yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] qzmicro:
[RESOLVED] I needed to JTAG, unbrick SD fix did not work for me.

I just wanted to let everyone know that indeed JTAG was the only way to go for me. I contacted both mobiletechvideos and brickedmyphone and received an immediate response from the owner. I spoke t him decided to send him the phone on a gamble. It turns out not only did he resolve my problem with the JTAG, he was also extremely well at communicating with me when my phone got there, what happened with it and when it would be back. I never asked/required him to do so. I was pleased. It took me about 5 days to get my phone back (cheapest shipping and all) due to the 4th of July weekend. I'm sure it would have been quicker normally. I recommend them if anyone has any concerns about the service. CHEERS!

-Q

Thanks J...! :cowboy:
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Willie68wr:
I don't own a Galaxy S3 but I'm searching for a friend. He has the SGH-T999N Does anyone know if this will work for him?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
No. Don't do it unless you want a brick. If it's anything that's not *exactly* T999 (i.e. if it has a N, V, L, your mother, a hamster, whatever) don't do it! (Unless you want an expensive paperweight)
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Willie68wr:
Thanks bro... I appreciate your response
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Dimension2035:
Hello all! I have the new T999UVUENC2 baseband from 4.3 (screenshots below) and I am unable to flash any Cyanogenmod over 10.0, and the camera is not working in that build. Is it because of the baseband? I'm aware that I cannot flash the firmware on the first post. Are there any work arounds? I will continue to search in my efforts to resolve this problem.

Thanks
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] DocHoliday77:
You do have the latest available version so do not flash anything but that when it comes to the firmware.

For the flashing problems, open a thread in q&a describing the issue and any errors you get. Thats beyond the scope of this thread and its better to keep it on topic.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] halebopper:
Camera issues - wondering if firmware is route to go

Hi Doc,

I have a T999 with baseband UVDMD5. In early September my camera stopped working. I've tried un-rooting and re-rooting the device, but it doesn't work in either state. I took it to a repair shop to have a new camera installed (thinking it was a hardware issue), but the new camera wouldn't work either after they installed it. I'm at a loss.

Have you heard of this before? Would re-installing the firmware you offer in this thread help? I appreciate your time and insight.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] DocHoliday77:
I would flash the MD5 firmware from my firmware thread. It's stickied at the top and linked in my signature. It's the full firmware and will get you back to full stock. The firmware in this thread is only the base firmware.

Use the root66 version if you want root. It'd probably be a good idea to factory reset after the flash, but backup all important data first, including your internal sd card.

The full firmware and root66 are for use with Odin btw.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] linsalata28:
My friend is still running 4.1.2 and I'm just wondering if I should flash this? Would it have any positive or negative effect ?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ndwgs:
Check Doc's post above, you should flash that. It should be pretty safe, it's a bootloader and modem updater. Also, if you're using a custom recovery such as Clockwork Mod/Philz Recovery/TWRP, after you flash this bootloader...

ALWAYS REBOOT BACK INTO THE RECOVERY. That way the bootloader will stick. Then you may "Reboot Phone" AFTER.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] linsalata28:
Thanks I'll give it a try. I flashed a liquid Smooth lollipop ROM with out any issues though.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tnt8902:
Question?

I'm on Cm10.2.1 with MJC, Should I still flash MD5 so I would up to date? In OP it says don't flash if you are on MJC, so I'm a bit confused here. Thanks.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ndwgs:
MJC is up to date.

What "manaslev" meant is if you have the very latest, which is NC2, you will hard brick if you flash back to MJC or MD5 or LOWER letter (note the 2nd letter, M "D" 5 is a lower letter than M "J" C in relation to A is the lowest and Z is the highest).

Recommend to stay MJC or, if you plan of not switching back down to old bootloaders, go to NC2.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] wenlez:
does anyone have another link, or be able to send me the T999_UVDMD5_firmware_v4.zip file?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] stlouie65:
Gonna give this a try, thanks mnasledov.

