Help with GS3 constant rebooting - Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III

Hi I have MOAR v5.1 with Ktweaker installed and everything was working fine for more than 6 months. Suddenly just yesterday, my phone keeps rebooting itself so I decided to perform a factory reset and reinstall the MOAR v5.1 because I made no nandroid backup earlier lol. After installing MOAR v5.1 it works for a little while, then my phone resets somehow automatically. Right now I can't tell whether my SW or HW is failing. It seems I have to start from scratch by erasing internal storage, or wipe system? But if I wipe either of these, do I lose root? I am not sure but I need some debugging help.
Thank you,
Update: Something weird is that when the phone is off and I plug in my charger it does not come up with the battery icon with the level of battery. It comes up then goes away. I am wondering if my phone got short-circuited somehow?
Update2: I have tried getting to download mode in order to Odin the tar file. Somehow my phone shuts itself off when its in download mode after a few seconds. I think I have a hardware failure. I have dropped it in water a few months ago but it was working fine since then. Can anyone else confirm?

It's called SDS sudden death syndrome. Your power button has failed it's a known defect on the S3. Some users have had some luck blowing compressed air in the power button area and playing with it to get it to work until they where able to go to sprint for repair.
Remember search is your best friend, Have a great day!

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[Q] HELP!! New stock nexus ui crashed, stuck at boot animation

Stock galaxy nexus, ui force closed. Powered off. Can get into recovery mode to attempt to reinstall stock rom. It shows a droid with an opened chest, with a red triangle above it when I try to go to recovery mode from the odin screen.
Anyone else have this issue? Is there a way to flash using a mac? I have limited access to a pc.
Thanks all.
This is the hspa version.
svntsvn said:
Stock galaxy nexus, ui force closed. Powered off. Can get into recovery mode to attempt to reinstall stock rom. It shows a droid with an opened chest, with a red triangle above it when I try to go to recovery mode from the odin screen.
Anyone else have this issue? Is there a way to flash using a mac? I have limited access to a pc.
Thanks all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The android icon you're referring to sounds like the stock recovery. In order to flash a ROM (even stock) from recovery mode, you'll need to load a custom recovery. This requires the device to be unlocked.
Not very often a stock setup needs to be restored. Generally, with the stock setup, only the /data partition is wiped (revert to factory default) and the issues are cleared. Not sure why a stock setup would need to be restore.
If you're still going to pursue reloading the system, without access to the normal android mode, the best route will be using fastboot. This can be done on a mac and the fastboot commands should be the same.
Hope that helps get a start!
This happened me earlier. I was able to factory reset it, which, unfortunately really annoyed me because I hadn't saved a backup..
Before the "Google" logo shows up, press and hold the power button and the volume up and down buttons.
Then go into recovery mode using the volume buttons.
When it reboots, you get that Droid with the hazard sign (which I know you're at, but just for the sake of others who need help) all you have to do is hold down the power button and WHILE it's held, press the volume up or down button and move to "Factory Reset". When you hold down the power button and press the volume rocker, a little menu will appear. It should only take a few minutes then.
Hope this helps. Apparently this is a WiFi issue. I'll definitely be keeping backups as of now..
I left it off, plugged it back in for a couple of hours and it booted right up. Strange.
I'm wondering if it had anything to do with juice defender and its settings that take effect at a lower battery level? Its the only thing I can come up with. Never had a stock phone's ui force quit and not reboot. The battery was definitely up to 25% given the time it was initially charging, but maybe it was still interfering.
Well, now that she's running, time to get root, recovery, rom and rejoice.
Thanks for the replies, very much appreciated.
svntsvn said:
I left it off, plugged it back in for a couple of hours and it booted right up. Strange.
I'm wondering if it had anything to do with juice defender and its settings that take effect at a lower battery level? Its the only thing I can come up with. Never had a stock phone's ui force quit and not reboot. The battery was definitely up to 25% given the time it was initially charging, but maybe it was still interfering.
Well, now that she's running, time to get root, recovery, rom and rejoice.
Thanks for the replies, very much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the exact same problem happen last night with UI crashing and then the getting stuck at the boot animation. I was desperately searching online, looking to find a solution that didn't involve rebooting to factory setting and came across this post and did exactly what you did and it WORKED, very strange, I really wanna know what caused that!!!!
I've had the same problem with my Galaxy Nexus. I received it on December 21st, with stock 4.0.1 build. No root or unlock attempt at any time. On January 2nd I experienced this problems (UI process crash, screen not responding, reboot and stuck in boot animation).
The only solution was to do a factory reset and start over.
On January 10th same problem, same solution. Second factory reset.
I got the 4.0.2 OTA just two days after that. I thought that would resolve the problem. The phone seemed more stable, with less FC's and no trace of the UI crash. Indeed it lasted long...
Exactly until January 24th when I picked up the phone and seemed in the sleep of dead. Removed the battery, restarted the phone... and stuck in the boot animation.
Do you have any advice? Should I return the phone? Aside from those specific problems I am quite happy with the SGN and Android 4 in general. And I use it quite a lot (I have a very long train commute) without other problems.
Again...
It happened again!!
I don't know what to do anymore, this is not a usable phone when I have to reinstall and reconfigure every 3 weeks.
I may have found the problem
Well, not me exactly, but this bug report seems to fit the problem and the charging workaround. Seems to be a problem the file used to store the battery stats and draw the charge graph.
It also fits my usage (I try not to charge it up until 100%).
I can't post links to the forum, the issue is id number 24518 which you can find in code.google.com/p/android/

