HELP reviving 'dying' phone?? :-/

[unit_shifter]

Girlfriend has a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, the AT&T version. It's had a few odd problems (still unanswered when I last posted - like a GPS that randomly "spins" psychotically on maps with no warning and seemingly still seeing the satellites, another issue where it seems to be unrootable using all methods that work for others, and an even earlier issue where it could not accept the factory update) but generally has worked okay, now all the sudden without warning it no longer seems to respond, although what it does changes and is intermittent.

We brought it into a Samsung store where they tried to run I think it's called the 'SMART' software, which supposedly fixes things, but never tells you whats wrong, but it couldn't complete. It'd take forever (like over 10 minutes sometimes) to go from 0% to 1%, then would creep upwards. The furthest it got was 21%, other times all died sooner. Many times you plug it into power or computer USB and it wont do a single thing.

When plugging the phone into a charger it usually wont show even the battery charge screen. Once in awhile when connected to USB in some boot mode or another on the computer it's gotten to some recovery mode, but then couldn't later. It never gets all the way up to normal functioning phone status anymore. Something said "no PIT partition" at some point during other attempts involving some Odin program. We have a little bit of data we'd like to get back out if possible (just some sound recordings) so haven't done the factory reset, I guess that's the last step because I think that will erase it. With the other intermittent behavior I dont have high confidence that will fix it either.

I'll try and get a list of the exact things she did to try to recover it if it matters but if there's no fix/if this is all the sign of an unfixable problem it's a little irrelevant. I'm wondering for instance if the built in flash is somehow corrupting or has a dying sector, is there any way to force some reformatting.

What are even the options? :-/

 

[Aquila]

Sorry to hear that her phone is failing - if standard software fixes aren't working and Samsung can't fix it, it'll likely be cost prohibitive to repair hardware issues. Unfortunately, it's a bit over 4 years old and it's very difficult to get reliable repairs that won't involve wiping data. If you can't get past recovery, then we're shot. If you can get back into recovery and can access the device via adb then you can pull whatever files it can find via adb.

 

[unit_shifter]

Worst case of wiping data is okay, but if wiping data is inevitable, are there any solutions or workarounds?

Like if it were a hard drive on a computer, you just low level format things, it marks out bad sectors that fail tests, you reinstall, and it usually works a bit longer. I'd hate to think a phone has to be tossed because one bit of data in the loader got flipped or something.

I'm not even sure how to make the phone stable (if it can be) enough to be properly tested so far though.

 

[unit_shifter]

Sorry to hear that her phone is failing - if standard software fixes aren't working and Samsung can't fix it, it'll likely be cost prohibitive to repair hardware issues. Unfortunately, it's a bit over 4 years old and it's very difficult to get reliable repairs that won't involve wiping data. If you can't get past recovery, then we're shot. If you can get back into recovery and can access the device via adb then you can pull whatever files it can find via adb.

FYI, realized there was something I didnt read... what is "ADB" and how do I use it to pull a file?

The phone has perodically gotten into "download mode" and "recovery mode" (according to GF), but that is part of the intermittent.

If we can pull the few sound files off there (or give up caring about the data) what comes next, a factory reset, or something else/some deeper reformatting or...?

 

[unit_shifter]

Last post on this topic but I hope someone might respond in the future if they have any ideas - the phone no longer wants to power up at all. The battery was tested to still have 2.77v of charge and tried with a new battery to no effect, tried on computer usb and wall charger usb power to no effect. Dont know if it's failing software or hardware but if I could ever get it back up even once i'd try to flash it. Hate to toss something that might only have one corrupt bit in the wrong part of flash causing a boot failure.

The only thing I tried was sticking the phone in the freezer for a few hours - seeing if thermal differences on capacitors or flash or such might have any effect but no dice. If there's any other suggestions on "reviving electronics" or SSD's since I suspect intermittently failing flash that's simply crawled up to 99% instead of the lower level i'd still like to try it, else I guess it's just parts now.