Edit: All good! :D I checked and its up to date. Thanks again mnasledov
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mutiny:
I ran this and it worked fine. My bootloader is now on the latest. When I tried flashing the latest Liquid Smooth 2.4 official rom however, it claims that my bootloader isn't one of the three choices required to flash the rom. Weird.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
Do you know which one you're on? That might do you some justice.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mutiny:
Sorry! Too much distractions! I meant to say My bootloader is NOW on the latest. Lol. Yeah. I'm on the latest and I still get the error.

UPDATE: Just rebooted and flashed the rom in recovery again (TWRP 2.5.0.0) and it worked!!! Thanks to the OP for sharing this sweet little flashable bootloader.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
I agree this can cause confusion. That's why it's s best to start from scratch. If you ODIN back to at least LJC you'll know exactly what's going on. You'll just have one ota and you'll be on a nice clean MD5 bootloader. It can be a hassle but it might just solve everything man.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mutiny:
I agree. My bootloader was from older JB. It's no wonder I kept getting the ro.bootloader error from the flashing script. Thanks to the OP for this once again!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
Whew -- yeah, rebooting is a must after firmware upgrade. I'm going to update the main thread. I also wrote a firmware backup script.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've been in the FOSS community for years (though inactive as of late) and have been using Android and doing little hacks here and there for years, but it's great to finally find some time to give back.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Aerowinder:
You seem to have completely misunderstood me, so let's start over.

Most of your post is completely irrelevant to my point (although it's good information). My issue was with the file names, I know those are the filenames Samsung is using. They are the ones from the sammobile tar archive. My question is, why do those files have different extensions if they are all supposed to be flashed the same way? To illustrate my point: do you open a .doc file and a .xls file with the same application? No, you do not. Do you open a .tar file with the application you use to open a .txt file? No, you do not.

I was theorizing that maybe Odin handles these file in a different way, hence my wanting to see the Odin source code. And also, my not making a pack like this.

I hope that clarifies my previously poorly worded post for you. What is your opinion?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
I wouldn't open a DOC or XLS file, and maybe I would open it with the same application. less and hexedit work quite well ;)

OK, but in all seriousness, the extensions are irrelevant. Why are the extensions such? The obvious answer is I didn't change them as I didn't see any reason to. There are the MBN files and the modem I've never seen as an MBN file on any phone including d2tmo -- always it's a BIN. As you've guessed, I yanked them from: T999UVDMD5_T999TMBDMD5_T999UVDMD5_HOME.tar.md5

But, seriously, I don't know why you're asking about file extensions. They're stupid mostly, IMHO. I don't run Windows so they're meaningless to me, other than a quick visual hint at what the file might contain. I might use file(1) to determine what the file is through looking at headers instead of trusting extensions.

There is a big difference between those MBN files and the modem BIN file, as file(1) will show:

NON-HLOS.bin: x86 boot sector

aboot.mbn: Hitachi SH big-endian COFF object, not stripped

Interestingly the rest of the MBN files, file(1) has no idea what to do with and labels them as "data" -- TBH I was surprised it knew anything about the above two files.

So to answer your question, you seem to have two:

(Q-1) Why do those files have different extensions?

(A-1) Because why change the extensions?

(Q-2) Why are they flashed the same way?

(A-2) Your eMMC is partitioned into many partitions. If you're curious, go into Download mode and run heimdall print-pit and you'll see all the partitions your eMMC has and what they contain. They're flashed the same way in the sense that they're copied byte for byte from a file to a specific partition on the eMMC -- which each file belonging to a different partition.

I have a question for you now -- what exactly is the point of this line of questioning? Please, rename them whatever you like. You can call aboot.mbn "Sally" for all I care. But that's not very helpful to you, to me, or to anyone else is it?

