mobile

Hi,

I am a long time lurker and big fan of the community. Here is my problem and steps I tried to do to fix it. My S3 was working fine on Thursday morning and I received some calls, sent some texts, etc. The phone was on my desk and all of a sudden wouldn't turn on. It had original battery in it that is 2.5+ years old and it worked well. Within last 2 weeks I noticed the battery would drop charge from full to 55% quicker than before but it was still performing. I tried charging it from PC usb, wall charger, USB power block, different USB cables and nothing worked. I read several posts here on XDA about similar problem that others experienced and tried connecting USB, getting red light and plugging battery after that and still nothing. What I was able to observe that while connected to power the phone would be able to turn on for a few seconds. Typically I would see only Samsung boot up logo and sometimes it would go to 2nd screen of Samsung Galaxy S3 and flicker and shut off. It would frequently show me empty battery sign. I also read a valuable tip about stores having old batteries before they send phones for repair and had someone call 6 stores and none of them had them.

Since the phone is able to boot up for a few seconds I did not think it was the phone and assumed it had to be the battery. I joined Amazon Prime and was able to order 2 batteries from them and had them delivered yesterday (Sunday). I also added standalone battery charger to my shopping cart but it would not be delivered in time and I removed it. I wanted it to add just in case there was a problem with USB connection on the phone and charge batteries externally. So last night I got the batteries and it is exactly the same thing, not charging and still boots up in similar fashion. One thing I was able to observe twice last night was that during one of my plug in cable, put in battery routines or maybe it was by pressing up volume & power. During two attempts instead of empty battery sign I saw a full green battery sign.

I am out of ideas on what to do. I am planning on making 2 hour round trip to Chinatown and walking around from store to store trying to find S3 standalone battery charger. Does anyone have any ideas what component could be causing this problem? Do you agree with me that USB cable must be pumping some power since the phone turns on?