**Ultimate GS3 sudden death thread**

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What we know so far, is that sudden death has nothing to do with:

-Rooted or non rooted phone
-Stock or non stock kernel
-Custom roms
-Branded phones or unlocked phones
-Heavy duty user or light user with 10 apps installed.
-Original charger or USB charger or any charger for that matter
-Temperature, phones have gone dead in ice cold Sweden and hot Brazil.
-Only quad core phones are affected. The International version. So far US phones are not affected like the Euro phones.

Most phones have died before 200 days of use
Samsung has not admitted there is a mainboard fault, however Samsung repairs all phones on warranty, except those who are accused of waterclogging.
Most dead phones are from the first batch of hardware 1.1 and down.


Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
 
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DeHAWK

Senior Member
Jul 25, 2011
1,628
2,738
Malmoe
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
DeHawk. I see that you have a GT i9305. Is it involved???

Envoyé depuis mon GT-I9305 avec Tapatalk

I know in about 160 days:mad:
And it doesn't matter, Samsung MUST emit that some of thiers phones suffers a deadly hardware failure. I did this because I don't like the way of thier silence and I would have done the same to Apple or any other. We are the cumstomers, we are those who buy thier products, because of us they make money... big money. So if they screw us, they loose money. If they had gone public with this and told us that there might be problem with the S3 and had done something about it instead of saying NADA, then all of this would not be happening and we would all know what was going on inside the phone.
My best regards to all of you!


Edit:
I'm happy with my Samsung products. Have phones, tablets and laptops from Samsung.:)

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda premium
 
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dimi22

Senior Member
Jun 4, 2008
311
48
Netherlands
I know in about 160 days:mad:
And it doesn't matter, Samsung MUST emit that some of thiers phones suffers a deadly hardware failure. I did this because I don't like the way of thier silence and I would have done the same to Apple or any other. We are the cumstomers, we are those who buy thier products, because of us they make money... big money. So if they screw us, they loose money. If they had gone public with this and told us that there might be problem with the S3 and had done something about it instead of saying NADA, then all of this would not be happening and we would all know what was going on inside the phone.
My best regards to all of you!

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda premium

True, i also would really like to know whats wrong and i will do some further steps. hope to collect so much evidence then sue them to court, if i might win the case or not i think the press will eat this story out of my hand.... just something else then apple vs samsung ...

But think of it the way Samsung does.....

They made a phone that is very cheap, you can see that in every way,

1. Dust in the corners, fcking annoying ugly cheap looking
2. Screen that cracks when a kid drops it from 20 cm onto the grass.
3. backcover that doesnt fit right
4. dust around the menu button
5. camera glass that collects dust.
6. power button that gets loose after 1 week of normal use.

so think of the inside that we can't see except on ifixit.... do you really think they made that better??


I think back to the S2, the half of the screen was yellow because of the ****ed up amoled technology never ever heard an excuse from samsung.

so who can we blame now? maybe ourselves for being stupid to buy this device.
 

vitormc

New member
Dec 25, 2012
1
0
me too

My s3 died today.

While charging overnight.
No root, bought in singapore, unlocked, flashed with uk Jb firmware.
No response, even download mode.

Question: I believe i cannot have it fixed outside singapore, does anyone has experience fixing samsung devices outside original country?

Thank you
 

vkrd

Member
Mar 2, 2011
7
0
Athens
I just bought S3 from Greek Expansys. On th 11th o Dec. Only a few days after I read this.
The phone is imported from Germany.
The charger is with Russian letters on.
The battery made in Japan assembled in China.
Its got 4.1.2 already since the 18 th .
I feel cheated. Is awful news that Samsung galaxy s 3 is going to be working for only 200hundred days the most! ! Disappointed already thinking of giving it away.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 01:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:09 AM ----------

It has XXELL4

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 01:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:14 AM ----------

So I think I call this " the AIDS of S3". No one can give an explanation of this bloody disease.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
 

Hel10s

Member
May 9, 2012
38
0
Dude

Maybe it's a NOOB question, but if it's a fail of soldering, and the phones died during battery charguer... Why die now all at 6 or 5 months of use? Why not died the first time we used the charger?, or a month later?
Why U.S. phones are not affected like the europe phones?

