Samsung Galaxy S I9000 bricked (screen shows Phone Exclamation Mark PC)

Let’s get this out of the way first : I am stupid, I didn’t read the warning everyone put on the internet and I attempted to upgrade my firmware even though my phone would not allow me to get into Download/Recovery mode using the 3 button combination (see : [WARNING!] Do Not flash Any ROM until you can get the 3 buttons DOWNLOAD MODE working.

So, what happened is I launched an upgrade using ODIN 1.3 and I decided the remove the USB cable in the middle of the process (it also says very clearly not to do that !). Afterwards my phone wouldn’t boot anymore (surprise, surprise) and the only thing that appeared on the screen was a pretty picture of a phone, a yellow exclamation Mark,  a PC and dots in between (the so-called Samsung Galaxy S Black Screen of Death).

There’s nothing you can do software-wise to get out of this mess ! You must put together a special hardware connector using a micro-usb plug and a 301kohm resistor (a so-called Jig). This needs to be inserted into the phone’s USB port and it will trick the phone into Download mode.  If successful you can then reflash the phone.

Everything is explained in glorious details here : [HOWTO] [REF] Get Download Mode without 3-button combo using homemade JIG

That’s exactly what I did and it worked.

Procedure :

1. In Switzerland, go to Conrad.ch and order the following :

• Article 421871    WIDERSTAND DRAHT 0,6W 1% 301K (link)
• Article 730794    MIKRO USB STECKER 5POL TRAPEZF. STECKER (link)
  This will cost you CHF 7.20 (shipping included) and will be delivered in 5 days.

2. Solder the resistor to the top right pin and the bottom right pin of the micro-USB component. These 2 pins will be the ones closest to the phone’s headphone jacks. The pic below shows the jig ready to be inserted in the phone.

3. Insert the battery in the phone

4. Insert the jig in the USB port and wait 5 secs. The download screen will appear and you can then proceed with restoring the boot load. I immediately installed the fix to enable the 3-button download/recovery mode and grabbed the files from this article : [FIX] Release: 3-button combo fix for any firmware.

5. Remove the Jig carefully (it is so tiny it can break apart very easily)

6. Start Odin3 v1.3

7. Plug the phone in the computer with Samsung USB cable

8. Go back to Odin 1.3 and select “Aries_P-SBL.tar.md5” as PDA file. Make sure “Phone Bootloader Update” is ticked and re-partition is unticked. Do not select any other files but “Aries_P-SBL.tar.md5”.

9. Press “Start” button. After 3 seconds  the updated phone will reboot automatically.

Et voilà ! an unbricked Samsung Galaxy S I9000 ready to be flashed with Gingerbread…