[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] droidshadow:
almost bricked my device!

I wish i would have seen this post before i tried EZ-Unlock today. You see when i was using EZ-Unlock it was i believe over 6 months ago. The version that I was using was 1.2. Anyways when i went to re-download the file i saw that there was a v1.4 update. I thought maybe that was for the 4.3 OTA update. I didn't think or know that the bootloader could not be unlocked and that Verizon or Samsung had added all of these fail safes and if you tried to unlock your bootloader it would end up soft bricking your device.

Moving on...when i ran EZ-Unlock it told me that the bootloader was unlocked but when i rebooted my phone i could not power it back on. I knew that I had immediately corrupted the bootloader and that I was in big trouble.

After rehearsing what I was going to tell Assurion (Verizon's insurance company) i started doing some searching here on XDA.

It turns out that if you have corrupted your bootloader due to the 4.3 OTA update there are a few things you can do.

First thing you need is a class 10 16GB micro sdcard. If you happen to have a 32GB SGS3 then you need a 32GB class 10 micro sdcard.

Next you need to go to this thread -> http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2581166 and you need to download the bricked.bin (stock bootloader) file and burn it to your class 10 micro sdcard and then you need to write the file to the sdcard either with win32 disk imager for windows7 or with dd if you have linux.

I won't get into the steps here since I gave you all a link but that is pretty much it. It is very easy and what happens is that your phone will load the bootloader from your sdcard instead of your corrupted bootloader on your phone and just like magic your phone will turn back on (at least mine did).

However, if you try taking the sdcard out your phone will still not be able to power on. There is a permanent fix though! With MTP you can transfer the "bricked.bin" file to your phone's internal store and then you can use terminal emulator to write the bricked.bin (stock bootloader) to your phone corrupted bootloader. With DD it overwrites the bad bootloadeer with the stock bootloader and again like magic your phone's bootloader is fixed.

Please note that you need to be rooted in order to use dd in android terminal emulator.

If you need to root your verizon sgs3 look into "saferoot.zip".

If you have really messed up your phone and you are lucky enough to get into "download mode" you can follow this great tutorial here on how to use Odin to put the stock 4.3 image back on your phone. This will put your phone back to stock with a stock bootloader, stock rom, and a stock recovery manager.

Here is that link -> http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2586319

I feel truly lucky that I was able to save my phone, thanks to the hard work and great advice of a few people on XDA. You know who you are!

I just wanted to get this information out just in case anyone out there is having the same problems i am having...

I think with this OTA update to 4.3 we are going to see a lot of this on XDA.

Hopefully someone will work it out on how to get TWRP or CWM on the SGS3 and hopefully someone will work it out on how to get the darn bootloader unlocked!

This could take some time though...

Until now a stock rom with multi windows support that can still be rooted isn't bad!

I hope this helps someone else out...

-droidshadow