[Galaxy S6 Edge Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FaKeT:
Hello dear users of xda.

I have read alot of threads on several forums to find a fix for my broken phone, since I am hoping that the problem is caused by the software, rather than the hardware.

Sadly I was not able to find the fix yet and therefor you guys are my last shot at this issue. This account is also freshly registered, so I will not be able to post any links or images to help you guys out understanding what happened ... so please just bear with me here :D

Since I am from Germany I hope you can also excuse small mistakes regarding my writing in this thread. Thank you in advance :)

Lets dive right into this with a few details:

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (SM-G925F)

Never rooted, flashed -> always official updates

Android 7 was up to date

Phone has no branding or any kind of simlock

What happened:

My phone was turned off a few days ago when I woke up. Since I always charge it over night it couldnt be out of power and that confused me.

I then pressed the On/Off-Button to start it and the phone booted up.

But the boot did get stuck on the Samung logo-animation. I mean the animation which is usually displayed after the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android".

I waited a minute or something and nothing happened, it seemed like the boot froze up and I turned it off.

When I booted it up again the samsung animation would not even finish and then freeze up. The animation is displaying the letters from left to right and it froze this time displaying only "Samsu".

After that I plugged the phone back into the wall to charge and went to the PC to google this issue. The phone displayed around 25% battery when I plugged it in.

So apparently it was not charging this night?

Anyways ... after googling and not finding any similiar problems I tryed to boot with Safe Mode ( holding Volume Down + On/Off Button .... no success) and then downloaded Samsung Switch and all drivers needed to get a device connected to the PC.

I connected the phone to the PC with an original Samsung cable and Samsung Switch was not showing anything until I entered the Download Mode on my phone by pressing Volume Down + Home + On/Off.

Then Samsung Switch displayed that the connected device was not compatible (even though it meets all requirements).

I went to the device manager to make sure that the drivers are working and the phone indeed was showing up in the list. It also disappeared properly when I unplugged it from the PC.

After that I again tryed out to boot the phone several times. It would always freeze up anywhere within that Samsung animation.

Not knowing what to do I thought an factory reset might help out and I pressed Volume Up + Home + On/Off for several seconds when the phone was turned off.

Nothing happened. I could only boot up the phone by pressing the On/Off button alone and by doing that it always froze up. Just the Download-Mode was accessable (Volume Down + Home + On/Off).

Since I had no way to recover or reset anything by using Samsung Switch or the Recovery Mode I decided to flash an official Samsung rom on the device using ODIN.

I downloaded the following:

Odin ( v3.12.3 )

Firmware ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 // from a german android forum, information below )

FIRMWARE INFORMATION

Model: SM-G925F

Model name: Galaxy S6 edge

Country: Germany (DBT)

Version: Android 7.0

Changelist: 10958180

Build date: Thu, 09 Nov 2017 10:08:50

Android security patch level: 2017-11-01

Product code: DBT

PDA: G925FXXU5EQK8

CSC: G925FDBT5EQK1

When I connected the phone Odin was recognizing the device and I was able to flash the firmware successfully. Odin did not display any kind of errors.

After the flash the phone was still connected to the PC since I feared it would run out of power. I know that the first boot after a flash can take a while. Since the LED was flashing while the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge" logo was displayed I thought it was doing something in the background. I kept it like this (big logo, LED flashing, plugged into the PC) for over an hour and nothing did change. The device was warm but I doubted that it's doing anything since one hour for a boot, even after flashing, is way too long.

After that hour I turned it off and it instantly started to boot up again, but this time and all the other times after that it kept getting stuck at the big logo. It did not proceed into the animation like before.

I tested if I could enter the Recovery Mode at this point but it still was only able to get into the Download Mode.

The only way to stop it from trying to boot now was to get into that Download Mode, else it would just keep looping around, but not turn off by its own.

Every now and then, instead of displaying the big logo, it showed a blue screen with a yellow warning sign and the android mascot laying on the ground with "No command" beneath it. If you want to see how it looks you can google images "android 7.0 no command" and look for the full blue screen pictures.

Googling this blue screen with no command said that it can be easily fixed by wiping the data/cache from your device. But as I said the recovery mode was not showing up when I pressed the buttons for it. So a friend of mine suggested using ADB or fastboot to wipe the cache / dalvik cache.

Using both (ADB + fastboot) the device was not detected. We made sure that the drivers were installed properly. There was and there still is no way to connect to the phone with these both tools. Sadly.

After the first try of using ADB/fastboot we decided that the issue might have been the firmware I downloaded in the beginning and we used SamFirm (v0.3.6) to download the newest firmware for my SM-G925F ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 )

This firmware appears to be the same as the one I downloaded before, but this one was slightly bigger.

This is a paste of the SamFirm window:

Checking firmware for SM-G925F/DBT/G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8

Model: SM-G925F

Version: G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8

OS: Nougat(Android 7.0)

Filename: SM-G925F_1_20171129140113_g7auy18e0c.zip.enc4

Size: 1950442496 bytes

LogicValue: 8ikzg48ul7hryauq

The flash was again successfull and still the same problem remained: no full boot.... sometimes a blue no command mascot.

After that we flashed again but with another PIT file attached. At first we got an error after the hidden.img but after changing the PIT file to this one ( ZEROLTE_EUR_OPEN_HIDDEN300M ) it worked again without any errors displayed by Odin. Apparently the PIT file we used at first did not have enough space for our hidden.img ...

We flashed that firmware several times and sometimes after the flash there would be a blue screen with an android mascot saying it is erasing, but the animation of that mascot freezes also after 10 to 20 seconds. I've kept the phone in this blue screen for several hours (up to 5h I think) since a few forum threads said that it sometimes takes very long to work and the LED was actually flashing all the time, but nothing changed.

We did not try to flash anything else because the Reactivation Lock is enabled and I have no idea how to turn this thing off w/o booting the device.

I would not mind flashing a custom firmware on the device as long as it just works again. So if this is somehow possible and might be a solution I am up for it.

What currenctly is going on with the phone:

· It only turns completly off when the power runs out.

· No button combination is working to turn it off.

· I can enter Download Mode easily but I can not enter the Factory Reset Mode.

Within the Download Mode it says:

ODIN MODE

Product Name: SM-G925F

Current Binary: Samsung Official

System Status: Official

Reactivation Lock: On

Secure Download: Enabled

KNOX Warranty Void: 0 (0x0000)

RP SWREV: B:5 K:2 S:2

· The boot ends either up with showing an "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android" logo for the whole time (kept it like that for several hours, no boot)

· or with a blue screen (yellow warning sign, android mascot laying on the ground and a "no command" beneath it).

· Odin is recognizing it as a device.

· The device manager is recognizing the device.

· Samsung Switch is saying the device is not compatible.

· ADB/fastboot can not detect the device.

So ... is it possible to get this damn thing to work again or is it gone for good?

If you still got any questions regarding the current state of the phone please ask. I will try to reply ASAP.

Thank you very much for any reply you guys might throw at me.