A few people (none I can think of, but it sounds better than saying “no one”) noticed my blogging absence. Well, I’ve suffered a digital loss.
Sunday morning had me waking up to an unresponsive phone. Pretty much all morning and early afternoon were spent trying to revive it. I didn’t even eat, and my coffee got cold as it sat in the cup next to the computer.
I worked the magic of soft boots, hard boots, factory resets, wiping cache, but at each step got errors that it could not find the system files or the backup cache. Tried to find the original firmware so that I could reload it and found firmware for just about every country on Earth except the US (Verizon).
Tried loading custom firmware but you need the phone to be able to boot for that. Tried a leaked Samsung program that is supposed to unfreeze bricked phones but it could not communicate with my phone. Tried an official Samsung program that’s supposed to fix this thing and nada.

Paraphrasing Jayne and Mal:
I found the patient unresponsive. I tried pulmonary resuscitation and applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from the patient.
The phone is four-and-a-half years young . . . it should have lasted longer than this, although I read that it was incredible that it lasted this long. And yes, it’s not comforting hearing “it had a good run, but you now need to let it rest in digital peace.”