The Samsung’s devices are well used by developers to test, and bring us new applications, custom firmware, and utilities. And sometimes, those things turn your phone into nothing. If something like that has happened with you, then this guide should help you. In this tutorial, we are going unbrick the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active using stock firmware, and make it work again normally. Also, we have a few more troubleshooting steps that you can perform before you begin flashing the stock firmware on your phone.
You might have just ended up bricking your phone while installing a custom firmware, recovery, or mod. Moreover, that could happen because of a third-party application too. There are tons of applications that can harm your phone. We highly recommend our users to download app from Google Play Store only. Apart from brick condition, many users face issues like a dip in performance, instability, app crashes, unusual behavior, and so on. Most of these problems can be fixed by performing some basic troubleshooting steps. You can perform a hard reset, or clear its cache memory. These two work most of the time. If for some reasons, you’re unable to access these two, you can flash the stock firmware.
However, putting a stock firmware on Samsung Galaxy S8 Active requires some prerequisites to follow. We recommend you to proceed to this only when you’re completely sure about your action. Flashing the stock firmware will wipe out your phone completely, and it cannot undo this process. This process replaces each, and every aspect of your phone. If you’re using a custom Rom/recovery, it will be replaced with the native firmware. All settings will turn to default ones. Before you proceed further, back up all the things you’ve on your phone, and means important to you.
Flashing stock firmware will help you to unbrick Galaxy S8 Active from bricked/dead condition. If your phone doesn’t boot up, or stuck, or you’ve already performed several troubleshooting, and nothing worked so far, then downgrading should worth a try. Until the problem is attached to the software part, this method should work. If something bad has happened to hardware part, then you must take it to the service center. Since, this includes some technical things, we suggest you to read all the steps thoroughly, and only then proceed further.
If you’re facing minor issues regarding the performance, and stability, you should try the very first two methods. Please note that performing a factory reset wipes the device’s internal memory. So, backup all the things before doing so.
Method 1. Hard Reset (factory data reset)
Either you can directly perform this action from Settings, or use recovery options. For better results, and to clear your phone, we suggest to perform it through the recover option.
The factory reset will remove all the third-party applications, downloaded files, and stuff stored under the internal memory. As the outcome, it will turn your device into a factory fresh piece. Follow the below instructions to perform a factory reset on Samsung Galaxy S8 Active;
-How to
- Turn off your phone using the power button.
- Boot your phone into the recovery mode — press and hold Volume Up, Bixby, and Power buttons at once. Release them once screen flickers. You should be now in the recovery mode.
- Now, under this menu locate “wipe data/factory reset” — tap on it using the Power button.
- Follow further instructions to perform this action.
- Once it is complete, exit the recovery mode by tapping “reboot system now”.
That’s it. Soon, it will turn on, and take you to welcome screen. Enter your Google account details, and set up your preferences.
Post this action, you will notice that performance has been calibrated, and bugs should have been removed. However, if you notice that it didn’t work properly, try performing the next action.
That will clean your device’s cache partition to remove existing bugs, and issues.
Method 2. Wipe Cache Partition
Again, we’ll use the recovery mode to clear the cache partition on Galaxy S8 Active. Basically, it’s a maintenance related option used to remove accumulated load from the device. If you’ve been using your phone for a long time, probably you might be experiencing a slow performance as compared it was in the past.
The cache partition (part of internal memory) is used by applications to store files at the run-time. Many of these files remain in this memory throughout the time. And it keeps hampering the performance, and other aspects of the phone. If you’re experiencing a dip in performance, instability, and other similar issue, you can this method to cure them.
It only deletes the cache partition on the phone, and doesn’t impact other part. It won’t hurt your installed apps, downloaded stuff, and other things stored in internal memory.
For Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, we have already published a dedicated guide for the same. To get rid of this access cache memory on your phone, follow the below guide:
If you’re more keep to improve performance of your phoned then don’t miss out the guide — best tips to Speed up Samsung Galaxy S8.
Method 3. Flash Stock Firmware
As we have already discussed, this method installs a fresh copy of the firmware on the device. It removes all the third-party aspects like custom firmware, recovery, mods, setting, and so on. If you’ve a root access on your phone, then the same will be removed as well.
This method will wipe out the device completely. If anything means important to you, try to back up, and proceed further. To flash the stock firmware on Galaxy S8 Active, you must read below prerequisites, and prepare accordingly.
- In order to perform this action, you need a Windows-based PC/Laptop with an internet connection.
- Download and install Samsung USB Drivers on your PC from →here. This will ensure that a proper connection happens between your phone, and computer. Which is necessary for this process.
- To flash the stock firmware on your phone, we’ll use the Odin flashing tool, a most famous software upgrading tool for Samsung’s devices. Download the Odin tool from →here, and extract the content on your computer.
- The last but most important, download the latest stock firmware of Galaxy S8 Active from →here. Extract the content of the file to obtain .md5 file (flashable firmware file).
That’s all you need. Now, you’re ready to repair your dead phone. Follow the below instruction to unbrick your Samsung Galaxy S8 Active.
Unbrick Samsung Galaxy S8 Active with stock firmware
The procedure the extremely simple. Just make sure that you’ve installed the USB drivers on your computer. Follow the below instructions to flash stock firmware:
- Turn off your phone using the power button.
- Now, boot into the Download mode – press, and hold Power Button, Bixby Button, and Volume down buttons till the Android logo appears over the screen. You should be now in the download mode.
- From the extracted Odin folder, run the Odin.exe file to run this application. It looks like this:
- Now, using a USB cable, connect your phone to PC. Look at the Odin tool, the ID:COM section should turn to blue. That means your device has been connected successfully. If that doesn’t happen with you, then try to install the USB Drivers again, and restart your computer. Then re-perform above steps.
- Now, tap on ‘AP’ button, and locate the firmware file (.md5 file) from the extracted firmware folder.
- Tap on Start button to begin the process.
- Once it is completed, take off your phone, and exit the program.
This should settle all the software related issues on your Galaxy S8 Active. Now, it should run like it was before it got bricked.
For the first boot up, it may take some longer time. That happens most of the time. So, that’s how you can use the stock firmware to revive your bricked Galaxy S8 Active.
That ends our tutorial here. We hope that it would help Galaxy S8 Active users to tackle such issues. If that helps you, don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comment section.
I cannot get Odin to recognize the SM-g892A. I reinstalled the USB driver, reboot, try with a different cable.
Not sure what I’m missing