As for your comment on using different programs to open different files -- do you know what dd(1) is? It's a raw command that copies data from one place to another -- regardless of whether it's a block device or a file. It doesn't care about what the data is -- it cares that every byte got copied over successfully. This is exactly what Download mode + heimdall on your phone would do if you did say

$ heimdall flash --ABOOT aboot.mbn --SBL2 sbl2.mbn [...]

So I'm still not quite sure what you're trying to get at.

PS: If you go through Samsung's image you'll find .img and .img.ext4 files, too. It does the same thing with them -- either dd or something that does exactly the same thing as dd.

I think what we have is possibly a misunderstanding over dd(1). Here's the Wikipedia page on it for further details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

It's nothing new -- I've been using dd to copy stuff to my phone's block device since the Android Dev Phone 1..
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
"Flashing" means essentially to take data and write it over some block device. That's what dd is for. They're not all flashed the same way -- they're all flashed to different partitions.

Without having the source code to Odin and Samsung's other stuff or clairvoyance, I can't tell you why they chose different file names. I can tell you that my updater does the same thing as running heimdall would do in my above post but instead of having to have heimdall installed and knowing the right command to run, you just flash this ZIP and you're done. I made it out of frustration for myself and have decided to share with the rest of the world as it can save a lot of people a lot of time.

And, with all due respect, I'm going to get a headache if I have to talk about file extensions more. Being a Linux guy, I'm not the biggest fan of file extensions. They're totally arbitrary.

Please, enjoy your weekend. Also if you're interested you can check the first post which I've updated with a backup script that'll use the same dd command but in reverse order to pull the data off the eMMC partitions into their respective Samsung-named files. Yes, I kept their extensions there too ;)

PS: When you have a chunk of rawdata that you know should be written bit-for-bit onto a block device, what IS the correct tool? The answer is there are many -- Odin works (but for obvious reasons I don't use it), hemdall works (and I've used it), and dd works. The difference is convenience.

Odin must be convenient for people who regularly use Windows, though I wouldn't call it convenient to flash the whole nine yards and having system, cache, recovery, and boot overwritten too.

Heimdall is great. I'm so glad that there's a Samsung equivalent of fastboot that runs on Linux. I'd be pulling my hair out if I had to own a phone that required Windows or OS X to fully utilize.

dd is awesome but if I were to flash all these files by hand, I'd probably just use heimdall. Given that I wanted to create a flashable update.zip, dd is what you have to use as that's what you have at the recovery level. Note this updater contains its own dd binary just in case it's used on someone's phone that is lacking it for one reason or another.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] razielpr:
Damn I'm on LJA :(
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
And why the sad face? If you were originally on the official LJA firmware (not including base ROMs) then you are indeed on one of the 4 latest bootloaders and should face no issues.

The OP clearly states you need to be on at least LJA, which is where the purpose of this thread comes in handy. It could very easily upgrade you to the very latest bootloader (MD5).
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
PPS: Does it bother you that I do dd if=debian.iso of=/dev/sdb where /dev/sdb is a USB thumb drive? dd wasn't written for ISO files or USB thumb drives. I'm pretty sure it predates the existence of ISO files. If this bothers you, it should not. It is the "magic" of dd, which, if you look at the source, isn't that magical. It does exactly as advertised.

I use the above command anytime I need to "burn" an ISO to a USB thumb drive. I wouldn't use it to burn it to a CD/DVD since those have their own protocol and set of commands to perform writes correctly -- the device has to be put into a special write mode, speed has to be negotiated, etc. But the eMMC is a simple block device not much different from an SSD or even a hard drive when we're dealing with it at this layer.

