Curing the S3 of technical problems via rooting

[trek186]

Hello all. First post here, and I am hoping that you all may be able to help me.

So here is the background. My partner went from a Droid Bionic to a Galaxy S3 shortly after the S3 came out in 2012, and he has had it since. So far the phone has been good to him, but in the last four or so months the phone has gone beserk. It has been freezing when apps are opened, and he has been dumped back to the home screen. It has been downloading massive amounts of data in the background, and it has been reinstalling apps which he has deleted long ago. The phone has continued to do this despite him forcing factory reset like 10 times now.

I consider myself reasonably computer saavy, but I have no clue what in the world is going on. We are about to go through with me rooting his phone, in the hopes that it will work correctly post-root. But I have never rooted an Android device before.

The instructions look reasonably straight-forward to do it (https://sites.google.com/site/tomsgt123/all-videos/samsung-galaxy-s3), but I am a bit unsure about what I am doing. The way I understand it, this would be analogous to reformatting the hard drive on a store-bought PC and replacing the bloated OEM Windows install with a clean copy of Windows. Correct? Thanks!

 

[Golfdriver97]

Hello all. First post here, and I am hoping that you all may be able to help me.

So here is the background. My partner went from a Droid Bionic to a Galaxy S3 shortly after the S3 came out in 2012, and he has had it since. So far the phone has been good to him, but in the last four or so months the phone has gone beserk. It has been freezing when apps are opened, and he has been dumped back to the home screen. It has been downloading massive amounts of data in the background, and it has been reinstalling apps which he has deleted long ago. The phone has continued to do this despite him forcing factory reset like 10 times now.

I consider myself reasonably computer saavy, but I have no clue what in the world is going on. We are about to go through with me rooting his phone, in the hopes that it will work correctly post-root. But I have never rooted an Android device before.

The instructions look reasonably straight-forward to do it (https://sites.google.com/site/tomsgt123/all-videos/samsung-galaxy-s3), but I am a bit unsure about what I am doing. The way I understand it, this would be analogous to reformatting the hard drive on a store-bought PC and replacing the bloated OEM Windows install with a clean copy of Windows. Correct? Thanks!

Welcome to the forums!!
You are close. Rooting does not wipe the phone clean. Rooting is like Administrative Control for Windows. Your line of thinking of reformatting and replacing Windows is with custom ROMs. However, I have a different suggestion. I would try to reflash (reinstall) your original stock ROM. I think the one you have may not have loaded correctly in which case no amount of resets will work. I do not know where to get your list of files, you can try Android, Windows Phone, and Windows Mobile Development News, Information, and Howtos - XDA Developers and look under specifically the Verizon S3.

Basically you would need a program called ODIN, you can put your phone into Download Mode (Power down and hold volume down, home and power) connect the phone into the PC using a USB cable, and then in the PDA box, you would put the MD5 file in it. Some downloads of original ROMs have Odin in the zip file, so that may not be a big deal.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Rooting doesn't change anything, other than giving you access to parts of the system you don't normally have access to, and letting you run programs that require that access. Rooting will let you flash new ROMs, but by itself doesn't change your ROM at all.

Rooting should not be seen as a miracle cure for any phone problems. In fact, if the problems are caused by rogue apps or malware rooting is the last thing you would want to do, as it compromises your phone's security. You and your partner should figure out what's wrong first. then decide if you want to root.

You say he's factory reset "like 10 times now." After a reset, is the first thing (s)he does is reinstall all the apps that were there before, and reestablish all the accounts that were there before? If so, DON'T. Do a factory reset and install nothing. Don't log in to any of your social networking accounts. Just use the phone plain vanilla for a day, and see what happens. If it works normally (and I bet it will), the problem isn't the phone, it's with one or more apps, or malware that's been loaded on the phone. Reinstall only the most important apps, and see if things are still OK. If not, start over, and install only 1 app at a time, and see what happens. When the problem recurs, you've identified your problem.

If things work with your critical apps installed, then reestablish your accounts, one at a time. Use the phone enough in between each additional account to make sure it's OK.

Finally, if things are still working OK, start reinstalling other apps, one or two at a time. Again, leave enough time between each set of installs to make sure things are OK.

Keep a log of what you do. At some point in this process, you'll install and app, or set up an account, and things will start getting flaky again, and you'll be able to isolate the problem to the last couple of changes you made.