Galaxy nexus keeps rebooting

I have a stock GN, not rooted yet. Today my phone automatically shut off and now it starts back up, google logo shows up and all those colors come on for couple of seconds and then the phone reboots itself.
I can press both volume up+volume down + power button and get into a menu which gives me the options of Start, Restart bootloader, recovery mode, and power off. I choose recovery mode but then it goes on to an android sign with exclamation mark. After that I can't seem to get anywhere. I have tried volume up +power, volume down+power, and volume up+down+power but nothing seems to work. It just keeps on rebooting it self.
Any solutions to this problem??
There are two possibilities:
1) Software problem. Since you were stock, this is unlikely.
2) Hardware problem. This is more likely, in my opinion.
If you want to eliminate 1) as a possibility, you can try this:
1. Download the GNex Toolkit here
2. Install it & get the drivers working on your computer (if you haven't already)
3. Unlock the bootloader by selecting Option 3 (it'll wipe your phone)
4. Flash factory stock rom by selecting option 8
5. Try it. If it works, congratulations. (if you want to re-lock your bootloader, use option 11)
If this doesn't work, relock your bootloader and send it in for warrantee. (most likely a hardware problem)
....
FredFS456 said:
There are two possibilities:
1) Software problem. Since you were stock, this is unlikely.
2) Hardware problem. This is more likely, in my opinion.
If you want to eliminate 1) as a possibility, you can try this:
1. Download the GNex Toolkit here
2. Install it & get the drivers working on your computer (if you haven't already)
3. Unlock the bootloader by selecting Option 3 (it'll wipe your phone)
4. Flash factory stock rom by selecting option 8
5. Try it. If it works, congratulations. (if you want to re-lock your bootloader, use option 11)
If this doesn't work, relock your bootloader and send it in for warrantee. (most likely a hardware problem)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, I did the above method and after flashing the factory stock rom it won't start up anymore. It doesn't respond to anything at all. It seems I've bricked it
Is there any way to unrbick it now? I'm assuming I can't send it in for warranty either now if it's semi bricked. Unless it's been completely bricked which means there is still a chance of getting a replacement phone.
I have the same prob on rooted SGN
This morning I switched off the airplane mode to be available, system crashed and restarted. And then still the same again - booting / android logo / restart again.. /./. I am using Android Revolution HD 2.1.5, for last month with no problems.
I tried to boot into recovery, then wipe the cache and reflash rom and radio from sd, it is still the same. I can see all the files on my int. sd with no probs.
Please help.
I'm thinking it might be a hardware issue, but I'll wait for another member's opinion before confirming.
Solved!!!
That's what I thought - HW prob, but it seems that luck is on my side, I hope. It helped to get back on stock but with total deletion including int partition
Anyway thanks for support.
630263 said:
That's what I thought - HW prob, but it seems that luck is on my side, I hope. It helped to get back on stock but with total deletion including int partition
Anyway thanks for support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was your phone rooted or bootloader unlocked before the problem occurred?
Anyways I've sent in my phone for warranty, hopefully samsung will fix it.
So my phone company called me today and apparently Samsung told them that it's corrosion(?) problem. When I asked exactly what does that mean they said it's moisture damage or physical damage that probably caused it. But I'm confused how could my phone possibly get moisture damage inside an otter box. I know how delegate these devices are and I know how to take care of them.
Anyhow it'll be $90 to fix it. I had no other option so I asked them to go ahead with the repairs. So frustrated with Samsung to be honest. I never dropped my phone once, never had any water damage, phone was always inside the defender case. And I still have to pay them for fixing my phone even though it's not my fault.
That's quite worrying, I just started having boot loop problems today. I've had the phone since Feb 29th and not had a problem with it yet, but today it started boot looping. I went into recovery and did a factory reset, was alright for a couple of hours then it crashed, started bootlooping again. Running stock 4.0.2 unrooted, I'm wondering if flashing 4.0.4 might help.
I'm in the same boat.... unrooting stock 4.0.1 firmware - canadian version from Negri.
April 23rd my phone crashed and started boot looping. Google logo - reboot - Google logo - reboot
Factory reset worked. I installed less apps than I had before figuring perhaps an app was corrupting something.
Yesterday - it happened again. Phone crashed. Boot loop. Factory Reset worked. Installed even fewer apps.
We'll see what happens this time around. I am hoping it is just a software thing. Hoping 4.0.4 gets pushed soon too.....
