[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dendera:
Hello,

I have an international unlocked Samsung Galaxy S III (GT-I9300) that is no longer in warranty and that started behaving strangely (unresponsive) a couple of weeks ago on Android 4.1.2 (official ROM, rooted with CF-AutoRoot).

After reading several threads here on XDA I believed it was subject of Sudden Death. So I started with a factory reset and rooted the phone again with CF-AutoRoot but after that I still experienced the same freezes and started my mission to try and resolve this using whatever method was required.

I starting with trying the DFG app but to no avail. The freezing was provoked but did not go away after many days of iterations and freezes (it always recovered out of a freeze).

Next I tried the eMMC check app to verify on what version I was so that I could help my in further pinpointing the problem. It said I was safe, but while running that app the phone freezed again but this time the screen turned purple/pink and it did not recover from the freeze after several hours until I finally removed the battery. The purple/pink turned into purple/pink with black lines and after removing the battery I could not power on the phone.

In all desperation I started trying out different "SDS-safe" custom kernels, ROMs and bootloaders (all flashed using Odin on my laptop) but the problem did not go away. In fact, I discovered a very strange correlation between the time that I leave the battery out the phone and the time it takes before the purple/pink freeze occurs again.

If I wait half an hour, put the battery back in the phone and boot it (in whichever mode) it would freeze/flicker/die after about 20 seconds. If I would wait several hours, put the battery back in the phone and boot it it would freeze/flicker/die after a solid 1 or 2 minutes.

Whether the phone is connected to the laptop or not makes no difference. I also tried with a different battery but the same behavior occurs.

After waiting a solid day, in still in act of desperation, I decided to flash the leaked 4.2.2 (I9300XXUFME7) official ROM. But even after a factory reset and wiping of cache I found that the problem still remained.

Now I believe I've tried almost everything I've found on these forums I'm not sure what I can still do. It seems it's not battery, ROM, kernel or bootloader related and it also does not seem a case of Sudden Death (I never heard mention of the purple/pink flickering, and it also never snaps out of the freeze; also the strange correlation between battery out of the phone and time before it freezes is something I haven't read about).

From all the research I've done I've not encountered anyone with the same symptoms (does not wake out of freeze, purple/pink lines appear on screen when freeze starts and keep flickering for hours, there seems to be a correlation between the time the battery is out of the phone and how long I have before it freezes again when I turn it on) and I'm running out of ideas.

I believe it is hardware related (but not a screen issue) rather than software related because the USB connection with the laptop disconnects when it freezes, purple/pink flickering and no recovery; but I have no idea what options I still have.

Before I give up on the phone does anyone have any recommendations of what I can try before sending it to a Samsung repair center?

Attached are 4 pictures to show the typical process after waiting ~4 hours and powering on the phone:

Phone boots OK

The phone freezes and a purple/pink overlay appears

More and more flickering making the screen turn more and more purple/pink

The screen seems to be divided in 4-5 parts

Everything is pink and black lines start to appear

Thank you for your time.