[Samsung Galaxy Tab A series ROMs, Kernels, Recover] frosty400:
Tab A Hard Bricked

Thanks for your hard work, ashyx.

My T550 appears to be hard bricked. Not entirely sure if it's a major hardware issue like battery/mobo/storage, or the fact that I refitted my system last week:

Full wipe, stock MM (T550XXU1BPE4_T550XAR1BPE3) via Odin, TWRP 3.0.2-1, SuperSU-v2.76, T550 kernel from your thread, and latest wanam Xposed.

As far as I know everything was compatible but I'll feel dumb if I didn't do something right there. Assuming that's OK, I'll move on.

Everything went smoothly. No issues. Best experience I've had with any such process actually. Was pleased with everything for 2 or 3 days. Then after this reassuring blissful period, I got a strange screen flash when handling the device (I think there was a visual blue line but I don't recall, the first time it happened). Immediately after that, I wanted to see if i could reproduce it as my first thoughts were that it's a hardware issue (refurb from eBay bought in January), so I firmly tapped my finger around the edge of the device, and it did seem to reproduce another flash when I tapped on the bottom left corner (or coincidence, I dunno). I'm pretty certain I saw a blue line this time unless my eyes were playing tricks. I was super tired at the time and just accepted it as a weird quirk as it went away and everything was fine for another 2 or 3 days. Didn't think anymore of it. I should note that I had made a restricted user account for my kids so they could keep their games separate and not need as much direct supervision. This turned out to be a pain since secondary accounts can't install from Amazon or unknown sources. Or maybe there's an app or mod that's better suited for this arrangement. Anyway their games and everything seemed to work decent enough, but things were a bit bogged down or unresponsive sometimes, and user switching was a bit slow. At that point I had been letting my kid use it as Owner under my supervision, to avoid the presumed lag of the secondary account. I actually meant to ditch the secondary account but never got around to it. At that point I was still pleased with everything (besides the odd aforementioned screen flash).

But this evening I was a few feet away from my kid and they said the screen just shut off. They said it happened around the time when they were trying to switch games (could be coincidence). They said it wouldn't turn back on and after a couple tries I couldn't get it going either -- not even recovery. I'm pretty sure the battery level was sufficient (30% or so) and there were no warning beeps so I didn't think it was the battery, but sometimes battery readings lie and do funny things so I figured I'd charge it and take a look at it later. Anyway, still a black screen after plugged in for a while and I didn't have luck with lots and lots of button combos and so forth, so I split it open and unplugged/replugged battery (again trying several button combos). When I plug into Win10 it usually comes up with the dreaded "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008". Tried using the diagnose/troubleshoot and sometimes it acts as if it fixed something but it just creates some "unknown USB devices" when browsing devices or messes around with the listing order therein when unplugging and plugging back in. Uninstalling from device manager obviously doesn't do any good. Nothing does since I can't even get a battery reading to come up.

'Warranty' is good till January I think but I highly doubt I'll be eligible once they see the mods, hehe. Not sure it's worth it to send it back so they can snoop around with my setup actually? My gut feeling says it's a major hardware issue and that the timing is just coincidence, in which case I would think they could fix the hardware issue, but at the same time, nothing's impossible so maybe something with the system did go wrong. I can say I should've been more cautious but I had several nandroid backups so I wasn't too worried about anything since I've been in similar situations and have always managed to recover (hindsight is 20/20). First ever hard brick. It would've been nice to be looking directly at the screen when my kid said the screen shut off :S Timing of everything can be uncanny, right. Then again it is/was Monday. I'm going to leave it plugged in to my PC overnight (stock cable). Grateful for any assistance. Maybe Tuesday will bring better luck.