[Galaxy Tab 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Tab3SMD:
Hi all,

I got given this Tab3 because the smd power socket connection guts were physically broken inside socket.

Fitted new power socket (I'm an electronics repair engineer by trade) and checked all pcb (printed circuit board) tracks leading from new fitted socket to ensure there were no hidden breaks ...... new socket refit was 100% successful .....with no solder shorts / bridges and no broken tracks leading to mainboard.

I left Tab3 on charge overnight and next day switched Tab3 on only to be greeted with dreaded .PBL and .PIT failed issue.

After extensive (days!) research I gathered together all necessary firmware and tools and decided that its an easy firmware fix if flashed to an original Samsung SM-T210 UK firmware.

(Please note I dont know past history of this Tab3 .... I dont know if it was rooted / upgraded firmware etc ..... I doubt it though as it belonged to a 7 year old)

Big issue ..... Odin flash tool won't show coms port connection on PC via USB (have tried 3 different laptops one with XP, one with Win7 32bit and another with Win7 64 bit. I've installed / uninstalled / reinstalled multiple Samsung usb drivers that were verified to work with my Tab3 SM-T210 model on each PC .... no joy. Even installed / uninstalled / reinstalled Kies from Samsung .... still wont connect when Tab3 is in download mode. Have kept PC device manager open and nothing appears in device manager. Also have tried 6 different makes of Usb A to micro Usb cables. Have disabled all antivirus, UAC, firewall and Win defender etc ... still no go!

When I go into download mode (power + Vol- +Home buttons) a warning screen does appear BUT it only shows right hand side of graphic warning ..... left hand side is totally grey from top to bottom. (LCD screen is not faulty as it displays full screen info on failed .pbl / .pit flash memory checks) When I then select Vol+ this vertical half graphic info and half grey screen disappears just leaving the backlight on .... which I assume means Tab3 is in proper download mode?

I can go to all recovery modes which allows me to factory reset and delete user cache etc .... it seems to go through the proper routines of reset but upon restart .pbl and .pit failed error in red memory check list is still there.

I can also try and flash firmware file from external sd micro card .... Tab 3 recognises firmware OK and shows Install ..../SD, but then after approx 5 minutes it restarts to failed .pbl /.pit error list again.

Apologies for long post, but from reading above issues can anyone please confirm ....

1) Is half graphic normal when going into download mode? .... or does this point to a previous incorrect or unfinished flash issue?

2) I have downloaded proper .pit flash (LT02) file and original firmware flash for my Tab3 ..... can I flash this any other way other than using Odin ....eg is there any bdm flash method (direct hard wired) flash method to motherboard from external programmer ....like they use for car ecu flash recovery?

3) As I dont know exactly whether Tab3 was rooted / flashed with wrong firmware / incomplete flash upgrade, is there a software tool that can attempt to list what firmware is on my Tab3 at present?

4) I can get into ADB recovery within recovery mode but havent a clue how to use this method .... is this a possible recovery method to use, as I can see SMT210 ADB device in PC device manager when going into recovery mode?

many thanks in advance for help, :good:

Tab3SMD

OK all, here's more info .......AND another additional issue!

I got stuck back in again tonight because not knowing anything about Tab3 ADB recovery mode was bugging me, so here's what extra I've done so far

While "poking my nose" into tonnes more Xda forum troubleshooting guides I discovered I might need PitMagic tool to try and sort my .Pit partition error via ADB recovery mode.

I tried to find Pitmagic but discovered this is now part of EFS Professional, so downloaded EFS Pro and found this got me nowhere as I needed to also install Android SDK .... which also requires Java Development kit, so I downloaded the full Android Studio and Java JDK 8u91 and installed all (about 1.2Gb and requires ~ 4.2Gb hard drive space!)

Anyway, I now ran Android Studio and then ran EFS Professional, opened my Tab3 into ADB recovery mode and connected Tab3 and PC via usb .....

All looking good EFS reported

Initialising ADB server ..... Okay.

ADB server is running!

Searching for device..... OK

Connecting to device .....OK

Checking device status .....

THEN BAMMMM ....popup from EFS

Connected device is currently UNKNOWN

Please ensure ADB server has been authorised by the connected device by confirming your PC's RSA fingerprint, then press OK to continue

like, wtf! .... one step forward and 6 back!

Can anyone please tell me what this means or better still how to proceed from here?