The app "EMMC brickbug check" works? There are some cases in which it says: "Your chip are not sane?
Are all S3 phones destined to die?

Thanks and sorry for my bad english :eek:
 

jay_m3

Account currently disabled
Nov 26, 2012
358
237
GB
meettomy.site
Dont be so worried..mine also came with a Russian language charger.just hope it will stand more than 1000 day :D

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
 
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vkrd

Member
Mar 2, 2011
7
0
Athens
I believe sooner or later we'll face the same problem. Samsung has to make the step forward and come out with a statement that puts things straight. What's happening now with this product is the beginning of a catastrophe for the company.
Is also a disappointment for us all. I wouldn't like to be in the bad position to have a dead phone on my hands.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
 

Fressh

New member
Dec 25, 2012
1
0
hey, mine is unfortunately dead too
my question now: i bought it in germany from a internet shop...should i contact them oder should i contact samsung?
thanks
 

drraptor

Senior Member
Mar 9, 2012
1,353
293
What we know so far, is that sudden death has nothing to do with:

-Rooted or non rooted phone
-Stock or non stock kernel
-Custom roms
-Branded phones or unlocked phones
-Heavy duty user or light user with 10 apps installed.
-Original charger or USB charger or any charger for that matter
-Temperature, phones have gone dead in ice cold Sweden and hot Brazil.
-Only quad core phones are affected. The International version. So far US phones are not affected like the Euro phones.

Most phones have died before 200 days of use
Samsung has not admitted there is a mainboard fault, however Samsung repairs all phones on warranty, except those who are accused of waterclogging.
Most dead phones are from the first batch of hardware 1.1 and down.


Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
add another issue, Most of the reported this, after leaving it on charger overnight. :)

---------- Post added at 08:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:08 AM ----------

What we know so far, is that sudden death has nothing to do with:

-Rooted or non rooted phone
-Stock or non stock kernel
-Custom roms
-Branded phones or unlocked phones
-Heavy duty user or light user with 10 apps installed.
-Original charger or USB charger or any charger for that matter
-Temperature, phones have gone dead in ice cold Sweden and hot Brazil.
-Only quad core phones are affected. The International version. So far US phones are not affected like the Euro phones.

Most phones have died before 200 days of use
Samsung has not admitted there is a mainboard fault, however Samsung repairs all phones on warranty, except those who are accused of waterclogging.
Most dead phones are from the first batch of hardware 1.1 and down.


Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

hey, mine is unfortunately dead too
my question now: i bought it in germany from a internet shop...should i contact them oder should i contact samsung?
thanks

Contact Samsung service centre directly.
 

epstar7

New member
Dec 25, 2012
2
0
GS3 sudden death

Me also facing this sudden death problem. had this problem 2 weeks ago when my SGS3 was 6 months old. My notification led was blinking. I tried to turn on the screen (via home & power button), but no response. Removed the battery, turned the battery back and still no response, even not a battery charging icon / notification light when connected to usb charger. Try to change the battery with working S3 but no response as well. Sent to Samsung service center in Kuala Lumpur (Low yat plaza) last week and had to long que to send my phone for warranty (so many people having problem with their phone/tablet as well). They promised me the phone will be repair within 4 working days. After a week i called them and the phone still under repair and the guy from Samsung said that its a power board problem. They are awaiting spare part from Korea. Its nightmare though.

Details:

Location: Malaysia
Purchase date: 22 June 2012
Color: White
Model Name: GT-I9300
ROM/Kernel: Rooted stock ROM
Software: Updated from 4.0.4 to 4.1
Info at the battery: cell made in Korea, assembled in Vietnam
Sent for repair: 18 December 2012
Repair status: Still under repair. expect power board problem as per samsung customer service info. Awaiting spare parts from Korea.
 

trabel

Senior Member
May 12, 2007
73
1
There are beginning to be a lot of threads popping up regarding peoples S3 just suddenly "Dying"

Some while charging over night, others simply not turning on again after screen off.