I've been having the same issue, plus sometimes my home screen it would lock up and wouldn't let me do anything, so I did a battery pull and it would boot loop for a half hour.
After the 3rd time I just took it to my Verizon wireless store, and showed them the situation and they couldn't figure it out, so their sending me a replacement, which I'm not looking forward too, don't want a semi-used phone....
Via Galaxy Nexus [LTE]
Rebooting Issue Solved.
I was also a troubled Samsung Galaxy Nexus user and my phone kept restarting more than half a dozen times everyday. Most of the times when I switched between two or more applications, or when it was simply idle on my desk.
However, I found a solution (at least in my case). All I did was root my phone, install cwm recovery, and flash a custom rom after wiping cache and factory resetting the phone, It's been about 5 to 6 hours now since I flashed the custom rom and I haven't had a single reboot or hang since.
Others who face this problem, please give it a shot, who knows? You might save your Galaxy Nexus instead of sending it back to get a replacement or spend some money on it for repairs which aren't even required in the first place.
I also had this problem unrooted. I had to give it to Samsung for the warranty
Swyped on my Galaxy Nexus running AOKP with Trinity Kernel, overclocked to 1.4GHz
I got my nexus yesterday, almost immediately after first start it start to install JB from OTA.
I did buy 2000mAh samsung original battery and started straight with it. not even testing with 1750mAh bat.
after installing JB and needed softwares, it started to randomly reboot.
it rebooted even it was just in my pocket.
sometimes when I did do something, display freezed and after about 5sec it rebooted.
Now I did changed to original 1750mAh, and it havent boot at all couple hours, even I did play angrybirds space.
I wont dare to root it before I am very sure problem is with 2000mah battery.
2stardiver said:
I got my nexus yesterday, almost immediately after first start it start to install JB from OTA.
I did buy 2000mAh samsung original battery and started straight with it. not even testing with 1750mAh bat.
after installing JB and needed softwares, it started to randomly reboot.
it rebooted even it was just in my pocket.
sometimes when I did do something, display freezed and after about 5sec it rebooted.
Now I did changed to original 1750mAh, and it havent boot at all couple hours, even I did play angrybirds space.
I wont dare to root it before I am very sure problem is with 2000mah battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could be wrong, but have you tried to clean the pin on the battery? Seems like battery and the phone isn't contracting too well
Swyped on my Galaxy Nexus running AOKP with Franco Kernel, overclocked to 1.4GHz
Little update, phone did continue rebooting with original 1750mAh battery also.
I did also reset with recovery mode, and after that it did also reboot one time.
like it uses all memory/cpu and when nothing to do reboot (like windows )
I also did flash stock rom with toolkit but no help.
I will test rooting phone and flash another rom, or is it useless ?
after using couple days, not yet rooted.
Phone works and wont reboot even in heavy stress. but sometimes it just reboots by own not a single program in task list.
might reboot right after previous reboot or take hours to reboot.
stupid phone
I have been done some research.
I did one more time reflash google stock with rootkit, and forgot lock phone, it was almost 3 hours by own in wifi, no reboots at all.
when I noticed that I forgot to lock it I rooted whole phone and installed paranoid android 2.13 with CWM.
Now Ive been using 2 hours without any reboot, installing software, setting things up and using apps.
I dont understand at all:silly:
edit: noup, yesterday evening one almost reboot, paranoid android did reset itself but didnt even reset uptime. so I didnt count that normal reboot.
but after wake up this morning, it did reboot once when I put in my pocket, another just lying on table, once activating bluetooth in my car.
going to send it back to seller.
I have a similar issue, although not quite the same. Last night my phone started boot looping - it managed to boot up to the lock screen, and I can use it for about a minute before it dies and then reboots. This continues again and again (I have to pull the battery to quit it).
I have stock JB on my GSM GN, but rooted with an unlocked bootloader / CWM. I restored my old CWM backup, and had the same issue. I also wiped the cache and the dalvik just to see if that helped, but I had the same issue. I then tried to do a factory reset in CWM, but after I did that the boot loop just got to the nexus logo and died, entering a new (slightly shorter) boot loop. I went back into recovery and reflashed my CWM backup, and that at least got me back to booting into android.
I can't understand what's going on - could it be a hardware issue if it will happily stay alive in recovery, but dies after 1-2mins of android?
Thanks for your help. If it is hardware then I hope I can reflash the stock recovery / bootloader and unroot through recovery... the phone doesn't stay on long enough to do it when it's booted into full android!

