yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III General] Kafman:
Hello Everyone

My phone died on november 25th and yes, almost exactly after 6 months of use, this is a brief story:

There was 79% battery left, I was using my phone normally. I left my phone on my bed and went to my ktichen, when I came back (about 3 min later) I pressed the home button to awake the phone and nothing happened. I removed the batttery, tried to charge it 4 hours, nothing... so I went to my phone carrier where they have this workshop (unsure if it's autorized by Samsung) and after 2 weeks they returned back my phone with the mobo replaced.

It seems that they replaced the mobo with one of the latest versions, MP 1.400, RF cal: 2012.11.12

As you can see, I think is one of the latest mobos available for the S3

One of my friends has a S3 too, he got his S3 2 months ago... I'm afraid he will experience the same problem as me and everyone that is reporting a faulty S3...

Hope the info about the new mobo helps.

Attached you will see the info oof the mobo replaced and the info of my friend's mobo.
[Galaxy S III General] gauravinvouge:
shethsa in ur case the screen was not damaged i don't know then y didn't they replaced the motherboard free of cost,in my case though iam on back foot but still there was no reason for my phone to die...in any case did u check the video i was talking about..........
[Galaxy S III General] shethsa:
I have written an email to BD Park (CEO) about this issue. Let's see if I get any response.

Gaurav, the service centre and even the india CEOs office are very defensive about the whole issue and refuse to acknowledge the real issue and are simply interested in hushing the issue and not bearing the cost, rather passing it on to the customer. So in effect there isn't any real reason to buy an official piece with warranty.

Btw my specs

RF cal 2012.5.31

HW Rev MP 1.100
[Galaxy S III General] emmanueldmc:
What is the code for know what is the FTA HW VERSION?
[Galaxy S III General] jgalvez21:
i think it's the charger guys

i noticed a few days back samsung charger getting warm and if u check status on setting it said USB charging even though it was connected to AC.

so i got a different one , so far its okay, but i notice screen get too satured but looks like a softwware bug, not hardware, since it goes away when i lock the screen.

my is manufacture : 19/06/2012

HW: 1.1

right now on : 4.1.2 Poland

i dont get USB charging in this charger which actually was a blackberry curve charger i had from my mothers phone
[Galaxy S III General] boidsonly:
Hmmm,

Seems to be a bigger problem than initially reported.

Mods, is there anyway to update the OP with what we do know and then keep it updated as more info comes to light? If there are some known do's and dont's about caring for the SGS3, that would be a good place to post them as well?

I just bought the wife a used but new condition SGS3 and now wonder if hers might take a dive in the near future? I am (read was) looking for a SGS3 for myself but I will now hold off buying one.

Thanks,

Jeff
[Galaxy S III General] UncleBeer:
So far, it amounts to "buy a different phone". :rolleyes:
[Galaxy S III General] funb0b:
This.^^^^^^^^^^
[Galaxy S III General] aureum:
Well, maybe we need to spam sammy facebook page, twitter, and so on... I write to Youmobile.org Nd they give me a replay that they forwarded my email to sammy support but they think if some of the line production affected they will not tell us nothing... marketing i say.... why engadet, android central do not say nothing about seroius issue samsung flag phone??? wird... also in poland pplstarting posts about dying devices.... :(
[Galaxy S III General] wrbex:
another one brick in the wall

Hi, Just to report that another one bites the dust, or brick in the wall :)

Same as other's I was using phone same as every day, and when I wanted to turn it on, nothing happened. Tried same as everyone with battery & and charging, but no result.

Phone was completly stock

here is ss when I upgrade it on 4.1.1
[Galaxy S III General] osvisfer:
the problem is only with the I9300??

Hi

Is this problem only happen to the I9300 ?

My wife got a T999 in september and as everyone one it has a differnte processor

I got an I9300 stock and a think it will die soon, because the battery is starting to drain very fast :(

I really hope that the problems is only with the I9300
[Galaxy S III General] clouds5:
Well would be a shame if mine would die after only 3 months^^ I've never been so satisfied with a tech device... Its really strange though that this is getting so big right now. I mean if its not related to the age of the device then this should have been big a long time ago.
[Galaxy S III General] wrbex:
Mine was old 90 day's few +- :)
[Galaxy S III General] sodeknetters:
fail. Personally I have used my nice old HTC HD2 charger for as long as I have had the S3 (saved me the trouble of unplugging it, unpacking the samsung one, plugging that in, etc :silly:)

AND YOU KNOW WHAT??? My S3 still died!!!

boom just like that. Dead. So all this bulls...t about chargers etc... chill out! Doesn't have anything to do with it.

with hindsight I have had ONE symptom shortly before (a few days) that I didn't have ever before; it was at SIM unlock screen when I woke up.