I've made this thread so everyone that has experienced sudden death cases on their S3 can post here and keep the forums cleaner.

Also it is a lot easier to gather info and find similarities when everything is together.

If you have experienced "SUDDEN DEATH" on your S3 please leave a post with relevant info:

What happened
Where phone was made
Where battery was made
What firmware you were running
Can you access download mode?

If you know what hardware revision you had prior to death then please post and also post your replacement hardware version by using this code in dialer *#12580*369# and posting HW Rev:

***If your phone has been fixed after sudden death please use emmc brick bug check from Play Store and post a screen shot or your eMMC chip info***


For those of you in Europe who have rooted your phone it appears that this doesn't void warranty. Check this thread for more info.

Also this website could prove very handy for anyone with a European or UK handset that has died.

Thanks guys, hopefully we can get to the bottom if this.


UPDATE: After reading through all the posts I think we can almost say that software isn't to blame here. This is most definitely a hardware issue, the most likely being corrupt NAND or faulty batch of main boards.
Obviously we can't say for certain and Samsung are staying very quiet about the issue.
Let's hope this problem has been addressed by Samsung and that the devices are being repaired with revised hardware.

Anyone working for a repair centre or even a Samsung employee that can shed some light please come forward.
THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR A FLAGSHIP DEVICE.

my customer came few days ago , brand new sgs3 , he said he was sms to someone , put phone in he pocket , after few min's was about to send another sms , phone was dead.
i dont have detail's of anything you asked as phone sent to gerrenty , thought i can say , no download mode , no respond in psu nothing .... phone is dead !! i looked for any water damaged , or anything , nothing , phone was brand new.

hope it something fixable on the long run , when ppl will run out of warrenty ...... :(
 

GavinZac

Member
Aug 11, 2008
17
4
S3 died last night (yay! Happy ****ing Christmas!), plugged in and charging.

I can get into Download mode but it will not boot and I cannot flash - I get a NAND write failure like so:
<ID:0/010> NAND Write Start!! <ID:0/010> <ID:0/010> Complete(Write) operation failed.

The most annoying thing is that I am in Ireland, but I bought the phone in Thailand... and I'm moving to Malaysia in about 8 hours. I'm not sure if I should leave the phone here and have a friend try to get it fixed under warranty as the phone has been flashed with a custom ROM and it shows on the Download screen.

Is this likely the same issue?
 

ML7

New member
Dec 26, 2012
2
0
My SGS3 died this week

My galaxy s3 died this week in exactly the same way: I connect the charger to the device and slept. when I woke up it was dead! :crying:

Shame on Samsung not to announce this and take responsibility.

Replacing the motherboard costs $300 & if you don't have active warranty you better sell your broken device as parts (display, battery , ..) & get yourself a new device (other than galaxy s3) same as what I did. I got an iPhone5 as I'm still cautious about having this issue in Galaxy Note II.
 

bnepete

New member
Dec 26, 2012
2
0
let me add to this ..

Ok let me add to the pile of complaints ..

My phone was purchased in Brisbane Australia ( where I live ) .. I am currently visiting family in Canada .. 2 hours ago my phone was at 60% battery so there is no way its the battery .. but for some reason my phone is dead .. tried everything .. plugged it into charger .. nothing .. pulled the battery put it back in .. NOTHING!

Just the WORST time to have my phone die .. so not impressed! I have 14 days to go on holiday with no phone and I can't take in for warranty here in Canada because I bought it on Australia.

I'm running stock Jelly Bean and its been running fine.

This just sucks.
 

dr.ketan

Recognized Developer / Recognized Contributor
My friend had same
Was working fine till he slept, In morning it was dead. Later on i have check it and No recovery/download mode. Still in service center and said need to change Mobo.
Rooted (CF Auto)
Purchased from -India
Stock ROM and Kernel (latest Indian)
Battery and charger : stock

Just one odd sign, friend was complaining of quite lagging since couple of days, even it was recently clean installed just a week ago and very few application installed. May be it could be coincidence.
 
