yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III General] leijonasisu:
Hey, did they fix yours on warranty even though you had a custom ROM installed? Did you do something before you sent it back to have it replaced under warranty? Even though mine says "Official Samsung Binary" I'm worried they'll be able to find out that I both rooted and installed a custom ROM, and force me to pay for it :/

So did you do anything to unroot or hide that you had modded it before sending it off to get it fixed?
[Galaxy S III General] donovan2123:
What happened: Was using phone on the 17/12/12 at around 9pm. I then put phone on charge at 10pm then went to sleep and tried to wake up phone at 6am the 18/12/12 and nothing. Pulled batery, put on charge, tried different charger and a different battery and still nothing not even to say its charging.

What ROM/Firmware: Standard 4.1 JellyBean with ROOT

What kernel: Can't remember

OV or UV: Nope

Where phone was made:

Where battery was made: Made in Korea

Spoken to vodafone who wanted me to wait 7-10 business days. I had to send my phone which ment i had no phone for 7-10days and my phone is very much needed for work. I kicked up a massive fuss and told them i know they can do a exchange basis and they agreed should be swapping phone tomorrow.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO OUR PHONES?
[Galaxy S III General] pigglett:
If its showing

custom binary download: 0

current binary: Samsung official

system status : official

You should will be fine :)

Good luck and I don't blame you not send just before xmas

Tho I would contact Samsung and get the fault logged
[Galaxy S III General] leijonasisu:
Mine says 'System status' custom :/ is there any way I fan fix that?

Will that stop me from having the phone replaced on warranty?

Product Name: [this space is completely empty??? IIRC it said GT-I9300 before]

Custom Binary Download: No

Current Binary: Samsung Official

System Status: Custom
[Galaxy S III General] whitebait:
I wouldn't worry, mine says custom too (and has blank product name) and it's never been rooted or had anything other than the carrier approved ICS and JB on it, still died!
[Galaxy S III General] leijonasisu:
Fair enough. I'll take it in tomorrow to have it fixed, although I know I won't get it back for weeks :/

I suppose I should just take it back to the phone company I bought it from right?
[Galaxy S III General] pigglett:
check to see which is quicker phone company or a Samsung service centre ... ask @ both
[Galaxy S III General] corrsea:
This is pure speculation. What if this is not accidental? What if some sicko is using the exynos exploit to kill S3s?

I don't actually believe that this is the case here but it certainly is technically possible and it's probably only a matter of time before somebody does attempt it.

ROM Sotmax Ultimate V10

Kernel Yank555.lu-V2.8c
[Galaxy S III General] Isadora:
Actually I am kinda half expecting my phone to die *again* in a few months time...

But hey, isn't it supposed to be the end of the world in a few days anyway? In which case, as long as my phone lasts until then... :p
[Galaxy S III General] GrandArcher:
This thread scare the hell out of me. 50 pages of dead phones in a single month. Are you saying that normal life span for this phone is half a year ?!? Or its just unfortunate small percentage out of millions sold ? Cause I don't recall similar threads in HTC forum !
[Galaxy S III General] Ethernauta:
First message. Very concerned about this news, I guess that seems to be related with power charging, but nothing confirmed yet.

Details of my unit ( No problems so far).

SSN:I9300GSMH

FCCID: A3LGTI9300A

Date: 12.09

Battery:

Made in Japan

EB-L1G6LLU

Date: 2012.8.22

3.8V - 7.98Wh

MaxV: 4.35V

I'm using "Battery Monitor Widget" from day 1, that's around 2 months ago.

I'm using 5 days a week a Samsung Y charger with this charging data printed in its label: Output: 4.75V 0.55A.

Saturday and Sundays using original S3 small charger plugged into 110VAC transformer (by chance, since is the only available place) - (here we have 220VAC).

I can see using the "battery monitor widget" information something interesting:

a) The maximum voltage value registered with battery at 100% of charge is 4.334V ( seems to be ok - 4.35 Vmax)

b) Using Original S3 charger, I can see 1218, 1236,1136,1183, 1138 mA registers as maximum current charge.

c) Using SamsungY charger, I can see lower values, 888mA, 795mA. That's strange since the charger says 0.55A maximum...

d) Using PC USB port to charge, the current is around 500mA. Obviously the time to get full charge is at least 4 Hours for 2000mA.

