[Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III] Homefix:
I figured Id start another thread so no one has to search and read thru all other threads for help like I had to.

I had to write this because i thought other guides were incomplete, and frankly they didnt work.

I will try to update and make things easier to read and use spellchecker when time permits.

and add in-between steps that i left out because i have no dam time. Thats why i call it expert guide-you need some knowledge of doing this.

This is just to help out someone who has had a hard time with other guides

It is not a step by step

Knowledge of cygwin and adb is expected.

Learn it, and how to setup, using google and xda like the rest of us.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY OF BRICKING YOUR PHONE ANY MORE THAN IT IS.

Here is were I made the mistake:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1745865

These are the 2 files

1.Galaxy-S-fre3-2.51.zip

2.Galaxy-S-fre3-MD4FirmwareModemAIO.zip

First of all I ALWAYS CHECK MDMSUMS

The second zip was flashed first, and wamo no andro

Heres my specs.

Android Ver:

4.3

Baseband Ver:

L710VPUCMK3

Build:

JSS15JL710VPUCMK3

Hardware Ver:

L710.14

Im guessing it bricked my phone because I flashed the Galaxy-S-fre3-MD4FirmwareModemAIO.zip before the actual rom itself "Galaxy-S-fre3-2.51.zip"

Obviosly I should have done it the other way around, well im only hu............ngry. haha, so im a knuklehead.

I refuse to go to that particular site to read the first post and see if there is some sort of DONT FLASH OUT OF ORDER OR RISK LOOSING A LIMB, warning posted.

I thought i lost my device (this is still a bad-ass phone, almost too nice to be in a roofers pouch and getten toren up. But it takes really nice pictures of my custom work, and takes em fast so i can get back to work.

I lost 12 hours for stupid mistake, (im sure someone will say thats the business, of course thats why we do it.)

Not to mention the last device i bricked was my first (Hero) and thought was my last.

When you play the Rom Game you may get Ram'd

I will post this to that fre3 site, however unless the OP makes note of this others will be in the same mess.

The only life left in the device, was red light, when battery removed (when battery was placed in during charge, red light went out in 5 to 10 sec.)

When battery was in unit, no lights at all.

I noticed when usb cable attached to ubuntu, oh **** i forgot what and how i saw it but it was some kind of Qualcomm Device _DLMODE or somthing.

I will edit this post when i find it again, but anyway that led to nothing.

My first attempts were made following this guide: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2369125

I couldnt figure out by reading the threads if how I was to format the fat32 partition default 8 or 4 or 1Mg

I couldnt understand why we would have to try to write the image over and over...Why it wouldnt write it right the first time.

I had a hard time trying to write the image file ..debrick_sph_l710.img to sdcard using my v-box..

(Virtual-Box under windows 8 with Ubuntu 13.10 installed ....Android-Kernel-Build ready ).

After trying all the different ways and different images, I said screw it i give up.

.........Till after dinner

wife made a roasted chicken not gonna be late.

Finally I made my own image from my wifes phone, because we bought them at the same time.

One problem hers isnt rooted and she wasnt about to let me touch it.............

Solution: I bought her a galaxy4 for 49.00 /w upgrade, now i have 2 galaxy 3's. But only one works.:/

That was a pain rooting because she always excepts the firmware upgrades when they come over air.

Couldnt get the "seLinux seAndroid" thing so i just went back to 4.1 for now so that i could adb.

Heres What Did It...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2345860

HERES HOW I DID IT

To extract a de-brick image from your phone (an UnBricked Phone) do in an adb shell:

If you know the partition use:

dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/HomefixSprint_S3_L710.img bs=1048576 count=70

If not use:

dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem of=/sdcard/HomefixSprint_S3_L710.img bs=1048576 count=70

MY TERMINAL SHOWS:

C:\Users\dad>adb shell

root@android:/ # busybox dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/HomefixSprint_S3_L710.img bs=1048576 count=70

0 of=/sdcard/HomefixSprint_S3_L710.img bs=1048576 count=70 <

70+0 records in

70+0 records out

73400320 bytes (70.0MB) copied, 4.578239 seconds, 15.3MB/s

Take that image, copy it to your cygwin directory and write it to an unformatted 16mb sdcard using cygwin:

TO GET THE SDCARD READY:

get EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition-Free For Home Users

and find the sdcard, its about 14.82GB, if u have more than 1 your on your own.

