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

At first, sorry for the long text but, that's the odyssey that leads to my problem. If you don't want to read everything, jump to the summary.

It all started when my S3 got wet inside my backpack while it was raining. I know that the first thing we need to do is to pull out the battery when you realize it is getting wet and let it dry for days before turn on. However, I was drunk so I tried the opposite turning it on at the end of the day and it didn't work. Then I pulled out the battery and let it dry for weeks. I've also opened the device and disassembled it. I could see some parts with some kind of white dust. So, I cleaned with a toothbrush and rubbing alcohol. After doing that, I tried to turn on the device without success. One or two days later that battery got stuffed and then I sent it to repair.

There, I pointed that it could be a problem with the main board. The guy performed a fast check with voltmeter and said he could be repaired. He took the device and returned with the S3 turned on in less than 15 minutes. Then, he asked if he could reset the device and where I bought it because it didn't have the stock rom (I changed it to Neatrom). Since it was "working" I said I would take it and do the rest of the job restoring the rom.

When I got home, I charged the phone for ~8 hours following the technician instructions since it was a new battery. The strange thing is that the icon for battery was not the green one, but the white one with the round arrow the whole time. Ok, then I did a clean and restore through CMW menu keeping the neatroom. It started autorebooting. Also tried CM12 but got bootloop. The next day, the battery got stuffed so I pulled it out and waited to whole week and sent to repair.

There, he gave me another battery (which now seems to be original). The battery worked and I did a reset through CWM recovery. At first minutes it was ok then it started rebooting. I thought it could be something with the room since It was not rebooting in recovery menu. Anyway, I also took my notebook there in order to restore the stock rom and, in case of errors, I could give the phone to the technician in the same day. The problem is that the process took forever when it got to the point of booting up the phone after restarting it and then I ran out of battery and had to turn it off.

When I got home, I applied the stock rom again and it booted ok but with the common efs/csc problems (Can't recognize sim card, IMEI/Baseband unknown....). Also, menu and back button seems to be not working. No leds or function. It's probable hardware but I check it later.

Well, I have a efs backup I've created with kTools (efs.img 20mb + efs.tar.gz 0kb) which I tried to recover but it didn't changed nothing. I also have another efs.tar.gz file alone with 1kb which I'm not sure if it's a backup but I think I generated that with Backup_EFS.bat. Tried Restore_EFS.bat but got stuck in * daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 * * daemon started successfully *...

I've already tried odin through PDA and CSC. My country is Brazil and I already tried the open region Stock Rom (PDA:I9300UBUGNK1	and CSC: I9300ZTOUGNK2) and rom from an specific provider.

Summary

- I9300 got wet (rain)

- ~3 weeks drying disassembled + mainboard clean with toothbrush and rubbing alcohol

- Battery stuffed 2 days after assembly and test without success.

- Sent to repair. Something was done there and it revived.

- Phone autorebooting then battery stuffed again.

- Sent to repair. Changed battery

- Tried to apply stock rom (odin). First boot took forever and had to turn the device off.

- Second attempt worked but got IMEI/Baseband unknown, sim card recognition problem

- Tried ODIN through PDA and CSC

At this point I'm downloading A.S_id's rescue firmware and try it's troubleshooting. Later I may try to restore IMEI with -efs rebuild using android SDK....

So many things happened that I'm not even sure what to ask but, if you have a luminous idea on something I've never done, Id kindly ask to let me know.

Did I do something wrong when trying to restore efs? BTW, I also have a full nandroid backup generated by CWM philz touch recovery but it seems it doesn't contain efs partition.

Also, I ask you guys if the IMEI,Simcard,baseband problem can be a hardware problem? I've even seen topics saying about "burning the baseband", is it possible?

I'm just trying to gather all information possible before going to the technical assistance again.

If you read everything, I appreciate your patience and I'd be grateful for any reply.