yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III General] bicapa:
Hi from Spain,

As far I know by the hundred and hundred of posts, here and in the spanish web HTCMANIA, i think we never will know what is happening. I think that Samsung knows that a bit of phones sold have a manufactering defect but they cannot identify them or if they can, they don't want to show what's the fault involved.

¿Why?

Money. I imagine that Samsung can not assume a public scandal. The competitors (APPLE, HTC, LG, SONY) are ready to attack if Samsung shows any sign of weakness. I'm sure they are reading word by word of this posts.

But there are good news, too. If this fault is not really serious, If the ammount of phones involved are very few, Samsung will do nothing, like they are doing now. They repair the phone and done. Very silent. Without questions.

I hope not to be wrong...
[Galaxy S III General] saisrujan:
bldg. desteadm

That's one dooms-day prep capable of impressing the Mayans. I only wish I had read and understood the significance of this before my phone died.
[Galaxy S III General] Phillips139:
GS3 Sudden Death

Happened to mine today, got from Three UK on day launched.

Stock 4.21 ROM but rooted.

GTI-9300

Standard battery (also used generic with no previous troubles).

Can't access download, completely bricked.

Luckily have my old HTC Desire to fall back on as it's too late on Christmas Eve to get anything sorted tonight.

Three customer service were their usual helpful souls.
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
My RF cal 2012:5:31

This means am over 200 days of use..till now no problem and am on jb 4.1.2
[Galaxy S III General] whitebait:
Yeah, 3 were pretty useless when I spoke to them, first store had no loan handsets and suggested Samsung warranty would be a quicker route for repairs. 3 phone support said I HAD to go through them and it'd be at least two weeks, likely longer over Xmas. Second 3 store were more helpful but basically said it would take ages and is be better of going direct to Samsung if I had a spare handset to use... So off to Samsung it went, raised the ticket with them on 15th, got the prepaid package on weds and it got assigned to an engineer today. Can't imagine I'll get it back before new year. :(
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
Thanks for keepin hope ;)
[Galaxy S III General] NEMESIS_9000:
Motherboard replacement

Pretty scary thread... I hope I'm not affected, because my S3 had some slow downs for 2 weeks on Dolphin browser (could be just the app after an update) and videos lag/hang on the youtube app which bugs me. :(

By the way is there a chance to get downgraded (32 to 16 gb) when the motherboard gets replaced? Or do you get the exact same model (chip version / number), which can happen to be just as faulty as the last one?

Edit: I hope the problem gets identified and sorted out / fixed soon!
[Galaxy S III General] drraptor:
Post your details as mentioned in this thread. :)
[Galaxy S III General] Payman_92:
Guys, +1

One of my friends buy an S3 last night use for a while and battrey became to 10% then put it in charge and in the morning, the phone was dead (My friend doesn't know the android version).

Some people have problem with charging the phone, sometimes it take a long time to charge and sometimes it is fast (20-100%) with same wall plug, and the battery efficiency is different (60 percent of them get this problem after a week from the update).

I test one of my phones with different wall plugs and one with voltage controller and I'll let you know what's happened.

Just show me an app for seeing voltages and power infos from the phone.
[Galaxy S III General] nhariamine:
I'm really starting to worry about my international Pebble Blue galaxy s3, is this problem is only for branded s3's?? mine came unbranded "it didn't belong to any mobile operator" and i bought it in juin 2012 and still works fine.
[Galaxy S III General] ginhou:
Mee Tooo!

What happened - 12/21/2012 charging overnight into 12/22/2012 would not wake from sleep. Soft reset into initial splash screen, hang - won't enter recovery mode, just keeps rebooting and hanging at initial splash screen.

Where phone was made - "Made in China"

Where battery was made - "Cell made in Japan, Assembled in China"

What firmware you were running - Stock OTA 4.1.1, never rooted or flashed

Can you access download mode? - Yes, but cannot transmit files due to "partition table missing", and all available versions of Odin will either fail or hang at re-partition.

