yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III General] Vrykyl:
Well mine has now made the transition from "part death" of only getting to splash screen, to "complete death" - it now wont power on at all.

Battery is fully charged (I have 2 batteries and a separate charger / dock), nothing has changed in the last few hours - its been sat on my desk with no battery in at all - so I think its safe to say the download mode only 'product name = blank' issue is definitely a precursor to gs3 sudden death...
[Galaxy S III General] Rob2222:
Thats my opinion since the beginning of these symptoms.

This is the same problem, just different stages of dead memory.

Sometimes the bad memory is still "good enough" to load the bootloader and that's it.

At least that's what I think.

BR

Rob
[Galaxy S III General] sale52:
I have read every single post on this thread tonight and really worried and scared about my S3. I have bought a phone from ebay and so far had no problems at all but there was no receipt so was wondering would I be still eligible for repair if mine also dies?
[Galaxy S III General] eksasol:
Of course, send it to Samsung and fork out the cash.
[Galaxy S III General] Vrykyl:
So anyone on here using Twitter? Try hitting up your regional @Samsung twitter account with your symptoms and #gs3suddendeath

See if we cant get a proper acknowledgment from them about what is obviously becoming a pretty common issue after 6+ months of heavy use...
[Galaxy S III General] JohnM1973:
If it happens before the end of May 2013 they can't say you have no warranty anyway, as the phone will have only been out a year by then. If it happens now, then to me, it should be repaired under warranty as it could only at most be about 6 and a half months old.

I don't know if I'm getting paranoid about this sudden death issue, but my phone is acting strange today. Had a call, by the time I had got to the phone, it had stopped ringing. Thought I would check to see who the missed call was, only to find the caller had not rang off, but the phone had answered the call and put it to speaker phone too! Bit spooky :eek:
[Galaxy S III General] sefuwl:
My S3 died this morning :(

I woke up and the charging light was still orange, I thought that was strange as it should of done a full charge overnight. So I hit the home power to wake it up and nothing.

Tried taking the battery out, tried download and recovery mode, no luck :(

About 2 weeks ago it suddenly stopped working, it showed no sign of life so I took the battery out and that did the trick.

Leading up to the sudden death, I change from official Australian 4.0.4 rom to official UK 4.1.1 rom, I had that on for about 3 days but noticed that everytime it reached about 70% battery the phone would restart itself, it was a little hotter than normal too. I put this down to me using it abit more because of the new features in JB and didn't think too much of it.

Last night, I decided to change the CSC to UK and factory reset the phone. Spent a few hours setting up the phone again, did a quick test to see if the phone would restart at 70% mark in which it didn't, then put it to charge and went to sleep. That was the last I saw my phone alive :(

Not rooted

Not overclocked

Just flashed from AU to UK rom

6 Months old in 1 weeks time.

Back to Samsung it goes :(
[Galaxy S III General] nailrik:
So upset

2 weeks already without my s3, sent it to samsung service center and they told me it will be fixed under warranty within 3 days. Then when I called them last week asking if I can retrieve it, they said they mistaken when ordering the spare part and so I asked if it's the problem with the motherboard, they have no idea whatsoever. They asked for another week time, I said 'fine but I won't make anymore call. Next time I go there, I want to find my s3 fixed and ready to bring home, or I'll file official complaint to your HQ."

Now, even if I got the phone back and good, I'm seriously considering to put it on ebay right away. I can just imagine how angry I will be if the phone goes wrong again in 6 months time and no more warranty that time. Since I bought the S3, I love everything about the phone but unfortunately after this experience, we have to part ways :(
[Galaxy S III General] faheemakbar18:
I think its happening with s3s of old batch. Anyone s3 of color except white and pebble blue got dead
[Galaxy S III General] iridaki:
I have experienced something similar. When using Instagram to shoot a photo, screen became unresponsive and a few minutes later phone rebooted and got stuck in the boot logo. Pulling and inserting the battery back fixed it though.

