[Asus ZenFone 3 Questions & Answers] binarez:
Hi, if someone here knows how to use the Qualcomm tools or any tool to unbrick my phone, your input will be highly regarded!

I bricked my ASUS ZE552KL... and I know how : it was full and I started a memory hungry app and it just froze. The app was probably caching some stuff locally. I hold the Power On button to reboot it and it doesn't boot at all (black screen, all LEDs are off, etc). This is known in some articles online as OLD “Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008” MODE (the worst kind AFAIK). When I connect the phone to my Win7 machine, I have a PORT that opens as “Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008”. I do not get the Qualcomm disk drive.

I found this guide (cannot post URL but dotandroid dot com/android-root-guides/unbrick-qualcomm-mobiles) that offered me some hope. I followed the instructions as best as I could. That means I uninstalled all the Qualcomm device on my system, I installed the proper drivers (QualcommDrv/Allx64, I have a 64 bit Windows installation) and the proper version of QFIL (QPST tools). I cannot remove the battery from this phone so I had to skip the "battery removal for 5 secs" step. I tried all kind of key combinations before/while/after plugging the USB cable.

I got to the point where I try to flash the files from 8675_W00 but the MBN file provided in it (prog_emmc_firehose_8936.mbn + rawprogram0.xml + patch0.xml) but I just cannot get it to work. I get the following error from QFIL:

Sahara Version:0
Start Sending Programmer
Download Fail:System.Exception: Unable to download Flash Programmer using Sahara Protocol
QC.QMSLPhone.Phone.QPHONEMS_SaharaArmPrgDownload(String sFileName)
QC.SwDownloadDLL.SwDownload.QPHONEMSSaharaDownloadArmPrg(UInt64& version, String armPrgPath)
Download Fail:Sahara FailSahara Fail
Finish Download

Eventually, I realized that 8936 was the cpu model number and that the ZE552KL model is 8953. I have searched pretty much everywhere on the internet for a prog_emmc_firehose_8953.mbn file but I can't find it.

I found some documentation on how to make your own mbn file using emmcswdownload.exe but it doesn't work because the partition_boot.xml file I'm using doesn't have the right syntax:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Qualcomm\QPST\bin>emmcswdownload.exe -f 8660_msimage.mbn
-x partition_boot.xml -s 1G -g 4M

C:\Program Files (x86)\Qualcomm\QPST\bin>-f = 8660_msimage.mbn
-x = partition_boot.xml
-s = 1073741824
-t =
-f : Beginning image build...
-x : Parsing partition description file...
CExParsePartition
-x : error parsing partition description file: Document error on element type "r
oot" and name/value "<image> tag no longer supported"

Conclusion: I'm new to this and I have no idea what I'm doing :)

Two questions:

1- Can I recover files from the phone before wiping it while it is in this OLD "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008” MODE? I have some pictures and movies from my daughter's birthday that I would like to save, if possible.

2- How can I resurrect this bad boy? It's under warranty and I didn't mess it further yet so I'll get it replaced if I can't get it to boot but I figured that ZE552KL-specific info was not commonly found on the web... maybe we can fix this thing as a community for future reference!

Thanks for any help with this matter!