S3 Won't Boot Past Splash Screen, Can't Enter Recovery

Linoge

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Aug 14, 2014
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Hi all, longtime lurker, first time poster.

I went crawling through the threads on here, but no one seems to be having quite the symptoms I do, so here it is:

My SIII was originally locked to T-Mobile but I since unlocked and it is running an AT&T SIM card. It was rooted almost immediately after I received it (talk about bloatware…), and has been running the most-current, stable install of Cyanogenmod ever since (10.2.1, currently).

I will not lie and say it has always been easy to keep it updated and running smoothly, but yesterday takes the cake.

I used the phone to make two calls this morning and take one picture around lunch. About 1530, I picked it up to make another call, and it was not responding to the power button (it was locked, not off, last I saw it). I held the button down for a while, mashed it a few times, and then gave up and disassembled its armor and removed and reinstalled the battery.

Now, it will not boot past the “Samsung Galaxy SIII” screen.

It will not boot into recovery mode, at all.

It will boot into download mode, but ODIN refuses to recognize the phone’s existence when it is plugged into a desktop, Heimdall cannot communicate with it, and Kies throws a connection error.

If I were flashing or rooting or updating or something, I would at least understand why this happened, although the “what” is sometimes confusing. But this time, it was just sitting on my desk, minding its own business, and… *splat*

This does not appear to be the stuck power button issue that a lot of people have, simply because it is not power-cycling and does respond to the button. Is there anything else I can try, or is it time to give this thing a proper sending off?
 
Have you tried leaving the battery out for more than a couple of hours? I know it's hard to live that long without a phone haha but I'd try that.

If not, it sounds like it could be a bad memory board (and now it can't load anything else) or a faulty motherboard (which would explain why not even ODIN or Kies 'see' the device).
 
Yeah, it sat the whole night with its battery out, and I held the power button down for at least 10 seconds each time I removed the battery.

Guess it's time to find a new phone.
 
Sad :(

One last resort is to use the flashing terminal they have on GOOD Samsung service shops. If that thing can't communicate with the phone, then yeah, it's pretty much gone. Hopefully it's just a loose connector or something. :(
 

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