How to Fix Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Problems and Errors [Part 24]

Hello guys. This is the 24th part of our Galaxy Note 3 Problems series. There are 8 problems I addressed in this post so if you have an issue with your phone, try to browse through the issues to see if they can help. You can also just send us your questions or problems through [email protected] and we will help you find answers.

Galaxy Note 3 Plays a tone by itself

Problem: I have a Samsung Note 3 on T-Mobile network. My phone plays a song “over the horizon” by itself. I think the song came preloaded on the phone. The phone does this even when I have my phone on vibrate. I think it my be an app I downloaded with some tracking virus, but if it is how do I tell which one is responsible and remove it.

Solution: To confirm your suspicion, boot the phone to Safe Mode and observe if the issue still happens. If it doesn’t, then you’re correct with your suspicion that the culprit is one of the apps you installed. Otherwise, it could be just a recurring alarm set to play that tone.

If it were a third-party app that’s causing this, it would be easy to know which one. All you have to do is wait for the tone to play again and go to your phone’s Battery Usage screen. Look for all third-party apps that are currently eating up your battery; one of them is the culprit. Or, you can go to the Application Manager and display contents of the Running tab. Every third-party app that is running by the time the tone played is a suspect.

Galaxy Note 3 Voice Control doesn’t work

Problem: Hello, please can you help me? On my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 voice control does not work. I think it is very useful especially for music and alarm. I tried restarting the device several times and cleaned the cache but failed. Please tell me what to do.

Solution: First of all, make sure that the Voice Control feature in your phone is enabled. I’ve seen one case before wherein the switch button was greyed out so it couldn’t be turned on or off. The worse thing is the feature wasn’t working so the switch may have been set to off before the problem started. We found out that one of the apps were causing it. We did uninstall the app but the button remained greyed out. So, we had to boot the phone to Safe Mode and we were able to change the settings there. Once in normal mode again, the button was back to normal already. If this is related to your case, try the solution I just mentioned. However, if the button can still be turned on or off, then try toggling it for a few times.

The Voice Control can be found in Settings > Controls > Voice Control. There are four options you can choose from when you enabled the feature; Incoming Calls, Alarm, Camera and Music. Configure the ones you want to use voice commands. But if these procedures won’t work, I’m afraid you would have to perform factory reset.

Galaxy Note 3 Media service crashed

Problem: Hey guys i have recently updated my Galaxy Note 3 N9005 model to the latest version. Been working fine, how i have this minor issue and its with my messenger; whatsapp. Lately i have been unable to change my message ringtone. Each time i tried i am getting this error message. Please see attached.

Solution: I’ve seen this problem in action first hand as I’ve encountered it in my two smartphones. It may also be triggered when you change wallpaper or view videos via the file manager. The immediate remedy to this problem, however, to clear the data of the service called Media Storage. Don’t worry, your media files will never be lost if you did this.

From any Home screen, tap the Menu key.
Tap Settings.
Tap the General tab.
Tap Application manager.
Swipe left or right to view contents of All tab.
Scroll to and tap Media Storage, then tap OK.

If this procedure failed, try to reboot your phone first and then try wiping the cache partition. If that fails either, there’s no other option left but to perform factory reset via the recovery mode.

Photos deleted after updating/installing apps

Problem: Hi, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and for months now it always came up with this reminder to install something, it came up every time the phone would get switched off and back on and a few times daily. I would always just clicked “Not Now” and it would come up with a reminder for 30 mins, 1 hour and 3 hours. It didn’t say what exactly the update was for but I accidentally clicked on it last night to install and it automatically turnt my phone off and started updating to 100%. It had the android mascot thing and said it was installing something, it then had to update 144 applications and when it was back on all my photos that I’ve taken with the camera were gone!! All the ones I’ve saved off Facebook etc are there but ones I’ve physically taken with the phone were not. My key pad is now different and some of my apps and games have uninstalled. I would like a solution to get my photos back as there are some very important photos I would like back. — April

Solution: Hi. Updates for your phone’s operating system and apps are provided to improve something and not to inconvenience users or, in your case, delete your photos. What was the name of the app that you installed prior to your photos getting deleted? That app is most probably rogue or may have been a backdoor for malware that messed up your device. If this is indeed the case, there’s just no way to recover your lost photos unless you saved a copy of them in some cloud services like Dropbox or Google’s. Please try checking your phone if you have accounts for any similar services as this is the only way to recover those images.

We recommend that you make a copy of your files in a computer or another device in the near future to prevent this from happening again.

You also want to reset your phone to factory defaults to wipe your device clean of any malware and corrupted apps. You can also reinstall all your apps and see if any of them is not familiar to you. If you have many apps installed, it’s possible that one of them is hosting malware.

To show installed apps, follow these steps:

From any Home screen, tap the Menu key.
Tap Settings.
Tap the General tab.
Tap Application manager.
Swipe left or right to view contents of All tab.
Tap the desired application.
Tap Turn on and then tap OK.

Note: If searching alphabetically, hidden apps may be listed at the bottom of the list instead of in alphabetical order.

