How to Unbrick Your Samsung Captivate Galaxy S Phone

If your Samsung Captivate phone has "bricked" (refuses to boot) before you toss it in the trash or smash it against the wall you might try the following tips to try and unbrick your phone. Bricking occurs when any Android platform device gets corrupted by a bad file or firmware installation. Personally I have not had this experience. I haven't bought a smart phone yet and still have a "dumb phone," but it did happen to a good friend of mine and he was able to unbrick his Captivate Galaxy S phone by following these steps he found on the XDA website.

(Please note. This only worked for my friend, I have not tried this myself, nor can I guarantee this will work for your phone. Proceed at your own risk. But hey, if your phone is bricked what do you have to lose?)

Step 1

Remove your phone battery and all cards (micoSD and Sim).

Step 2

Wait 15-20 seconds then launch Odin3 on your PC

Step 3

Once Odin3 has booted hook your phone up to your computer (leave the battery and cards out still!)

Step 4

Hold down Volume Up, Volume Down and Power at the same time and insert the battery with the previously buttons still held.

Step 5

Release the Power button. Only the power button. Keep the other two pressed. This will put you into Download mode. Once in download mode you can release the volume buttons. Your PC will identify the phone and you can simply reboot your device to normal mode.

Hopefully this will unbrick your Captivate phone. This method only works on the Samsung Captivate model it will not work on any other Galaxy S models. If this doesn't work for you, my directions are confusing or you have a different phone you can visit the XDA website for more detailed info.

Sources:

XDA How to unbrick the totally bricked Captivate Forum Thread, XDA-developers.com