Now to the "sudden death" matter, my phone is only a few weeks old and this thread is giving me goosebumps!! I mostly charge it via USB on my PC or laptop, because the phone gets much less hot while charging. Of course when I'm in a hurry I just plug it on the wall but never leave it overnight. Maybe charging habits have nothing to do with sudden death but even so, conditioning the battery is important in the long run.

iR¡D@k!* from i9300 via Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III General] xbizkuit:
stick this thread!!!
[Galaxy S III General] Mcelli:
It's nothing good seeing these reports :eek:
[Galaxy S III General] Vrykyl:
Ok quick update from me -

rang samsung uk service line this morning (very friendly), and was told to take the phone down to a 'Tier 2' repair center 2 miles from me.

Took the phone in, service guys had it approx 1 hour - came back and said they'd managed to get the phone to power on (apparently the power button was stuck down on the inside?) but that they had been unable to restore the phone past download mode due to a fault with the internal memory (something I already knew due to other posts on here).

They then (quite rudely) informed me that as the download mode said "System Status: Custom" I was no longer entitled to a warranty anyway, and they weren't prepared to handle the problem any further - I was on my own.

Went home, rang samsung uk again and had a rant about the tier 2 guys and a hardware fault supposedly not being covered, EU law and not being a tech noob -

The guy on the phone was great, said they were encountering this problem with early GS3's A LOT, and not to worry, rooted / custom rom'd or not they'd send me out a prepaid envelope in the post - send the phone off in it to a 'Tier 3' service center, and that they'd replace under warranty what was most likely dodgy nand memory with a new motherboard.

Obviously it still remains to be seen how they actually handle the fault once the phone is sent off (or if the envelope ever arrives) - but at least I've actually heard first hand that SamsungUK know full well there's a problem, and exactly what the cause is...

Will update as things progress
[Galaxy S III General] lockmunk:
my phone already 1 week at centre..they said to replace the motherboard..

im using s3 pebble blue,1st batch at malaysia..

the problem is:

stuck at samsung logo,cannot enter cwm..

can enter download mode,but cannot flash anything...
[Galaxy S III General] Criminal23:
Status from me:

First I had "Sudden Death Mode"

Mean no respons at any. No LED if plug power cable, no res with full 2. accu, no res with J-Tag - nothing.

I rooted and flash my phone, and couldn't reset counter because of no resp.

Send it to w-support.de (I'm german).

After 6 Days it come back - repaired!

Everything fine now!

With no cost for me!

Criminal23
[Galaxy S III General] UncleBeer:
Wha-? It's a customer's right to assume a product will perform reliably for more than 6 months. Since Samsung has utterly failed in this regard, due to their own design flaw which they're taking their sweet time to rectify, I think righteous outrage is fully justified.

And as to your opinion of what's appropriate to post here ... :rolleyes:
[Galaxy S III General] bobolobo:
Sudden death - totally dead

I have searched the thread but couldent find an answer, so i hope someone will enlighten me.

Today my phone died, like completely. It wont turn on, go to download mode, it wont even charge. I contacted Samsung who said they need to replace the motherboard. My question is, can they see that i have been rooted and have custom ROM when it is completely dead(the answers i found was only for bootlooping/constant freeze)?..
[Galaxy S III General] Kangburra:
If it is completely dead they can't tell, they will swap the board and send it back.
[Galaxy S III General] ForbEx:
what Firmware did you have?
[Galaxy S III General] pickandwhammy:
If you can't go to download mode neither can they. Chances of detection are very slim, assuming of course you haven't overlooked anything (like battery having shorted).
[Galaxy S III General] bobolobo:
Not sure, but i think it was the stable 4.1 cyanogenmod.

Thank you for the answer!.. I were just worried that the flash counter or something was not on the main board :).. I will send my almost 1 year old galaxy in tomorrow because we got two years warrenty in my country on hardware failure (not including things such as batteries) :)...
[Galaxy S III General] shrome99:
After reading this, and the other Sudden death thread, I'm pretty confused. Samsung says that XXELLA (and above) fixed the issue, yet people claim to have bricks after updating. What's going on? I'm on stock XXELLC, never rooted, (baseband DDELK1) and the only thing stopping me from it is this. I don't trust the replacement system in my country one bit :p Can someone explain the situation?
[Galaxy S III General] samydroid:
XXELLA does seem to fix the SDS. But for some people damage done already is too much to be fixed. Probably thats why they die even after upgrading.
[Galaxy S III General] zerocool-G:
Guys just want to ask/ confirm if a im safe? Bootloader - i9300XXALE9

ROM - AnonoRom V23

Kernel - perseus alpha 32

Baseband - i9300XXELL4

Recovery - Phil recovery...
[Galaxy S III General] htcsnap93:
Think about it. It has nothing to do with luck, the 32gb board doesnt have the SDS thats why they are replacing it with a 32gb. They know it.