S Finder not searching Evernote and other apps on Note 3

Problem: Hi. I’m a longtime EN premium user and have owned the Note 3 since December 2013. Until recently, one of the things that I loved was that I could use the Note 3’s “S Finder” app to search all content on the phone (action memos, stored files, google drive etc) while also searching content from my Evernote account (and other apps) simultaneously. Recently, for no reason obvious to me, Evernote notes no longer appear to be being searched when I do an S Finder search. I have gone into settings multiple times and checked and unchecked Evernote, uninstalled and reinstalled EN to see if I could get it working again, and even did a factory reset. No luck. I’ve posted this issue on XDA developers, phandroid, and even recently did an online chat with AT&T my provider) without any luck. I’m starting to consider even doing a factory reset, but I’d hate to go through all of that trouble (already did it once recently after installing Kitkat). I believe S Finder was still searching EN after I installed KitKat, so I’m not sure that that’s the problem either. Someone please help!! Thanks. —Jordan

Solution: Hi Jordan. We understand that you have done all you can on your end to resolve the issue so S Finder may be an important feature for you. We have done our own share of research to find a fix for this issue and we believe that the best way to make things go back to normal is by going through the hassle of a factory reset. We know how frustrating this suggestion may be to you but it looks like the main issue lies within the operating system itself. We can’t quite figure out a logical explanation for your trouble here so we think that bringing back the phone’s original state is the safest way.

S Finder is Samsung’s way of bringing the search power of a mini Google engine to your phone, but obviously the system is not as good. We have users complaining about it searching forever as well as freezing randomly. It’s tied to a complex web of apps, both stock and non-stock, so there’s always that risk of losing the efficacy of its algorithm because of compatibility issues. Of course, it’s not uncommon for some Android apps to cause problems rather than improve things after an update, which further complicate how S Finder operates. Resetting the phone to factory defaults will unclog the system. We hope that this will bring your phone’s functions to normalcy but should the problem continue, please let us know so we can work on it together.

“Unfortunately settings has stopped” error in Note 3

Problem: Hi. I keep on getting “unfortunately settings has stopped” error message every time I go into Settings. Can you help?–Roy

Solution: Hi Roy. The error message “unfortunately settings has stopped” can be caused by a faulty third party app in your phone. If you have recently installed an app prior to getting this error, try to uninstall it and observe. If you have multiple installed apps, you may also want to perform Safe Mode on your phone to confirm our hunch. We have guides in our website to show you how to perform this step so just search it. If the error stops while in Safe Mode, uninstall apps individually until the error stops popping out.

If the problem continues however, it can either be caused by the Application Manager or the Settings app itself, which means that you have to perform a factory reset. Before you reset the phone, don’t forget to create copies of your files to a computer.

Broken images and videos in Galaxy Note 3

Problem: Hi. My note 3 has not been loading my pictures or videos and it’s giving me a broken image when I pull up picture. All I’m getting are the standard image icons for both videos and pictures. I can’t load any of them now. How can I restore those files back? — Miggy

Solution: Hi Miggy. Are those files stored in an SD card? Are you getting the same images for all your pictures and videos? Answering these questions would really help us figure out what the problem is.

However, based on experience with the same and other Android devices, images and videos can sometimes get corrupted for some unknown reasons even if you take care of your phone. Try inserting the SD card to another phone or tablet and see if the problem occurs. If it does, then this means that you have a bad SD card and there’s no way to recover those files.

Note 3 cannot browse even if connected to Wi-Fi

Problem: Hi. My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was previously having problems connecting to my home Wi-Fi but I managed to solve that problem. It now connects perfectly fine but it no longer allows me to browse. Can you help me? — Riki

Solution: Hi Riki. We need to check a few things so we can identify why your phone does not pull up web pages or connect to the Internet. The first thing to check is to ensure that your phone is connected to a good working Wi-Fi network. If this is your home Internet, do other wireless devices like other smartphones, laptops or tablets connected to the Internet? If not, then obviously your Wi-Fi needs some checking. Provided that other smart devices are working however, you want to check your Note 3’s connection/Wi-Fi settings. Make sure that your device is receiving at least 3 signal bars before connecting to the Internet to ensure a stable stream of packets. At times, deleting the Wi-Fi network profile helps in resolving connectivity issues as well. To do that simply follow these steps:

From any Home screen, tap the Menu key.
Tap Settings.
Tap the Connections tab.
If necessary, tap the Wi-Fi Switch to On. The Switch moves right and turns green.
Tap Wi-Fi.
Touch and hold on the Wi-Fi network.
Tap Forget network.

After doing these steps, scan and connect to your Wi-Fi network again. If you are still unable to browse, the problem may lie on the browser you’re using. There are a few browsers for Android out there but the most common is, other than the stock browser provided by Samsung, is Google Chrome. If you’re using Chrome, you must clear the cache to wipe out corrupted files that may prevent it from accessing web pages.

Open Chrome
Go to Setting
Tap on Privacy
Find Clear Browsing Data on the bottom of the page and tap on it
Check the Data you would like to clear

You can also reinstall Chrome if you want. In case you’re using the stock browser of your phone, follow the steps below to delete the cache:

From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
Tap Internet.
Tap the Menu key and then tap Settings.
Tap Privacy.
Tap Delete personal data.
Tap Cache.

I hope this helps.

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 visit our Troubleshooting Page. Thanks.