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Galaxy S7 keeps showing SD Card tap here to transfer media files error, files in SD card got corrupted, other issues

Hello everyone! Welcome to another #GalaxyS7 article that addresses some issues on this device. As usual, these issues are sent to us by some of our readers so if you have your own S7 issue, don’t hesitate to let us know about them. We will publish your issue in the upcoming posts.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy S7 not receiving SMS and app notifications

I have noticed that i am not receiving text messages in my Samsung Galaxy S7 device as of the last two weeks. I’ve also noticed that i am receiving notifications in most of the apps on my phone but there are two apps called “fotmob & “whaff locker” where a notification pops up but where i pull down the notification bar there is no notifications & I’m unsure how to fix these issues.:slightly_frowning_face: — Ronaldo

Solution: Hi Ronaldo. The first step that you want to do is to ensure that there’s no app bug that prevents the messaging app from receiving SMS. To do that, you want to clear the messaging app’s cache, and if that won’t work, clear the app’s data. These are the steps:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6 or 7.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Cache and Clear Data buttons for the application.

The steps above are meant to address a possible issue with the messaging app. However, if clearing its cache and data won’t work, do a factory reset. Factory reset returns all software settings to their defaults, effectively eliminating any operating system glitch that may have developed over time. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

IMPORTANT: Factory reset will delete unsaved personal files like photos, videos, etc. Make sure to create a backup before doing it.

Problem 2: Galaxy S7 reboots on its own

A few months after I got this phone (January 2016) there was an update on the firmware (did not note number) and had an issue with a boot loop; went through the troubleshooting and all seemed fine. Then my phone started booting randomly, sometimes multiple times in a day. Other times it will go multiple days without a boot. I have done a full reset on my phone twice, updated, then upgraded the firmware and the OS (now on Nougat) But my phone still does it without warning and usually in group of twos (it will reboot , then a minute later reboot again). I have resigned myself that that is the way it works and I am now debating if I am going to blame Samsung, Android or both when I get a new phone in a few months. I know it is not a third party app as I had the phone without any third party for a few weeks after the last complete reset and it still did the reboots. I don`t think it is hardware as it does it charging (Wireless) and just sitting on a table without any movement whatsoever. If I had to guess, it has to be something Samsung’s humongous masses of bloatware. — Francois

Solution: Hi Francois. It’s good to know you’ve already done some troubleshooting even before you contacted us. You should know by now that there’s only so much that you can do in terms of Android troubleshooting. In most cases, an end user like you can only do basic software procedures like wipe the cache partition, observe the phone in safe mode, uninstall apps, install updates, wipe the phone via factory reset, and at times, reflash the firmware. If the issue continues after you’ve performed all these, the best thing that you can do is to contact Samsung so the device can be checked by their technician. The next logical step for them, if they can’t find any conclusive evidence of hardware failure, is to replace the device.

Problem 3: Galaxy S7 keeps showing SD Card tap here to transfer media files error

I have a Galaxy S7 and I keep getting the following notification that won’t go away: “SD Card – tap here to transfer media files.” If you click on the notification it just takes you to a dead screen with My Files / SD Card and you can do nothing. The notification constantly reappears after you swipe it away. I’ve tried changing and reformatting my SD Card but the notification continues. It’s driving me nuts and I’ve been searching all over for a solution. This seems to have been happening ever since my phone updated to 7.0. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! — Justin

Solution: Hi Justin. If you’re positive that the problem started to occur right after a factory reset, there are four things that you must do to fix it. Any of these things should fix the problem (provided in order):

  1. delete the system cache
  2. install all app updates.
  3. boot to safe mode
  4. do a factory reset

Wipe the cache partition

Updates can sometimes corrupt the system cache, a set of temporary files Android uses to load apps quickly, resulting to all sorts of problems. In some cases, a minor system glitch can signal a problem, while in others, annoyances such as freezing and apps crashing happen frequently. Since downloading update files means modifying the system cache, there’s a chance that the issue you’re facing right now may be caused by a bad system cache. To ensure that said cache is back to its normal working, you want to wipe the cache partition where it’s stored. Here’s how:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Install app updates/remove incompatible apps

Installing Android updates does not necessarily mean all apps get updated as well. If you have an updated Android operating system but an app/s has become suddenly “out of sync” with it, you can potentially encounter a problem. Keep in mind that not all apps are tested to work in all Android devices and firmware versions. Some developers may not update their apps right away after a new Android version hits the market, making their products problematic in some cases. As a user, there’s no way for you to know an app may have become incompatible until it’s too late. If you’ve already updated all your apps but the problem remain, try to remove all third party apps from the system and observe how it goes. If the SD card error stops after uninstalling apps, that means one of them is to blame.

Boot the phone to safe mode

If you want to put off uninstalling third party apps, you can alternatively go a less drastic approach by observing the phone’s behavior while it’s on safe mode. Safe mode blocks third party apps so if one of them is the reason why the error keeps appearing, the problem should not occur when you enable safe mode. To boot the phone to safe mode, follow these steps:

  1. Turn your Galaxy S7 off.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7’ logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.

Wipe the phone clean with factory reset

If all of these procedures won’t help at all, restore the phone’s default settings via factory reset. Make sure that you run the phone for a few hours right after you factory reset it to see if there’s any difference. Do not install anything during this time. The error is not supposed to reappear during this observation period but if it does, even when there are no apps installed, that means that the cause must be something deeper in the hardware or in the operating system. Make sure to contact Samsung so you can send the phone in.

Problem 4: Galaxy S7 won’t turn on after an update

Hi. I have just installed the system update and now the phone has switched off. I restart by pressing the power and lower volume keys and its starts up with the little robot icon and say installing updates as a percentage bar travels across the screen. At 100% it switches off again and will not switch on with any of the methods on your trouble shooting pages. Please help! Many thanks. — Carol

Solution: Hi Carol. Be sure to try booting the phone to Recovery mode first so that you can then attempt to wipe the cache partition and/or do a factory reset. If your phone fails to restart to this mode, you must then contact Samsung or your carrier for additional support.

To boot to Recovery mode, follow these steps:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy logo shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Problem 5: Handcent app in Galaxy S7 can’t receive SMS

I have the S7 active and use Handcent as my texting app. My son and his friend use the standard messaging that comes on the Galaxy and when they text me, it doesn’t register in Handcent. My wife used the same texting as I do and she gets their texts. I have to go into the apps and open the messaging app in order to even see that they texted me. Do you have any idea why my wife’s Handcent app gets and notifies the texts from them, and mine does not? Thanks. — Andy

Solution: Hi Andy. The first thing that you want to do is to check if this app is set as the default messaging app. If you receive the SMS in your standard messaging app but not in Handcent, the latter is probably not set to receive any SMS. To check, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap Apps.
  3. Tap More options icon at the upper right hand side (the one that looks like a three-dotted line).
  4. Tap Default apps.
  5. Tap Messaging app.
  6. Set your preferred messaging app.

Problem 6: Galaxy S7 won’t detect Straight Talk signal

My phone hasn’t been scanned properly I guess is what Straight Talk is telling me. They told me to have Walmart scan it and my fiance bought it for me so no receipt is able to be found. This was a $600 phone from them. It’s completely unable to use even after I put another new SIM card in and tried my old one that was in the my other straight talk phone. it works fine with my iPhone I’m using now but I love my S7. I’ve owned 2 already and never had a problem like this. I’ve tried about everything I could to get signal to the phone and still nothing. Kinda hopeless and we’re out $600 sadly. — Sabre

Solution: Hi Sabre. We don’t know what you mean exactly by “scanned” but if your device is not getting any signal and it’s a brand new one (if the purchase price is$600, then it must be brand new), you should seriously consider getting it replaced. Let your fiancé request a replacement for you. The store that sold the product should be able to replace since they gave you a damaged good. Walmart generally sells working electronics but if ever you got a lemon, you should have it replaced. Since you did not mention any specific troubleshooting you’ve tried so far, we assume that you’ve already tried a factory reset, which is the ultimate step that you can do in this case. If that did not fix the issue, the phone is either inherently defective, or its hardware may not be compatible with StraightTalk’s operating frequency in your area.

Phones are built to work within a certain set of radio frequency bands and if its network chip is not compatible with that of your carrier’s frequencies, it will never be able to get a signal. Try to do some research about your device by going under Settings>About device and searching for networks-specific details about it like frequency bands and the like. Then, contact Straight Talk and ask what their frequency bands are. You can then compare your device’s frequencies to Straight Talk’s own.

Better still, just return the phone to Walmart and ask them to give you a Straight Talk compatible S7. If that’s not possible for some reason, you’re out of luck. You should try other compatible carriers to use the phone.

Problem 7: Galaxy S7 camera not working

I have tried all of the troubleshooting ideas to fix the camera on my S7 but none of them have helped. My phone has been in a case since the day i bought it and doesn’t have a scratch on it. i’m curious if you have any more ideas to fix this problem. I love my phone and have had s series phone for about 10 years. Ready to just give up and waste 700.00 just to have a cheap phone with a camera. HELP PLEASE!!! Thank You for your time. — Tracy

Solution: Hi Tracy. We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what the problem is. Please get back to us with a complete description of the problem, as well as other relevant information that might give us some clue in identifying the cause. Let us know if you’re getting any error messages and if you did something different before noticing the problem. In other words, make sure to provide as many details as possible. Telling us that you have a camera problem does not really help.

Problem 8: Galaxy S7 sound notification and vibration not working

Good morning. I have a Galaxy S7 and my text message notification sound is not working, nor does it vibrate. The icon for text messages shows if I have a new message but the notification sound itself does not work. I have gone through all the steps to verify the notifications as being on, changed the sound and even did a factory reset this morning and it is still not working. What suggestions do you have to try to get this fixed? — Doriane

Solution: Hi Doriane. First, you want to run the phone in safe mode (steps provided above). Factory reset won’t work if you simply re-installed the apps right after doing it. You should have checked sound notification was working immediately after a factory reset to know if an app is to blame. If you did not do that and you simply re-installed apps afterwards, doing a factory reset in the first place was useless. So now, to check if an app is causing this problem, restart the phone to safe mode  and send a test SMS to yourself. There should be two possibilities in this case. If sound notification works while it’s in safe mode, one of the third party apps is the culprit.

However, if sound notification still fails to work, there must be a deeper reason for it. In this case, you want to do another round of factory reset and see how sound notifications work. If the issue persist, send the phone in.

