i hope this is the right place to ask this...

my brother just bought me a (new) S4 from Australia. he got it online, supposedly it's a brand new machine shipped from HK.

but when i unboxed it, it's all in French ( o____O )?!?!

switched it on, it is branded to SFR. even has an SFR app in it, besides the standard SamsungApps on top of GoogleApps.

firmware - I9505XXUAME2


so my question is, can i flash it to a local firmware? should i?!

didn't know until too late. i'm not bothered by that tho.

just thinking if i should flash a local firmware & root it only...

do i need to unroot first?

BMG8 would be 4.2.2 isn't it? newer 4.3 any good?

ok so i've upgraded to 4.3 & have been using it normally for 2 weeks... no problems whatsoever.

but last nite, coz of CNY & all, was out late & had it running down to 4% battery life. came back home & charged it & passed out straight after. i remember it being charged coz i've set the screen to be on when charging.

but when i woke up this afternoon, the phone is dead. totally hard bricked. no response to anything. tried downloader boot nor charging.

WHAT AM I TO DO?!?!? someone please help. does anyone know where i can send it to?!

bare in mind my unit was bought from overseas (a gift from my brother) so all warranties are void already. chances of sending it back is highly unlikely coz he bought it off a website too...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP...

nope, can't boot into download...

but here's the funny thing... the next day after my post, in the morning to be precise, i managed to switched it on. & it worked like nothing happened. weirddddd...

and after 24 hours of using it... it can't be on again!!!!

AARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH...

hopefully i can on it again tmrw morning. if i do, i'll backup my data & straight away factory reset & wipe data...

this is very troublesome indeed... can't find any other such problems online either...