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  • 85
    **** SAMSUNG HAVE APPLIED A SUDDEN DEATH FIX VIA A SOFTWARE UPDATE****

    STOCK KERNEL: XXELKC AND NEWER

    STOCK RECOVERY: XXELKC AND NEWER

    ALSO ANY CUSTOM KERNEL AND RECOVERY THAT ARE BUILT FROM THE UPDATED SOURCES. THERE HAVE BEEN CASES OF SDS ON DEVICES THAT HAVE UPDATED BUT TO WHAT EXTENT THE DAMAGE WAS AT ALREADY BEFORE FLASHING WE DON'T KNOW.



    WHO'S AFFECTED?
    It seems that at the moment the only devices that have suffered from SDS are the 16GB version with:
    eMMC: VTU00M
    FW Rev: 0xF1


    To check your eMMC version download eMMC Brickbug Check from Google Play.
    What you want is the eMMC version and the FW Rev.



    THE FIX
    Samsung have now released a Sudden Death Fix via a patched Kernel and Recovery in latest firmware. Firmware Version: XXELKC

    Simply update OTA or download XXELKC firmware (or newer) from sammobile.com and flash using Odin.

    You need both the stock recovery and kernel installed for it to work properly, or a custom kernel and recovery built from the updated sources
    ie Latest Perseus Kernel and PhilZ Recovery are examples



    LINKS
    For more info about SDS, who could be effected and how to fix check out this awesome thread by rootSU

    For a detailed look at how the fix works check out this thread here.


    WARRANTY
    For those of you in Europe who have rooted your phone it appears that this doesn't void warranty. Check this thread for more info.
    Also this website could prove very handy for anyone with a European or UK handset that has died.
    40
    Just took a look at the diffs and i have to admit, i don't nearly get what this does. What are those "movi commands"? Where can one find a data-sheet to decode the magics? :(

    BTW, just took the kernel image from the WanamLite v5.3 CWM zip (that's what i am currently running), un-gz-ed it, and actually found the "movi operation is failed" error string in there. Good for me, i guess ;)

    AndreiLux, thanks A LOT for your research.
    You won't. These are HIGHLY proprietary to Samsung's storage people.

    I'd hazard a guess that it does - but I'd certainly like someone like Entropy to weigh in.
    Bah, I wish I could see what you quoted. As far as safety goes:
    90%+ chance that the change in Update7 is the fix.
    75% chance that XXELLA/4/etc have the fix (It's possible, but highly unlikely, that the string VTU00M would appear in the kernel without the fix.

    Is there a way to check if I already have any bad blocks on my eMMC?
    This isn't about bad blocks - this is about a firmware bug where a data structure gets suddenly corrupted. You can really only know "is it working" or "is it dead". The one exception seems to be that some people see odd performance issues just before death, similar to the issues people see when using PIT workarounds for Superbrick.

    Just as I said above, the low-level details of what's going on are HIGHLY proprietary to Samsung.
    The patch additionally checks that the firmware date is 2012/04/13 and only applies the commands then.

    So you need type: VTU00M revision: 0xf1 and internal firmware date of 2012/04/13 for the bug to have an effect. The date which eMMC brickbug checker reads is the production date as it seems.

    So there might be phones with VTU00M/0xf1 out there which are not affected, I don't know if that makes sense in regard that if the revision would even be the same then.
    Yeah. I'm wondering if we should add some printk()s to check what the date is. I'm curious if there are other dates floating around.

    No, the date shown in the eMMC app is the production date, the internal firmware date is something else and not possible to read out through normal methods.
    Correct, although we could add a printk to kernels to print out the info.

    eMMC app gives me: 05/2012
    but checking via the SSID gives me: 2012/06/09.
    So two different dates, but none of them is the internal firmware date, correct?
    Correct.

    Most phones died over night after charging. Since there are many defective chargers, can this be related to a faulty charger? For example, I have my sgs3 for about 6 months and a few days ago charging became very slow (didnt charge fully after whole night). I used HTC's charger and charging is nornal again. Ive seen that many sgs3 owners got problems with charger. Can some faulty chargers start charging very skow and others give too much electricty which burns internals?