Of note, I think the phone may have been showing early signs of failure for the previous couple of weeks; it would fail to wake up after extended sleep periods - charging or not.
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
its not only branded phones we try to find out what is causing the problem so please report where your phone is made and where your battery is made, which version of android u use and how you charge your phone? do you turn it of all the time do you use flightmode at night? etc.. etc..
[Galaxy S III General] LBTaylor1984:
I know you guys are suggesting that the phone completely dies, however in the last 3 weeks mine has developed a screen flicker which creates the signal to go dead, which either rectifies itself or needs a restart. Does this sound like the same thing?
[Galaxy S III General] secable:
Hi there,

I come back on what i said before, about batt goes down due to some download app in background.

Today i ses my batt go from 80 to 10 in about 2 hours, just after rebooting phone.

I check again batt stats and saw again " multimedia" or "download" app for about 70% use batt.

My phone over heat in my pocket alone.

Maybe check that way, its enough strange to search on that Way.

This appears after either Samsung market update or 4.1.1 update.

If something like this happens all night long, maybe too more heat, then crash, and brick.
[Galaxy S III General] _delice_doluca_:
So, basicly the solders on the chip has no heat-proof even though the heat is under the risk temperature for the device. Again it looks like a manufacturing problem. Why put the best phone in a cheap plastic cover and solder it carelessly?
[Galaxy S III General] joonair:
hey guys this isn't really related but,

i'm buying an international gs3 in canada (if that even matters) really soon.

do you guys think this is a bad time to get one? the warranty is only 90 days long
[Galaxy S III General] jshashwat93:
I'm really worried. My phone has been lagging since a week and today had the charging issue. Plugged in my phone today and after 30 minutes the led was on but no response from home button or power button. And just previous night battery drained around 30 percent. My phone started again but I instantly turned it off as I was scared. My question is how much longer will my phone work till its blacked out? And do I need to unroot and return to stock and reset flash counter to retain my warranty before my phone bricks? If yes can someone tells me the steps. Thanks a lot
[Galaxy S III General] adityamgk:
I am from India. I have both the Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S3.

I have a galaxy s3 16gb pebble blue, bought it in september..Its fine going on well..According to what I see is it a faulty charger? Because from what I have read in this thread many of the users using S2 or some other lower amp charger are less prone to this problem. As you can see the charger ratings are as follows.

Galaxy S2 +12V: 0.7A (700mA)

Galaxy S3 +12V: 1.0A

From what I see, I guess this high current and overnight charging is causing this problem.
[Galaxy S III General] saisrujan:
Well, we have predominantly seen two possibilities:

The phone dies completely. Totally unresponsive. nobody will be able to read the flash counter because it's completely dead. So, if you end up with this case, Samsung will accept the phone under warranty IF they do not detect any water-logging (apparently the square at the bottom right corner underneath the battery turns pink if water seepage is detected).

The phone enters download mode, but wouldn't be able to flash. The flash counter will be accessible and there's a possibility that Samsung may deny warranty.

Nobody knows when your phone will die. We don't even know IF your phone is susceptible to this issue. So, if I were you, I'd go back to Samsung's official ROM and see if the phone gets back to normal. Again, in my case, I never rooted, never tinkered with the ROM and yet, it died on me.
[Galaxy S III General] nitinvaid:
What type of details ?
[Galaxy S III General] ManuC84:
My white European GT-I9300 bought in June has just died. I had it on my pocket with low battery, somewhere around 10%, I was going to put it to charge and it didn't turn on when I tried to wake it. It had stock ICS, my carrier has not released Jelly Bean yet. I was thinking on flashing a ROM this weekend and BAM! It didn't even give me a chance.

Couple of things. 1st I have an insurance with my carrier that replaces any broken or stolen phone, should I try talking to them or go to Samsung themselves? and 2nd , what if this just keeps happening to absolutely everybody? maybe those who haven't had it happened to them yet are just not at their time yet. I know I thought this was something happening to a few people only and yet look. How can we know if this is a generalized event or not?

Oh another thing, I've never had charge problems and my phone was working perfectly, no lags or any symptoms.
[Galaxy S III General] bala_gamer:
Sharing my saga here, few months back the mobile went dead with everything working few min back before dying, regardless of whatever I did it didn't turned on. It was dead for around an hour, Finally as a last step I put it in charge for around 45mins and voila it turned on, no issues so far:cool:

Maybe you people should try charging it for sometime, it may help.