It has a lot of advanced features that didn't have any use here. For example, I used it to grab the metadata off a bunch of RAID6 drives as backups -- and "flashed" (read: wrote) the metadata back onto the drives back with dd. dd and dd_rescue (a special version of dd for drives with bad blocks) saved a RAID6 I had with a sudden triple drive failure. You can tell it exactly how many bytes to copy, where to start, what blocksize, and much more. I don't know how else you would do it.. You could write a program to do it easily, but dd already exists.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
Yep. There's no real need to upgrade from LJA if that's what you have currently. I prefer the MD5 modem, but people's mileage with the modems vary based on where they live. And you can have the MD5 modem without the MD5 firmware. There's a flashable update.zip someone else posted in another thread for that.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1880987 has most of the modems. The thread isn't 100% up to date and is missing LJC and MD5.

Here's a link to the MD5 modem update if you want to just use that: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2276670
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] razielpr:
I don't understand all this bootloader stuff I just flash roms when I see something new and I check my device and see its not updated I assume I'm outdated and need to update.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
Agreed. MD5 has worked great so far in my case. With that said I'm glad I upgraded lol.

Thank you for this extremely helpful guide bro.

---------- Post added at 12:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 PM ----------

I suggest you read up on this post made 2 days ago by Cyanogenmod.

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cdxpafunnexghb04cc5q4knbyjh4hprg0k
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] razielpr:
Thanks just finished reading it.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Aerowinder:
Wow, lot's of good info there, thanks! You did answer my question in your second post. I learned quite a bit in the process of reading your replies.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Zotak:
Will this work on Canadian version ? T999v ?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
It should as far as I know. They have a similar build and baseband but don't hold me to that. I'd get a second opinion and maybe look more into LL1 if I were you.

EDIT: No lol
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
You'll need different firmware files. This is US T-Mobile specific since it has their radio and stuff.

Maybe what folks need is a firmware flash update zip generator program. Ha, that's so meta I may just write it.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ndwgs:
I was about to update my bootloader... But before I dove in, I checked what BL's I had... LJ4?!

Is this even safe for me to update, or should I just try to go flash MD5 like Jovy's, then this? Or skip this?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] LuigiBull23:
I believe LJ4 is ICS if I'm not mistaken. At the least, the LJA (JB) bootloader is required. Do not flash any of those base ROMs as they will not upgrade your bootloader. It needs to be an official firmware and that's the whole purpose of this awesome thread.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
This will update your bootloader and baseband (modem) to MD5 regardless of what you had on there before. I had UVALG1 firmware and UVDMD5 baseband when I upgraded to MD5 fully. It's totally safe for you to flash this provided your phone is T999 (not T999V).

If you want, flash the fwbackup .zip I have in the first post first just in case so you can have copies of whatever was on your phone before.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
I can grab the latest Canadian T999V firmware files and make an update .zip to just update the firmware and/or baseband like the one in this thread.

The problem is I don't have such a device so I'll need someone to work with me to test it. Mainly I need to see the output of heimdall print-pit when the phone is in Download mode and then someone brave enough to test it on their T999V afterward.

Shouldn't be very high risk -- before actually flashing the update zip on it, we'd back up the old firmware and do a quick sanity check that we have the partitioning correct, in case it's different. I'd just need someone to work with me to test it, wouldn't take very long.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ndwgs:
Perfecto!!!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] St0n3s:
"signature verification failed"

That's all i'm able to come up with.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
How did you get that message? Can you take me through the steps?

EDIT: Maybe it's that I edited someone else's updater that seems to have been a hack of someone else's updater. Maybe certain recoveries don't like that signatures under META-INF are bogus. I've been reading up on Edify so I'll probably take another swing at this and generate one from scratch that doesn't have any signature verification issues.

I'm still curious what recovery you used to get that message as CWM doesn't seem to care.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] St0n3s:
rom manager, i'm using cwm 6.0.3.1
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
Does it happen if you reboot into recovery and try doing it manually instead of through ROM Manager? I suspect ROM Manager is doing the extra checks. I'll fix the script but in the meantime I advise to try directly through recovery.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] St0n3s:
Same thing
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ndwgs:
Hmm, it shouldn't matter. I did mine via CAM. In my experience, signature fails normally happens when I forget to MD5 check, which, if I did check... always don't match.