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
    No. Seriously - READ. It is at this point unambiguously an eMMC firmware failure that has NOTHING to do with the charger.

    The ONLY connection with charging is this: CHARGING HOLDS A WAKELOCK. This means the device will do various tasks in the background that it wouldn't do in deep sleep, some of which perform I/O cycles on the eMMC.

    The patch to the MMC driver discovered in the Update 7 sources released by Samsung performs a procedure that is nearly identical to the fix for another mmc firmware bug in a different samsung device.

    The patch also includes some character strings which can be searched for in the binary kernel of XXELLA, as when code is compiled, strings are left as they are.

    The kernel from the XXELLA firmware DOES include these strings, so it's probably safe to assume that the kernel includes the code that performs the in-RAM fix to the mmc firmware.

    The fact that some people have reported that they've experienced SDS on the XXELLA ROM is interesting - none have confirmed 100% that they had the XXELLA kernel running (to the best of my knowledge). This means that for some reason they may have been running another kernel that doesn't have the patch.
    So far all of them were running other kernels.

    It's just like the people who claimed they Superbricked on stock recovery. Turns out that in their eyes, fakeflashing CWM from stock recovery was still in some twisted way stock recovery... It wasn't.

    I'm still confused. Some posts say lla kernel is safe others say you need Perseus. So which one is it

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
    Perseus is 90% guaranteed to be safe (I'm not claiming 100% without a detailed technical explanation from Samsung. Even then I'm not claiming 100%, just like I refuse to guarantee that nonsecure erase is safe on Superbrick-vulnerable devices even though Samsung claims it is... As a result anything I release has eMMC TRIM/ERASE completely disabled for those devices.
    ELLA/4/etc are 75%+ guaranteed to be safe - since we THINK they have the same patch

    If i understood it correctly, we have an assumption? that because similar code is implemented in kernels for similar problems in other samsung phones, so that means we have the same problem in S3.
    If this is true then all or almost all 16GB phones are affected, as i didnt saw a phone with different emmc.(maybe some new phones have newer revision?)
    We are talking then for millions S3's that are going to die?
    Maybe this code then doesnt have to do anything with the "SDS issue" and is more of a precaution or even testing trying to figure out the problem from Samsung?
    Samsung's storage guys have a wide variety of chips/models. VTU00M 0xf1 is primarily seen in I9300 units, and almost all 16GB I9300s except very recent ones have it. Some other devices have it, but it isn't nearly as prevalent in other devices. My Note 10.1 has MAG4FB I think (need to check again...) In addition, there appears to be some additional identifying information beyond VTU00M 0xf1 that we haven't had time to collect data on yet (and developers need to make kernel patches to even allow this data to be collected...)

    I think that it's combination is the solution.

    according to this from 1st post:

    ...Kernels >v31 and beyond stock LLA are now the only truly protected ones.

    Can someone confirm this?
    the key in that post is the word "now". That post was made yesterday - the patch has been making the rounds and is getting integrated

    Have you searched for it in older kernels? Why wouldn't that string appear also in those? If it does, then this means nothing.
    That's something that needs to be checked... However if it appears in older kernels Samsung was violating the GPL with them as I'm fairly certain it is nowhere within the source.

    Nothing can fix an SDS because the phone is already dead. :D
    But to prevent it, yes it seems. One of those at this moment.
    Just like Superbrick.

    Samsung haven't fixed the super brick bug yet :p

    Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
    On a small subset of affected devices they have - I9100s in HK apparently have Jellybean and that has their official fix. But so far, nearly all affected devices are still on ICS and they only put the fix in JB kernels.

    Just did a emmc check and I found out that my fwrev is oxf7 and the date is 11/2012... But I got the same chip like otherss... :(

    So am I on a safer side?

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
    Unknown. Often flaws like this are firmware-dependent.