《posted from samsung rom》
[Galaxy S III General] c_codrut:
I confirm the problem with charging, i have just unplugged the charger and from 5 to 100% took 5h and 20min. Other days it needs about 3 hours. No heat observed, just different times of charge.For me it is the first device that have this problem and i had/have a lot including other Samsung products. This problem was with stock 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 now as well.
[Galaxy S III General] drraptor:
Those mentioned in original/first post + H/W revision etc

---------- Post added at 10:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 AM ----------

Post your details
[Galaxy S III General] ManuC84:
Crazy update!!!!!!!!!!! After all night of meddling with the phone in hopes of resurrecting it, plugging it through USB, holding all button combinations for a while, taking battery out and putting it on again, and anything else you can imagine, someone suggested I held power+home buttons for 5 seconds. I had done that so I disregarded the suggestion as silly but my desperation made me try once again and 5 seconds passed nothing, I kept them held and I don't know if it was 30 or more seconds but the phone turned on!!!!!!!!!!! I must add that I had it plugged in to the charger when I tried this.

I mean of course knowing beforehand about all the sudden death situation I naturally thought I was one more biting the dust, but the most interesting thing is, could it be that all phones would turn on if people held home+power for at least 1 minute? Has someone tried that? I mean I had tried holding them for a good while before and nothing happened but then on this last try it did.

I am utterly confused.
[Galaxy S III General] dli7319:
For those of you in the United States who have had theirs replaced, what did you do? Does samsung uk (or whatever country) offer repair under warranty if you bought it in the U.S.A? Do they want to see invoice? return shipping cost? Just wondering
[Galaxy S III General] radeonxt:
my unit is from 1st batch here in my country.

i overcharge my phone when i fall asleep BUT i'm charging it from laptop's usb.

i have rarely used the included 1Ampere charger. i only use it for emergency purposes like i need to up the battery charge from low to medium fast.

hope i can contribute.

if i were to avoid this

1. for those who use custom kernels, i'd set back the voltage settings for charging back to default.

2. make sure don't turn off screen when charging in settings > developer options is turned off.

3. don't use the 1A charger when charging at night.

4. use the slow chargers .7A if there is no need for immediate use.

5. only use the fast charger 1A if you need to use the phone heavily immediately.
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
In your case u gotta try the JTAG solution
[Galaxy S III General] gauravinvouge:
hi, i read ur views n frankly speaking can you please elaborate how water can seep into the phone....i mean genuninly please tell me because i was told abouth that square on my phone has changed color but what the hell did i do for water to enter there and also i earlier gave it to another customer care centre and i had no knowledge of that square.so my point is how do i be sure that it's my fault and not samsung's......attributing it to water damage is the easiest thing samsung can do right now.

one point is that my screen was damaged in the first month of purchase but even then the phone was working fine...so for anything samsung claims that my warranty is as such null and void but screen damage is one thing and motherboard failure different.......plz guide me
[Galaxy S III General] emreeken:
My S3 is back from service after one week. They said, new software installed. No hardware change. My phone is formatted and IMEI is the same. But WiFi MAC address changed, so I suspect that they changed the motherboard and rewrited the IMEI.
[Galaxy S III General] kusuriurikun:
And as a point of reference (and hopefully the Sick Solder Syndrome or Sick Chip Syndrome is NOT occuring in non-Exynos GS3s):

Haven't yet seen any reports of Sudden Galaxy Death Syndrome yet with US GS3s not using the Exynos chip, and the GS3 I have (which uses an S4 Snapdragon chip) seems to have an entirely different EMMC than reported with unwell GS3s so far. (The Sprint version of the GS3 in particular uses MAG4FB, FwRev: 0xf7--IF there are reports to come in with S4-based GS3s, this points almost exclusively to Sick Solder Syndrome, aka the issues with solder joints that caused Red Ring of Death Syndrome in Xbox360s. If the problem is largely restricted to international GS3s, however, this points to an EMMC bug, as you noted. It's also entirely possible both syndromes could be occurring.)
[Galaxy S III General] nitinvaid:
If u don't turn of your screen it will result in screen burn

---------- Post added at 07:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:47 AM ----------

Is my device is also going to be dead
[Galaxy S III General] ivan4o5:
Let me share my theory with you guys . Dont laugh :D !