[Q] Phone constantly reboots before getting to CWM or ODIN

So my S2 is stuck constantly rebooting before I can attempt to get the phone into download mode or back to CWM.
The best luck I've had so far is to rather consistently press the power button while the phone is trying to boot. This keeps the phone booting for the longest, and I've even made it into CWM and ODIN doing so. However anytime I stop tapping the power button, the phone will reboot.
At one point I did do a super wipe of the cache and OS, I just haven't been able to flash the phone back to stock. The same behavior occurs with a charged battery, a battery-less phone plugged into the wall, and a phone plugged into the wall with the battery in it.
I've opened up my phone to take a look at the power button placement. The plastic case is not pressing in the button, and when I press it in myself I hear a distinct click noise as normal. I've even pried away the case with no luck.
What next steps do I have? I do not have insurance with t-mobile or warranty of the phone. I do have the knowledge to solder if needed. Are there more options for me to try, to fix this issue?
EDIT: So this time I was able to get into ODIN, after letting the phone sit and do nothing for a week. No idea why it works now. I flashed back to stock. Will give it a day or two and then flash back to custom.
If you can get a computer to recognize the phone it can be fixed using adb or another method.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk
So now it's in ODIN and staying there! I don't know why, it never did before.
Should following this be all I need?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1513359
My only confusion is, what is "This will restore to T-Mobile 2.3.6 ULKL1." ? I only know I have the T-Mobile T989 version.
ralewis said:
So now it's in ODIN and staying there! I don't know why, it never did before.
Should following this be all I need?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1513359
My only confusion is, what is "This will restore to T-Mobile 2.3.6 ULKL1." ? I only know I have the T-Mobile T989 version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what i know for sure is that it should be T-Mobile uvlh1 which im 98% sure is the standard base band when i got my phone
but other than that is your phone already rooted?
also when you go in CWM what does it say?
Does it just freeze?
So I did go through with the link and flashed back to stock. Everything seems to be working great now. I did nothing to the phone and it stopped acting up.
What used to happen is the device would act like I was holding the power button constantly. It would simply reboot, but never freeze. It felt Software independent, which worries me that it'll come back.
The problem started slowly, where my phone would reboot on its own here and there. Gradually getting worse. This happened after applying some OTA updates for CyanogenMod10. Though it didn't happen immediately after applying the updates.