I would stop to use the S3 original charger as preventive measure and charge it through USB or SamsungY charger.

I suggest to install this app and compare this peak values with different charger sources and S3 units.

We are in touch, if the S3s starts to die in massive amounts, this can damage the image of Samsung very strongly, specially for the customers outside Europe and USA, where usually the technical services face the complaints and finally fixes or replaces the damaged units.

I would be totally broken, since I bought from eBay in Usa and brought here in travel.

This sounds similar to me to the 3RL in the first Xbox360s.

Cheers from Buenos Aires.
[Galaxy S III General] emelsk:
The first instances of this problem were reported weeks before ExynosAbuse exploit.

---------- Post added at 10:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 PM ----------

Unfortunately, flash/board replacement is your only option.

There's more of us eager to know what is going on here.
[Galaxy S III General] InfX:
Since practically all of the symptoms mentioned by most posters can likely be explained by the flash memory death, and assuming the least we wear it out, the lower are the chances for it to die, what we can do is:

The less writes to the flash memory the better.

Every app temporary locations, caches etc that can be moved to an external card instead should be moved, external card should be the preferred location for the media storage, logs, photos, etc. If an app provides an option to store it's stuff in a custom location instead of /data/data, use the option and redirect it to an external card.

The more free space you have the better.

I have no idea if the wear leveling used on our device is static or dynamic, but in the latter case the only parts of the flash memory actually participating in the wear leveling is the empty space. In this case, the less free space you have, the faster some of the pages are wearing out. Even if the static wear leveling is used, it will still have easier time operating properly the more free space you have.

NOTE: Reading this tread spooks me enough to actually start thinking about copying ALL the data from /sdcard to an external card and actually unmounting it, mounting the external card in it's place instead. Obviously, this won't move the /data dir off the flash memory, yet, getting the /sdcard off it and to the actual sd card seems like a pretty good idea now.

PS: Am i being too paranoid?
[Galaxy S III General] Rob2222:
I think yes.

I think this is just a faulty flash or maybe wear out by a bug of the firmware that causes permanent writes.

I don't think that this is normal use wear out.

BR

Rob
[Galaxy S III General] InfX:
Sure, my assumption is, though, if we can minimize the writes we control, we can minimize the risk.

So, how about

mount -o bind /mnt/extSdCard /mnt/sdcard

mount -o bind /mnt/extSdCard /data/media
​

? :(
[Galaxy S III General] MuertoKo:
Just FYI, I've fried 2 Sensation and one Nexus one in less than 6 months each, stock, no flash, perfect care.

All changed on warranty, sh*t happens some times, when they sell 10M+ devices is usual that this things happens (even on iphone, fried 3 iphone 4 at work in a year... For those those who think they rock)

Add to this a ton of faulty reports about people who had a bad flash, a bad install, a rogue root app... Bricking their phones (not "sudden dead" realted) and you get this thread :)

Enviado desde mi GT-I9300 usando Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III General] RohanAJoshi:
Guys..

In emmc brick bug app, there is option for "check memory blocks".

Ia this same as DFG or different ?

Can you use that option for force freeze like DFG?
[Galaxy S III General] ereziel:
Ok guys, by reading the whole thread, I am finding people that don't fully understand what it is, so I want to make a simple comparison that may help newbs to understand it better.

Imagine having a faulty hard drive, with some, but not all damaged sectors.

One may think, but having 50sectors damaged in a 1TiB hard drive is not much a challenge, the possibility to hit one is too low! (as many have stated before with SDS).

So yes, you can work with this HDD, and maybe you won't hit a damaged sector in 1 year, or maybe you hit one the next day.... the real question in this example would be:

Would you store sensitive and important information on it, without having any other copy, and RELY on it?

Obviously not, right? In case of SDS it is the same, but even worse, because if you hit the bug, not only you lose information, but you convert your phone in a expensive paperweight (literally)

So I would like this simple comparison between a daily life HDD and chip internals help people to understand better and not take unneeded risks.

