[Galaxy S 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tlcd:
Please bare with me as this is a little bit long because I think I need to tell you everything up to now I have done to recover my phone so you can give me the most accurate advice to fix it.

I have a Galaxy S5 G906S & had the following stock firmware installed & worked well & I have left the reactivation lock on.:(

PDA: G906SKSU1ANK1

CSC: G906SSKC1ANK1

Google play was updating some apps & suddenly the phone went in to a boot loop. I tried to get in to recovery mode but didn't work. I tried many tutorials and guides from this site but couldn’t get the phone to recovery mode. So I installed latest USB drivers & flashed above mentioned KitKat 4.4.2 ANK1 successfully. Still the boot loop and no recovery mode. Removed the battery and tried & nothing, no recovery mode. I got to know that the phone is soft bricked.

Then I came across this thread, describing you should do a firmware install using Nand Erase All , Re-partition & Phone EFS Clear in ODIN 3.09...using Pit file and Stock ROM.

https://xdaforums.com/sho....php?t=2610757

I got the SM-G906S PIT file from the following thread @ #1398

https://xdaforums.com/gal...807639/page140

Using Odin 3.12 flashed as described in the previous thread. It failed giving me the following results....

[IMG="1"]https://i.imgur.com/wxVJFfF.png[/IMG]

[IMG="2"]https://i.imgur.com/CpZSCuj.png[/IMG]

[IMG="3"]https://i.imgur.com/tYBcVus.png[/IMG]

After failing that I again flashed stock ANK1 firmware using Odin 3.12 normal settings and everything went well. Still phone goes into boot loops. No recovery mode either. But this time after exiting Odin 3.12 while the USB cable still plugged in to the PC I removed the battery & again tried to go to the recovery mode. This time it worked!!!

I cleared the cache & factory reset the phone & rebooted. Phone booted past the Samsung logo till the page where it shows LTE-A X3 logo and briefly came to the language selection page for the KitKat OS and then completely shut down and battery charging logo was displayed on screen as the phone is still connected to PC.

I removed the phone from PC and tried to reboot again. Boot loops happen again and no recovery menu booting. Here the phone ran on battery power only.

Switched off the phone & connected to wall power outlet and rebooted. Again, boot loop appears and I removed and re install the battery and then try to go to the recovery menu & again it works. Clear the cache & factory reset the phone and reboot. As before the phone boot till the language selection page and shuts down and battery charging logo was displayed on screen as the phone is still connected to wall socket.

But if I try to boot to recovery mode while the phone running on battery power only it just goes on with the boot loop without going to the recovery menu even when the keys are pressed. Only “recovery booting” appears in blue color when the Volume Up, Home and Power keys are pressed.

By this stage I am skeptical to whether I have damaged the partitions of the phone since I used a PIT file to re partition according to above thread & failed. But I do not know for sure.

Then I again flashed stock ANK1 above, hoping it would work but still the same results.

Reading for some more information I got to know that while the reactivation lock is on you cannot flash any ROM to the phone. Is that true?

Then I came across this thread

https://xdaforums.com/note-4-tmobile/help/reactivation-lock-soft-brick-t3144253

According to the above thread you can remove the reactivation lock on soft bricked G906S phones using TWRP Recovery. Then I downloaded necessary files from the following thread....

https://xdaforums.com/galaxy-s5/development/recovery-twrp-recovery-v2-8-7-0-t3199011

downloaded the following file for KitKat .

KK & LP : Old versions (V1 ~ V4) (trlte port) ----> G906SKL_TWRP_3.0.0-0_PORT_V4.tar

using Odin 3.12.3 flashed the TWRP tar file according to the https://xdaforums.com/note-4-tmobile/help/reactivation-lock-soft-brick-t3144253 thread @ #3.

Flashing TWRP failed as follows....

Phone's download mode menu on top says "secure check fail: recovery"

[IMG="TWRP flash"]https://i.imgur.com/j2Drr9w.png[/IMG]

Since the Odin is mentioning a PIT file & I haven't given it one above, I again tried to flash TWRP with another PIT file but that also failed as well giving the message "re-partition operation failed" in Odin log.

I've tried flashing with Kies too but never got a code for it & the serial of the phone doesn't work with both Kies & SmartSwitch.

These are the things I have tried to fix my phone but still no luck.

What else can I do to fix my phone?

Getting the phone back to ANK1 (Android 4.4.2 KitKat) would be enough.

Please advice me on what to do next.

Thanks much in advance.