Problem 9: Galaxy S7 SD card got corrupted, files in SD card got corrupted

Hi! (Get ready for reading, this will be a very detailed and very long letter). I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 mobile phone with a 7.0 android version. The problem began 3 days ago (plus-minus 1 day ). I was travelling in Transylvania with my parents, visiting many famous places like the Torockó village , the Red Lake (or “Killer” Lake), the Saint Anne volcanic lake (it is located in a crater of a inactive volcano), the famous Transfagarasan road , the Tordai rift and of course the whole Szeklerland. When we were at the middle of the tour at the Tordai rift, a storm began and we went to a nearby cave to hide from it. When I made a video about the weather and showed it to my parents, there was a lightning and they said that half of the screen (vertically) went black. To be honest , I did not pay much attention to this happening. I forgot to mention that in the middle of the whole trip, I purchased an SD card  because I didn’t felt the need to purchase one before , and set my camera to save everything to the SD card. That video (unlike the other 13 videos i took) was saved to the SD card. Since then, every picture which I took and saved to the SD card went fully grey with an exclamation mark in its middle and some pictures which were taken before this happening but were saved to the SD card went half grey as well. Right now the camera rejected the SD card, and all of the pictures which I will take will only be saved to the phone’s memory, which isn’t enough. What do I need to do? ( Please help me 🙁 ) *Sorry for my english grammar * — Málnási Béla

Solution: Hi Málnási Béla. We know how frustrating an issue like this can be but it looks like the SD card may have been corrupted. We can’t give you an explanation why your particular card has malfunctioned but there a number of factors that can cause it. SD cards are convenient and easy-to-use storage devices and they can be reliable until they’re not. Unfortunately, a corrupted SD card will most likely result to corrupted files. And of course, corrupted files are basically useless to an average user. Unless you have the training and right tools to recover corrupted files, data recovery is really just a field for specialists. If you think those corrupted files are worth spending a couple of hundred dollars to recover, you can try to tap experts in file recovery. There a lot of companies in the web that can offer file recovery jobs so try to contact them.

Keep in mind though that even if money is not an issue, there’s no guarantee that file recovery experts can recover all those missing files. If you plan on recovering those files from your SD card, make sure not use the card in any way. Unmount it from your phone and keep it in its present state. If you’ve already tried inserting it to another device like a computer and said second device can’t read it either, make sure that you don’t write anything on it. Just keep the SD card and do not attempt to reformat it or save something on it. You’ll want to let a professional check it next to see if your files can be recovered at all.

Problem 10: Can’t import photos or videos from Galaxy S7 to PC

Computer will not import pictures or videos from phone. Just got phone last year, never has been able to perform this function. Had no problem with previous phone (galaxy s4) When connected to computer, the import pictures and videos box comes up. it shows (Samsung-SM-G930V.) Another box also comes up and it shows (No new pictures or videos were found on this device). — Michael

Solution: Hi Michael. Make sure that you install Samsung Smart Switch on your computer before connecting your S7 to it again. The installation should also re-install the necessary drivers in order for your computer to detect your phone. Keep in mind that outdated computer operating system may cause connectivity issues with some phones. Be sure to update your computer’s software if installation of Smart Switch won’t work.

Problem 11: Galaxy S7 edge 4G connection is spotty, 4G keeps disconnecting

I recently purchased a Galaxy S7 edge but seem to be having issues with the 4G connectivity. It works fine for a while and then stops. It won’t let me access the Internet or anything Internet related but can still receive calls and text messages. To temporarily fix my problem I’ve been turning flight mode on and off which works for a while until it happens again. Is there a better fix for this issue? — Dean

Solution: Hi Dean. Be sure to do the following:

  1. wipe the cache partition.
  2. install app and Android updates.
  3. restore all software settings via factory reset.

Any of these steps should fix the issue. If 4G connectivity continue to work intermittently, there’s a chance that it may be a network problem. Make sure to contact your carrier for additional support. If they’ll say that their service in your area is working normally, then the issue may be device-specific. In this case, you’ll want to send the phone in so it can be replaced.

Problem 12: Galaxy S7 can’t send email, keeps getting sending failed error when sending email

I’m having trouble sending email messages with my S7. So what’ll happen is whenever I write an email and send it, I’ll get a “sending failed” message. Initially I thought it was just through Wi-Fi connection that it was happening with but it was also when I have full LTE connection. The email app will keep trying to re-send the same email and it will eventually get sent after awhile. Any ideas why this is happening? — Mark.mislang

Solution: Hi Mark.mislang. This can be due to an unknown email app bug. Make sure that you wipe the email app’s cache and data. Refer to the steps above provided for

Ronaldo above. Alternatively, you can try using another email app like Google’s Gmail app to see if works normally.

Problem 13: Galaxy S7 can’t answer incoming calls

I can’t answer incoming phone calls on my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone. The green phone icon (which shows up when I’m on another call or just waiting for a call to come in). The green phone icon which asks Answer or ignore, does not do anything, either sliding it, pressing it or anything. The phone does not let me answer the call. I’ve lost so many calls this way. Very time-consuming and annoying, some were urgent calls. This seems to apply to long distance calls mostly, from people in my contact data. Is it how the tel number is input into my contact data? — Bcaptijn

Solution: Hi Bcaptijn. Call-related issues like this one should be referred to your carrier but if you want to do some device troubleshooting first, make sure that you begin with an app cache and data wipe. We provided the steps on how to delete an app’s cache and data above so try to follow them first.

If wiping the Phone app’s cache and data won’t help, you can then try to use another voice calling app like Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts. If incoming calls continue to behave erratically, call your carrier for more support.

 

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Galaxy S5 has flickering green/black screen, won’t turn on, other issues

We know that the #GalaxyS5 has been around and there are still millions in circulation at this time so we continue to receive reports of issues here and there. As usual, this post answers some these reports today so if you’re ready, here are the topics we cover for you:

  1. Galaxy S5 not charging, only charges when it is off
  2. Galaxy S5 restarts on its own during the evening
  3. Galaxy S5 won’t read encrypted SD card
  4. Galaxy S5 Active corrupted files in the SD card
  5. Galaxy S5 has flickering green/black screen, won’t turn on
  6. Galaxy S5 wifi keeps dropping due to incorrect APN
  7. Galaxy S5 stopped working and won’t power back on

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S5 not charging, only charges when it is off

Hey! I am having charging issues with my Samsung S5. My phone won’t charge while it is turned on. There is no charging symbol (lightning bolt), nor does the LED light blink in red like it usually does when it charges. And it even though I leave my phone alone, it still manages to use up some energy pretty quickly. The only way I can charge my phone is if it is turned off. But even that yields a problem cause while it does charge, it charges on and off every 5 seconds (5 seconds charging, 5 seconds not charging).

I’ve tried cleaning my port, using different cord and troubleshooting. The only thing I haven’t tried is changing the battery and doing a factory reset because my phone is charging pretty slow so I can barely get it to 10% without me maybe leaving to charge overnight. I’d really appreciate the help. Thanks. — Enrilelucy

Solution: Hi Enrilelucy. There’s only so much that you can do to fix this case on your end. There may be a hardware fault causing the erratic charging behavior so you must try another battery or do a factory reset if the rest of the software troubleshooting didn’t help. If using a different battery or factory reset won’t improve the situation either, you should have the phone checked for hardware malfunction. The most likely issue is on the charging port so a thorough diagnostic test must be performed by a technician.

We know that the Galaxy S5 has been around. If you’ve been using your phone for over a year now, there’s a chance that the battery have simply lost significant capacity to hold a charge. Lithium-based batteries gradually degrades the moment they left the factory so replacing it now may help you fix the problem.

If we are not mistaken, the phone’s warranty is already up at this time so consider bringing the phone to an independent service center.

For reference, here are the steps on how to factory reset your S5:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S5.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up, Home and Power keys together.
  3. When the device powers on and displays ‘Power on logo’, release all keys and the Android icon will appear on the screen.
  4. Wait until the Android Recovery Screen appears after about 30 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, highlight the option, ‘wipe data/factory reset’ and press the Power key to select it.
  6. Press the Volume Down button again until the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted and then press the Power key to select it.
  7. After the reset is complete, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and hit the Power key to restart the phone.

Problem #2: Galaxy S5 restarts on its own during the evening

My phone keeps randomly restarting and/or freezing several times a day, especially during the evening. The problem has occurred every day for the past month. I have deleted some recent apps added, cleared my cache, changed my battery, even did a factory reset, and still the problem persists. Sometimes, when the phone shuts off it drains the battery completely as well. Occasionally, the battery gets really warm too. I have taken it to a tech several times within the past month but they say they can not find anything wrong with it, even after doing several stress tests on the phone. I know last year it would repeatedly tell me that my SIM card was not detected at various times. I am unsure if that has anything to do with it though since I have not seen that message in recent months. — Chris

Solution: Hi Chris. There are only two possible causes that we can think of — either you’ve installed a problematic app, or that there’s an unknown glitch in the hardware.

To see if a bad third party is to blame, you can either boot the phone to safe mode or do a factory reset. Starting the phone to safe mode blocks all third party apps and services from running so you should observe the phone for at least 24 hours to see the difference. If you think an app is causing this problem, you should uninstall apps until the issue is eliminated. To boot to safe mode, follow these steps:

  1. Press and hold the Volume Down and Power keys for 20 to 30 seconds.
  2. Once you see the Samsung logo, release the Power key immediately but continue pressing the Volume Down key.
  3. Your phone should continue booting up and you will be prompted to unlock your phone as usual.
  4. You will know if the phone successfully booted in safe mode if the text “Safe mode” is displayed at the lower-left corner of the screen.

Alternatively, you can factory reset and observe the phone for a day as well. You should not install anything — app or update — during the observation period so you’ll know if something that you add later is the cause.

If the phone continues to show the same symptoms either when the phone is in safe mode or immediately after a factory reset, you can assume that bad hardware is behind them.

Problem #3: Galaxy S5 won’t read encrypted SD card

Hi. I have an issue with my SD card for my Samsung S5 SM-G900F. I encrypted the files but one day something happened while the files were encrypting or decrypting and since then the SD card wont mount in the phone. So it’s neither encrypted or decrypted but essentially I can’t access about 6 years worth of photos of my kids which I’m gutted about. I’ve looked into solving this issue online and I understand formatting the SD card would help solve the mount issue but it would also wipe the photos which I want to avoid. I don’t think I’ve backed the files up either. When I either go to encrypt or decrypt the error message I am getting is as follows: ‘Error encrypting SD card. Unable to mount SD card.”

I have tried the SD card in a SD card reader on a PC and also in another phone and the SD card works but the files are encrypted so I can’t access them. If you’ve anything I can try I’d be grateful, many thanks. — Gavin

Solution:  Hi Gavin. SD card encryption is an effective way to keep data from snooping third parties but it has its weaknesses. One of the such limitations is the fact that there’s nothing that you can do if the device that holds the decryption key gets lost or suffers a malfunction. A decryption key for a storage device like your SD card is tied to one device or phone only. If your phone has lost the key or becomes incapable of decryption the card right now, there’s very little to nothing that you can do. There’s no known app or hack that can break Samsung’s decryption system on Galaxy S devices so you’re basically stuck. Even if there’s a software that can do a decryption somewhere (we’re not aware of any at this time), it will still take months for it unlock the card, even when using brute force attack. That’s in fact, the beauty of SD card encryption but it’s also a curse if your situation occurs. If you want to use the SD card again, you can reformat it. Doing so will erase your data but again, there’s just nothing that anyone can do about this situation.

