Bricking and Debricking Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH-I535
I want Lollipop!
I was given a used Samsung by a friend a year or so ago.
I recently transferred my Tracfone number and minutes to it through their Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program--that story is a laugh and half, but not for this set of notes. After three or four hours of conversation with various and sundry support personnel, the problem in their system was detected, and the process was brought to a successful and very satisfying conclusion.
The operating system is 4.4.2 (KitKat).
It may be vulnerable to the Stagefright exploit.
I would love to move up to Lollipop or Marshmallow, but Samsung has abandoned the S3.
They have not provided a patch for Stagefright.
They have not and will not make Lollipop or Marshmallow available.
"No problem," I thought. "I'll just load a new system in by hand. I've been using computers for over 30 years. I can handle this."
Now for the three hardest words for a man to say: I was wrong.
I got Knoxed!
As a preliminary step, I wanted to make a Nandroid backup of my system that I could use in case anything went wrong.
I downloaded TWRP from the play store.
I verified that the installation folder was correct by installing Android Studio so that I could open an Android Debug Bridge window and navigate to the putatively correct folder.
When I was confident that I had found where TWRP needed to go, I confirmed the folder and set the installation of the latest package in motion.
After installation, I tried booting into TWRP in order to complete the Nandroid backup.
The boot failed with the error message, "System software not authorized by Verizon Wireless has been found on your phone. Please turn off your phone and go to the nearest Verizon Wireless store for help."
As they say, I did not see that coming.
I was able to reboot into Download mode and prepare the phone for re-installation of some approved software.
Using Odin, I tried to install a previous version of the kernel.
Things seemed to go from bad to worse. Now I got the error message pictured at the right: "Firmware upgrade encoutered an issue. Please use Software Repair Assistant & try again." In this mode, the power key ceased to work, so I could no longer boot into Download mode.
I thought the phone was hopelessly bricked.
The three hardest words for a man to say: "I was wrong."
It took a while for me to collect my wits and realize that in tiny little letters in the upper-left corner of the screen, it says "Odin Mode." I realized that the phone was not dead, just unhappy.
What a relief that was!
But I had run out of things to try with Odin.
Several sources recommended Kies. I hate Kies.
Kies to the rescue--eventually
I kept hammering away with various versions of Odin and various tarballs. At one point, I lucked out with some combination of packages and options, and got back into Download mode for a moment. The phone would partially boot, but died with a red screen o' death.
So back to Odin and other tarballs for a few anxious hours.
When I was convinced that Odin was not going to work for me, I