Can I recover a soft-bricked Galaxy A5 without voiding the warranty? I have a newly purchased Samsung Galaxy A5, which, after attempting to install Marshmallow eventually got stuck on the "Downloading... Do not turn off target!!" screen. Just before this happened I briefly saw a message that said "error" beside a picture of a little android lying on its back (presumably suffering from an error).

I tried leaving it there on that "Downloading... Do not turn off target!!" screen but after 8 hours I gave up, took the charging cable out, and let the batter die (the A5 has an internal battery so removing it was not an option).

I can restart by charging the phone for a bit and then holding down Power + VolumeDown + Home, which takes me to a screen with 2 options:


VolumeUp: Continue
VolumeDown: Cancel (restart phone)


both options take me back to the "Downloading... Do not turn off target!!" screen. I can restart with Power + VolumeUp + Home, which seems to make the phone attempt to reinstall the update. I get a screen saying "Installing system update...", which gets to about 90% before showing me the little dead android and the "Error" message. After that, it's back to the "Downloading... Do not turn off target!!" screen.

My first option was to return the phone but the vendor is giving me the run-around and my credit-card company will take up to 80 days to revert the payment, so I was hoping to fix this myself, but not at the cost of voiding the warranty, as this could jeopardize my chances of getting a refund / repair. I have contacted the Fair Trading body in my state (in Australia) who will mediate and probably get me a refund but, again, this will take a while.

So, do I have any options, or do I just need to wait this out?
I installed Odin and was able to flash a stock version of android Kit-kat onto the phone:

http://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/download/38455/A5000ZCU1ANJ2_A5000CHC1ANJ2_CHC.zip/

I now have the phone running again but this version doesn't seem to have the play store installed. I'll start a separate post outlining my woes in that department:

How can I install Google Play on my Samsung Galaxy A5?