Problem #4: Galaxy S5 Active corrupted files in the SD card

Hello. I have a Galaxy S5 Active. I’ve always had storage issues with the internal storage, but it didn’t inhibit me too much since I knew what was wrong. I have a 64GB SD that I transfer plenty of images to to conserve internal storage. One day, I suddenly had plenty of internal storage, but my files were all there. I was like “oh, okay… suspicious but I’ll take it”. About two days after that, all my SD files were corrupted. They either didn’t load or had the black screen with an exclamation mark. I panicked bad because I CANNOT lose these photos. When I put the SD into the PC, the pictures were seemingly fine… but when I put it in the SD, after constantly force stopping, taking out the battery, restarting… the files are corrupted in my phone. I’m worried and can’t find any resolution. Thank you. — Matthew

Solution: Hi Matthew. The first thing that you must do is to ensure that all your important files are copied to another storage device like a computer. After creating a backup, the next best thing to do is to factory reset the phone to minimize bugs that may be causing the problem. Here’s how to do it:

  1. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Find and tap the Settings icon.
  3. Under the ‘Personal’ section, find and tap Backup and reset.
  4. Tap Factory data reset.
  5. Touch Reset device to proceed with the reset.
  6. Depending on the security lock you used, enter the PIN or password.
  7. Tap Continue.
  8. Touch Delete all to confirm your action.

Once you’ve factory reset the phone, make sure that you also wipe the SD card clean by reformatting it. If this SD card has been around, we recommend that you don’t use it as your primary backup storage. Use another device where you can keep another copy of your irreplaceable files just in case this SD card will fail again. Keep in mind that any storage device can fail anytime. The older a storage device is, the higher its chance of failing so don’t be lax when it comes to creating backups.

To reformat an SD card in your S5, follow these steps:

  1. From the home screen, tap and drag the Notifications bar downwards.
  2. Tap the Settings icon.
  3. Scroll to, then tap Storage.
  4. If the memory card has not already been mounted, tap Mount SD card.
  5. Tap Format SD card.
  6. Tap Format SD card.
  7. Tap Erase everything to confirm

Problem #5: Galaxy S5 has flickering green/black screen, won’t turn on

My mom has a Galaxy S5 that suddenly had a flickering green/black screen. It won’t turn on and show the logo, go to hard reset or the reset menu, or go into safe mode. Battery was taken out and put back in after a minute, and the SD card was removed as well. Phone has been babied, not dropped, and kept clean and had a factory reset less than a year ago. It also isn’t connected to any phone service as it’s used as a Wifi device only. As far as she knows there’s been no updates and no new apps installed recently. It’s been behaving perfectly with no glitches. She was playing a game she plays every day and it just flickered this green/black screen, then went blank. LED light will go red or green when plugged in to charger or will go white when trying to get to the reset menu. I’m thinking it is just a display issue but it seems so sudden. If you have any advice I’d be eternally grateful! — Christina

Solution: Hi Christina. If the phone has been used for a few years now, it’s possible that the problem may be battery related. The Lithium-ion battery may have lost its ability to hold a charge so it’s good if you can try to use a new one. There’s no guarantee that a new battery will fix the issue but it’s the only thing that you can do at this point.

If you’ve already tried to power the phone back on to different alternate modes without positive result, there must be a hardware problem behind the trouble. In this case, you want to send the phone to Samsung or to an independent service center.

For reference, here are the steps on how to boot your phone to different modes:

Boot in Recovery mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Boot in Download Mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume DOWN keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume DOWN keys.
  4. Wait until the Download screen appears.
  5. If you can boot the phone in download mode but not in other modes, that means that your only way out may be to flash a stock or custom firmware.
  6. Use Google to look for a guide on how to do it.

Boot in safe mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7’ logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.
  6. The only difference of safe mode from normal mode is that the former prevents third party apps from running. If you can boot the phone in safe mode but not in normal mode, uninstall all apps until the issue (that prevents you from booting normally) is eliminated.

Problem #6: Galaxy S5 wifi keeps dropping due to incorrect APN

Hi. Droid guy. I have the Samsung Galaxy S5 and my carrier is through Walmart Family Mobile. Well i pay them but somehow T-Mobile is in on this as well. I have century Link as my internet provider and i have a couple questions.

This phone is a refurbished from a mall kiosk a couple years ago and within a couple months i broke the charging port. So phone sat for a year and now it’s running. The wifi drops constantly. I have:

  • soft reset,
  • turned the smart option off
  • turned phone/wifi router off and on
  • Cleaned the cache through the soft reset.

Nothing seems to help. The APN wasn’t listed even after my carrier sent me a couple texts for data/mms and something else. So i added one from family mobile. Any suggestions?

I Googled this model and read this phone is from Canada. I’m not sure if that means anything but figured I’d throw it in. On the APN, there’s a virtual network operator type (reads GID) and value (reads 4D) tabs. They are not listed in family mobile APN but when i erased them the wifi dropped. I’ve tried everything and have read many of your articles and I’m hoping you can help or offer advice. I don’t have a warranty since it’s a Kiosk $300 special grrrrr lol. Thank you for the time you took for reading my email. — Kim

Solution: Hi Kim. We can’t see the logic of your phone’s wifi dropping when there’s no correct APN settings so there must be a separate unknown software glitch. APN settings are only applied to mobile data function so we can’t explain why your phone’s wifi behaves erratically when the APN is changed.

Try to install the latest Android update first to see if that will make the wifi function work normally. System updates can sometimes include updates for a phone modem firmware. This modem firmware is used by the networking chip to allow you use your phone wirelessly. If it’s outdated or buggy, it can potentially lead to wifi or mobile data function.

If there’s no available update for your phone at this time, do a factory reset and observe how the phone’s wifi work. Make sure that you don’t install any app or updates during the observation period. Refer to the steps above on how to factory reset your phone.

Problem #7: Galaxy S5 stopped working and won’t power back on

Hi. I own a Samsung Galaxy S5. I was using it normally, like I do everyday, and while I was writing to a friend on Facebook, suddenly the screen just blacked out and the phone stopped working. I tried the power button and the phone turned on showing me the logo of Samsung S5 and it showed: Android update 5 of 10, and then blacked out again. After that I haven’t been able to turn it on. I tried several times to take off the battery then put it back and turn it on, or take the battery out, hold the power button for longer than a minute (as you suggested), then put the battery back and turn it on… nothin. It just vibrates when I try to turn it on. I put on a charger because I thought that maybe the battery died, and it’s on the charger for already 30 mins, and still nothing, just vibrates. What am I suposed to do? :/ Please help, thanks. —  Ana

Solution: Hi Ana. Please refer to our suggestion for Christina above. Basically, what you need to do is to try to see if it’s a battery issue by using a different one. You also want to check if you can start the phone to alternate modes (recovery mode, safe mode, and Odin mode). If that won’t work either, send the phone so it can be repaired or replaced.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy S7 battery drain issue after installing AT&T Nougat update, other issues

Welcome to another article about Samsung’s #GalaxyS7 and #GalaxyS7edge devices. As usual, we will be answering some of the issues sent our way for the past few days. We hope that the solutions in this post will help not only those mentioned here but others with similar problems as well.

Below are the specific topics we’re covering today:

  1. Galaxy S7 can’t upload photos and videos in one conversation thread
  2. Galaxy S7 network service not working properly in some locations
  3. Galaxy S7 screen remains black but continues to ring or vibrate when rebooted
  4. Galaxy S7 battery drain issue after installing AT&T Nougat update | How to change icons while in Maximum Power Saving Mode
  5. Galaxy S7 edge Verizon Messaging app not showing envelop icon notifications when receiving messages
  6. Galaxy S7 screen is damaged after it was dropped accidentally
  7. Galaxy S7 audio not working
  8. Galaxy S7 edge unable to receive messaging using stock messaging app | Galaxy S7 edge not showing log of sent and received messages for certain contact
  9. Galaxy S7 stock calendar app not syncing with Facebook calendar
  10. Galaxy S7 won’t read mp3 files after an update, SD card corrupted after an update

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S7 can’t upload photos and videos in one conversation thread

Good Afternoon. Recently, may have been just after the firmware update received, there is one specific conversation thread that will no longer upload all of the previous message photos and videos. Conversation thread was started back in January 2016 until now, photos will only upload as of December 20th, 2016. Anything before this dates shows as continuously trying to load. I haven’t changed anything in the phone, SD card is the same since I purchased. I can’t understand why only this one contact will not load all previous photos and videos. I look forward to any insight and or enlightenment on my situation. Thank you. —  Douglas

Solution: Hi Douglas. There may be a bug causing this problem. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of potential points of failure in a complicated software environment as Android so it’s hard to determine what specific coding issue is behind it.

Wipe the cache partition

To troubleshoot your problem, we recommend that the first thing you want to try is to wipe the cache partition. This may help in this case as this process will force the phone to create a new system cache. Installation of app and system updates can sometimes cause problems due to a corrupted system cache. Deleting the old one and replacing it may be the fix. Wiping the cache partition won’t erase your messages or any of your user files such as photos, videos, documents, etc. so it can be done safely. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Delete the conversation thread

Should wiping the cache partition won’t fix the problem, you have no other option but to delete the conversation thread and see if it will help. There may be a bug associated with the said thread and creating a new one may clear it. Before you delete it, consider creating a backup of your messages to a computer or another device using Samsung Smart Switch app. This app can create a copy of your messages so you can restore them back to your S7 if you’ll be able to eliminate the bug.

Wipe the cache and data of messaging app

If deleting the conversation thread won’t work, the next step is to make sure that you deal with the messaging app you’re using. It’s possible that the bug is being caused by the app itself so you must restore it to its default settings. Be sure to back up your messages via Smart Switch before you do the steps below:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6.0.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Data and Clear Cache buttons for the application.

Problem #2: Galaxy S7 network service not working properly in some locations

For several weeks now I have been dealing and service connections. My feeling is that my phones wireless signal is damaged but I’ll illustrate. There are times that I have great service and shitty service all in the same minute and in only particular locations that I go to. Anywhere else I have perfect reception and I haven’t worries. Any help you can give me?? I have had my SIM card changed, I have completed a factory reset, had my networks reset. And I am going to give my phone back to my local technician to send off to Samsung but I would desperately need some answers please. — Gareth

Solution: Hi Gareth. A network service problem that occurs only in one location is more of an indication of poor service or signal reception than a phone issue. If this issue is due to software or hardware error in your phone, it should happen regardless  where you are located.

Telling us that you network service issues without giving any specific details is not very helpful in identifying the problem. You must work with your carrier in solving this problem rather than with third party support teams like us. There’s nothing that we can do given how little information you provide here. We also don’t have the right tools to conduct some tests to see if there are any on-going service interruptions in the area you’re having problems in. This problem is the territory of your carrier so contact their technical support department for answers.

Problem #3: Galaxy S7 screen remains black but continues to ring or vibrate when rebooted

I have a blinking green light, and a black screen that will not turn on. Lower buttons light up, and phone rings/vibrates still. I have tried the reboot methods and after holding the volume and power buttons, after 10 seconds or so the phone will vibrate for a second, but not turn on.

Also the right side of the screen will light up for a second, with white lines, only the right 1/8th of the screen will do this though. Any ideas what this could be? Thanks. — Nathan

Solution: Hi Nathan. Was the phone accidentally dropped before noticing this problem? This problem is often caused by unnecessary shock on the screen assembly after a drop. In some cases, exposure to water or heat can also damage the screen which can manifest in a situation you’re describing here. If the phone suffered any physical damage at all, stop looking for software solutions. Obviously, you won’t be able to fix a hardware problem with any software “magic” trick. Just contact Samsung  so they can check the screen and do the necessary repair. If there’s no nearby Samsung service center you can run to, you have no other choice but to let an independent service center do the repair for you. Letting a third party repair your device will automatically void the Samsung warranty and Samsung may refuse to fix your S7 later if they’ll discover that someone has opened the device first. Only send your phone to a third party service center if you have absolutely no way of sending it to Samsung.