---------- Post added at 07:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:44 PM ----------

This is not SDS. Doesnt have the same symptomps. Ever heard what the word DEAD means ? Right 0% life. Your motherboard was still working therefore it was not SDS and you payed. Do you live in europe ?
[Galaxy S III General] wednesday13:
Umm really? They're still experiencing sudden death unfortunately.

Do you know why they are swapping it from 16gb to 32gb? Cause they have no f*kin clue how to solve it. If that's a software issue they could just swap a new and update it to latest version
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
For anyone confused as to why ELLA+ don't fix SDS (for a lot of people), it's because SDS is a process that takes place over time. SDS is like cancer; if you don't fix it right away, there will come a certain point where the damage is done and all you can do is wait for the eMMC chip to finally give out.
[Galaxy S III General] htcsnap93:
Bad comparison, having a family member with cancer who has been at the hospital for a year, that was 6 years ago. She is now declared clear.

Choose your words more wisely next time, if you said decease it would have been enough.
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Sorry, it was the best comparison I could think of given the concept of how the problem works. Alright, it's like putting low-grade gas in your car for as long as you own it, and then when it starts to show signs of giving out, you switch to better grade gas, hoping it will fix the problem.
[Galaxy S III General] kaspervkristensen:
Sv: **Ultimate GS3 sudden death thread**

i got no sds and my phone is from may with firmware from 13/4 2012 so its not all suffer from sds
[Galaxy S III General] mhoysmerize:
So guys......it means that any samsung galaxy s3 with 32 gb is safe from SDS?
[Galaxy S III General] Infy_AsiX:
I'm sick of constant freezes so I'm going back to unpatched kernel and waiting for the death. If it dies it's ok under warranty and then ill decide what to do. Maybe the patch works without issue on new devices.

?????? Galaxy S3 ??????
[Galaxy S III General] Glebun:
the comparison stands. your family member's cancer was treated right away. if it was done later, there would be little to no chance
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
That was my reasoning. I didn't want to argue back to keep it civil. I have no idea who you are or that a family member had cancer. I'm glad they pulled through. That being said, I don't think it's entirely fair that you (the original guy who replied to me) is offended by my post, as I didn't say anything offensive. Glebun's post was exactly what I was trying to convey.
[Galaxy S III General] Kangburra:
How is talking about death better than cancer? The point was/is the phone can be dying slowly over time. Maybe it is too late when the fix is applied, maybe not.
[Galaxy S III General] Alf0903:
Think of it as this:

You just have a brand new Ferrari (being your device) with a perfectly healthy engine (your eMMC chip), but you always have it fueled in the very same fuel sation, not knowing the fuel delivered to your car is damaging your car's engine (the fuel being the fault eMMC chip Fw), after 150 days or so your find that you have been damaging your engine by using faulty fuel, and your engine won't dye if you change the fuel station, but by doing so you are not reverting back the damage has already been done.

If you flash the safe stuff to your device, it won't be fixed, it has already been said, that the ROM, Kernel, and recovery are in fact jus a work around the faulty FW, so the damge has been done, so I would advise to wait for the unavoidable, and once your device has been fixed, then use the vaccine, in a perfectly healthy device.
[Galaxy S III General] sak500:
Next time use AIDS reference. All S3 16 gb from last year have HIV most get full blown AIDS some will not but still have the virus. Samsung found temp cure to prolong HIV from developing AIDS
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Yeah, but then someone with HIV/AIDS will get offended that I said that.

But well all understand how it works. There's irreversible damage being done, and when a certain percentage of the chip is damaged, it dies completely. Done. I just wanted to given an easy-to-understand analogy, as that's what I do best.

Moving on.
[Galaxy S III General] Infy_AsiX:
But what if the fix prevents damage by freezing. So if a new or repaired phone still has the faulty firmware it may suffer from constant freezing.

