[Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) Questions & Answers] RobWarton87:
Ok i have searched the site for an exact answer to the issue i have encountered, with not getting a specific answer to my question. If there is already a thread for my exact problem, or two to solve the two issues i have encountered, please share the link, thank you.

My Wife and I got her son a Galaxy J3 (SM-J320fn) open network, with a Giff Gaff sim, from Argos. Its his first phone and we wanted to see if he could look after it, and if so, we would get him a better model at Christmas. Now his dad wanted to put google family link on the device, and due to it being only android 5.1, this was not possible. This sparked a huge row between my wife and her ex, with him being a general ****. I have tinkered with PC's and X-box 360s before, and thought i could have a go at Rooting the device and installing a custom android 7 rom. I didn't go into this lightly, and read that XDA was the very best place to seek advice and guides. I read up on rooting the device i had, Odin,TWRP and the OS linage android 7 rom. I was comfortable, that although it was very in depth to my skill set, i felt i could do it. I followed the guide to rooting the J320fn, installing the drivers, and USB debugging, fired up ODIN as administrator and installed TWRP, from there i followed the guide to install the custom ROM after than.

all was fine. device was android 7 and google family link was installed. everybody was happy...

My step son left his phone in the school office after his football match after school the other day and the device powered down for the first time since i uploaded the custom rom. When powering up the device we got the custom binary blocked by FRP lock issue. ok... so i came back here to XDA to read a thread about that. i decided that maybe i should have looked into other parental apps instead of messing about with the phone. so i went down the root of restoring the stock firmware and to battle it out with the dad about using a different parental app. so i downloaded the stock firmware for the device, and put the device into download mode. i ran ODIN but the install failed and on the device the loading bar at the bottom was about 5mm into the download and nothing else moved... ****... ok... now what? i took out the battery, and then powered up again. "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again" ... Oh man, now what. so i return back XDA to look at this. read the guide and went to KIES3 to install stock firmware, but kies doesn't seem to recognise my device model? i click the emergency firmware recovery, but lists no device to recover?

so now im searching frantically to solve this... i downloaded the stock firmware from SamMobile; J320FNXXU0ARA1_J320FNEVR0ARA1_J320FNXXU0ARA1_HOME.tar.md5 (which took like 17 hours.. meh) and that Fails in ODIN too...

<ID:0/003> Added!!

<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..

<OSM> Binary Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..

<OSM> Please wait..

<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..

<OSM> Leave CS..

<ID:0/003> Odin engine v(ID:3.1100)..

<ID:0/003> File analysis..

<ID:0/003> SetupConnection..

<ID:0/003> Initialzation..

<ID:0/003> Get PIT for mapping..

<ID:0/003> Firmware update start..

<ID:0/003> SingleDownload.

<ID:0/003> boot.img

<ID:0/003> NAND Write Start!!

<ID:0/003> cache.img

<ID:0/003> hidden.img

<ID:0/003> nvitem.bin

<ID:0/003> PM_sharkl_arm7.bin

<ID:0/003> FAIL!

<ID:0/003>

<ID:0/003> Complete(Write) operation failed.

<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)

then i read to try install TWRP again, which also didn't work either as that brought up the binary blocked by FRP again and Failed in ODIN.

"<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..

<OSM> Binary Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..

<OSM> Please wait..

<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..

<OSM> Leave CS..

<ID:0/003> Added!!

<ID:0/003> Odin engine v(ID:3.1100)..

<ID:0/003> File analysis..

<ID:0/003> SetupConnection..

<ID:0/003> Initialzation..

<ID:0/003> Get PIT for mapping..

<ID:0/003> Firmware update start..

<ID:0/003> SingleDownload.

<ID:0/003> recovery.img

<ID:0/003> NAND Write Start!!

<ID:0/003> RQT_CLOSE !!

<ID:0/003>

<ID:0/003> Complete(Write) operation failed.

<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)"

So now i really don't know what to do... is it bricked? any and all help would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Rob