A lot of the cases have occured during overnight charge . Lets asume the chargers are faulty . Over the night , the electricity has a little more power ( I mean around 12am - 5 am )because there are not as much users as during the day and ... you've got the point . Maybe we should charge our S3 via USB from the PC :/ .
[Galaxy S III General] ragnan86:
Hi all,

Below are the details of my phone. I have faced sudden blue screen displays and 2 random reboots till now. I am not sure if these are signs but could anyone tell if my phone falls in the alleged faulty batch/chip series?

NOTE: I DID ENOUGH SEARCHING BEFORE POSTING HERE BUT IS STILL CONFUSING.
[Galaxy S III General] drraptor:
If does die, please also post the details both the current and repaired. And Point Samsung India's Service to this thread instead of paying Rs 8000. :) Do a regular backup of your data. and enjoy the holidays.
[Galaxy S III General] ragnan86:
Will do that.. But do you know if my chip series comes under the reported faulty ones?
[Galaxy S III General] drraptor:
Can't say for sure but You can read Entroy512's reply
[Galaxy S III General] namirm:
galaxy S3 dying

I had the same problem with my galaxy S3 ,the day before it died the screen flickered for 2 minutes then froze,I had to take out the battery to reset,next day I charged the phone overnight, in the morning it failed to boot. I had to send it back to Samsung for repairs ( 2 weeks!).

The worrying thing is that apparently there is a problem with the motherboard or the NAND memory(whatever that is) and Samsung is fixing the dead S3's with the same components so I would expect my S3 to die again in the next 4-6 months !!!

Samsung should come clean and tell us where the problem is, they should also replace the malfunctioning components with new parts that would solve the problem rather than a temporary fix as they appear to be doing.

Come on Samsung be fair to your customers.
[Galaxy S III General] deorext:
dead s3 here in malaysia

i got my s3 about 5 months ago and 23dec after my over night charge...

suddenly in the noon my phone cant turn on from sleep...

took out the battery and managed to turn it on...

but 2 hours later it happens again and now it is completely cannot turn on....

sent to Samsung Service Centre and fxxk them up yesterday!

hopefully can get a replacement set by tomorrow!
[Galaxy S III General] Payman_92:
Clear phone memory (RAM) before plug the charger, If you see problem again let Me know.

Do you have this problem with android 4.0.4?
[Galaxy S III General] JepeP:
Ok, funny things ...

I have 2 GS3, the one which died 4 days ago (4/12) and a new one (11/12).

When the older GS3 died, i tried to charge the battery in my new one.

Battery was nearly empty at that time.

Charging worked, was 100% when i put the battery back in my old and broken GS3.

2 days later, i tried again to Switch the batteries of the two phones.

Battery of the broken GS was absolutely empty!

The phone ist dead, was never switched on since the charging and drained the battery from 100% to 0% within 2 days.

So, what does that mean?

An absolutely dead and non-responding phone drains the battery in 2 days.

Guys, can anybody explain this?

This must be a severe hardware fault - there must be a "short circuit" which drains battery while its dead and off.

What do you think?
[Galaxy S III General] c_codrut:
I canot say because I had 4.0.4 for about 10 minutes, the phone updated via kies immediately after the purchase in mid november.

Will do that thing with RAM and post here . Thank You for tip.
[Galaxy S III General] shethsa:
Anybody try going back to ics and seeing if symptoms persist?

After replacement of my motherboard my problems seem to have increased. Extremely fast battery discharge (8-10 hrs max battery life), frequent shutdown of camera app, more heating when phone is idle, etc. Seriously disappointed with this phone now. Getting on my nerves.
[Galaxy S III General] nom76s:
Dead Galaxy S3 - Samsung Service Centre replaced the Motherboard and Camera

What happened - I purchased the phone on 15th June 2012 and booted it first on the same day. It worked fine until the early morning of 18th November 2012 (After exactly 156 days). The previous night after the battery was down to almost 5% I connected it to the Samsung's charger and when I got up at 4 am to check any new notifications found out that the phone is completely dead; not responding at all even after removing the battery and putting it back won't help a bit.