The fix itself is troublesome. If the chip is damaged the freezes are considered a broken device but can't be proven under warranty thus saving Samsung repair costs.

It's still yet to be seen if the fix fixes new phones or will just cause freezes to prevent damage. In any case Samsung is taking the cheapest approach to the problem with no real solution evident except for the case of new phones with new firmware.

Also on a non patched kernel I just got a couple of freezes that unfroze a minute after. Is it possible the fix changed it's operation and I'm stuck with a freezing device that won't die thus no warranty cover?

?????? Galaxy S3 ??????
[Galaxy S III General] offgrey:
Umm that's why I said WORKAROUND. Not a cure, not a solution, a workaround. You know why they swap it from 16gb to 32gb? It's because sometimes they run out of their stock no-imei (therefore your old imei number can be written over it) 16gb boards. Some, if not most, of the service centers have a quota to fix x devices by x days, so that's what they do.

and it's already been explained why there are still some people on XXELLA (or any 4.1.2 stock firmware) get the problem.
[Galaxy S III General] aalvico:
Today phone started to freeze a lot.... sometimes back after 10 minutes sometimes rebooted ...getting worse and worse (with safe kernel and recovery). i had no problems before... and had a long time the internal memory was close to full...yesterday I moved some files to sd to get more space (just things i downloaded) and had the first freeze.....

I had a hope with a full wipe it would get better...but it doesnt... freezed when in use and when went to stand by.

Fortunatelly was possible to use triangle away and flash stock rom back....but after some happy minutes it froze again...i waited like 20 minutes and no response so forced reboot removing the battery....after boot i tried factory reset.

By now stop freezing but since i have the insane chip not sure how long it will work....

Edit:

Back to problems... that theory that wait to unfreeze make it get better is not working for me yet
[Galaxy S III General] wednesday13:
So you're fine with the workaround since you still got 8 months warranty left. What if your phone died after the warranty?
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Just so you know, EU/UK Galaxy S3 i9300 has a 2 YEAR warranty. The seller I bought it from is in Germany and they told me the first time I sent it to them to send to a repair shop. You can even look it up. I believe it's on Samsung's website as well. So we're good until the Galaxy S5.
[Galaxy S III General] rezapatel:
Stupid assumption, but like I said just an assumption.

I believe the eMMC is the internal memory, example the 16 GB? If we use the script that swaps the internal and external memories, will I be (assuming) correct that the wear and the possibility of frequent read / write on the internal memory / eMMC will be almost negligible?

Or is the eMMC the partition where the ROM lives?

Sorry if this is an extremely stupid assumption.

Thanks!

Sent from my Galaxy S3

---------- Post added at 03:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:23 PM ----------

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1772234

[MOD][8DEC] ExtSd2InternalSd v5|Increase your data storage|100% Working|

Sharing the link for the memory swap thread that I refer to on my post.

Sent from my Galaxy S3
[Galaxy S III General] dr.ketan:
I think same thing was on xda news portal and elite developer, I forget full name of him (Adam something) have already been partially succeed to try booting device from external SD, but when i read his article, he said it may takes some weeks to fully test
[Galaxy S III General] camil:
it's supposed to be safe since it has a different eMMC type
[Galaxy S III General] philgalaxs3:
Not stupid but not sufficient :(

This mod moves data and user apps to external sd but SDS affects part of internal memory ("system" partitions) which is (and can) NOT be moved to external . It s a shame ...
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
It'll also result in overall slowdown since internal storage is faster than most memory cards.
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
....and /data/app and data/data is never going to fill the 11.35 GB of the /data partition, so its gaining space but wasting space at the same time.
[Galaxy S III General] philgalaxs3:
I would add if a slowdown would have avoid SDS it would have been interesting ... but unfortunately it s not the case ..
[Galaxy S III General] stetman:
sds solved after 4 weeks next problem

Got my s3 back from repair after4 weeks :) home button doesn't work. Again 4 weeks for repair :(

Thankyou Samsung
[Galaxy S III General] ForbEx:
That situation is so scary. I have the same experiences with sgs 2