P.S. Yes, the example is not 100% accurate, as a HDD does not brick by only having a few damaged sectors, but maybe this way people understand it better (Do you agree @RootSU?)
[Galaxy S III General] nani67:
finally got my S3 back from service care...

motherboard has been replaced and now the EMMC details are as below

Type : VTU00M

Date : 01/1998

FwRev : 0xf7

so, i am on a safe chip.... ( as of now )
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Your Virgin Mobile one is the equivalent to the AT&T one here the US. Either way, unless you have a GT-i9300/i9305/possibly the Asia-specific models, you're safe.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
I agree with the mantra "backup everything, always"
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
I agree with the mantra, "I will not buy a Nexus device until it has a memory card slot again", for that very reason. Phone dies, card survives, data survives. On a Nexus, phone dies, data dies.
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Yeah sd slot a must for me although foldersync will help those who need to backup to cloud / local network location
[Galaxy S III General] pricey2009:
Just got mine back and I have the same..

I had SDS but the phone still booted with black squares and distortion all over the screen..

I luckily managed to install triangle away and clear the counter before sending it for repair.. phew!
[Galaxy S III General] nm8:
Yeah same here. Same reason I returned my nexus 4. I went to n4 forum and complained and my threads got closed. People in that forum seem the worst bunch here at xda LOL.

Ok back to topic...
[Galaxy S III General] effepas:
I agree with you.

There is a possibility on Nexus devices without SD, you could backup with an OTG cable on an USB stick, in example. It's not the best one but is a partial solution to an annoying situation.

Anyway, I have a GT I9300 with an insane chip, I'm on CM 10.1 and I'm waiting to decide if bring my phone to the customer care or take it until the end of the warranty waiting patiently the SDS...
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Foldersync ;]
[Galaxy S III General] eia2088:
Thanks. Didn't have to give up my phone today.

I hope no more bugs like this anymore.
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Probably not. I have the Galaxy Note 2 now and it has a completely different memory chip in it. I'm just pissed Samsung played dumb with all of this. The least they could have done was notify the repair shops, so they know about the issue instead of refusing to repair people's phones.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2
[Galaxy S III General] eia2088:
I know right.

We actually have the exact chip, MAGF4B / 0XF7

I panicked a little. I was texting my friend then suddenly messaging app acted weird. It crashed and there's nothing in my inbox anymore. What I did was restart the phone and got it working again. But what was that? :confused:
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
You have this chip in your S3? That's weird...

As for the texts disappearing, that's weird but not completely unusual. The internal database that holds the text could have corrupted and the phone may have done "Clear Data" on the Messaging app to un-fudge it. But obviously, you lost your texts in the process. Try using An SMS Backup app so you can schedule an automatic backup, in case it happens. But I doubt it'll happen again.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2
[Galaxy S III General] eia2088:
Yeah i do have the exact same chip. How weird is that? :confused:

I just rebooted my s3, then all my messages came back.
[Galaxy S III General] theviruz:
i have this chip but the memory test pass without errors!

can i feel safe or not?
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Read post 1 of this thread:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=36499838

The safest you can be with your chip is to ensure you have a fixed Kernel and recovery
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Yes. You have no corrupted see sectors. As long as you're on a recent firmware you're fine.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2
[Galaxy S III General] veteran_troller:
Is there a case with anyone gettong sds being on latest rom and kernel....

Sent from my GT-I9300
[Galaxy S III General] stevee1953:
Hi rootSU,i have the suspected 16g Sammy s3,i have rooted and I have ultimarom installed with kernel perseus-alpha33,and baseband xxemb5,i tried the emmc check as per the first thread,the chip type says it is vtu00m,date 12/2012,cid num,but it does not show no fw rev,sorry if its a silly question,but of all the q/a ive read on sds I havnt heard of anyone saying they have similar results of the emmc checker.am I safe in your opinion,cheers bud
[Galaxy S III General] HassanM:
Yes.... Ure all set....
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
That's odd - I've never seen that. I would assume manufacture 12/2012 is 0xf7 but just incase, ensure you stay with a good kernel and recovery
[Galaxy S III General] coolkakucool:
Guys need ur help urgently!!!!

I got a sealed blue 16gb s3 some days back from officeworks.imei starts with 354.now would u recommend me to open it and use it or get it exchanged with a better imei maybe 355 or greater?.and does all phone with 0xf1 suffer with bad sectors?.