    For example:
    VYL00M/KYL00M/MAG4FA fwrev 0x19 = Superbrick + 32kb-of-zeroes bug
    VYL00M/KYL00M/MAG4FA fwrev 0x25 = 32kb-of-zeroes bug only (immune to Superbrick)

    However for the above, we had confirmation from a trusted source (A Google engineer) that 0x19 had a bug with the symptoms we were seeing and that HE had seen it in GNex prototypes, and that 0x25 was "fixed" in regards to that bug (Superbrick). A fix for the bug in 0x25 is what led us to him.

    Theoretically if you have the same chip, you are candidate for sds sometime.... :(
    Not necessarily. I would put the status as "unknown". If you have VTU00M 0xf7 you're much less likely to have problems than 0xf1 - but with something like this guarantees cannot be made.

    Also: The fix patch was merged to CM10.1 source last night. So today's nightly should be safe. If it's not - no one is safe.
    30
    Will my i9305 die too, or only the i9300 is afected?
    If you have VTU00M fwrev 0xf1 flash, you are probably at risk. I9305 is too new to tell

    In today's SamMobile article, they say is a firm bug!!?????? In other words, sammy firm only have the bug?? If I use (no because my phone deaths on 12/27) aosp rom and custom kernel, bug not affect my device???
    No. In fact, there's nothing that indicates there is a bug in the bootloader/kernel/system firmware yet. Given the behavior of the problem and Samsung's past history, it's likely a bug in internal eMMC firmware (which can, at best be field-patched if it only involves a few bytes of microcode - major changes are not possible in the field.) This upcoming update likely contains a workaround for that eMMC bug.

    Look at the Superbrick bug - There was no underlying "bug" in any of Samsung's firmwares, except that they didn't block commands that would trigger a known bug in the underlying flash memory. Now, in any hardware without that bug, issuing secure erase commands is fine. The workaround for the bug is simple: Don't send secure erase commands to the damn chip.

    Is it true that all 16gigs phone will die soon one day?

    Sent from a better Galaxy designed for humans!
    Unknown. Right now any device with VTU00M flash is at risk - but how high the risk is we don't know.

    but Samsung says that will fix the issue with fw update.....or not?

    there is no fw going to write to the NAND?
    No one knows yet. If it's done in the kernel, we'll know EXACTLY what/how they fixed it and how to apply the fix to custom firmwares. If it's the bootloader, we won't know unless they explicitly states that they changed the bootloader to fix it. If it's in /system (HIGHLY unlikely) we might see something.

    Most likely place they'll fix this is the kernel with a variant of the Sumrall patch from last spring, OR an alteration to the MMC code in order to avoid doing something (we don't know what) that the chip doesn't like (this would be similar to how Superbrick is worked around). So far, every time Samsung has ever fixed or worked around an eMMC bug/defect, it's been in the kernel and not the bootloader. So everyone flashing this new bootloader is just making it more likely they'll be denied warranty support if their device dies.

    Yes the current btu release (today)apparently has sudden death fix via the bootloader.

    I recommend updating via pc odin as mobile odin won't fix the bootloader, Im already on samsung 4.1.2 release at christmas just downlaoding todays release.
    Bull****. You have ZERO evidence to substantiate this claim.

    so we can only wait for the new bootloader from Samsung .... :crying:
    And why do you think it's the bootloader? There's no evidence to say WHERE the fix will be applied because there isn't even any information about HOW the failures are occurring. Right now, I'd say it's most likely going to be a kernel fix.

    Yes but its like a chain reaction: if one component or sector dies mostly the other ones will follow. Freezes and hookups are those signs of hardware failure.

    As long if those symptoms doesnt apair you dont need to worry too much

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
    If it's a wear leveller bug, there's a possibility fixed wear leveller firmware might "repair" damage to the internal data structures.

    Can someone please explain... if it's a wear leveler, and thats a part of eMMC (as opposed to software-only wear leveling), how is it even possible to update it? Can one possibly update the eMMC microcode ?!
    Search before posting. I posted an example of how this has been done to Samsung eMMC chips in the past only 1-2 days ago. (Search this thread for Sumrall...)

