yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III General] atcasanova:
What happened

I woke up this morning and my phone was stuck at the boot logo (Samsung Galaxy GT-i9300). It wasn't even plugged to the charger.

If i plug it to the charger, the battery animation pops up, but no "green" filling it.

Where phone was made

brazil

Where battery was made

korea

What firmware you were running

Stock 4.1.1 rooted + clockwork mode

Can you access download mode?

Yes, but when I try to flash another rom using odin or heimdall I get the message: "Re-Partition operation failed." if using a .pit file or "There is no PIT partition." if not using .pit file

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2066557

in this thread i provide more details about my problem

I think it's about time to send it to samsung.
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
Yes strange things in this topic. I think its software that causes this overheating and in combination with charging overnight it heats up to much for to long and then phones get bricked ... :good:

SO keep an eye of your cpu and your temp and hopefully nothing happens to your phones
[Galaxy S III General] atcasanova:
sorry to disappoint you, my phone wasn't hot or even charging when bricked :)
[Galaxy S III General] gauravinvouge:
hi i got my motherboard changed from samsung india and i'm posting pics of the damaged motherboard.I was told that it's a case of water damage plz guide me...
[Galaxy S III General] demirisdemir:
Do we have any signs of conclusion?

Is it better to be on lattest samsung firmware 4.0.4/4.1.1/4.1.2 rooted/non-rooted, or is it better to be on cm9/cm10/cm10.1?
[Galaxy S III General] nitinvaid:
the board chips looks totally fried
[Galaxy S III General] mihqke:
Same here.

dimi22, if you read this thread then you see that there is no pattern in used software. We have seen this problem with stock 4.0.4, 4.1.1, rooted versions and with flashed ROM's.
[Galaxy S III General] Mister B:
That board looks cooked to death, certainly not water.

They are either stupid or lying scammers (probably the latter)
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
No but there is software heating up the phone, can't be something else... so many people reporting it while charging overnight.

People who have bricked phones not while charging, could be overheated before.... very likely that it bricks some time.
[Galaxy S III General] mihqke:
I took charger out 9AM and my phone bricked 5PM. Also I used my phone all day without any signs of some failure or something like that.
[Galaxy S III General] AaronMichael:
That looks crispy. Samsung is covering this up good. I was at their main office in Indonesia and I saw them tinkering around with a couple fried boards and busted phones. The second I asked it the technician just took a cloth to cover everything. Trying to speak with an executive here with no luck.

Sent from my GT-I9300
[Galaxy S III General] "D":
Hi,

I have since June 2012 a S3 and up to this Point no Problems. My IMEI beginns with 353166********

regards "D"
[Galaxy S III General] vasp3690:
I have been charging my batteries with a desktop charger. Hopefully if charging has anything to do with it it should be safer. I do use usb charging and car charging though as well
[Galaxy S III General] edint3000:
The fried chip on your motherboard is a network component and phone would start without it.

Maybe you wouldnt have network, but it should work, as display phones dont have it at all and they work, everything except gsm network.

See example:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2046250
[Galaxy S III General] msbmsb:
I have a T999 (TMobile - US), and something very similar happened to me, apparently. I had already returned the device before I saw this thread, so I don't have the specs on the faulty unit.
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
S3 overheated, then runs okay but it's dead at the day after

Hey folks! I checked all other threads around here, but since i couldn't find someone with the exact same problem that i have, i'm posting here seeking for your help. So, yesterday was a damn hot day here in Sao Paulo, Brazil. At one time i felt my S3 strangely overheated in my pocket and when i grab him, he was all crazy and blinking and i couldn't pass through the lock screen.

I restarted it and everything was fine again. The phone continued to run smoothly for the rest of the day and night until this morning.

After a few hours not looking to him, when i got him again it was completely turned off. I thought maybe it was out of battery so i plug it in for recharge and...... nothing happened. No lights, anything. When plugged the only thing that it does is get HOT, really hot. And nothing more.

I'm waiting for the wife to get back home to try switch batteries and sees what will happen. Anybody here had heard about something like that?

Some data:

- International model running official 4.1.1, rooted.

- Any apps were installed from the past days and the device was barely used.

- I bought it overseas so there's no warranty or anywhere to ask for a replacement.
[Galaxy S III General] whitebait:
What about the brown/burnt looking chip on the other side of the mainboard? Just near the edge by the lowest prong of the four prong connector at the USB end? Also a network chip?
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
That s normal.

the internal parts of you phone get fried overnight .....

85% of the cases the phone fried so much it doesn't work at all in the morning

15% of the cases like your case works in the morning but then if it cools down or whatever happens THEN the phone bricks.

frying a phone is not an on/off switch it can happen during weeks of time or in one night.

