Phone Mysteriously Bricked - Danger

[mswish]

usually i like to try and figure these things out for myself before i sign up on a forum to bother a bunch of strangers on the internet... but this time, i can't.

i have a stock, never-before-been-rooted samsung S3, and to my dismay it has mysteriously bricked itself. i don't know how or why, but i do know that i have data on the phone that i don't want lost. for the past two days i've been trying over and over to boot it into every mode i know, and on two or three occasions, i managed to successfully boot it into both regular and safe mode. the phone would later crash.

i booted it into recovery mode, and cleared my app cache. that didn't work. i tried to boot into recovery mode again, but now recovery mode crashes, too.

is download mode my only hope to save my data on my phone? and if so, how would i do that? there are so many tutorials and contradicting advice, i'm not quite sure where to start...

 

[belodion]

Welcome to the Forums.

I must ask before going any further, are you sure the battery is good?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mswish]

thanks for the welcome!

as far as i know, the battery is okay. i have not had a chance to borrow somebody else's battery to test it out, but i assume that if i was able to boot up my phone at least two or three times, it should be fine?

 

[belodion]

You could be right of course, but batteries can be funny things when they're failing. It's your phone and I guess you'll intuitively know if it's not battery but if you're in any doubt I think it would be worth a try at least.

Among all the bootings, did you manage to successfilly perform a Cache Partition wipe in Recovery? You mention App Cache above but I'm referring to System Cache.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mswish]

i did successfully complete a cache partition wipe in recovery mode. since then, i haven't been able to use recovery mode without it crashing. as for the battery, i'll try somebody else's ASAP.

 

[mswish]

phone was not able to boot, even after using a different S3 battery.

i've been reading about this application named odin. could this be the key to me saving my phone and not losing data?

 

[belodion]

Sorry the battery suggestion was no good.
If you are considering rooting, about which my knowledge is minimal, I think you could do no better than to start posting in the Samsung Galaxy S3 Rooting, ROMS and Hacks forum. There will be geniuses there who will be able to advise.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mswish]

would using odin require me to root my phone? is that the only way to go about restoring my phone and rescuing my data?