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I pulled out a Samsung Galaxy S6 that has not been used in a while. It has never been rooted or had custom software, and it was working last time. But now it was not starting up, it got stuck at the boot animation with blinking Samsung logo.

When booting in recovery mode, it said "dm-verity error", which indicates corrupt system files. I do not care about the contents, I am okay with wiping the phone. Galaxy S6 recovery mode

I booted in download mode and tried flashing the original software with Odin 3.14 on a Windows 10 computer. This phone is SM-G920F from Vodafone Italy. I downloaded the newest software from SamMobile, G920FXXU6EVG1.

Odin failed while transferring system.img and now the phone only starts up to a screen saying "An error has occurred while updating the device software. Use the Emergency recovery function in the Smart Switch PC software." Download mode works, but recovery mode does not.

I downloaded and installed Smart Switch and tried the emergency recovery initialization. It stops, saying "This model does not support firmware upgrades and initialization."

Trying to flash the software with Odin again fails at sboot.bin.

Odin fail

With re-partition option enabled, it says Can't open the specified file (Line: 2006). With erase nand option enabled, it fails at Erase... All fails occur almost instantly.

This phone has re-activation lock enabled, so flashing a custom recovery like TWRP also fails (I do not mind tripping Knox), with error "Custom Recovery Blocked By R/L". I know the Google and Samsung account credentials to remove the lock, but the phone needs to start up to enter them!

Other things attempted in vain:

  • Re-installing drivers from Smart Switch
  • Older version of Odin (3.10)
  • Older version of Windows (7)
  • Different USB cable (works fine with other devices)
  • Different USB port (2.0)
  • Rebooting the phone between each attempt
  • The older software that phone was running (G920FXXU6ERF5)
  • The software with four files (BL, AP, CP, CSC instead of just AP)
  • Extracting the .pit file from the CSC file and adding it to the Pit tab in Odin
  • Flashing only recovery.img (extracted from the .tar.md5 file and put into a new .tar file and added to AP)
  • The generic Italian software (ITV instead of OMN)

I even tried hijacking R/L with Hagard's tool, which claims to succeed, but the lock is still on.

The only way to shut the phone off is by letting the battery run out or disconnecting it.

How can the original software be flashed to this phone to get it to start up again, with or without data? Please help.

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  • If all attempts to flash anything to your phone fail it could be caused by a dying flash chip. Considering the age of your phone this is a possible reason. If flash memory recognizes defects it is often configured to switch to read-only mode.
    – Robert
    Commented Dec 29, 2023 at 21:30
  • @Robert I do not want to write this phone off, there are much older smartphones that work fine to this day. I would still like to try anything, even risky options. I replaced the daughterboard because the original Micro USB port seemed like it was not making a good connection even after cleaning it, but no difference. My main suspicion is the reactivation lock, but it should not prevent flashing the official software. Flashing modem.img with Odin goes for a couple seconds before failing, while flashing anything else still fails instantly.
    – dick
    Commented Jan 13 at 17:39

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