SO i think for 99% that this problem in all cases is ****ed up software that fries ****ed up hardware. :cowboy:
[Galaxy S III General] Payman_92:
My tests result :

1) I find, battery data reset at 90% level in android 4.0.4 but it reset at 100% in android 4.1.2 (I'm on Poland rom).

2) Ram size increased to 832 MB with 200 MB or more free ram (732 MB with 100 MB or less free space in 4.0.4)

3) My phones doesn't get warm while charging in 4.1.2 but in android 4.1.1 it get warm.

4) Most of dead phones batteries made in Korea (cell and assembly) or phone completely made in Korea by Samsung.

5) Most of dead phones, located in UK,Israel,India and some in US,Germany,Brazil.

I tell you if I find new thing.
[Galaxy S III General] AndyJ91:
I find it very strange how this happens after an overnight charge almost every time. I'm gonna avoid leaving it charging overnight, maybe somehow charge doesn't stop when battery is full and fries the MB.

Something similar happened to my Galaxy S1 a couple of days ago, I left it charging in the afternoon, took a nap and when I woke up it was dead. Tried another battery but nothing..... At least that made me get an S3. :)
[Galaxy S III General] nitinvaid:
I was thinking that the board was fried bcoz of heat up

its 8'c temp here and after using the device like playing game for 20-30 min it heats up a lot from the bottom the battery temp is 49'c so I was think what if I play game while charger plug in then it will heat up more.and chips will start frying.
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
exactly what i think .
[Galaxy S III General] b_henry:
I bet that most of people charging the phone switched on. In that case you can expect massive overheating,especially if there´s some kind of SW bug which randomly overloads the cpu to 100%..
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
RIGHT! and if you don't have any software bug its oke.... your phone will last for years but if you have... a few days cooking and burning and you phone is dead....

i base this story on user reports that tell me over the software that keeps cpu on 100%. on the other hand i experienced something very strange that didn't go away by flashing sammobile rom.... only after a 4 file odin flash in the samsung store... SO developers here think they know everything about the software but there is something that remains and its not wipe-able or flash-able so especially when people flash roms stock or non stock there remains some **** on their devices ....

then you got the exynos exploit who knows what kind of guy makes virussus and put them in roms or apps??
[Galaxy S III General] c_codrut:
Does this sudden death thing happen to anyone that was not using stock battery?

Maybe the stock battery after some wear and tear is not in factory parameters anymore, maybe it heats or doing weird voltages.

85% of fried GS3 on charge during the night made me suspect the battery too.
[Galaxy S III General] nitinvaid:
Only Samsung can tell us what the problem is
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
UPDATED

UPDATED: i tested my phone with another battery and it's still not working. Also, my battery worked fine on another S3.

To feed the stats:

- Phone bought in China (China Unicom)

- Installed original Jellybean 4.1.1 from UK, 2 months ago

- Using it here in Brazil.

- Can't really tell where it was made.
[Galaxy S III General] veksx:
I am beggining to think that this issue is not about how old the phone is.Because just month or two old phones are starting to die too and some users are using phone much more than others and the simptoms would show sooner than now. Maybe there is some trigger which is now somehow connected with exynos exploit :confused:
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
THATS TRUE

THATS TRUE

I would love to hear the meaning of the pro devs:p
[Galaxy S III General] veksx:
Exactly,and samsung doing nothing about recalling phones is just proof that this is maybe not hardware fault.
[Galaxy S III General] dr.ketan:
Very unlikely,

It happened to those who were on complete stock rom, so that rule out spread through custom roms

And if it is from application then this should happen to other device too, but this is limited to sgs3 only.
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
So, what's the fix?

So the thing we need to know is:

- What was the problem? the motherboard fried up?

- How do we fix it? Anywhere we can buy a new motherboard?
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
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.... 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 ( i did resetted my flash counter) 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!!!!! 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] dhiru1602:
Indian Samsung Service is always the dumbest. I am not surprised they said that it was water damage. Infact, it is suprising that they actually gave you the old motherboard. 7200 bucks for a Samsung Development board ain't bad, if you know what to do with it. :P
[Galaxy S III General] arys64:
Ok people, im a little concern. Take a look at my screen shots and tell me what you think.
[Galaxy S III General] InfX:
No. The battery itself got overcharge protection circuitry. And, if that would fail, overcharging a battery would definitely leave a very visible sign on the battery itself, up to the extent of the battery rupturing/blowing up.
[Galaxy S III General] jmarcosk:
My Galaxy S3 died on this sunday (DEC 23). same history: I left on charge by overnight on saturday (dec 22), on sunday morning I try to wake up my S3, but without sucess, I tried to take off the battery and put back on, now no signal of Life.