Problem #4: Galaxy S7 battery drain issue after installing AT&T Nougat update | How to change icons while in Maximum Power Saving Mode

My Galaxy S7 has never really had good battery life, but at least it lasted through out the day. In the last month, AT&T has pushed out the Android 7.0 and then an update and at 100 % charged, the phone tells me I have less than 9 hours of use.

My question is tri-fold. I have over 140 apps on my phone, they are all set to not run in the back ground. I have had them since I had my S3. Occasionally, adding a few new ones, could they be affecting the S7 7.0 performance?

Secondly, I have taken to setting my phone to maximum power saving mode and would like to switch out one of the eight icons allowed to a different one. How do I do that?

Lastly, what else can I do to correct this power drain as my S3 and S5 worked fine with these apps installed? I have already done a factory reset after the update and nothing changed. Thank you in advance for any help you can offer. — Faye

Solution: Hi Faye. There are a number of factors that can negatively impact battery performance in your Galaxy S7, with the most significant ones include the following:

  • the number of apps installed,
  • the number of apps and services running in the foreground and background,
  • display settings
  • connectivity functions remaining on most of the time

One of the most important considerations in extending battery life in a daily basis and battery performance in the long run is to limit the number of installed apps  to the minimum as much as possible. We know this doesn’t bid well for modern users but sadly, current smartphone battery technology hasn’t really improved much for the past 10 years so while the devices become faster and more powerful, the power source (Lithium-based battery) has significantly lagged behind. However, Samsung and other smartphone makers market their devices as amazingly fast and feature packed, there’s no doubt that the main weakness remains that battery. We don’t know how much longer you expect your S7’s battery to last but based in our experience with our own S7 (with bare minimum of less than 50 apps installed), 10 hours is the longest time in a day that we can use it before topping it off again. To answer your questions, continue reading.

Question #1. Like all Android versions, Nougat may or may not perform up to par due to a number of reasons. The vanilla operating system version released by Google is pretty decent and works satisfactorily with most flagship phones we’re used so far. Keep in mind though that the Android Nougat version is no longer the original Google  version but most probably a slightly modified one from your carrier. Poor or inefficient coding may be introduced in the firmware version running in your phone after installing updates or apps so the answer to your first is, it depends. In general though, Android Nougat is stable enough that it even works better than Marshmallow (based in our own experience). This may not be true in your case. Just bear in mind that the more apps you install, the higher the chance of possible points of failure there are. That said, it’s possible that apps may be hampering the performance of the operating system.

Question #2: While in Maximum Power Saving Mode, you will only be able to edit the four lower icons. The first four icons on top can’t be changed at all. To change the  second group of icons at the bottom, do the following steps:

  1. Run the phone in Maximum Power Saving Mode.
  2. Tap the options icon at the upper right hand side of the screen (the three-dot icon).
  3. Tap “Edit.”
  4. Tap the minus sign for each icon you want removed or changed.
  5. Tap the “+” sign inside the box where you want to add the new shortcut or icon.
  6. That’s it!

Question #3: Fast power drain issue can only be remedied and there’s no permanent fix for it in general. You must use your phone smartly, keeping in mind that whether you use it or not, its battery is draining power. Lithium-ion batteries like the one in your S7 gradually loses capacity to hold a charge the moment it left the factory. The rate of this capacity loss quickens the more you charge and discharge (use) the phone day in and day out, meaning you’ll eventually be charging it more often. The more apps you install, the more power the system needs to maintain them. There’s also the chance that some of the apps you have may not be coded properly, draining more battery power that they’re supposed to. If you can’t live the apps you’ve installed right now, then you simply have to focus in other aspects in minimizing battery consumption such as lowering screen brightness or turning off unnecessary network functions such as wifi and bluetooth whenver possible. If you’re looking for a permanent fix for a battery drain issue, we’re afraid there’s nothing available for you, unless of course there’s a particular case that causes it like a bad app or malware.

Problem #5: Galaxy S7 edge Verizon Messaging app not showing envelop icon notifications when receiving messages

I have a Galaxy S7 Edge which I updated last week. I use the Verizon Messaging App. Before the update I would receive an envelope on my lock screen that would indicate how many text messages had come through. Since the update the envelope no longer appears. I still receive the LED letting me know I have a new message, sounds still work etc., but I depend on the envelope. Under settings I no longer see where I can mark this app to allow messages on lock screen. I have tried a soft reset and everything else I can think of. How do I keep my envelopes back?        — Gingermeyers4

Solution: Hi Gingermeyers4. We’re assuming that you installed Android Nougat or one of its follow-up patches. If nothing changes when you set up Notifications under the Settings app (Settings>Notifications), you want do our suggestions for Douglas above. If the solutions we suggest for him will not work, the new update may have changed the behavior or the app or the operating system for this particular feature. This is a coding change and there’s nothing that we can do about that. Consider letting Verizon know of the issue so they can help you.

Problem #6: Galaxy S7 screen is damaged after it was dropped accidentally

Hi there! Dropped my phone last night. On the locked screen, where the date, time and battery life is displayed, there’s a constant green and white big bar that’s dropping down from the top non stop. It moves at a pretty quick rate (I counted over 60 repeats in less than a minute). Clicking the home button on the device brings a black screen. Using the side button to get to the unlock screen causes RAPID flashing and the entire display is completely out of order. I can see that there are duplicates of everything, as it’s constantly scrolling down. For instance, I have the weather on the front screen, and I can see where it normally is; top left. When I unlock, I can see the weather down where the first row of applications would be. It seems holding it a certain way will completely stop all of the flickering, scrolling and odd colors, but it’s hit or miss. I’m wondering if replacing the screen is needed, if it’s a lose wiring, OR if there’s a problem with the back light. It almost seems as if the phone still thinks I’m touching the screen and trying to predict where I’m going to swipe/click. But it’s completely erratic. — Heather

Solution: Hi Heather. The only way to know what causes the screen to behave erratically is open the phone and check the screen assembly. We are certain though that you have a damaged hardware but if you’re lucky and the shock from the drop did not damaged other components, a screen replacement may restore all normal workings of the device. Kindly contact Samsung and let them handle the screen replacement for you.

Problem #7: Galaxy S7 audio not working

Sounds is not working on my Samsung GALAXY S7. I’ve tried “Wipe Cache” from the reboot screen, factory reset, testing out sounds in safe mode, and none of these helped. I even took my phone to a Samsung Service center an hour away, only for them to tell me it’s not a hardware issue and it’s software, and then I need to factory reset again and download one app at a time. I’ve uninstalled a lot of apps and tried uninstalling one app at a time to see which is the problem. None of them have worked. I’ve also taken my phone to a Samsung specialist at Bestbuy and they did a hard reset and it didn’t help. Please help :(. — Yeeliau

Solution: Hi Yeeliau. The general rule in troubleshooting any Android problem is to always start with software troubleshooting first. If nothing will change after you’ve exhausted all software solutions, especially after a factory reset, you can assume that it’s a hardware problem. As far as troubleshooting this issue on your end is concerned, you’ve already done all of them at this point. Contact Samsung again and have them repair or replace the phone.

Problem #8: Galaxy S7 edge unable to receive messaging using stock messaging app | Galaxy S7 edge not showing log of sent and received messages for certain contact

Hi there. Using the stock message client, on S7 Edge, I am having an issue with a particular recipient. It doesn’t happen with anyone else. When I type a message to her and click send, the message is sent and received at her end. But it does not save or appear anywhere on my end. There is no history or log or record of any message being sent to her. I also can not receive messages from her. We have checked the obvious, that she has been blocked somehow, but all those settings appear to be normal. Really bizarre and frustrating. As I said – it doesn’t happen with anyone else in my contact list. Appreciate any help! — Rob

Solution: Hi Rob. Your issue may not be identical to Douglas’ above but the solutions are the same. Make sure to back up your messages before attempting to clear the cache and data of the messaging app.

You can also try to narrow down the causes by using a third party app to see if that will work. There are many free messaging apps in Google Play Store that you can use for this purpose. If you can send and receive messages normally for this contact on another app, you may need to reset all software settings to default via factory reset. Here’s how:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Problem #9: Galaxy S7 stock calendar app not syncing with Facebook calendar

Hi. I have an Samsung S7 and I am facing 2 issues. 1) It seems that my Facebook calendar cannot sync with Samsung calendar. When i go to settings/account, under Facebook there are no options. the same for contacts. Also, it seems the notification are not getting pushed to my phone, i have to access the app to see updates. 2) outlook calendar and email doesn’t sync. When i am trying to set up the EAS, i login in but then it doesn’t sync. When i click in the server settings and it tries to connect to the server it says cannot connect to server, so nothing gets synced.

I also have the Outlook app and that works fine but the calendar and info from the outlook app doesn’t sync with the Samsung. I have to access Outlook app to see any of the data. i use 2-step verification thank you in advance for the help. —        Fivos

Solution: Hi Fivos. Samsung Calendar app appears to only support 4 accounts which are:

  • Samsung account
  • Exchange
  • Google
  • Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

We can’t see any option to add or sync Facebook calendar to the stock Calendar app either so it’s limited by design. That means that it’s not built to sync with the account types you’re trying to sync here. Unfortunately, there’s nothing much that you can do about it right now.

Problem #10: Galaxy S7 won’t read mp3 files after an update, SD card corrupted after an update

March 30, 2017 came a new update for my phone so I plugged it in and let it run its course. When it finished I realized that none of the mp3 files on my SD card worked saying “Sorry, this player does not support this type of audio file.” The photos on my SD card were also blank, yet all the files showed they were still there with their respective sizes. I’ve deleted and downloaded the same app, a new app, tried opening the files on another S7, restarted the phone (once with and once without the card inside), moved them to the phone and back, moved them to Google drive and back, and all with the same result. Nothing supports the files and shows blank pictures. I’m confused as to why the update even touched anything on the encrypted SD card, much less why it did what it did. What should I do? — Felix

Solution: Hi Felix. Since you have an encrypted SD card, you have very limited options at this time as the only device that can read it is only your phone. Letting another device access your files is obviously pointless so your only chance of using it normally again is to reformat it. We know this will delete the files you’re keeping in it but there’s really nothing that you can do at this point. We can’t say what happened exactly but the update may have changed some operating system parameters, which may have affected how it reads the card. An unknown software or app glitch may have caused the problem after the update. Whatever it is, there’s no way to find out. To prevent this issue from happening again, always make it a habit to create a back up of important files regularly to another device before installing an update. Updates change core operating system parameters so there’s always a chance that some things may not work as expected afterwards.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy J7 won’t turn on, won’t charge fully to 100%, apps won’t load, other issues

Hello #GalaxyJ7 users! Welcome to our new troubleshooting series that addresses issues regarding the Galaxy J7. We hope that the solutions in this post will help not only the users mentioned here but others that are experiencing similar issues as well. We will be posting more of the same posts in the near future so keep watching.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy J7 getting delayed SMS

My phone is delayed in receiving text messages some times. It’s never too much, at the most half an hour, but it’s still rather inconvenient. I really only text with one person, so I’m not sure if it’s an issue on my end or his. It’s his texts that delay, I don’t think mine do. Sometimes for about half an hour I won’t receive any texts from him, but he is still getting everything I send over that span of time. Then suddenly I get all the texts he’s sent that I hadn’t been getting. Or sometimes it’s just one text that will delay; we’ll be having a conversation then a text he sent 10 minutes ago will finally send. What can I do about this? I’ve restarted my phone plenty, taken the battery out, and it hasn’t helped. Device is a Galaxy J7, carrier I’m pretty sure is Straight talk. — Kaitlyn

Solution: Hi Kaitlyn. You should try to wipe the cache and data of your messaging app. This will address any possible bug that may be in your messaging app. Try to delete the cache first and observe how messaging works for 24 hours. If that won’t work, proceed with Clear Data. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6 or 7.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Cache and Clear Data buttons for the application.

