[AC Question]

Never rooted. Phone got stuck in boot a few days after the last Marshmallow update that Verizon pushed over the air. I have no idea if it ever actually booted into the latest Marshmallow, so there is no way to say what SW version is on it now.

First the Samsung splash screen was coming on, but would not make it to Verizon screen. Now the screen is completely black. I can manage to put the phone into download mode by knowing the sequence of buttons to press. It connects to ODIN3 and shows up there. Tried re-flashing with old and latest MD5s, but same cycle happens. Even tried to play around with ODIN options like turning on bootloader, repartitioning with that button that says "do not go there". Same thing - ODIN gives green pass, but the phone gets stuck in early boot steps and blue light stays on with nothing on the screen. Tried both rebooting from ODIN and rebooting manually. Called local phone shop nearby, they said they can not re-flash. How locked up are these phones?

I did find a new version of ODIN that talks about using separate files for BL, AP, etc for newer phones. But, I cannot find those files individually and I have no idea if S5 is considered a newer phone. Anyone solved anything similar?

[can3gxw]

Take it to a Best Buy and go see a Samsung expert. They should be able to reflash it. The S5 is not THAT locked down that you aren't able to reflash a stock firmware. It could possibly be something in the internal memory just died... sort of like when a hard drive fails on a PC. You will never be able to reinstall the OS on it. It is entirely possible that your phone got damaged (impact/fall/water) or the insides just died.

If the Samsung techs can't flash it, you may just have a pretty paperweight now.