Select that one, and delete all partitions.

Then, New partition, select fat32, and then finish by applying the operations.

DO NOT FORMAT

IN CYGWIN:

Get sdcard info:

cat /proc/partitions

MY TERMINAL SHOWS:

dad@MAINFRAME ~

$ cat /proc/partitions

major minor #blocks name

8 0 976762584 sda

8 1 976759808 sda1

8 16 117220824 sdb

8 17 358400 sdb1

8 18 116859904 sdb2

8 32 976762584 sdc

8 33 976759808 sdc1

8 48 244198584 sdd

8 49 244196001 sdd1

8 64 976762584 sde

8 65 976657408 sde1

8 80 976762584 sdf

8 81 976760001 sdf1

8 96 976762584 sdg

8 97 976760001 sdg1

8 112 976075776 sdh

8 113 976074752 sdh1

8 128 15558144 sdi

8 129 15558110 sdi1

dad@MAINFRAME ~

$ ls

debrick_sph_l710.img HomefixSprint_S3_L710.img kitchen

dad@MAINFRAME ~

$ dd if=HomefixSprint_s3_L710.img of=/dev/sdi

143360+0 records in

143360+0 records out

73400320 bytes (73 MB) copied, 338.771 s, 217 kB/s

I DID WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO:

Put battery in

Connect usb cable

Insert sdcard

Vol-up/Home and Power

I felt the vibration no more than a second after pressing power (along with vol_dwn and home key pressed and held)

As you can imagine, my adrenilin was pumpped to the point of feeling like i smoked a pack of camel ciggirettes, AGAIN, as i try to boot the phone.

I knew i was out of the woods after I saw the samsung logo.

It Skipped past download.

I was able to boot right into my desktop, however there were no signal bars.

and the Baseband ver: was unknown.

I powered down the phone (man that was hard to do) but i did.

Tried to get into download mode but failed at first, recovery failed also.

Finally got to download then i was good.

NOTES:

After I revived the phone I had nothing too loose because now I had 2 S3's, so I played a bit.

Its fun to brick your phone on purpose haha

I fed this PIECE OF S#!+ Galaxy-S-fre3-MD4FirmwareModemAIO.zip to my phone the first time and i lost 12 hrs plus the time write this.

:The debrick_sph_l710.img or the Debrick_Sprint_S3_L710_4.3.img did not work for me

:I did not need the class 10, class 4 worked too

:did not need cable attached

:did not Matter wich order i put battery, sdcard, usb-cord to boot

:did not format card

:eek:nly took 1 try to write working image each time ( didnt take several attemts) I wrote and tested 3 different images.

:Upon booting It seems to be the same each time ,couple three four sec (out of a few times playing it may have taken 10sec to boot on one occasion).

:I think the issues with ubuntu was,the sdcard was not ejecting properly and corrupting the image.

:If you have a sucssesful write to sdcard, it may not show up in file explorer until you pull out card reader and re-insert it... then it will show up in file explorer as a folder called "image" with bunch of files or somthing in it, then you know it wrote ok.

:for some reason after i haha... BRICKED MY SG3 ON PURPOSE....Oh my GOD....Im SHOT, booted to my homemade image, i was able to boot into recovery as well as Download.

:Not for nothen I tried to:

dd if=/sdcard/recovery.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/recovery

dd if=/sdcard/boot.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/boot

dd if=/sdcard/modem.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem

(Remember i was able to boot to system, so adb worked)

Did not work, however it may have worked if i used the syntax...mmcblk0 and such.

Questions:

Why is my debrick.img smaller than others on this site

Why my image works for my device and no others will work

Are all phones with these snapdragon cpu's have the ability to "sdcard boot"

Why do we spend endless hours with our phones and forget we have a family.

MY FILE:................ http://rooferdave.com/Downloads/sprintsg3.html