Please reply soon .i just have 2 days to get an exchange?
[Galaxy S III General] Flavine:
IMEI

Just got rid of my white set with insane chip and topped up some cash to get a gray set with sane chip (for peace of mind). My gray IMEI starts with 35495... I think it's the end of the 354 series, and almost reaching 355. Of course this is just a guess :D
[Galaxy S III General] coolkakucool:
mine has 3547...what should i do .sumbdy please suggest????
[Galaxy S III General] Flavine:
What would be your valid reason for returning and asking for another set? :confused:
[Galaxy S III General] coolkakucool:
I would say this series of imei is facing problems??
[Galaxy S III General] Kparks:
Hey guys i have a 16gb s3 for verizon and i just finished charging it was listening to pandora and it just shut off and wont come back on at all completely dead battery pull did nothing and when i plug the charger in the light does not even come on but if i take the battery out the charging light comes on for about 10 seconds any help is this the sudden death thing i thought it was fixed?? also my screen has been cracked for 2 months will they still honor the MFR warranty or will they make a fus about the screen?? Thanks
[Galaxy S III General] Kjc99:
If it is actually a Verizon model then it is not affected by Sudden death... Only international Gt-I9300 models are...
[Galaxy S III General] scottcwhite:
Well about 2 months and my phone is still in UK with them telling me it can't be fixed because it's a us phone. Guess no one can fix mine. I'm not even going to pay to have it shipped back. $1000.00 spent, I'm done. Samsung, you win. I give up.
[Galaxy S III General] jay_m3:
you do nothing, just make sure you check your emmc ver. and apply the fix, that's all what you can do anyways
[Galaxy S III General] rookiegenius:
You better get the screen fixed before bringing it in.
[Galaxy S III General] coolkakucool:
Hey

Hey guys I gt a replacement and now I have sealed s3 with imei starting 35599.... .hows that?.would that be 0xf7 ?.its like a lottery?.lol
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
use the EMMC app to find out :confused:
[Galaxy S III General] veteran_troller:
Hey guys I am going to buy galaxy note 2 can you please suggest the things I should check before buying the phone ?

I cannot open the box . So can't use the app

Please help

Sent from my GT-I9300
[Galaxy S III General] tshoulihane:
Buy the phone, check the kernel is up to date. Done. If this doesn't help you, nothing can.
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
Galaxy Note 2 has completely different memory.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2
[Galaxy S III General] tarui04:
just got back my supposedly repaired phone

XXEMC2 but the brickbug app still gives says my phone is susceptible to the issue.

terribly frustrating experience dealing with those people

anyone knows what is their corporate email addresses for their CEO, customer service in US and s.korea?
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
It all depends if they know about the bug as to whether they put an unaffected one in. They don't all seem to know yet
[Galaxy S III General] nani67:
you can send e-mail to ceo's office via samsung support page...

i have sent a mail and got immediate response from the ceo's office

http://www.samsung.com/in/support/main/supportMain.do
[Galaxy S III General] JMS74:
does the s3 9305 model have the same faulty nand chip? It's the exynos 4 with lte and 2gb of ram..

Am thinking of buying it for a family member but don't want to offer one that's going to sudden death in about months from now.

Thanks
[Galaxy S III General] Smartie36:
Hmm, went to use my s3 earlier only to find it was dead, pressing the home or power buttons had no effect , thought it strange when I'd only used it 10 minutes prior and everything was fine, plenty of battery life etc, anyway I took the battery out for a minute or so and that cured it so not sure if that was a sign of sds or not as I don't think pulling the battery would get the phone up and running again if it was that.

Had my s3 about 10 months and that's the first time I've gone to use it only to find the handset dead and unresponsive, I'm running jellybean mc2 all stock, phones never been rooted.

The emmc app does show my phone has an insane chip.
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Sounds like "black crush". Nothing terminal
[Galaxy S III General] goranbm:
I don't think that you can recover from SDS ....
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
You can't but for about 2 weeks leading up to sds, I would often find odd issues like reboot to the boot splash overnight and general performance issues. I guess he was asking if it was a symptom
[Galaxy S III General] yahyoh:
not all of them :(
[Galaxy S III General] Product F(RED):
That really, really sucks buddy :/ I think you have an early model.
[Galaxy S III General] tarui04:
the eMMC check says I've got a lousy chip but the exynos mem check says my memory is fine.

so what is it? anyway the samsung repair side claims this is BS, says that this is no proof of anything
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
The exynos memory bug is different to sds so obviously they will differ in results
[Galaxy S III General] alijani:
I want to buy this phone and I want to know that is this happening to 16gb models?Am I safe if I buy a 32gb?
[Galaxy S III General] SiriusCybernetik:
Just quoting myself. Finally I got my phone back. It took them 2 weeks but at least they changed the mainboard and I now have an unaffected emmc.