[Q]Rogers Galaxy S3 constantly restarting even in recovery/download mode

So tonight out of the blue, my Rogers Galaxy S3 restarted itself. This isn't totally unusual, as sometimes this will happen once or twice a day, but never has it been too bad.
First off, I've been running Cyanogenmod 10.0, and again, has been relatively problem free. The first major issue I had was a week or so ago when I woke up to my phone having seemingly restored it's default settings on its own. Apps and all my other data were intact, but widgets, app settings, etc, were all cleared.
Now tonight, my phone can rarely boot into CM, and when it does, the power menu will appear shortly thereafter before restarting itself once again. If the phone is plugged in, I can't get anything other than the charge indicator to come on the screen for more than a second. The phone also does this when trying to boot into recovery mode or download mode.
I'm at a total loss as to what to do here, so I'm going to be leaving the phone off with the battery out over night. Appreciate any feedback in the meantime.
Also having a similar problem: phone boots up, will barely enter the bootloader/TWRP/boot animation for hyperdrive ROM. Also with rogers. I believe it might be SDS but I need to re install the stock firmware and can barely boot into the bootloader without the phone dying (battery is charged though). Any help greatly appreciated!
EDIT: managed to boot up for long enough to install "eMMC check" and apparently I have a 'sane chip'.
There have been issues with the power button getting stuck. Maybe you have that issue?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Domoo said:
There have been issues with the power button getting stuck. Maybe you have that issue?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, after pulling most of my hair out, that does seem to be the issue. Would explain why the power menu would come up the few times it did manage to boot. I managed to get it working for a while, but the button seems to be really delicate since picking my phone up and barely touching it reset it again.
I guess now I need a solution to the power button sticking, but at least it doesn't seem to be SDS.
Okay, that makes sense. When I leave the phone completely stable it's fine.
However, I have tried unrooting and reinstalling stock firmware. However, my system status in bootloader is still custom, when I boot up the rom I still have superuser installed. I tried installing two different stock firmwares for Rogers and the same problem. Any help would be great, I really want to send this in for warranty ASAP.
EDIT: After using ODIN to install stock rom, I still had Superuser. I installed SuperSU and then preformed it'sfull unroot. After that i cleared data and cache from stock recovery and the phone is now at original status and seems to not be randomly rebooting/dying. Weird.

Faulty power button. Fixed myself.

I take no responsibility for your damaged devices, or any stuff you did in wrong way.
So how it went wrong:
Some days ago i flashed some rom. it was working okay. Than i flashed some more, and random reboots started to occur. Than i tried to boot to recovery from rom, and it just started to bootloop, not booting to rom neither to recovery.
managed to get to download mode after several attempts, odined a recovery (twrp as i always use it).
rom booted after i flashed recovey via odin. than i went back to recovery, checked md5 and its ok. So than did another clean flash, it was running ok. But than i pick my phone out of pocket and it's dead again. Odined once more.
It was booting like this - 3-5 seconds/vibration/blackscreen. and also not displaying battery on charging, even no led, even not letting to get to download mode. After battery reinsert it starts to boot, without pressing a thing.
Try not to panic first, try to boot properly and test how power bottom behave.
Fix:
Disassemble, put 2 little pieces of rubber between button and board, and should work fine so no matter to go for repair. It consumed me 10 minutes. Assembles without any trouble. And saved 5-10 bucks.
Can attach some photos if you ask to.
#000000 said:
I take no responsibility for your damaged devices, or any stuff you did in wrong way.
So how it went wrong:
Some days ago i flashed some rom. it was working okay. Than i flashed some more, and random reboots started to occur. Than i tried to boot to recovery from rom, and it just started to bootloop, not booting to rom neither to recovery.
managed to get to download mode after several attempts, odined a recovery (twrp as i always use it).
rom booted after i flashed recovey via odin. than i went back to recovery, checked md5 and its ok. So than did another clean flash, it was running ok. But than i pick my phone out of pocket and it's dead again. Odined once more.
It was booting like this - 3-5 seconds/vibration/blackscreen. and also not displaying battery on charging, even no led, even not letting to get to download mode. After battery reinsert it starts to boot, without pressing a thing.
Try not to panic first, try to boot properly and test how power bottom behave.
Fix:
Disassemble, put 2 little pieces of rubber between button and board, and should work fine so no matter to go for repair. It consumed me 10 minutes. Assembles without any trouble. And saved 5-10 bucks.
Can attach some photos if you ask to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please attach some photos, I'm having the same issue with my power button
When I had this problem a month ago I took out my handy dandy heat gun after disassembling the back and cleaning with isopropal alcohol. Fixed mine right up and I haven't had any issues since *knocks on wood*. If I have anymore problems though I will try this, thanks.
landroid2000 said:
Can you please attach some photos, I'm having the same issue with my power button
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will upload in 1-2 days. Having issues with second device.
#000000 said:
Will upload in 1-2 days. Having issues with second device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay thanks
This is a nasty issue with pretty much any Samsung device, these are pretty ingenious work arounds considering the actual solder job can be a nuisance. I obviously recommend replacing the button to anyone if possible but still interesting to see what works!
P.S. I work at a uBreakiFix, my manager hates this solder job :laugh:

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