If anyone with a still functional phone Hardware revision 1.0 or 1.1 ever has something like this, SAVE YOUR PICTURES!!! I'm afraid most of these phones are going to die before they're a year old
[Galaxy S III General] funb0b:
Don't think I have ever used the Samsung charger either and still dead.
[Galaxy S III General] InfX:
Guys, you are managing to spook me with all those posts!!! I've actually did rebind the /mnt/sdcard to the external card now, this should greatly reduce the flash memory load, i'll still have the pics, titanium data, and everything else on the /mnt/sdcard in case something goes wrong, but i'll have to live with a bit lower "i/o" performance (the external card i've got is class 4). TBH, not that much lower after all.
[Galaxy S III General] hassbass:
Sudden Death

Location: London

Network: Three

What happened: Woke up, took the phone off charge, started using it. Wasn't responsive on Nova Launcher, so reverted to touchwiz. Tried opening facebook, and it rebooted. Happened a couple of times, then responded, opened facebook and froze. I pulled the battery out, put it back in and it got stuck on the Galaxy SIII screen. Tried Hard Reset, just same screen flashing.

What ROM/Firmware: Stock, Jellybean

What kernel: Stock

OC or UV: nope

Where phone was made: South Korea, assembled in Vietnam

Where battery was made: same as phone

Back to the stone age I guess.... :rolleyes:
[Galaxy S III General] corb06:
I never used the included Samsung charger with usb cable either. I have a weaker charger that uses less amps and volts so it takes abit longer to charger. And when not charging during night I have the phone docked in a USB 3.0 dock to my PC. USB 3.0 also has less amps and volts than the original charger.
[Galaxy S III General] robfish:
What happened: S3 seemed a bit unresponsive for the last week or two. OTA update to Jellybean last night and phone seemed OK most of the day then when I pressed the Home button I think there were a couple of sounds then looked like rebooting.

It just hangs on the Logo screen.

Cannot get into recovery mode.

Can get into download mode but Odin fails with NAND write error

What ROM/Firmware: Stock 4.1.1

Where phone was made: Do not know - it has been sent away for repair.

Not happy.
[Galaxy S III General] gauravinvouge:
hi ive also bricked my s3 no flashing only stock rom....i saw a video on youtube about mobiletechvideos they can repair with a tech they call JTAG repair mods plz elaborate and guide........

---------- Post added at 06:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:15 AM ----------

hi all mobiletechvideos.com are offering repairs knwon as JTAG repair for bricked SGS3 any know how as to how much authentic are they plz help......
[Galaxy S III General] emmanueldmc:
Do you know what means FTA HW VERSION?? mi phone shows 1.3 is bad?
[Galaxy S III General] rookiegenius:
I've read pages and noticed most cases are in the UK or Europe, some are in asia (south east asia, india). Somebody tells me if US version is safe please :rolleyes:

btw, I got mine in august (manufacture date: 06/27/12). US version (Tmobile). not die... yet. But Im living in fear after knowing this thread.
[Galaxy S III General] lupoli:
Hi all, same problem, from one hour to another, S3 could not be awakened.

I sent it to service partner, they said it's because of wetness, but I'm sure it never was in contact with any liquid.

No chance in Austria to get any help, I'm very angry...
[Galaxy S III General] FirstNoobToBrickHisPhone:
Looks like AT&T variants are just fine.
[Galaxy S III General] funb0b:
Hmm... maybe It's an Exynos related fault?
[Galaxy S III General] rookiegenius:
it seems like US versions (all carriers) are good. Someone with Tmo had this issue but his phone is UK version which is different from Tmo US version. and I don't recall anyone reports his/her US S3 has this issue.

---------- Post added at 08:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 AM ----------

possibly. The US version don't have exynos and so far no one with US version (including me) has reported this issue (yet). I hope not lol
[Galaxy S III General] xWolf13:
My uncle has an AT&T S3. He hasn't told me any problems with random reboots so its probably just the international Variants having this problem. Hope someone can fix this soon!
[Galaxy S III General] sodeknetters:
This thread is posted under Galaxy SIII I9300, I9305 for a reason, you know ;).

