Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 Dropped phone now it won't power on or charge

Question

I have a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 (SPH-L710) worked fine until I dropped it. After I picked it up the phone shut off, I tried removing/reinserting the battery, it would go to the Samsung logo, vibrate, and shut off. Power switch doesn't seem to work.

I tried plugging the charger in and it does nothing. I remove the battery and plug in the charger and the red light comes on, but when I reinstall battery it goes off.

I have tried removing battery, holding down power switch for 1 minute, then reinstalling battery. Does the same thing, vibrate, Samsung logo, off. I tried removing battery and when reinstalling it hold down the home key and volume+ key and it will say loading recovery, but then screen black.

The repair store where I live said it needed a new LCD Display and Digitizer??? I shouldn't be able to see the Samsung logo screen, Correct? I need to power on phone to remove some file and photos. Can this be done?

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

That's a very weird situation. You would assume it's a hardware problem... which it probably is, but it's possible the filesystem could've corrupted when the phone lost power after hitting the ground.

I would try inspecting/replacing hardware first (only if you're experienced), just reseating all the ribbon cables, maybe lightly clean the contacts with isopropyl alcohol to remove oxidation (again, only if you're experienced).

The very next thing I would do, is download the "stock SPH-L710 firmware/ROM image" file off XDA-Developers and use the instructions/downloads provided there to flash the image in download mode via Samsung's Odin program. They make it sound like it will wipe all your data, but from my experience (I have a Galaxy Note 2 -Verizon which I bricked), it will not wipe your data as long as you flash the correct image, same Android version (likely 4.1.2 or 4.3). If you don't know, and you know you have updated the device regularly, I would try to find the latest version available.

If you want more details on either of the solutions, I'll edit my answer to provide more details/articles.

Hope this helps,