[Sony Xperia S, Acro S, Ion] kram187:
Accidentally messed up and soft bricked Ion- LT28h.

xperia Ion LT28h

ROM: JB 4.1 Pure CyanogenMod Based on CM 10 FXP 218

kernel: GI Kernel v3 or v5

Recovery: TWRP and CWM

Rooted and Unlocked Bootloader

Hi guys, above mentioned were my previous settings. Had occassional reboots and sometimes it was kinda laggy that's why i decided to flash it to another ROM - supposedly to ParanoidAndroid. After following steps to install PA, my phone was on bootloops, was in a hurry then freaked out, i tried soft and hardreset, and tried booting on recovery both on twrp and cwm to flash properly as what was instructed however i may have flashed the wrong zips interchangeably with other roms and kernels resulting to a total messed up ion. i could have restored immediately to a saved CWM or TWRP backup right away however, i only stopped resetting when my phone suddenly stopped responding, no Sony logo, no Xperia logo, no boot, just backlight on, does not turn off, soft and hard reset no nothing. i guess until the battery went dead, then i charged it the whole night.

after reading most threads on recovering softbricked phone, mainly this {RECOVER SOFT-brick}[2012 XPERIA's]Recover ALL 2012 XPERIAs from SOFT-brick thread, and after a couple of days of red led, i constantly charged, i patiently waited(2days) still no green led, however i found out that i can access fastboot. (blue led).. i managed to get to this fastboot mode(blue led) ONLY after i soft reset or power+vol.up/1 vibrate the phone once the backlight lits up- on&off - for about less than a minute then it goes back to red led. (i'll be calling that stage as backlit-on&off-then-back-to-solid-red-led cycle) but then again if i go to fastboot, it will stay in fastboot mode during flashes and it stays there until the battery runs out and goes back to red led. then i charge my phone again, but

during fastboot mode, i have tried flashing the kernel, system and boot image. all via Fastboot command prompt.

and all were successful. there were combinations like, flashing only the kernel, tried flashing kernel and system, tried boot image only, tried all the same time, tried system only, tried different kernels, system and boot img, BUT STILL my phone wont even give me the sony logo screen.

then i thought i may need to wipe cache and userdata so i also erased cache and userdate a couple of times via fastboot mode command prompt. and yes fastboot does detects my phone. it can reboot to bootloader or just the normal fastboot reboot. so i have no issues regarding phone and pc via using fastboot command prompt. and Same thing - all flashes were successful,

i have flashed i think more or less than a total of 50 times, flashing different combinations. Still it goes back to brick mode.. backlit-on&off-then-back-to-solid-red-led cycle.

i'd like to add that i have also tried flashing via fastboot mode using Flashtool. (thunder icon+selecting 'fastboot mode'). i have flashed the kernel and system, tried kernel only, tried both same time, tried system with boot.img tried flashing kernel with boot.img too, tried different combinations. again, all were successful, but still same result.

it only goes back to backlit-on&off-then-back-to-solid-red-led cycle.

a couple of days after it went to green. flashmode finally! thinking everything will now be alright, i decided to flash it using flashtool via flashmode. I connected phone to pc, after the solid red led and after backlit-on&off-then-back-to-solid-red-led cycle. and the it goes back to red led then the backlit on&off cycle, after observing my phone for hours i then knew that after, i guess about a hundred cycle of backlit on&offs it really does go to green led by itself and if i'm connected to the pc and flashtool it stays on green led or flashmode, however if im connected only on a wallcharger it goes to green led but will only stay there for like 1-2 seconds then goes back to red led and then the backlit on&off cycle.

then i thought just maybe my battery really needs to die as mentioned, since upon plugging my phone on to a wall charger it goes immediately to red led and there's really no response on the phone except only if you gonna wait for the backlit on&off cycle the n press power + vol up then it will respond and go to fastboot mode or power+vol down which goes to flashmode. then i decided to reset the battery by carefully unplugging the ribbon cable and i did. well, initially it did (led was off for a moment then changed to blinking red then solid red) but i have to go to work that time and had to continue only after coming home from work, and that did not resolved it.

i may have flashed my ion a hundred times or so to this date, still no luck. i have finally decided to re-locked my bootloader- and yes it is successfully locked now. - thinking PCC/SEUS/SUS would get it back to life but i'm wrong - it just cant detect my phone. PC companion detects it as Phone/Tablet only then after selecting Ion on the phone list it always says my device is upto date and no available software. (sad)

I also noticed that flashtool does not detect my phone as LT28h. It only says that it is connected to flashmode. Is that an issue too. I have tried diff versions of flashtool from 9.6 to 9.11 all same. i have also installed fastboot and adb as well as flashtool drivers, it sayas all were successfully installed however if im connected via flashtool flashmode, none seems to be detected on device manager, tried reinstalling and manually installing the sony sa0103 adb interface driver however after installing i get an error unable to start device. even if my phone is connected still the device on devicemanager still has an excalamation point. i'm using windows 8. i have flashed successfully before when my phone was in good state, however now that im on brick mode it seems that all flashes i've done did not push thru. also those times that i have flashed my ion via flashtool it says something like:

phone should be connected with usb debugging on and enabled install on unknown sources. i have tried flashing it using win7 pc phone was not detected still, however flashtool stated and detected my device was connected on usb debugging mode, but have has errors during flashing though.

since my bootloader is now locked im unable to flash now via fastboot. before bootloader status says- rooted now bootloader status is- ROOTABLE.

i previously owned xperia neo and have managed to flash it successfully without any issues, also this is the 3rd time i had bricked my ion and managed to fix it before..

i also want to ask regarding flashing back to stock - does that mean any stock firmware can be selected? can be .233 / .68 /.20 or the latest ICS 6.1.E.3.7? coz i have basically tried to all of those mentioned. also is the reason that my flashes were not successful is it because i was currently on 4.1 JB ROM and im flashing 4.0 ICS stock? I also have TWRP and CWM backups on my PC and on internal SD card, is there a way for me to flash or restore those backups via flashtool?

I'm running out of options, i'm desperate and on the verge of giving up.

i dont want to believe that i have totally messed up and hard bricked my phone. I do believe that there is a solution to this, and my phone can be recovered without sending it over to repairshop.. Today is the 3rd week and still struggling to get my phone back to life (even just the sony logo) . any suggestions before i unlock again my bootloader? please help. Any help will be gladly appreciated, and many thanks to everyone for spending time on reading my messed up and soft/hardbrick ion experience.