As far as we know the GT-i9300 is the ONLY device affected by these board failures. :crying:

If you have other information about phones with different version numbers, please take discussion about that to the relevant subforums.
[Galaxy S III General] rookiegenius:
now Im quite glad my S3 has the dual core instead of that quad core. That Exynos recently has proved itself nothing but trouble. probably the cause is the exynos.
[Galaxy S III General] shethsa:
I'm also angry. Svc center in India also using excuse of water logging. I paid $140 for a new motherboard.
[Galaxy S III General] marthewlett:
Vodafone....grrrr

Phone started running slow the night before while at work with one automatic reset.

Got home, put on charge and in the morning a totally bricked phone. Hard reset only brings it back to the logo screen. Other than that, sod all.

Vodafone repair centre telling me its "water damage to the USB port"..... and that will be £100 please.... I think not Vodascum.

I am waiting on photographic evidence from VF at the mo as Ive started a complaint about this.

Ive also taken to phoning them every 15 minutes today to put the call taker on hold (yeah yeah, childish but fun as I have a day off and want them to know how annoying it can be)

Will probably ask for the phone back and send it to a Samsung repair centre. Oh, VF did offer to put me through to their "buy back team">..... hahahah yeah, righty, like I will get alot of money for a bricked phone!!

details are...

VF bought in July.

Stock ROM

battery is a 4500mH jobby of Ebay that worked just fine thank you.

Just had a photo back from VF of the USB port and I must agree, it looks terrible. Strange for a phone that is only ever in a shirt pocket. I must obviously sleep swim with the damn phone, silly of me.
[Galaxy S III General] MalboX:
Still no reaction from Samsung France (at least via Twitter). I used #gs3suddendeath each time ;)

My S3 left the repair center in Paris to the "factory repair center" last friday.

I was told that "it takes 3 to 4 weeks and no tracking information is available". Great.

And no idea if it will lead to an estimates of cost or to a free repair.

No so fun!
[Galaxy S III General] flavioramos:
+1

My GT-I9300 died last week. I'm taking it to the repair service this saturday.

I was running CM10, left the phone charging before going to bed. At morning it as dead.

No lights when plugging USB cable, even tried putting another battery.
[Galaxy S III General] offgrey:
Looks like this issue is getting some traction. My phone hasn't died (sure hope it won't as I bought it overseas) but this issue is currently on the front page of androidheadlines.com
[Galaxy S III General] nebsif:
Android Authority posted about it too

http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s3-sudden-death-mainboard-issue-141783/ :good:
[Galaxy S III General] offgrey:
Following this thread has made me more paranoid than any of the Mayan-believing dummies partying their lives out tonight. Sincerely hope mine doesn't die in five months. :eek:
[Galaxy S III General] marthewlett:
Update about anyone on VF

They will do the repair with insurance (obviously) or charge £100. The USB port is prone to "water damage" which refers to any issue caused by condensation, So, sweaty palms, having it in the bathroom or even a trouser pocket! Doesnt seem to be well built if that can happen in only 5 months as Ive never come across this issue before.

Ive attached the photo from VF repair centre
[Galaxy S III General] mtbsoft.:
What happened: Start of November (so about five months old). Using on way to work as hotspot for laptop, and music player. Simply stopped playing music, serving wifi, tried to turn on - nothing. Tried charging, taking out battery for a while, etc. Totally dead.

According to Samsung needed new m/b and battery.

What ROM/Firmware: WanamLite 4.1 dual booting with CM10 nightly

What kernel: Siyah 1.6 (from memory)

OC or UV: 1700MHz and -100mV, plus slightly increased USB charging level (+125mA) and Touch boost to 1200MHz

Where phone was made: Korea

Where battery was made: Replacement is Korea, don't know about original.

Originally sent to Vodafone, Australia repairs where it sat for ten days, apparently "waiting for stock on the motherboards, there are quite a few waiting" I was told. Had it returned unrepaired and sent it to Samsung, it was back in less than a week, fortunately all under warranty.
[Galaxy S III General] prashant.ks000:
Ultimate GS3 sudden death

What happened: All problem started after I updated phone to Android 4.1.1. on 22nd November, 2012. Dont know if it was mere co incidence of really on of the reason behind dying. Update had many bugs so had to get the new Jelly Bean updated again from Service center this time. After that phone worked fine for two days and when I was on my foreign trip, it stated to hang or freeze in middle of any work or during tranzition from one app to another. I had to pull out and put back the battery to restart it. On the day before dying, it hanged about 8-9 time and on the next day it hanged for one final time. After that it never restarted and it would freeze on boot screen. I had to remove battery to turn it off.