There’s really nothing much that you can do on your end to fix an SMS problem. Device troubleshooting is very limited and there’s nothing to change since apparently  SMS function is working. If the issue will continue after clearing the cache and data of the messaging app, contact your carrier for support.

Problem 2: Galaxy J7 uses up all remaining storage space, apps won’t load

My J7 did a software download which completed, installed and optimised all applications. Subsequent to completing all my free storage space started to disappear. As quickly as I deleted apps, images and music, it got used up until all 1.6 GB was used. I could not use any apps. Tried removing the battery and restart. Phone boots to the Samsung name and after a while reboots while chewing up power very quickly. Did a recovery start and erased cache. Did not work. Did a factory reset and that did not work. I am at a loss in terms of what to do next. tried downloading bootloader but it has been saying it is downloading for over an hour. I believe it is hung. — Jefft104

Solution: Hi Jefft104. Like you, there’s no way for us to know what’s going on with your device since there’s not much information you provided. The fact that the phone won’t even do a factory reset is a bad sign though. It can mean that the bootloader may be corrupted, or there’s a software glitch causing system to behave erratically. If your issue is similar to this one, your only option may be to flash the bootloader and firmware. Just ignore the downloading bootloader option as that won’t help. Restart the phone by pressing and holding Power and Volume Down for at least 10 seconds, then boot it back to Odin mode. Try to find a good online guide on how to flash the bootloader and firmware for this particular phone model and see how it goes.

For demonstatation purposes, here are the steps on how to flash a bootloader. Keep in mind that the exact steps may vary on your phone model.

  1. Look for the correct firmware for your phone model and download it. Make sure that you select the right one. It should be the same exact firmware that ran previously on your device. We assume that you list down the firmware version somewhere. If you did not take note of it before, there’s a chance that you may pick the wrong one. As you may know now, using an incorrect firmware can cause complications so good luck with that.
  2. Let’s now say that you have identified the correct firmware. You then want to download it to your computer. The firmware file should have a bunch of files in it like AP_, BL_, CSC_, etc.
  3. Look for the file that starts with a label BL; this should be the corresponding bootloader file for this firmware. Once you’ve identified the bootloader file, copy it to your computer’s desktop or to any other folder that you can easily access.
  4. Proceed with the rest of the flashing procedure using the Odin program.
  5. In Odin, click on the BL tab and make sure to use the bootloader file you’ve identified earlier.
  6. Now, make sure that the “Device Added” status and its “ID:COM box” has turned blue before hitting the START button. This will initiate the flashing of your phone’s bootloader.
  7. Restart the phone once the procedure is finished.

Problem 3: Galaxy J7 won’t charge fully to 100%

Hello there. For the last few days, my Samsung Galaxy J7 won’t completely charge to 100%. It’s only new since March. I first noticed a couple of nights ago that when I plugged it in, it didn’t do the little bing alert it does to let me know it was charging. But the battery itself had the charge icon so I wasn’t worried. The following morning when I was it was only on 97%. The phone usually fully charges in around 2 hours. I figured I just hit the cable during the night or my toddler unplugged it or something. Then this morning, the same issue. It was only 97% again. I know it’s not the worst of problems but it’s just a little niggling problem that I’m thinking may get worse over time if I don’t fix it Any help would be appreciated 🙂 — Ciara

Solution: Hi Ciara. Try to recalibrate the battery and everything should be fine. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. Use the phone by playing games or doing tasks to hasten power discharge, until the phone turns itself off.
  2. Turn the phone on again and let it turn itself off.
  3. Charge the phone without turning it back on.
  4. Wait until the battery says it fully charged to 100%
  5. Unplug the charger and turn the phone on.
  6. If the phone says it’s not 100% anymore, turn it off, plug the charger back in and wait until 100% charge is reached.
  7. Unplug the charger the turn the phone on again.
  8. Use the phone until you drain the battery down to 0.
  9. Repeat the cycle once.

If battery recalibration won’t help, back up your important files using Smart Switch and do a factory reset.

  1. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Backup and reset.
  4. If desired, tap Back up my data to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  5. If desired, tap Restore to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  6. Tap Factory data reset.
  7. Tap Reset device.
  8. If you have screen lock turned on, enter your PIN or password.
  9. Tap Continue.
  10. Tap Delete all.

Problem 4: Galaxy J7 showing green vertical line on the screen

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to read my problem. I’ve got a Samsung J7 running LineageOS 13 (Android 6.0.1). I’ve got a green line running down my screen about 1 to 2 pixels wide. It does not affect usage of my device in any way. The line shows up even in bootloader and TWRP Recovery. However due to the design of AMOLED screens this line does not appear when black color is being displayed such as when using BlackPlayer EX. I’ve attempted to return to the stock Samsung ROM as well as factory reset and RessurectionRemix Nougat. Is it possible to get this line fixed up? Thanks! — Adarsh

Solution: Hi Adarsh. If this green vertical line appears in Recovery and normal mode, you’re dealing with a hardware issue possibly due to a physical damage. If you want to fix it, have the screen replaced. There’s no amount of software tweak that you can do to solve a bad hardware.

Problem 5: How to recover files from a corrupted SD card in a Galaxy J7

I’ve had SD card installed since purchased, no problems. Think after recent system update this has started, but most recent pics in gallery show up as grey with the exclamation point. I’ve read thru info here and done the following: soft restart, removing battery & SD at least 10 seconds, wiping cache and starting in safe mode. Nothing brings photos back and i don’t know what next step is. Recovery software? Side note, two photos in my gallery show the picture but half of it is solid gray. This is weird to me. — Ticialacollins

Solution: Hi Ticialacollins. The troubleshooting steps you mention here won’t bring your photos back. Yes, you need a recovery software for that, if there’s anything to be recovered at all. Recovery software are mostly proprietary and are only available to companies specializing in digital forensics. If you think those missing files are worth a few hundred dollars, try scouring the web for reputable companies that can help you recover your files.

While searching, make sure not to use your phone or SD card. If possible, turn the phone off and do not remove the SD card. Just leave everything in place to avoid something from overwriting sectors that may still contain relevant information.

Problem 6: Pre-owned Galaxy J7 can’t detect network signal

Respected sir. I bought a second hand Samsung J7 prime, and phone looks good and works good. but i came home and inserted a 4G SIM card and it  doesn’t work. It does not show the network. then i check network setting, but it does not have 4G LTE option in network setting. I checked online and use *#*#4636*#*# and other option too.. but it dosesn’t work. Please reply with solution as soon as possible. Thanks and regards. — Pratik

Solution: Hi Pratik. There are a number of possible reasons why the phone does not detect your network. Here are they:

  • Phone was never network unlocked. Samsung devices, except those built for the global or international market, are usually locked to a certain carrier’s network. For example, although of the same model, some phones are built for AT&T while a similar ones for T-Mobile. The network function of a phone built for AT&T network may not work when you insert a T-Mobile SIM card to it. It must be network unlocked first before you can use a different SIM card to it. You should have asked the previous owner if the phone was network unlocked in the first place.
  • There are things called CDMA and GSM. CDMA and GSM are the two most popular networking technologies being used by most telephone companies around the world. If your J7 was built for a CDMA network like Verizon or Sprint and you try to use it in a GSM network, it may not work. Aside from making sure that it’s network unlocked, you also have to ensure that it can work in a different network type like CDMA or GSM.
  • Phone’s hardware may not be compatible with your current network. Every carrier operates in a particular radio frequency. If your phone’s network chip is designed to work in a different set of radio frequency not being used by your carrier, it will not receive any signal at all.

Due to space limitation in every post, we can’t dwell on more details about these items so our advice to you is to know more about your phone so you’ll know if there’s any incompatibility issue causing the problem. Better still, try to talk to your carrier and see if their technical support team can walk you through some things, especially in checking the details of your phone.

Problem 7: Galaxy J7 won’t turn on

I have a Samsung Galaxy J7. I can’t turn it on or reboot or anything, it’s just a black screen. I’ve tried pulling out the battery, charging it, etc. and nothing has worked. I have even tried plugging it into my computer to charge and nothing comes up on the screen to say that I even plugged it in. Could it be my battery, USB cord, or charger? This happened before when I had an iPhone and they said that I had overcharged it too many times but I’m not sure it’s the same case. Thanks! — J.taylor.4004

Solution: Hi J.taylor.4004. To know what’s the reason for this problem, you need to narrow down the possible causes. Telling us that your phone won’t turn on does not really give us any idea where the issue may lie. You should have included other relevant details that may have led to the issue.

The usual causes of an issue like this includes the following:

  1. defective USB cable and/or charging port (that’s why the phone won’t charge and appears not to power on)
  2. bad battery
  3. damaged charging port
  4. malfunctioning screen assembly (for the black screen issue)
  5. other unknown hardware errors (other serious motherboard problem)

We want you to go over the list above and check each one. We know you can’t directly test the charging port, screen assembly, and the motherboard so if using a different charger/cable and battery won’t fix the problem, send your phone in for repair or replacement.

Problem 8: Galaxy J7 stuck in Samsung logo screen

After a software update was downloaded, I selected install updates. The green Android robot appeared and counted from 1 to 100. Then the Samsung logo kept on flashing with brightness changing from bright to dull for about 3 hours. I did some research then tried to reboot the phone until it eventually gave me option to go to download mode. It was on that screen for about six hours and my phone was heating up. I removed my battery and it returned to the flashing Samsung logo screen. — Wykunjwa

Solution: Hi Wykunjwa. Boot the phone to Recovery mode, then wipe the cache partition first. If nothing will change afterwards, make sure to do a factory reset.

Below are the steps on how to restart your phone to Recovery mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Make sure the phone is turned off by removing the battery for at least 10 seconds before putting it back in.
  3. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  5. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  6. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  7. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Problem 9: Sound keeps cutting off when headset is connected to Galaxy J7

Hi. Having sound issues on my Samsung J7. Sound is fine without headphones. With headphones, it cuts out permanently. I can just hear background noise but no speech. I’ve removed the battery, done a factory reset. These haven’t worked. My headphones work fine on other devices. Please help. Thanks. — Arvindaucharaz

Solution: Hi Arvindaucharaz. In a lot of cases, an issue like this is due to a malfunctioning headset port. Try nudging or turning the headset plug to see if you can remedy the situation that way. If that won’t work, try using another headset. Sometimes, a head plug may not fit properly in the port causing poor or no contact at all. If this workaround won’t work though, we’re afraid you have to revert to more drastic solutions like opting for a wireless headset or having the phone replaced entirely.