Device Details:

Made on Brasil

bought in 07/10/2012

battery made in China

Running Android 4.1.2
[Galaxy S III General] b0gd4n:
just came with my phone from Carphone. It works ok now.

I just checked the hardware version (*#12580*369#) and it says: RF cal: 2012.12.21 and HW Rev. : REV0.1.

Is that ok?

I am going to sell it anyway, but do not really know what to buy. I would like to get the LTE version of the s3...but I think I am going to wait a bit for smth new,
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
A proper flshing will solve your problem. I have a friend who got the same problem. Ps : phone works fine

---------- Post added at 10:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:03 PM ----------

I heard that battery has some circuit inside which has got something to do with nfc.. I wonder if dead phones has already nfc activated when it happened? ?
[Galaxy S III General] Vrykyl:
So, still waiting for my GS3 to be repaired - Samsung had it for 3 days before Christmas, but still showing online as only being "Acknowledged"... so not been looked at or assessed yet :/

Tbh will most probably buy a Nexus 4 (if they ever appear in stock again soon) or an HTC One X+ - my faith in the GS3 is more than a little shattered.

Was talking to my family over xmas - seems most people I know with a GS3 have either had theirs die and get repaired, or die and get replaced with a new handset entirely.
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
So, for those who have a totally dead phone, i tried to look and the main board to see if i found something strange.

I don't know anything about electronics but there was a chip that was looking funny (picture).

There were some kind of stains at i'ts sides.

I'm sorry that i couldn't get a better shot from it, but maybe by the position we can try to guess what's the problem is?

It reads something like: M2531007 VM ...anybody knows that it is?

UPDATE: yeah, i found that this is a Murata M2322007 WiFi Module, so i don't think there's anything here.
[Galaxy S III General] Alex93917:
I can return the phone to Amazon and get a refund to 31 January 2013 (Galaxy S3 bought in November), and buy an other phone, but I wait and see the informations about this problem.

Do you have any advice about what I have to do ? :) --> Return phone and buy an other or not.
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
That seems to be the Murata wifi module.. Why does it look funny :confused:

Is this your S3? did you open it to just look for ?
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
I need you to check somthing. Would you go to settings/about device/status and check serial number from bottom. Is it zeros? ?
[Galaxy S III General] sak500:
Ok so now my S3 died.. wasn't even on charge. Left it on my desktop with 65% battery after few hours i tried to switch it on but nothing, plugged in my computer no charging light, took out the battery and put back nothing, plugged in wall charger nothing.. WTF.. Luckily still have nokia N900 which has given quite good service over last 3+ years and this stupid POS i bought on May 25th (died Dec 27th - 7 months later). It already damaged my 32GB Sandisk class 10 card luckily could replace it under warranty. And now this.. Pathetic.. I've had LG, iphone 4 but none just up and died. Prob like earlier xbox it has this RROD issue.

Hope i can get a quick replacement from the retailer as it's under warranty.
[Galaxy S III General] projnet:
Sudden death in Australia

Put phone on to charge overnight. Was off in morning and will not wake up.

Vietnam

Korea/Vietnam

Omega v26

No
[Galaxy S III General] evivbulgroz:
Mine is 6 month old now, but so far i have no problems.I hope it stays that way.

It reminds me of the RROD which affected the first batches of xbox 360 : Due to bad cooling ,the cpu and the ram chips would get desoldered provoking early failure.
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
Yeah, i opened because it's DEAD! lol So i did try to make and autopsy and tried to found something.

The murata module was looking funny because some stains around it, but for what i have seen, those are standards.
[Galaxy S III General] sodeknetters:
Can you get into download mode? If so, would it be an option for you to donate the phone to xda elite developer Adam Outler? He is willing to try development of something that would allow the entire system to be loaded from sd, but he needs a device to do it.

I'd be willing to refund your postage costs.
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
Good job, can you send more high res picture of the other parts of the main board?
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
I'll try to fix it with some local technical support after the new year's eve. If there isn't anyway to fix it (or if it turns out to be too much expensive) i'll happily donate it.

But unfortunately i don't even get into download mode. Really, NOTHING works.
[Galaxy S III General] Marilize-Legajuana:
Yesterday I've placed order for Galaxy S3, and now im reading all those posts :eek:

What will you recommend to cancel my purchase or to try a luck and stay with it? I dont need no updates, new versions of firmware - really dont care. If there someone who have their Galaxy S3 working stable even after "overnight charging"? :cool:

Thanks for any feedback, now i'm seriously subscribed to this forum! My new homepage :laugh:
[Galaxy S III General] zeziv5150:
pics or didn't happen?

