Hi. Just a few hours ago while I was on my way home, I was browsing some news feeds with my SGS and I noticed some lag so I thought of restarting it, but to my surprise.. it was not booting anymore and it was stucked displaying the "S" screen then after a while it will go black although the buttons are still lighting up but there is no response or any activity in the screen and the only way to turn it off is to pull out the battery.

Upon getting home, I browsed the internet to find similar cases with most of the suggestions on how to "fix" this was to bring it back to Samsung Service Center and I'm not ready yet to do that so I dug in deeper to research. I just want to share the steps I have done to UNBRICK my almost Semi-bricked SGS.

First of all, my SGS doesn't have access to the 3 button mode recovery (Volume up + Power + Home) thus basically leaving me helpless because I cant reformat my phone from there and worst, in this case, my phone wont even boot up.

Secondly, it was fortunate that i had my phone rooted prior this.

Now, the process:

You should atleast have:

* KIES installed
* Android SDK
* USB Cable

First thing I did was:

* Connect my phone to the USB cable
* Turn phone on
* Wait for KIES to detect it and for windows to install necessary USB drivers (my phone was detected by KIES even if it was hanging in the "S" screen)
* When everything is done, go to COMMAND prompt in windows
* Locate where you initially placed the ANDROID SDK then Tools folder by typing it, example: (C:\Android-sdk\tools)
* when you are already in the right folder type in ADB REBOOT RECOVERY
* Check your SGS and it should be rebooting to the RECOVERY MODE wherein you will now be able to select format options
* move your selection by pressing up and down volume keys
* confirm your selection by pressing home key
* then reboot again and presto.. your phone should be up and running again

Anyway, if you cannot access the recovery mode by using the 3 button process, it could probably because your operator intentionally locked this feature out. There is a fix I found from XDA that works: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=785201

Hope this helps and drop me a message if you have queries.
By the way, i'm trying to restore my apps again so ciao for now.