Problem 10: Galaxy J7 System UI has stopped error

My Samsung Galaxy J7 keeps saying System UI has stopped working everytime I try to recored my phone screen or stream it. it started happening after I accidentaly deleted mobizen for Samsung. Please help me. — Donovan

Solution: The best solution for a System UI-related error is factory reset. If you haven’t tried that, make sure that you do. Here’s how:

  1. Back up data on the internal memory. If you have signed into a Google account on the device, you have activated Anti-theft and will need your Google credentials to finish the Master reset.
  2. Turn off the device.
  3. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
  5. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
  6. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  7. Press Power button to select.
  8. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
  9. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  10. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  11. Press the Power key to restart the device.

 

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Galaxy S7 keeps restarting after using it under water, won’t read SD cards after an update, other issues

Hello Android community! Here’s another #GalaxyS7 post for you and we hope that you’ll find it useful. We are publishing more of the same posts in the coming days so keep watching.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy S7 won’t read SD cards after an update

So around a week or so ago, I upgraded my phone via a notification that popped up in the notification area. Afterwards, I started getting this unsupported SD card message. Seems like I’ve seen this happen in the past with the last OS version and would simply reformat the card since it seemed to be the easiest way to get things back to normal. Now, however, the phone will not format it. It tries and then delivers the message “command ‘7 volume partition disk: 179,0 public’ failed with ‘400 7 Command failed.” Every time I attempt another reformat, the first and last number (7 above) increment by one. The first logical conclusion that I came to was that the SD card is corrupt or bad. So I took it out and with a reader, attempted to access it with my Windows laptop. I could browse the card with no problem so I copied the data and then reformatted the card to FAT32. After reinserting into the phone, I get the same unsupported SD card message and so I attempted to format again. I get a progress bar that’s prepopulated at 20%, then the message above pops up. I, again, thought maybe it was the SD card so I tried another. Same thing….tried another….same thing. I’ve tried multiple cards no with no difference.  The first SD card is a Transcend 32GB Class 10 card and the other cards I’ve tried are all Samsung 8GB Class 10. The phone is running Android version 7.0. I have attempted the following with no change:

  • factory reset,
  • wiped the cache,
  • booted into safe mode, and reformatting the card using both Windows DiskManagement (both quick and slow method) and GParted.

A Google search returns quite a few hits related to this type of error message but no apparent resolution or cause. Everything is pointing back to the phone as the culprit, but I’m just not sure if it’s software in nature or hardware. My gut says it’s software since it started happening after the last upgrade and the fact that it appears to be manufacturer agnostic, meaning I’ve seen Sony users, Motorola users, HTC users, etc…. having the exact same problem.

Anyway, I’m hoping it’s a software as that would lead me to believe there is a possible fix for it. Any ideas? — Billyrwise

Solution: Hi Billyrwise. There’s no way to know for certain whether this type of issue is software- or hardware-related. The most that you can do is to see what you did previously that may have led to this problem. If you are positive that the only change to the system was the installation of an Android update, then you’ve probably installed a poorly coded firmware version. Since a factory reset did not fix your issue, the only solution left for you, other than a phone replacement, is by reverting the firmware to its previous version — Android 6. Be sure to use a good guide should you wish to flash an older Android version on your phone.

Problem 2: Galaxy S7 keeps restarting after using it under water

Hello. Today I went to a water park for my sister’s birthday, so i used my Galaxy S7 in the water, also under it. It worked perfectly all day. about an hour later I left my phone on the car and when we were leaving, it worked normally but it started to get very hot so i turned it off. Now it keeps turning off and on. It only shows the Samsung Galaxy S7 logo for a few seconds then shut back off and it keep doing the same thing without stopping. I can’t get it completely off or on. It also keeps getting hot even like that. — Alex

Solution: Hi Alex. First of all, a case like this is almost always hopeless because you are basically unable to do any software troubleshooting on the device. If the only different thing you did before was to use it in water, there’s a chance that its internal components may be compromised. Remember, an S7 is water resistant only, not fully water proofed. Any unnecessary water pressure (present when moving the phone under water) can force moisture inside.

Secondly, you want to try restarting the phone to other modes to see if you can stabilize it to an alternate mode. If you can’t, we don’t think there’s any other troubleshooting that you can do on your end. You must send it in for repair or replacement.

Below are the steps on how to boot your phone to other modes:

Boot in Recovery mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy logo shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Boot in Download Mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume DOWN keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy logo shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume DOWN keys.
  4. Wait until the Download screen appears.
  5. If you can boot the phone in download mode but not in other modes, that means that your only way out may be to flash a stock or custom firmware.
  6. Use Google to look for a guide on how to do it.

Boot in safe mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the Samsung Galaxy logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.
  6. The only difference of safe mode from normal mode is that the former prevents third party apps from running. If you can boot the phone in safe mode but not in normal mode, uninstall all apps until the issue (that prevents you from booting normally) is eliminated.

Problem 3: Galaxy S7 unable to make voice calls and keeps getting error message saying SMS can’t be sent

I have a factory unlocked Samsung Galaxy S7 which I have owned for the past several months. Starting approximately two days ago, I began to be unable to make calls to certain people (the other people had both Android and Apple phones). This issue then escalated to where when I try to send a text message I get a sending symbol until eventually it says the message cannot be sent. However, my messages still appear to go through because people can reply to me and calls can be made to me. The issue is very annoying because I am constantly getting message not sent messages and it is also difficult to know when my message has genuinely not sent. I have tried a hard reset which wiped me to factory reset and I have also cleared my system cache. I have contacted my provider as well and they say everything on there end appears to be fine. Please help. — Devin

Solution: Hi Devin. Was there anything that you did differently before experiencing these problems like install an update or app? If you did, try to reverse it and see how it goes.

You can also try another factory reset and observe the phone. We know you already factory reset your device prior to contacting us but most people do it without observing their device afterwards. If you haven’t done that, here’s what you need to do exactly:

  1. Do a factory reset.
  2. Observe the phone for at least 24 hours. Test how sending text and voice calling works.
  3. Make sure not to install anything (app or update) during this time. The aim is to see if there’s any difference when the phone is running a clean software.

If SMS and voice calling works normally during observation period, that’s an indication that one of your installed apps is to blame.

On the other hand, if the problems remain during observation period, it can mean that there’s a glitch with the operating system or hardware. In either case, you want to have the phone replaced.

Problem 4: Galaxy S7 screen shows tan or sandy color

The screen has darkened. If I were to go on Google for example, the internet won’t be white and instead it is a tan or sandy color. It was working fine in the morning then I put my phone in my back and when I took it out, the screen is now a tan color. I don’t think water, dust sand, dirt ect caused this because my bag is clean and water has got on my phone before and the screen was fine but now it’s not and I don’t know what caused this or how to fix it. — Pegbuchunam15

Solution: Hi Pegbuchunam15. Pull up your phone’s service menu first by doing the following steps:

  1. Open Phone (dialer) app.
  2. Dial “*#0*#” (without quotes).
  3. Test how your device’s screen change colors by tapping Red, Green, Blue, and Black boxes.

If the screen remains the same, that is, it continues to show tan or sandy colors, you have a broken screen at hand. You should have the phone repaired or replaced.

On the other hand, if screen’s color change according to the box that you tap, that can mean that there may be an operating system problem. You should try a factory reset to fix it. Here’s how:

  1. Create a backup of your important files such as photos, videos, contacts etc. You can use Smart Switch for this task.
  2. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  3. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  5. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  6. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  7. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  8. Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  9. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  10. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Problem 5: Galaxy S7 edge stuck in boot loop

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 edge which hasn’t been working for a week. It’s stuck in bootloop it won’t get past the samsung galaxy s7 edge screen at the start. I’ve tried putting it into safe mode to clear cache and reset the phone which worked previously when I had a similar issue, but this time when I press the buttons to go into safe mode it just comes up with a screen saying no command with a dead android guy. I’m starting to think the only other thing I can do is root my phone but I wouldn’t even know how to go about that. I hope you can help, Thanks in advance. — Danielle

Solution: Hi Danielle. If doing a factory reset via Recovery mode (check steps above) did not help, the only other option for you at this time may be flashing the bootloader and/or firmware. Below are the sample steps on how to flash a bootloader. The exact steps for your device may be slightly different so make sure to do some research how to do this. Flashing instructions vary by phone model. The steps below are for demonstration purposes only. If you don’t think you can do it, let someone with more advanced Android knowledge do it for you.

  1. Look for the correct firmware for your phone model and download it. Make sure that you select the right one. It should be the same exact firmware that ran previously on your device. We assume that you list down the firmware version somewhere. If you did not take note of it before, there’s a chance that you may pick the wrong one. As you may know now, using an incorrect firmware can cause complications so good luck with that.
  2. Let’s now say that you have identified the correct firmware. You then want to download it to your computer. The firmware file should have a bunch of files in it like AP_, BL_, CSC_, etc.
  3. Look for the file that starts with a label BL; this should be the corresponding bootloader file for this firmware. Once you’ve identified the bootloader file, copy it to your computer’s desktop or to any other folder that you can easily access.
  4. Proceed with the rest of the flashing procedure using the Odin program.
  5. In Odin, click on the BL tab and make sure to use the bootloader file you’ve identified earlier.
  6. Now, make sure that the “Device Added” status and its “ID:COM box” has turned blue before hitting the START button. This will initiate the flashing of your phone’s bootloader.
  7. Restart the phone once the procedure is finished.

IMPORTANT: Flashing the bootloader or firmware can potentially brick your phone for good if not done properly. Be sure that you know what you’re doing before committing to it. You don’t need to understand how the entire process works but you want to be aware of the risks you’re taking.

Remember, flashing is not a guaranteed solution and there are lot of cases that it won’t help. If the problem stays, have the phone repaired or replaced.

Problem 6: Galaxy S7 keeps rebooting on its own after an update

My Galaxy S7 on EE network in Britain recently updated by the network. It worked normally for a while. I switched it off last week in the night and when switched on in the morning it just now keeps switching off and on. It stays on for variable times between 2 to 30 seconds max. I did the delete cache but still the same. I tried safe mode reboot but still the same. I have pictures and files on the phone I want to access but smart switch does not have time to connect to my new S8 I had to buy. The EE people in the shop say they can only wipe it and repair/replace since it is within warranty. Please help with any ideas to recover? — Gerzz

Solution: Hi Gerzz. You need a stable system in order to move files back and forth so we’re afraid you don’t have much choice in this matter. If you want to fix the issue though, you can try the suggestion we have for Danielle above. Flashing will delete the operating system though so you’ll still lose your data.