Where phone was made - I purchased it in Saudi Arabia from Jarir Bookstore with Samsung's 12 months warranty. It is made in Vietnam by Samsung.

Where battery was made - Battery cell is made in Korea Assembled in Vietnam.

What firmware you were running - Stock Touchwiz Nature UI. Never rooted or hacked it.

Can you access download mode? - No. What is it? I am not aware of it!

I went to the Samsung Service Center and they took the device and after 4 days the Service Center employee returned it back to me telling me that he has replaced the motherboard and camera as he found them to be completely damaged.

Now the worry is that if Samsung has replaced the new but same faulty motherboard then I should expect the same thing to happen after about 5 months. Should I change my phone with some other model? Worried!!
[Galaxy S III General] Gillion:
Even if they replace the mainboard with the same type of board it may not fail.

The newer boards with the same components would have been properly soldered.

Bad solder joints can cause these issues. This issues seems like samsung has a bad or weak solder formula or reflow bath in the manufacturing process.

Even so if this happens in 6 months it would be horrific for samsung as droves of us would abandon them for sony... or the google "x phone".

6 months is good enough time.

If they have not revised the mainboard (rev 0.3 to rev 0.4 for example) it means poor building of the board (solder) or bad batch of passive or active components (capacitor or voltage regulator for example)

Just my ¥200
[Galaxy S III General] JepeP:
When the problem ist the bad soldering of the eMMC - why does a completely dead SGS3 drain the battery so that it is empty after 2 days?

Any explanation?
[Galaxy S III General] Reb00tas:
Cwm

Mine died after 183 days. Just turned off when i was talking in phone. And after show batteri is empty. But i Can force it to try boot by. Hold volume up - Home and power button. And choose reb00t device in cwm. Its trying to boot. But screen flicker and freeze and stop freezing again. After 10 min it freeze 100% i hope they fix it or atleast replace with gs4 next year
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
Guys i hear more about updates and software conflicts that may cause this deaths..

Listen to my story that hold me busy for 3 days long......

I flashed some rom because i love to.... i try Darky, didnt like the lock screen rotation and some other things so i switched to omega rom, then try some other roms and then i had the problem that my phone didn't wake up from deep sleep, had to reboot every time, sometimes the phone rebooted itself. flashed stock rom from sammobile wiped everything that you possibly can wipe in cwm recovery.... for couple of 10 times!! realy!

But the problem remained, I searched and found that init.d could be conflicting..... but when you wipe everything it must be clean..... did that again for 10 times, flashed some init clean script zip files, and flashed different stock roms, sometimes with pit sometimes without...... nothing helped and the problem remains.......

Asked some very experienced developers on this forum and on the CM Teamhacksung support. they all said when you wipe everything and flash a stock rom you phone must be clean there is nothing that can remain... again did that. nothing works.... so i thought it might be an hardware problem but i didn't believe that because everything else was fine except the USB mount didn't work (odin does work!) and the phone doesn't respond when it the screen was of for 10 seconds or more... sometimes reboot itself.....

I was complete hopeless and went to the Samsung service center (a Vodafone store) the guy did not look at the phone and said liquid damage.... :eek: then he looked and then he said o no its only dust in your USB ..... oke he said i need to send it for repair this and that...

Then i asked if he would try to flash the software first, he said oke no problem i use factory software he said ... i said odin yes yes he said.... oke nice :D ( i did resetted my flash counter:p) then he flashed my phone with not a single file we download on sammobile but with 3 different files and a PIT file.

after the flash everything works fine!!!!! :laugh: HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE???

and trust me i did everything possible to do.. Have 3 years experience in flashing Samsung devices.

also try to flash 4.0.4 and update trough ota tot 4.1.1 that also didnt help ....
[Galaxy S III General] Dean-xXx:
Very interesting story..