Sent from my GT-N7100 using paid Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III General] pickandwhammy:
I like your sine-wave smiley system :p
[Galaxy S III General] behemot24:
Did you try to flash the latest ROM?
[Galaxy S III General] offgrey:
Actually, I've got no warranty. My unit's a gray market phone. So I will have a huge problem if my phone dies. But you're missing my point. They've found a way to at least keep the phone running even if it goes through the sudden death sequence. It's a pretty crappy exchange but it's better than nothing. Theoretically they could update the internal emmc firmware to 0fx7 (which, iirc, is not affected) but as Entropy and other senior elite developers have said, that's actually opening all 0fx1 phones up to possible hardbrick... Which frankly would not be worth it. Call me an optimist, but I do think Samsung will eventually find a way to fix (not just workaround) the problem.
[Galaxy S III General] aalvico:
After a day freezing a lot (even after full wipe and go back to stock rom) and like suggested waiting it goes back (around 20 minutes everytime which made the phone almost unusable) today I had the same only three times in the morning ....and then finally 12 hours without problems ...hopefully phone is fixing itself
[Galaxy S III General] Infy_AsiX:
my freezes are fairly random while playing a game I play a lot., highly annoying and frustrating. It does tend to happen soon after usage after idling but can happen hours into use too. My freezes only last a few minutes and I've let a couple dozen resume but there's no change to them. I doubt there's any fixing going on.

I'm desparate for a fix in trying the one from the freeze thread now which hasn't helped. I can't prove mine to warranty but in your case it's so frequent you should get that replaced.

?????? Galaxy S3 ??????
[Galaxy S III General] scottcwhite:
Interesting, mine just bit the dust shortly after using tibu to clean cache. Can anyone provide guidance on having Samsung fix it. I obviously can't take an international s3 bought off Ebay 8 months ago into att. Sorry for any ignorance but having a $500 brick has me quote depressed today
[Galaxy S III General] Kjc99:
Is yours a gt-I9300 international or an at&t model?

Edit oops never mind... But I do not think titanium backup has anything to do with Sudden death because a lot of non rooted handsets also dropped dead...
[Galaxy S III General] UncleBeer:
Yep; that was my quote re: TiBu. Post #15 in a thread that now contains 4,229 posts. Clearly much has been learned since then. ;)
[Galaxy S III General] ajobbins:
Got my phone back yesterday. Took 6 business days (excluding drop off day) to repair (Via Samsung Customer Services Plaza in Melbourne, Australia). They replaced the motherboard as expected. Came back with Jelly Bean 4.1.2 so hopefully it's all good now.

Repair notes also state "Customer received ACL letter through us" – but I have no idea what they mean by that. I have no 'letters' from them.
[Galaxy S III General] mikey_sam:
was is it the 16gb model? if you could, can you check the manufacturing month on the box?

Thanks
[Galaxy S III General] stenk:
Hi guys since a few weeks ago my phone started freezing and whenever it freezes i get no response from the home button and the power button when i take my battery out the phone restarts without any problems, i am running rom omega v40 so my kernal isXxema2, i have the faulty emmc chip, is my phone about to die on me?
[Galaxy S III General] camil:
no one can tell for sure, but be prepared just in case it will die
[Galaxy S III General] chrisgeller:
I bought my phone secondhand, will it still be covered by the UK 2 year warranty? Am trying to find a Samsung accredited repairer that's open on a Sunday (and failing), but if it's not covered I'd just claim on insurance.

My phone is completely dead btw, no light, no charging.
[Galaxy S III General] pickandwhammy:
I don't see why they'll reject warranty as long as you have the purchase invoice. In fact all S3s in the world are under warranty now, it's not been a year since launch, so technically the question shouldn't even arise.
[Galaxy S III General] Kangburra:
I think you will need Proof Of Purchase, otherwise they could repair a stolen one, as long as you provide that it should be fairly easy.
[Galaxy S III General] Madarox:
I got the faulty emmc chip on my 16gb sgs3,I bought it last October.Yesterday,I made sure that every part of my device's software got the so-called sds fix(tho I updated to 4.1.2 last month but I wasn't rooted yet).I never had any freezing problems but I did have problems with charging over night a couple of times.It's most likely caused by the wall plug which my wall charger doesn't fit in well(It takes me a while to properly connect the charger to it) and I find the device not connected if I had a problem with charging.I don't know if I should unroot just in case my gs3 died I can repair it under warranty or do you think my device is no longer affected by the sds ?