[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Greengas424:
Samsung Galaxy Note II Hardware fail

Robobob, I have no idea of what happened to the phone, but it wasn't instantaneous. The first sign was that it failed to respond to the power button on the side. I had just landed in NRT, and had gotten connected to Docomo's LTE service, and checked the status of my luggage, so I know it worked. Next I attempted to use MAPS to check the traffic back to Yokohama - but the line started moving so I tried to shut off the screen. It wouldn't shut off, so into my pocket it went. After we picked up luggage, I realized the screen was still on, but was unresponsive to any buttons at all. That was indication #1.

Indication #2: after I took out the battery to reset and restart it, it would not get past the DOCOMO initial boot-up screen. Over and over - no joy. Finally, I started the button combo - and finally found the volume down-home-power combo worked - and gave me a white screen with very fine color squiggles all over it - but nothing else. With that screen on, I could hit another set of combinations that put me in the Odin download mode, so I thought I was clear to reflash and fix it.

Not so. Apparently, this fault (remember, this is a STOCK, Unflashed, Unrooted, virgin SC-02E) has literally wrecked the PIT and any other required systems, or has created a hardware fault where NO version of Odin will get past the PIT file. Even when I try to load a replacement PIT, it fails, meaning to me that that path or circuit in the phone is fried.

This is what bothers me the most - I'm not the only one that I've seen on this forum that has had this happen. I've counted about 5 folks, all different, that have presented the same problem, and ultimately, they had to take the phone to Docomo. While it is under warranty, Docomo does not FIX anything - they just give you a new phone, and you're on your own to restore it. In my case, I can't restore it because it wasn't being backed up to Google, and not being rooted, I couldn't use any of the much better backup systems.

Moreover, if this phone is this prone to spontaneous catastrophic failure, I question whether or not I want to do this again - and rely on a piece of plastic electronic computing hardware with all my financial, photographic, and other information, not to mention my carefully-assembled set of apps that I often use, including all my maps (OSM+) which are now toast.

I do not think if I had USB debugging selected on my phone, but adb can't see it. I suspect that is due more to the fact that the phone is not booting up at all - while the PC recognizes the phone is connected, ADB can't see it, meaning to me that not enough of the phone is running for it to even query the phone to see who it is. I don't know - debugging may work at a much lower level than I think, but either way, it does not respond. I am pretty sure this phone's hardware has a fault.

Which brings me back to my earlier statement - it is now time to reevaluate these hand-held, expensive, but very vulnerable, fickle, and now, undependable computers and decide if I want to go through this again. I have a Nokia N900 that runs Maemo - it has yet to crash and burn like this one, and it's kernel is completely open source. It's rooted from the factory, as a matter of fact. The only problem is that it is slow. Vip is looking at the OPO - I may go that route as well, seeing that my only option now is to go back to Docomo and get a new phone that is wiped clean, unrooted, and hopefully will work for another 2 years like this one before it crashes. Thanks for the comments and the interest.

Steve