Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has a fail-safe in case things don’t work the way they should after boot up–Safe Mode. When a third-party app has gone rogue and causing too much trouble affecting the normal operation, the phone reboots to Safe Mode. If the software develops some conflicts with the while running, the phone will do the same.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2: Problems, Questions, Solutions, Fixes [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5]
There are, however, times when the phone gets stuck in the Safe Mode for some reason. When this happens to you, here are some things you could do:
Power-shock the phone
- While the Galaxy Note 2 is on, pop open the back panel and remove the battery.
- Leave it without a battery for a minute but at the same time, press and hold the Power button. This will discharge its electronic components of stored electricity.
- Place the battery back in.
- Boot normally.
If the phone still boots into Safe Mode, try the next procedure.
Remove third-party accessories
To rule out the possibility that a case might be in contact with any of the keys, remove any third-party accessories for now. After doing that, reboot the phone normally and see if boots up to normal mode. Otherwise, continue with the next procedure.
Wipe cache partition
- Turn the phone off.
- Press and hold the Volume Up, Home and Power buttons.
- When the Galaxy Note II screen appears, release the Power button but continue holding the other two.
- When the Android System Recovery appears, release both the Home button and Volume Up key.
- Using Volume keys, highlight ‘wipe cache partition’ option.
- Press the Power button to select it.
- Highlight ‘reboot system now’ and press the Power button.
Let the phone boot up to see if it can normally do so.
Factory Reset
- Boot your phone to Safe Mode.
- Backup all your important data.
- Turn the phone off.
- Press and hold the Volume Up, Home and Power buttons.
- When the Galaxy Note II screen appears, release the Power button but continue holding the other two.
- When the Android System Recovery appears, release both the Home button and Volume Up key.
- Using Volume keys, highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset’ option.
- Press the Power button to select it.
- Highlight ‘delete all user data’ and press the Power key.
- When the reset is done, choose ‘reboot system now.’
The boot up may take longer than usual and hopefully it will boot up normally this time.
Flash Firmware Using ODIN
There is this very popular flashing tool called ODIN. This is your resort but it’s kind of risky. If you know how to do it, then download the firmware that is currently installed in your phone and then download ODIN and install to your computer.
You can now flash the firmware to your phone. If ever you want to do this, contact me by email and I will provide a guide on how to do it. I just don’t to include the steps here to prevent other users from following it and put their phone at risked to be bricked.
Engage with us
Feel free to send us your questions, suggestions and problems you’ve encountered while using your Android phone. We support every Android that is available in the market today. And don’t worry, we won’t charge you a single penny for your emails. Email us via [email protected] any time. We read every email but can’t guarantee a response. Lastly, if we were able to help you, please help us spread the word by sharing our posts with your friends or subscribe to our newsletter.
This may or may not be related, I’m not certain… call it indirectly related, maybe. I was having trouble with my Note II’s power button (at&t variant); the power button wouldn’t turn the display on or off immediately just by tapping it, as it should, and I would need to do one of two things to turn my display on or off :
• tap the power button several times instead of just once… 2–3 times, typically
• hold it for a bit… sometimes for just 1 second, sometimes up to 4–5 seconds
It got progressively worse over a period of 2–3 months, so while at first two taps (instead of just one) would do it, over the course of several weeks it got to the point of really having to fight with it to get it to work.
The surprising thing was the simplicity of the fix. If you’ve been having issues with your device’s power button and your symptoms are similar to the ones I described, try this simple cure, which worked for me :
• TURN PHONE OFF *
• pop the back cover and REMOVE BATTERY
• with the battery out, PRESS & HOLD POWER BUTTON DOWN for 30 SECONDS
And that was all, believe it or not. After putting the battery and back cover back in place, starting up the phone by holding the power button for a second or two (as is normal), and waiting a minute or so to ensure everything was fully loaded and the phone was just idling, I found that the power button worked exactly like it did on the day I bought the phone : a single tap turned the display off, as it should, and another single tap would turn it back on again. In fact it’s taken me about 20× longer to write this entry than it did to fix the phone :)
—
* Use of CAPS just for emphasis on each step’s key words
I think factory reset is the god of all troubleshooting steps when it comes to S3 software problems. Nothing beats it, I tell you.