Samsung Galaxy S4 Dead?

[scrafita]

Hi, my sons S4 went into a reboot loop yesterday. It doesn't seem to be a regular loop though as sometimes it gets to the Samsung Galaxy S4 screen and either freezes or reboots, sometimes it will attempt to start with the Samsung logo, boot music and all, occasionally the screen will start flickering with a grey background, sometimes with vertical lines flashing on the screen.

We managed to get it to boot up a couple of times but it lasted about 2 minutes before it rebooted. I have charged the battery fully, sometimes the phone will freeze on the battery charge screen!

I managed to boot into recovery mode and performed a factory reset which completed the format. The phone will not even begin the setup process, it started once and froze halfway through and rebooted.

I cannot get the device recognised on my laptop using either Kies or Odin. I can get it into download mode but still isn't recognised. It will not boot into recovery mode any more, it just freezes on the logo screen with recovery booting in blue at the top of the screen.

I'm guessing we have nice mobile shaped paperweight!

Oh I have opened up the phone to check the connections due to the flickering screen issue but everything was as it should be.

The phone has just rebooted again and the entire screen has gone grey with black horizontal lines across the top third of the screen!!!



Do I just give up trying??

 

[Rukbat]

It sounds (and the picture looks) like a bad motherboard and, unless you can find one with a smashed screen but a good motherboard (for free) and do the swap yourself, it wouldn't pay to have it fixed. You can get a good refurbished one for about $50 (and maybe even less at a local repair shop) and a new one for about $100, and a repair would cost more than that.

 

[scrafita]

It sounds (and the picture looks) like a bad motherboard and, unless you can find one with a smashed screen but a good motherboard (for free) and do the swap yourself, it wouldn't pay to have it fixed. You can get a good refurbished one for about $50 (and maybe even less at a local repair shop) and a new one for about $100, and a repair would cost more than that.

Thanks for the reply

I kinda guessed it would be something more sinister than a software/firmware issue. I guess there are no little tricks to get it working again apart from replacing the motherboard?

I might keep a lookout for a damaged one and replace it if I get one cheap enough. It's a decent phone but my son has been having problems with it for some time with screen freezing issues etc. We have got him a new phone anyway but I was hoping to use this one myself as I am currently stuck with an iPhone 5 which I hate!!!

I'll have a look around anyway.

 

[scrafita]

Ok you were spot on. I managed to get hold of a Galaxy S4 with a broken screen, switched the motherboard over and it works perfectly again.

Thanks