Problem 7: How to recover files from corrupted SD card in Galaxy S7

Hello. I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and I save most of my pictures to a microSD card. One day, I noticed my camera album was missing, but didn’t think much of it. A little while later, I noticed that albums from a couple of large trips I had taken were gone. There are still some albums remaining and plugging the SD card into a PC gives no files other than what shows up when I open the file manager on the phone. Turning the phone on in Safe mode shows nothing additional either. Do you have any suggestions? Any data recovery program that you recommend (or will data recovery not do anything since there is still information on the SD card)? Any help you can offer is so greatly appreciated!! Thank you! — Kassie

Solution: Hi Kassie. Data recovery is a tricky business so there’s no telling what you might be able to get. If you think those missing files are worth a few hundred dollars to recover, we suggest that you visit Google to search for third party companies that offer data recovery service. Make sure to ask the terms of their service before paying so you’ll know what to expect. Some companies won’t charge you if they can’t recover anything but others may.

Problem 8: Galaxy S7 S Beam and NFC

My Samsung Galaxy S7 had a black screen issue after 6 weeks so it was returned and replaced. I received it in the mail and did the set up and restored it. After that was completed, I checked all my pics to clear them and make room to do the update. I had about 20 videos that was from my sister’s phone. I posted them to her on FB to get more room so I could do the system update, as space was needed. Everything was fine, except for the update loop, but that’s ok. The next day I went to look at the pics, since I had lost some from old phone and they were there. There was also about 100 of my sister’s pics now. We have never used the S Beam or NFC. It is driving us crazy how I got all them. Different phones, different providers, and they have never shown up for a restore before. All the pics and videos were from 2013, that’s it, no recent ones. Do you gave and clue what is going on? — Karen

Solution: Hi Karen. We don’t think we understand your point here. Can you please get back to us with clearer questions? We’ll update this post accordingly.

Problem 9: Galaxy S7 overheating and won’t turn on after it got water damaged

So I went swimming and since my phone is the Samsung Galaxy S7 I knew it was water proof. So I tested it in the pool but only put the phone under water for about 5 seconds tops. I dried it off after that and then set it aside in the shade and when I checked on it later it was already off. So I turned it back on but when I opened it it started glitching and switching between the home screen and the multiple tab screen (where it shows all the apps that are open). it kept doing that for a while and it kept shutting down because the battery was overheating until the battery died. Now when I charge it the battery sign shows up with a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle. I looked it up and I know there is water damage because it said that under the battery there is a white square and if the square has red on it there is water damage. Now I just need help on how to fix my phone so I don’t have to pay for a new one or how much it will cost to fix it. –Arielrz2015

Solution: Hi Arielrz2015. First of all, your phone is not a water proof device. It’s only covered with water resistance protection, technically an IP68 certification, which means it’s not immune to water damage at all. Giving you the difference between water resistant and water proof devices is beyond the scope of this article so hit Google and do your research.

Secondly, the only effective solution (if you can call it a solution at all in this case) for a water damaged phone is repair. We can’t even be sure if your phone can still be fixed at this time. In an ideal situation, you’re supposed to turn off the phone, remove the battery, and dry the phone thoroughly to ensure that no moisture is left inside the device. Not doing them in the first place puts your phone in a uncertain situation. Depending on the affected component, the phone may or may not have permanent damage at this time so even a good technician may not be able to fix it. Anyhow, we strongly suggest that you have the hardware checked so you’ll be advised whether it can still be saved or not.

Finally, to prevent this issue from happening in the future, never ever intentionally expose your electronics to water, even if they have water resistance protection. You already know what can happen.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem.

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy Note 5 can’t send group message, speaker not working properly during calls, other issues

Welcome to another #GalaxyNote5 post for the day! This post brings you 9 more Note 5 problems and solutions so hopefully, this will be a good reference for those looking for solutions to their own issues. If you can’t find any useful tip in this one, keep watching for more Note 5 articles in the near future.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy Note 5 not making alarms from time to time

At 330am, I jumped up outta bed knowing I had to be at work at midnight last night. I saw where two employees who tried calling me and one was my supervisor. I was in shock because I seem to never be late or miss work. Well my phone now has caused me twice to be late to work in as little as months part. I got to work and started troubleshooting my phone. The thing is I had no volume and all my dials were up full staff, so I knew the volume should’ve been working. I tried calling it from my work phone and sure enough, no volume working but all the graphs were full bar. I restarted my phone and it was fine, then but I need to know why it would just simply not work from time to time. Could it have went through an update while I was sleeping and that be the cause of it not working all of a sudden? — Ernest

Solution: Hi Ernest. There’s really no way for us to give you an accurate answer to your question. If this problem does not happen on a regular basic though, it’s highly possible that a third party app may be preventing the speaker to work, or put the phone on mute from time to time. The thing is, there’s also no way to identity which app you install may be the culprit. To prevent this problem from happening though, we recommend that you set your phone to safe mode before going to sleep, making sure that you use the native alarm clock app to wake you up. When safe mode is enabled, all third party apps and services will be blocked. If you are using a third party alarm app, don’t use it and just use the built in one. We know this is not a permanent solution but given how little information you provide us, this is the best suggestion that we can give you.

If you think it’s worth the hassle, you can try to factory reset the phone to ensure that you eliminate any possible operating system related bug.

Below are the steps on how to put your phone to safe mode, and how to factory reset it.

How to boot a Note 5 to safe mode

  1. Turn off the phone completely.
  2. Press and hold the Power key.
  3. Once ‘Samsung Galaxy Note5’ shows, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. The phone will restart but keep the Vol Down button pressed.
  5. Once the phone has finished restarting, ‘Safe mode’ will be display in the lower-left corner of the screen.
  6. You may now release the Volume Down button.

How to factory reset a Note 5

  1. Create a backup of your important files.
  2. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  3. Find and tap the Settings icon.
  4. Under the ‘Personal’ section, find and tap Backup and reset.
  5. Tap Factory data reset.
  6. Touch Reset device to proceed with the reset.
  7. Depending on the security lock you used, enter the PIN or password.
  8. Tap Continue.
  9. Touch Delete all to confirm your action.

Problem 2: Galaxy Note 5 GPS not working

Hi TheDroidGuy, My name is Hafiz and I’m having major issue with my Samsung Note 5 (N9208). The problem is my GPS can’t connect to any satellite. I tried almost everything. It happened out of blue. Even my bluetooth is hit and miss now.

  • Using GPS status app show 0/0 satellites available. Even with agps update or reset.
  • Enable airplane mode and turn off GPS button. Turn on them back.
  • Restart my phone.
  • Reset my phone to factory default.
  • Take out my SIM and restart.
  • Update to latest official firmware 7.0 Nougat.
  • Enable high accuracy in location setting.
  • Change to different SIM card.
  • NV rebuild on *#0011# settings. I don’t know what else I can anymore except looking for help from professional. I hope you guys able to help me out. Thank you. Regards. — Hafiz

Solution: Hi Hafiz. If the GPS sensor in your phone has stopped working in ALL apps that use it (such as Google Maps and similar apps), that’s an indication of a hardware failure. The chip that handles the GPS function may have failed for some reason. The same cause may also be responsible why Bluetooth is no longer working as expected.

If you’re using the GPS Status & Toolbox app, they offer the following troubleshooting steps for a non-locking GPS:

  • Side menu / Manage aGPS state.
  • Select ‘Reset’ to clear the internal state of the GPS.
  • Select ‘Download’ to re-download the assistance data. You will need an active internet connection at this step.
  • Close the GPS Status application for 10 seconds.
  • Go outside and find a spot where large part of the sky is visible.
  • Make sure you have the ‘Keep the screen on’ settings turned on (in Settings / Display & Tools’.
  • Let the program run and try to acquire your GPS position for at least 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, there’s no way direct way to troubleshoot the GPS function of a Galaxy device. The only recourse is replacement if ever a user finds out that the GPS sensor has stopped working.

Problem 3: Volume on  Galaxy Note 5 calls become very low

My wife’s Note 5 all of a sudden started messing up during phone calls. More often than not when she is on the phone the person on the end cannot hear her. It starts to sound extremely low. It happens even when she has full bars for her 4G service. I’m not sure what the issue is because I can call her through Facebook and it will be no problem at all but as soon as I call her through her Ozone number I can’t hear her. The same goes for her friends. She tries tried rebooting and also factory reseting her device and the same issue persists. I really hope someone can help. Please and thank you. — Rich

Solution: Hi Rich. An issue like this is most likely network-related. It’s not the phone’s speaker, nor a software bug since a factory reset did nothing to improve the situation. Kindly tell your wife to contact her carrier’s tech support so they can look into the issue. If the problem started happening only recently, it’s possible that there may be an on-going problem affecting her area or account. Such situation can only be checked by a carrier. The most that she can do is to do the basic device troubleshooting, which ultimately ends with a factory reset.

Problem 4: Galaxy Note 5 won’t turn on after it was fully charged

I have a Note 5 that was showing 100% charged. When I picked it up the charging cable came out of the port (I think more fell out than pulled out as I don’t believe I put pressure on it or pulled the cable) to which the phone went blank. I’ve tried leaving it unplugged for days, plugging it back in, using all the battery reset possibilities and still nothing happens. It isn’t registering anything and didn’t acknowledge being plugged in. Any suggestions for possibilities? — Sam

Solution: Hi Sam. If your phone no longer responds to any attempt to start it to different boot modes (recovery mode, safe mode, and download mode) and does not turn on at all, it’s safe to assume that there’s an on-going hardware problem behind the trouble. Contact Samsung or your carrier so it can be repaired or replaced.

Problem 5: Galaxy Note 5 speaker not working properly during calls, volume too low during calls

Hi there. I recently had the screen and LCD replaced on my Samsung Note 5 – which I then gave to my mom as she lives out in the back and beyond and I needed to be able to contact her! Strangely, although the phone was always fine, there is now a major problem with the speaker/call volume! When she calls out, she cannot hear the ringing tone unless she puts the “speakerphone” icon on! Also when you are speaking to her on the phone – you can only hear her for the first few seconds and then her voice fades away completely until you can no longer hear her … although she can still hear you! So anybody trying to contact her has to call back again just to try and get a few more seconds of conversation with her!

She has been through the phone and tried to turn up the volume everywhere she can – but both myself and my mom are not very techy. Does this sound like a fault/loose connection or something simple? Any help hugely appreciated! 🙂 — Hannah

Solution: Hi Hannah. Try clearing the Phone app’s cache and data first. Doing so will let you know if this problem is being caused by the phone app used during calls. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6 or 7.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Data and Clear Cache buttons for the application.
  6. Call your mom’s phone again and see how it works.

If the above procedure won’t fix the problem, do a factory reset. Refer to the steps above on how to do it.

Should the issue remain after a factory reset, contact the carrier of your mom to see if there’s any network problem causing the problem. If everything is clear on the carrier’s end, you  can assume that bad hardware is causing it. The technician who did the repair may have damaged some components during the repair so you will have to send the phone in again so the hardware can be thoroughly checked.

Problem 6: Galaxy Note 5 wifi won’t work, can’t connect to wifi

I have a problem with wifi connection. When I try to connect to wifi, it just keep saying connecting and then stop. Sometimes it will say authentication error. Sometime it shows connect, but whenever i use the internet, it disconnects again. I have already tried to clear system cache, reset my router, reboot my phone, but none of it solve the problem. — Tony

Solution: Hi Tony. Try booting the phone to safe mode and see what happens. If one of the third party apps is responsible, you should know it when the phone is in safe mode. Refer to the steps above on how to do it. Make sure to try connecting to wifi after you’ve restarted the phone to safe mode.

