[Galaxy S II General] colsieb:
My Phones Sudden Death And Re-Incarnation

Here is my story about my SGS2 (stock ROM, although previously rooted),

My woes started with the same problem as many people on this forum, the old "no signal, blank IMEI, no baseband" issue. Tried another simm card - no different. Thought it may of been something to do with my dual simm adapter - binned it and this made no difference. Strangely enough, unlike most other people who perhaps corrupted their EFS folder during flashing, my phone signal usually came back after messing around with the battery in out and power resets etc etc. Since this appears to be intermittent it cannot be a software / EFS problem, right? Anyway, tried factory reset and other ROMS / modems but none helped. Sometimes it would go a week before loss of signal.

Out of options I was living with this, however the other day whilst at work I went to pick him up to find that he was completely dead, will not even show charging graphic or boot to recovery, it also shows no signs heating up as some other people have indicated, dead, nowt, disaster. Another frantic internet trawling session ensued.

Tried removing battery, waiting 10mins-1hour-2hours, soft reset (holding power button for 10 secs with batter out), hard reset (holding volume down, power and home for 10 secs, 30 secs, hell even longer), removing all boards, visually checking all contacts and ICs etc, replaced the USB port circuit board (as my USB connection is sometimes dodgy anyway!!), powering up with various combinations of devices removed, nothing seemed to work, nothing.

My phone has a smashed screen(glass only), is out of warranty and was now running rooted with non stock ROM so I guessed that it was either going to join the rest of the corpses in the kitchen drawer or I was going to pay through the nose for a service center repair. Depressed about losing all my photos and getting a hard time from the wife about this I turned to Google looking for new contact deals on an S3 to cheer myself up.

I just could no bring myself to click on proceed in the shopping cart to order a new phone. One last go I thought, so I opened her up yet again bearing in mind that it was now approaching 11pm with work at 7 tomorrow!. I scanned the entire board again with a torch (new batteries this time!) and a magnifying glass (cleaned this time) then something caught my eye, down at the bottom right, a surface mount capacitor has what looks like maybe a tiny hairline crack, it just does not look right. After a consultation of the service manual downloaded previously it is capacitor C565 beside IC U503 and looks like it is something to do with the USB OTG function of the phone. Googled this chip along with the "galaxy s2" keywords and came across this:

"I am not allowed to post the link as I am a NOOB, sorry - google it"

Looks like this chap has water damaged his beloved and has found a similar issue. Processed this for a minute and decided to hunt out the soldering iron, nothing to lose and all that!! De-soldered the capacitor, bolted the phone together and pressed the power button.............................................could not believe my eyes, the big "S" logo suddenly appeared!! Almost did some cart wheels round the kitchen!!

Moral of the story I guess is that the power of the internet and the knowledge experience and advice from people on forums such as this can not be underestimated. This along with a bit of gambling, a little electronics knowledge, a steady hand and never throwing the towel in can pay off sometimes.

It was never about the money, or even the data on the phone, I guess it was about the phone itself and how attached you get to these things (how sad is that eh!!)

Anyway, happy ending, I do not know and to be honest do not even want to know what this capacitor does, all functions seem to work (have not tested USB OTG, not bothered about this)

Over and out..