I didn't took any more pics, but you can find a very good hi-res set if you Google it: ifixit SIII teardown

It was with this site help that i identified the suspicious WiFi module.
[Galaxy S III General] MATTHEWLONG:
Just to add some info. Mine was not on charge when it died. It died about 12 pm after use in the morning. It has never been the slightest bit hot. I run setcpu widget all the time to monitor temperature and clock (I hardly game). About 45% battery was left.

Its really interesting that they all die now after about 6 months.
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
I used yo do overnight charging all the time and mine is ok
[Galaxy S III General] robogo1982:
I leave my S3 on the charger overnight, been doing so for 6 months, still no problems.
[Galaxy S III General] b_henry:
Leave your phones switched on or off while charging??
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
Dont buy cancel now!
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
On of course
[Galaxy S III General] dimi22:
it is very strange, hope samsung will give a clear statement in short time . i will switch to another phone for sure hope everyone does
[Galaxy S III General] Entropy512:
Yeah. Only one (out of the thousands of users affected) person ever recovered a device from Superbrick - they were a highly experienced electronics tech with BGA replacement experience.

No.

Possible.

I had another thought that could permit failing solder joints to explain all symptoms - There's a possibility that during boot, the eMMC operates at a lower speed/narrower bus width. If this is the case, some devices might be able to boot but then fail when software attempts to put the eMMC into a faster mode. Of course, some devices are so hosed even low-speed operation fails. I asked AdamOutler to poke at his bootloader contacts to see if they know anything about eMMC speed mode changes during boot.

Because a device that is "completely dead" from a user perspective can be 90% operational - if the eMMC is dead, the CPU just tries to boot over and over again OR hangs during boot, consuming power.

It was common during the Superbrick days that anyone who hit a damaged MMC region would have their CPU heat up.

All phones may have a design defect, but it's random chance as to whether a defect causes a failure.

See the Xbox 360 RRoD fiasco as a great example - Poor thermal management (design flaw) combined with lack of industry experience with leadfree solder (leading to manufacturing technique flaws) led to devices that were fundamentally flawed - did the flaw lead to failure of all devices? No, but it caused an exceptionally high failure rate.

We've already had a few people with visibility into repair logistics chains in various places stop in and say that repair centers around the globe are seeing abnormally high rates of GS3s going through their facilities.

That's how I feel every time flashing something in recovery takes longer than it should on my N7000. I know I have 2 layers of protection against Superbrick in place - but I still freak out because I know the underlying defect is still there.

As to people wondering if this is connected to the exynos exploit - NO.

1) This started long before the exploit became known

2) The failures are not consistent with any known way to damage the device with software. If blackhats wanted to kill Samsungs with software using the exploit, you'd see I9100/N7000/I777/D710/other units with Superbrick-vulnerable flash bricking en masse.
[Galaxy S III General] danielhtc:
Interesting that most were on 4.1.1. More likely though this has been happening for ages but hasn't started to attract attention until now and most users just happen to be on 4.1.1 at this point. I had only been on it a few days before manually updating to 4.1.2. I have been charging the batteries with my desktop charger and swapping them out just encase there's a software but causing the suicides. But if it is a hardware problem I'm just prolonging the inevitable.

Is there a hardware monitor that remotely logs stuff like cpu usage, temps etc. It may be useful to get some stats on what happens to the phone leading up to death should it occur.
[Galaxy S III General] keenan1986:
I leave my phone on charger over night for the past 5 months (phone is on while charging), i bought it in the middle of july, white one, 16gb..

rf call 31.5.2012.

hw rev 1.100

"Cell made in Japan, assembled in China" is written on battery.

My phone is still without issues.
[Galaxy S III General] DJ Palmis:
Assuming this can be a real problem and not isolated cases (as I'm sure), I do not agree.

A solder problem, specially on a BGA, can be solved in a very silly way: People with problems can simply make a pressure on Nand memory during power on. That's all, folks.

So, even if there was a gross error on the soldering thermal profile by Samsung or its assembler (And I don't believe that, I bet) people would notice that some mechanical action can "resurrect" S3.

About bootloader reading speed: I don't have time but for firt We can read datasheet to see if different speed is supported by memory..

Anyway: Nand corruption should be handled by eMMC itself with wear leveling.

So, again, this situation recalls me the battery explosion case..

Inviato dal mio GT-I9300 con Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III General] OrangeRafi:
Did anyone w/ a 4.1.2 (stock or custom) firmware reported that their phones died?