[Asus ZenFone 3 Questions & Answers] tulioburgos:
Hello guys,

I need help. Definitely

My phone stopped booting into system after some service.

First a

little brief

:

Phone never showed any problems before.

LCD+Touch were replaced.

Phone stopped booting into system.

Stills boots/ works perfectly in fastboot, recovery and userdebug.

Tried:

factory reset

unlocking and relocking bootloader

flashing several factory and stock RAWs

stock recovery and TWRP

stock raw alone

update stock system from stock raw

twrp + stock rom + magisk

twrp + lineageos + magisk

several guides on this forum

Nothing works. Problem remains the same, doesn’t matter the alternative I try.

Now the

whole story

:

I’ve had this phone for a while. Always did the OTA updates. Never had problems… at all.

Some days ago, I dropped it and was finally able to break the screen. The lcd became black in some spots and had different brightness in others. Touch kind of worked, kind of got crazy after some seconds (and I had to turn the screen off and on again).

I’ve got some experience in repairing electronics and phones. So, I watched/read a dozen guides about this particular service, bought an original LCD+Touch kit, and replaced myself.

No apparent problems with that. The process is quite simple and straight forward. (I knew what I was doing. But if you tell me something might be wrong with that, I will look into it. I will take any help. Just tell me what to do.)

And so it begins.

I set my phone up again - without gluing anything, as it was the first test – and turn it on. It seems to boot normally… boot logo shows normally… boot animation seems to take longer than usual… the screen suddenly goes black.

I open the whole thing again, check every connector, everything is ok.

I try to turn it on again, now the phone turns off after just one or two seconds of boot animation.

I did then a factory reset, problem persisted just the same.

I thought to myself: “ok, then. System must be somehow corrupted.”

I updated the system to the lasted version in ASUS website trough adb sideload. Problem persisted.

“ok, maybe I must clear the system partition then… let’s go a little further”.

I read some guides, and proceeded to unlock the bootloader (flash factory raw, fastboot commands, flash oreo raw), flash TWRP and LineageOS.

When I turn it on again, a bit of hope. Boot animation takes, again, a long time. An “encrypting device” screen comes up and I believe it’s finally over. But no. The phone goes off after about 10 seconds of supposed encrypting and, when I turn it on again, same as before… two seconds of boot animation and then darkness.

After that I Just went deeper into the habbit hole.

Tried several brick fixes in sent by the XDA community.

Tried flashing RAWs using Asus Flash Tool (v1.0.0.86 (20201124)) and flashall_AFT.cmd (that comes inside de RAWs.

Tried all combination and orders I could imagine of the following RAWs:

CSC_ZE552KL_13.1301.1603.53_WW_Lock_20171128

CSC_ZE552KL_13_13_1_36_M2_6_7_P7_userdebug

WW_ZE552KL_13.20.10.137_M3.10.35_Phone-user.raw

WW_ZE552KL_14.2020.1703.28_M3.10.47.3_Phone-user.raw

WW_ZE552KL_15.0410.1712.31_M3.10.47.16_Phone-user.raw

WW_ZE552KL_15.0410.1807.75_M3.10.47.19_Phone-user.raw

It doesn’t matter. Whenever I flash a RAW, the phone goes to this encrypting process and then goes black. From there on, I can flash anything through adb sideload, fastboot or twrp…. It shows the boot logo, (possibly shows the dm-verity screen, depending on the set up), and goes off after about 2 seconds of boot animation.

Tested everything I could with TWRP: LCD, Touch, mounting partitions and storage seem to be working fine.

Tested everything I could with the factory RAW userdebug (using command fastboot oem enable-userdebug boots a very simple system (there’s an image below)): Again, LCD and touch work fine. Also, hard keys, wifi, Bluetooth, calling, messaging, 4G and both speakers are working.

And there we get to present time. I just don’t know what else I can do.

My next steps would be going into QFIL flashing. That would actually be new to me. But since I can use all these functions properly, it doesn’t seem to me that that’s the way to go.

Please help. I will take anything. Tell what I may have passed by. Send me the guides you think may help me, even if I’ve already tried.

I can give you any information you guys believe is pertinent.

I will start leaving here some info I think may help:

ZE552KL Z012DC ASUS_Z012DC Brazilian model BRAZIL

4GB RAM. 64GB storage.

C:\Users\Vanisi\Desktop\ZE552KL>fastboot getvar all
(bootloader) version:0.5
(bootloader) battery-soc-ok:yes
(bootloader) battery-voltage:4236000
(bootloader) variant:MTP eMMC
(bootloader) secure:yes
(bootloader) version-baseband:
(bootloader) version-bootloader:O-CS4 - 4 - user
(bootloader) display-panel:
(bootloader) off-mode-charge:1
(bootloader) charger-screen-enabled:1
(bootloader) max-download-size: 0x1fe00000
(bootloader) partition-type:asdf:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:asdf: 0x4000000
(bootloader) partition-type:APD:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:APD: 0xd000000
(bootloader) partition-type:ADF:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:ADF: 0x2000000
(bootloader) partition-type:cache:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:cache: 0x8000000
(bootloader) partition-type:userdata:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:userdata: 0xd683f7000
(bootloader) partition-type:system:ext4
(bootloader) partition-size:system: 0xf0000000
(bootloader) cpuid:046
(bootloader) project:ZE552KL
(bootloader) serialno:H2AZB601E85****
(bootloader) kernel:lk
(bootloader) product:MSM8953
all:
Finished. Total time: 0.281s
C:\Users\Vanisi\Desktop\ZE552KL>fastboot oem device-info
(bootloader) Device tampered: false
(bootloader) Device unlocked: true
(bootloader) Device critical unlocked: false
(bootloader) Charger screen enabled: true
(bootloader) Display panel:
(bootloader) Device is_authorized: false
(bootloader) ssn_num: H2AZB601E85****
(bootloader) isn_num: MB352KL0AB****
(bootloader) check_fused: 0
(bootloader) Device resize: false
(bootloader) BOOT_COUNT : 175
(bootloader) SB=Y
(bootloader) Re-partition: false
(bootloader) Device had been rooted: >>> YES <<< (Warranty void)
(bootloader) Device has copy fsg to fsgCA: false
(bootloader) Device last copy fsg status: fail
(bootloader) verity_mode: 1
(bootloader) is_ffu: false
(bootloader) verity_counter: 0
(bootloader) total verity_counter: 0
OKAY [ 0.203s]
Finished. Total time: 0.203s
C:\Users\Vanisi\Desktop\ZE552KL>fastboot oem system-info
(bootloader) board_info: msm8953
(bootloader) mem_info: 4GB
(bootloader) mmc_info:
(bootloader) product_name: ASUS_Z012D
(bootloader) product_locale: en-US
(bootloader) product_carrier: US-ASUS_Z012D-WW_Phone
(bootloader) csc_build_version: WW_ZE552KL-13.20.10.152-20161222
(bootloader) bt_mac: 2C4D5****B18
(bootloader) wifi_mac: 2C4D5****E38
(bootloader) imei: 35905207393****
(bootloader) imei2: 35905207393****
(bootloader) ssn: H2AZB601E85****
(bootloader) isn: MB352KL0A****
(bootloader) color: 1B
(bootloader) country: BR
(bootloader) customer: CKD
(bootloader) revenuecountry: BR
OKAY [ 0.188s]
Finished. Total time: 0.188s

(the **** don't actually come up... it's just to hide the information I believe may be sensitive)

Help. Please