I gave phone to the service center and they took one week to fix it. This was seriously disappointing episode.

What ROM/Firmware:

What kernel:

OC or UV:

Where phone was made: Korea

Where battery was made: Korea
[Galaxy S III General] qazibasit:
I am glad my note never experienced such issues. And for those with rooted s3 with custom roms, i have a question for you , "dont you people have any triangle away and binary counter reset apps for your phones?"
[Galaxy S III General] justruss:
Just wanted to note that I sent my dead phone to Samsung (Germany) and they replaced the main board and sent it back within about a week. Not bad. Now I hope it doesn't happen again...
[Galaxy S III General] firstknightfirst:
checking in...

I have the same problem... usually when i unlock the phone nothing happens all it needs is a reboot. But this time it doesn reboot the last thing felt that it was hot. I was having scramble with friend on and it went to sleep on its own or i put it to sleep by pressing power off. So in to SC and out come a replaced motherboard.

Rooted at that time ICS with checkrom. siyah kernel then. no change made ....

International S3 (Malaysia)
[Galaxy S III General] gboydroid:
good thing i havent experienced this problem with my s3. weird.

related article about dying young http://www.phonearena.com/news/Some-Samsung-Galaxy-S-III-units-are-dying-young_id37944
[Galaxy S III General] babblerx:
This has happened to me as well

Just to add to the list (in the vague hope that Samsung might admit there is an issue)...

My phone died on 10/12/12 after being on charge overnight. Alarm went off at correct time (5.20am!!), took phone off charge and it cam out of standby, put it back into standby, shoved it in my pocket during half hour drive to work. At work, took it out of pocket to put on silent only to find it was completely dead.

Took it to Phones4U same day sho sent it off to repair centre and gave me repair tracking URL. It's taken a little longer than I would have liked to get sorted (though just under 2 weeks isn't too bad), but got an email from repair centre this morning saying the main board had been replaced and it will be sent back to my local Phones4U asap.

All in all, not too bad service wise, but it would have been nicer if it hadn't happened in the first place.

Just for info...my phone was purchased in June, only ever used stock ROM (with any updates always done vie KIES), running stock JB when it died.

Rich
[Galaxy S III General] drraptor:
Please do mention your country and carrier (if carrier branded).
[Galaxy S III General] Albin0:
Happened to me with international version of SGS3. Phone was 3 months old.Never rooted,never flashed ,never charged with anything else than Samsung's original charger.Warranty wasn't voided.Put on charger on about 25-30 % battery.It just died over night during charging.No led flashing,no sign of life at all.Battery/SD removal trick didn't work.Battery swap with new one (stock original never used before-still on 40% factory charge) didn't work also.Carrier's SC replaced motherboard and shipped it back with JB 4.1.1 stock FW,took them 3 weeks to insert new MB into phone and ship it back.Fairly quick considering malfunction type.Carrier replced MB without any charge,under warranty with same IMEI as before malfunction.

FW was stock 4.04 last updated on 22nd August via OTA( pda I9300XXBLH1 csc I9300OXFBLH1 )

Kernel -stock

Root - none

Flash counter - 0

Production place - no idea

Battery production place -no idea (stock battery)

Carrier - VIP Serbia
[Galaxy S III General] gboydroid:
btw after reading your experiences im a bit scared :( hahaha

btw mine is manufactured @ vietnam :D
[Galaxy S III General] emreeken:
My phone died on tuesday. Not after a full night charge. I locked the screen, when I tried to unlock, it didn't. And after that, it didn't turn on. I did not root, and I was using stock 4.1.1. I gave it to the service center and am waiting for answer. (I'm in Turkey and unbranded. I bought it in July 16.)
[Galaxy S III General] Criminal23:
How we should reset anything, when phone dosn't go on anymore, ...?
[Galaxy S III General] whitebait:
So they saw my reddit post then? :)
[Galaxy S III General] hd779:
I emailed Phone Arena about this yesterday, glad to see them pick up on it and let people know. Hopefully this makes the rounds and stirs somethin up. I just hope it doesn't get pushed aside on american based sites because it appears isolated to the international s3. Its in everyone's best interest to hold Samsung accountable, maybe