It came back with XELLA installed and I got an OTA update to EMC2.

Note I can finally enjoy my sgs3 again.
[Galaxy S III General] nani67:
i too got a main board replacement..

but my only worry is

is this new emmc with 0xf7 firmware really safe as we are thinking..

will this sds repeat after a year..

now, am really feeling bad for choosing sammy phones..

i know i can move on with some other phone..

but 37000 rupees is very big money for a phone

and, y dont sammy properly test everything before finalyzing the spec..

initially i was using samsung wave.. awsome phone, very good battery backup, fast, responsive,

solid built, premium feel metal

but bada os sucks..

sammy just made a joke of all who bought this phone..

then got a galaxy note,,

good battery life, nice stylus and apps to use the s-pen with,

but emmc brick bug, color banding,

phone tends to become slow after a month of usage, even if i dont install many apps

ok, used to factory reset when using gingerbread,

but can't do it with ics.. it would brick the phone

audio quality was worse...

wave has very good audio,, coming to note from wave is dissapointing with the kind of audio n speaker output..

moved on to S3, now SDS....

1gb of ram for international model & last minute upgrade to 2gb ram for us models ( they say it is to compensate the dual core processor )

models with lte has quad core n 2gb ram

when htc, motorola, lg, n all others are able to make phones without any hardware issues,, y cant samsung pay attention n give quality products

(i mean to say , others too have issues, but not as serious or worse as sammy phones have )

after all this,,,

what phone should i buy...

a nexus is not officially sold in india, no micro sd, 3g is not good here, i need a mobile which lasts a day, i dont need a land-line always connected to power socket or laptop, camera is one of the most important feature for me which none of the nexus have got it right

htc, moto, lg, sony cant come up with hardware or software like sammy,

sammy doesnt care for customer,,

so, should i go get a nokia lumia...

wp is BADA v2

only left out option is.... IPHONE

or, start using my old sony ericsson k790i... good camera, good music, good build, good battery
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
No one can make a phone without issues. Its just about how they go about dealing with those issues. Sony seems best
[Galaxy S III General] sewer56lol:
Sony :)

Still having great glory in my hands with Xperia Play, whether GB, ICS or JB a Sony Rom never had a single bug ever.
[Galaxy S III General] nm8:
Yeah I know the feeling and its really annoying to buy an expensive device then learning about the fault. I have to go through maybe 5 NOte 2's and 6 S3's.... until I got a "sane" chip.

I personallt got my eyes on the new S4 but I will wait for a few months and see if there are no major bugs... and which one will be better esp with battery life, the octa core or quad core.. In know they are worldwide LTE now and have 2gb memory.... i's just a matter watiting and weighing the pros and cons... if thie S4 has another bug similar to SDS... I will never buy the galaxy line again.. maybe I will wait for google nexus to make phones with memory slot, or go xperia...
[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Funny because if I Google "xperia play bugs and faults" I get loads of results.

Remember, you're not the only owner of an xperia play. You not personally experiencing a bug doesn't mean anything if thousands of others have. So no, not Sony. Not anyone
[Galaxy S III General] sewer56lol:
I'm talking firmware-wise though

Galaxy S3 had :

- System Freezes (Fixed in XXEMC+)

- SDS Fix 1 (XXELA)

- SDS Fix 2 (XXELC? I don't remember exactly)

Some more minor things I might not be aware of

Still has :

- Broken keyboard autocorrect bug

Some more minor things I might not be aware of

Eventually one or two users on a rare occasions can have a problem with Flex Cable (caused by physical movement of phone)

This can cause a screen that does not work or broken touchscreen (and reboots unless on charger)

I have the phone for a while as well as having worked on a ROM for it, the firmware literally is perfect in terms of stability.
[Galaxy S III General] jeffnz:
Why are we even discussing Sony here, if its that great, cool buy it as its individual choice buts lets skip comparing devices in this thread