    Minor eMMC microcode updates can be done at runtime. It's fairly safe since it apparently patches the firmware after it has loaded into volatile memory (and hence a power cycle removes the patch if it's misapplied). This is what the Galaxy Nexus patch for VYL00M/KYL00M/MAG4FA fwrev 0x25 did.

    Major eMMC microcode updates can't be done so easily, which is why the underlying Superbrick flaw was never fixed.


    [KIES]I9300XXELLA 4.1.2->EXYNOS BUG FIXED!!S3 SUDDEN DEATH FIXED!!Jan.02,2013

    http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2077844
    Don't make definitive claims you have no evidence to support.
    27
    Hi all,

    Assuming that there is no NAND degradation or similar and that SDS come for something specific, why over 90% of the deaths have come from the fourth month onwards? Why have not failed at 4 days or two weeks, for example? What is the secret component involved over time to fail?

    We will likely never know the specific secret component, but with knowledge of the behavior of eMMC, how it behaves, and how Samsung eMMCs have failed in the past, we can guess.

    The wear leveller keeps track of what memory blocks have been used and what haven't, and relocates blocks periodically to spread wear across the device. For example, if you write to the fourth block of the eMMC repeatedly, internally it'll map the fourth block to the 100th, then maybe the 150th, then 200th, etc...

    At some point, after a long time of operation, the wear leveller might reach a corner case where a bug is triggered - my guess would be an integer overflow or a signed vs. unsigned issue. For example, it's working with the 32767th instance of block 5, and tries to increment a counter to 32768 - but instead, gets -32768 instead because something is treating an unsigned int as signed. The next time it tries to work with that counter, BOOM - it crashes. Again, we don't know the exact nature of what's happening, but it's likely something along these lines.

    It's very similar to what happened with Superbrick on the GS2 - if you issued a secure erase command to erase memory that was in a certain specific state (I can't talk about what the exact state is, sorry... And no, there's no way to tell if the memory is in that state unless you're Samsung or you've Superbricked it.), the wear leveller would crash and leave behind corrupted data structures - any attempt to access these structures again would crash the wear leveller again. The symptom to the user was any attempt to access affected regions of the eMMC would cause the chip to hang.
    22
    Entropy512, thank you.
    How can you explain users that had XXELLA stock rom, and still suffered from SDS? There are more than one report of it.
    I have yet to see any such reports... The one report I've seen of an XXELLA failure was XXELLA system + Siyah.

    You are being unecessarilhy harsh here, especially considering that you are addressing people who are under the fear that their expensive phones will die on them suddenly. AdreiLux seems to be more skeptical regarding the possibility of the fix depending on the new bootloader as well. Calling names surely doesn't make you look smarter than the "idiots" who took a step -granted maybe rushed- towards a probable fix of a dreadful issue. And you may know much more than the average joe here, but you still have ZERO evidence that the new bootloader doesn't do anything at all that contributes to fixing the SDS, so you may have as well been nicer. Just my 2 cents.
    I have all of the evidence I need - I now have kernel source for a complete eMMC firmware patch. The fix is in the kernel, not in the bootloader. It's being patched in the EXACT same way as the GNex 32kb-of-zeros fix patch, which had zero bootloader involvement.

    The fact is that flashing a bootloader is a fundamentally dangerous operation, and flashing a bootloader with known regressions in functionality is 100% reckless and stupid.

    The fact is that Samsung has NEVER fixed a problem like this in the bootloader before. There was ZERO evidence pointing there. There was plenty of evidence (the GNex VYL00M/KYL00M/MAG4FA 0x25 patch) pointing to the fix being in the kernel when it came out.

    How come you knew that SDS is related to eMMC (and specifically version VTU00M) before samsung released their code? What led to this assumption?
    All of the symptoms and behavior pointed this way.
    1) Some devices were exhibiting "Superbrick-ish" behavior where certain eMMC regions were working and others were inaccessible
    2) It was ONLY happening on 16GB devices - this is the most obvious piece of evidence. If it weren't the eMMC, it would have been seen on 32/64GB devices
    3) It would be the third time in one year Samsung has ****ed up their wear leveller, their quality control is clearly crap in this regard.