they will start improving quality control. This is my third phone in the galaxy line ; the captivate, us galaxy s2 and now international s3. If this phone fails then all three will have suffered a significant hardware issue , before the phone was even a year old. I took precaution and bought a warranty to cover the phone for a year since international devices have no warranty in America and I don't know anyone in Trinidad and Tobago. But suffice it to say the S4 better be so impressive I can forget about all the issues I have had with Sammy Phones
[Galaxy S III General] MalboX:
Great if it spread over blogs. I hope it will make Samsung give us some insights!

My GS3 left the local repair center to the factory one last week (from Paris, France). No news since.

I made a call and was told that it "takes 3 or 4 weeks" and that "no tracking information is available". Great, thanks :mad:

And I still don't know if it will lead to a "free" repair or to a costs estimate only.

No infos/news at all from Samsung France (via Twitter or phone support). I used #gs3suddendeath each time.
[Galaxy S III General] b0gd4n:
I just checked the Carphone Warehouse repair tracker...I just got fixed :D wohoo!

The tracker now says "great news! We've fixed your SAMSGHGLXYS3" - "preparing for delivery to store"

They did not call me to ask for any money (I had custom rom installed on it - so no warranty)...at least they did not ask me for money until now...hope they don't! :D
[Galaxy S III General] Entropy512:
There's no known way to cause damage like what is described intentionally on any GS3.

It is indeed possible to permanently destroy a GS2 device with only a few kilobytes of malicious payload now (abuse both Superbrick and exynos-abuse in one payload), but not a GS3.

Back during the Superbrick fiasco days, people were getting replacements with the exact same defective eMMC chip for many months.

If anyone can bring back a device, it would be Josh Groce at MTV. HOWEVER - based on some of the descriptions here, it sounds like the parts of the eMMC chip are in la-la land, and not even JTAG may be able to resurrect the device. Unfortunately, once your device has been JTAGed, Samsung can see that the JTAG pads were soldered to and reject service for that. (Lots of Superbrick victims got ****ed this way.)

I don't think so. It's starting to sound like an eMMC wear leveller defect to me... Samsung has an established track record of broken wear levellers at this point (see Superbrick).

All of the symptoms I'm seeing described (can enter download mode but DL mode can't do anything) indicate the main MMC flash region (mmcblk0) is toast, but the boot region (mmcblk0boot0) is still alive. If you read the JEDEC spec, there's some pretty low-level isolation between these regions and I don't think they share wear leveller data.

The thing is that in addition to having a different SoC, USA variants frequently will have somewhat different flash chips.

For example, international GS2 and Note1 devices were almost always VYL00M or MAG4FA fwrev 0x19 (bad). USA Note1 was Qualcomm AND it had VYL00M fwrev 0x25 (safe).

It would be nice to get some info on what flash chip was present in devices that died, but there's no way I can think of to do this without a variant of one of AdamOutler's recovery methods (SD that boots recovery or a kernel off of SD and pulls the NAND flash info - something like this won't be able to resurrect a device though based on the described symptoms.) Flash chips that haven't died aren't particularly useful unless people write it down and THEN post it IF their device dies. (Having people who are still alive post chip data will just clutter this thread with uselessness - only if some people write it down and THEN their device dies will the data be useful.)
[Galaxy S III General] shethsa:
Someone sensible from Sammy India called me to reassure that they'll be taking a deep look at my damaged mobo and maybe, just maybe, it's not a case of water logging. I'm sure they're monitoring this site as well because I told them to. For now it's a new mobo and less $140 from my pocket.
[Galaxy S III General] InfX:
That's what i am thinking too, do you have any details on the wear leveling in use? Starting from the basic things, such as, is it static or dynamic, ending with the details of the broken wear levelers you've mentioned? This thread has currently spooked me to the level i've rebind my external sd card to be used as an "internal" ones, in order to minimize the flash writes to some extent :(
[Galaxy S III General] etique57:
My case:

GS3 I9300, rooted, WanamLite 5.0.

Left my phone on the table in the evening, battery probably got exhausted overnight. Never, ever came back to any sign of life. Not even a battery led when charging.

It is now gone in Warranty, waiting to get it back sometime next week. Hopefully they won't notice about the rooting.