sgh-i747m model from from a mexican carrier, the latest official firmware that was installed on my phone was "I747MUMUEND3_I747MTCEEND3_I747MUMUEND3_HOME.tar" and i had a custom rom CM12, but i had a problem with the gps and try to update the bootloader or something like that and flashed with the file "d2att_I747UCUEMJB_bootloader_modem_4.3" so after flashed it wouldnt turn on anymore, only the red light when its connected without the battery, i have try different unbrick images but im not able to unbrick, if anyone could help me i would really appreciate.

    Thanks in advance!
    ps. sorry for my english