Have you checked? Not being a butthead, but it happens
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
I removed the lingering cert files from the update.zip. Can you try the fully unsigned version? Wrongly signed has to be worse than unsigned.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14606531/T99UVDMD5_firmware_v2.zip

If that doesn't work, I'll sign it though from what I read it doesn't seem necessary.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] kamau79:
Successfully updated bootloader, thank you
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] chrisram88:
Thanks for this op!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] RichardBronosky:
Worked perfectly for me!

I too am a Linux zealot. When the instructions say use Odin, I use command line Heimdall. I've gone through great effort to make Heimdall work where others turn to Odin. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall/issues/112 (Yes, that is for OSX. I use Linux for me servers and appliances.)
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] kiden:
Installed and all is running well on CM 10.1.0 RC2. Figured I'd update now, before stable comes out. Thank you Linux wizard!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] inkling:
Thank you! Worked perfectly!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] PoLaRBe4r:
hmm,

Little word to T999 from mobilicity wind and videotron. I may have hard bricked my phone after flashing the v2 firmware update. I will keep trying to boot but it does not look good right now.

FML, lines about this not working on canadian variants on page 4 and 5 should have been in 1st post.

I now have an expensive paperweight. even the usb jig wont get it in download mode
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
I'm very sorry to hear about this, I thought I had updated the first post but I have failed. Can you get into recovery or download mode at all or it's totally bricked?

This has at least the same effect as flashing a US modem on a Canadian phone which people say not to do.

Updating the first post now with strong warning.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] PoLaRBe4r:
I have a jig that usually brings the phone to download mode when its bricked and i've got nothing, black screen, no LED on. Tried getting into recovery or download mode and nothing, screen wont even light up a logo. tried plugging it in to PC, doesnt even detect it as an unknown usb device. The good part is I got the phone in september 2012 and since this is on a corporate plan, i told them I plugged it in, went to bed, when i woke up it wouldnt turn on, so they will be replacing it under warranty (thank you jebus)

Thanks for updating the first post :) I understand you are not responsible, it just sucks that it happend, oh well, I'm getting a brand new old phone.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] PoLaRBe4r:
Well thanks to do awesome technical support I was able to get a warranty replacement this afternoon. I have a brand new Galaxy s3
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jason27131:
So if we can't flash this on canadian variants, does this mean T999V effectively hit a break wall in terms of running ROMS? Can we not flash anything anymore thats updated from today onwards?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] PoLaRBe4r:
Have been running cm10.1 rc2 since it came out with no issues (befor this mis-hap of course)
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
Hm, the CM10.1 bootloader checks for UVDLJA, UVDLJC, or UVDMD5 I believe, or maybe it checks for UVDLJ4 too. I'm not sure if the Canadian model has an entirely different bootloader or not. I know that flashing the modem ends up in a brick. I wonder if a bootloader-only update would work.

What does your phone print when you run "getprop ro.bootloader" in adb shell or Terminal?

If it's the same bootloader stuff as US T999 and all that's different is the modem, I can make a new modem-less update.zip that should work on T999V. I'd want to be very sure we wouldn't be making a brick script for T999V and someone brave would have to guinea pig...

Alternatively, you can point me to a link to the latest (or I'll Google for it later when I get home) for-Odin download of the T999V system and I'll take the binary files from there and make an update.zip based off that. I guess this would also answer the question of if the bootloader files are the same -- I'll be able to check their hash sums against the US ones.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mnasledov:
It was one of the post-rc2 nightlies that started asserting the bootloader minimum version. However, not everyone needs this update. Some people already have the minimum firmware. If you you meet the minimum firmware criteria, there's no real need to update. I like having everyone on mine up to date though.

I'm happy you managed to get another phone under warranty and apologize again for the trouble. The first post clearly warns now. I still want to help the T999V users out there, though.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jason27131:
I have T999VVLDLL1.