Should the problem stay, do a master reset. Here’s how:

  1. Create a backup of your important files such as photos, videos, contacts etc. You can use Smart Switch for this task.
  2. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy Note 5 completely.
  3. Press and hold the Volume Up and the Home buttons first, and then press and hold the Power key.
  4. Keep the three buttons pressed and when ‘Samsung Galaxy Note5’ shows, release the Power key but continue holding the other two.
  5. Once the Android logo shows, release both the Volume Up and Home buttons.
  6. The notice ‘Installing system update’ will show on the screen for 30 to 60 seconds before the Android system recovery screen is shown with its options.
  7. Use the Volume Down key to highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ and press the Power key to select it.
  8. When the process is complete, use the Volume Down key to highlight the option ‘Reboot system now’ and hit the Power key to restart the phone.
  9. The reboot may take a little longer to complete but don’t worry and wait for the device to become active.

Problem 7: Galaxy Note 5 screen won’t turn, stays black, Note 5 won’t charge

My battery was having issues when charging, where sometimes it would vibrate when plugged into the wall but continue to vibrate and not charge. So I Googled it and it said that it could be due to water damage and to leave my phone in alcohol to dry out the remaining liquid inside. So I did…and it was charging fine after that for a little bit but then the screen turned green with the charging symbol and now the phone works fine except for the fact that the screen is completely black. So I can hear my notifications and change the volume and everything but can’t see anything.

Also, the screen has a crack, if that affects anything — Celeste

Solution: Hi Celeste. Firstly, we want to make it a point that if your Note 5 was exposed to water before this problem occurred, we recommend that you stop looking for any solution on your end to fix it. The best that you can gather from hours of scouring the web for answers are all software troubleshooting, which would be totally useless if your phone was water damaged. There’s not much a software tweak can do for a hardware failure. Even us can’t help you at all. You need to send the phone in so the hardware can be assessed and if your phone can still be saved.

Secondly, a phone with a black screen issue usually indicates a malfunctioning screen. If you can’t make the screen to turn on, the best thing that you can do is to attempt to start the device to other modes. Only then can you attempt to do follow up troubleshooting. Here are the steps on what you need to do:

Boot in Recovery mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Boot in Download Mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume DOWN keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume DOWN keys.
  4. Wait until the Download screen appears.
  5. If you can boot the phone in download mode but not in other modes, that means that your only way out may be to flash a stock or custom firmware.
  6. Use Google to look for a guide on how to do it.

Boot in safe mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7’ logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.
  6. The only difference of safe mode from normal mode is that the former prevents third party apps from running. If you can boot the phone in safe mode but not in normal mode, uninstall all apps until the issue (that prevents you from booting normally) is eliminated.

Remember, if your phone’s screen stays black or won’t turn on at all after trying all the procedures above, you’ll need to have the phone repaired.

Problem 8: Galaxy Note 5 keeps corrupting SD cards

I have a Samsung Note 5. I had an 64GB SD card which was filled up. So, I decided to get a 128GB SanDisk. It worked fine for a while but then got corrupted after a year. Only some sectors because I was able to recover some of the data. I then bought another 128GB, this time a Samsung one. It worked fine for like two months and the day before a trip I rebooted my phone and after turning it back on, the phone wouldn’t recognize it. I haven’t been able to check the card itself as I just got back so I don’t know if it’s corrupted or if it got deleted completely. I went back to my 64GB card but I haven’t transferred all the data yet out of it. It seems to be working fine as before. I checked online and this phone is supposed to support up to 128GB, but I’m starting to doubt this. What could be the problem? — Gisselina

Solution: Hi Gisselina. It’s rare to see a problem like yours being caused by the phone itself but since you’ve already experienced SD card corruption at least twice, we can’t eliminate the device as a factor. Of course, there can be other things that you need to consider when dealing with this issue. One such factor is your usage habit. If you tend to interrupt the phone while it’s trying to read the SD card, or when it’s trying to save something to it, that can be a cause also. Interruption in this case means turning off the phone while the SD card is being accessed, or closing the app that tries to use the SD card such as the Gallery or Camera. There are still other reasons that can lead to SD card corruption but they are hard to pin down. We can’t discuss all of them in this article but you can do some research of your own using Google. Just search “causes of SD card corruption” or any similar wording to get you started. A lot of literature about this topic are easy readings so you won’t need any advanced Android knowledge to understand them.

To see if the issue if the issue is due to a phone glitch, we suggest that you try a factory reset. Refer to the steps above on how to do it.

Problem 9: Galaxy Note 5 can’t send group message

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 on Net10 using T-Mobile as a carrier and when I try to send a group text to multiple recipients it does not convert it to an MMS message and only sends the message to each individual recipient using the stock messaging app. According to the manual and Net10’s online tutorial, the stock app should be capable of sending group MMS texts, but mine will not. The tutorial says to put commas between recipients and the Net10 helpdesk said to use spaces, neither of which worked. Their solution then was to download a secondary app for sending group texts; not really a solution to the problem in my book. The phone will send pictures in texts so I believe the APN settings are correct.         — Mike

Solution: Hi Mike. The usual way to send a group message using the Samsung Messages app is as follows:

  1. From any Home screen, tap Messages.
  2. Tap the Compose icon.
  3. Tap the Contacts icon.
  4. Drop down and tap Groups.
  5. Tap the group you want to send the message to.
  6. If you haven’t created a group in advance, you can also manually select multiple contacts.
  7. Tap Done.
  8. Enter message text in the Group conversation box.
  9. When done, tap the Send icon

If these steps above won’t work, then the app you’re using may not support your carrier’s group messaging system, or vice versa. In this case, you should try the suggested workaround by using a different app.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy Note 4 keeps rebooting on its own after a power surge, screen is unresponsive, other issues

Hello Android community! Welcome to another #GalaxyNote4 article and as usual, we’re bringing you different issues and solutions. Don’t forget to visit our main Galaxy Note 4 troubleshooting page should you not find anything useful for you here.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy Note 4 keeps rebooting on its own after a power surge

Hi, this is my problem. I own a Galaxy Note 4 since some time. The phone is not rooted, nor cooked. The only different thing from plain original phone is the battery, which is a Mugen Power 6640mAh battery with used to work very well for 6 months (approximately November-December).

The actual situation is a phone that does not turn on. What is happening is that, without power connection, the phone keeps rebooting itself and is not starting up. With “rebooting itself” I mean that, when I press the power button, the phone turns on, I can see the “Samsung Galaxy Note 4” and it immediately reboots over and over. (The Samsung logo is the white one that appears immediately after releasing the power button, NOT the animated one with flashing status led).

Connecting the power cord does not help, since the phone goes again into a boot loop but this time it reboots as soon as the battery logo appears. I happened to interrupt this booting loop once and the battery seemed to be able to recharge.

The story of this phone starts a bit far in the past, though. Since December, the phone kept rebooting itself in random occasions and in random ways. I have not been able to figure out “why” it kept behaving like that, meaning that I was not doing the same things when reboot happened, nor I had been using the same applications…it all seemed really random and impossible to reproduce. The only thing that I noticed was that it used to happen more often when the phone hotter, than when it was colder, but apart from that, nothing so common to be identified as the cause of the problems.

The only odd and strange thing that I noticed was that, again on random occasions, the phone was unable to reboot at the first try, but it had to reboot twice or more to be able to successfully reboot and it behaved, again randomly, in some puzzling ways displaying strange things on the screen (blue, green and red pixels spread on the screen, together with the fixed Samsung logo instead of a uniform black background). This was going on since December and apart from the annoyance of the continuous reboots, nothing really happened. (No more signs of hardware decay, no memory problems, no corrupted data, nothing at all).

The only thing that I noticed, because the back cover was not able to stay shut anymore, was a battery swell, that I noticed in the last few days. Today, after the nth reboot, the phone suddenly didn’t woke up at all…it just kept rebooting like said at the beginning of this message. I was not at home and thought that the battery had collapsed and needed to be replaced. (Fortunately I ordered a new battery a few days ago, because of the swell that made me think a near fail). In the meantime I thought that until Friday I could use the old original Samsung battery which the only fault was to have way less power than I needed (I don’t recall issues with that one, even if it stayed unused for near a year).

Once at home, I switched the batteries and really bloody nothing happened. The phone kept behaving like it did with the Mugen battery. This puzzled and frightened me a lot, since I thought that, even if old, the original battery would had solved the problem.

In three days I’ll be able to tell if the new battery solves the problem (maybe I’m only unlucky and the Samsung original battery while in the box developed some problems that I’m unaware of), but in the meantime I don’t know what to do. I’m only 50% frightened of not being able to resuscitate the phone anymore, because pictures and videos were stored on the external SD card (which after the first time trying to start the phone was pulled out to both save her from damage and ensure that it was not the cause of the fault) and backed-up elsewhere, but SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram chronologies as well as some game progresses that are tied to the internal memory were not and only old backups do exist, not to speak about “Samsung memo” files which were not backed-up at all. It would be not deadly but really awful to lose this data.

What I did was the following:

 

  • Remove the battery and tried to start the phone without: No signs at all.
  • Remove the battery for 30 minutes and try to start the phone (both with and without SIM and SD Card): Boot loop like above
  • Start phone in recovery mode: The recovery mode is recognised, a “Android is installing updates” appears, then reboot and boot loop.
  • Start phone in download mode: The download mode is recognised and it starts successfully. I’m able to press the volume up key and go into the next stage in which the phone is awaiting to download something (these are the strings appearing: ODIN MODE: High Speed – Product Name: SM-N910F – Current Binary: Samsung Official – System Status: Official – Reactivation Lock: ON – Knox Warranty Void: 0x0 – Qualcomm Secure Boot: Enable (CSB) – RP SWREV: S1, T1, R1, A1, P1 – Secure Download: Enable – UDC: Start).
  • I did not go further since anything I do, might damage data; the only thing I did was to connect the phone to my PC and notice that the phone was not showing up, even if the driver installed correctly. But I believe this thing to be right, since in download mode only Odin is able to access the phone. I did NOT try to connect to the phone via adb nor know if, via adb, is possible to connect to collect phone data. I don’t think that there is much else to say, apart from an accident the phone had this December.

 

One day, an underground cable broke (the N of a three-phase cable) in the flats of a friend I was visiting and all the 8 apartments got a shocking 380V power surge in the sockets for quite some time. Since the thing was happening the second time, my friend was aware of the problem and when his TV begun to behave strangely, he ran to disconnect my PC and mobile phone from the outlet. The PC continued to work flawlessly, so did the Phone, but from that time on, reboots begun to happen (damaged battery?).

The surcharge for my appliances happened for only 10 minutes because after that they were disconnected (differently from a dvd reader that blew up) but that time might had been not enough to blast the phone to pieces but enough to cause some sort of damage to something I’ve yet to discover. (really light damage if the phone survived for 6 months being still operative, apart from reboots).

If the phone is to be scrapped then this is no big problem. What I need is to be able to do something to start it up and recover some data. From my experience (computer science degree), what is happening might be related to energy supply, having the phone to thing there is no more power, when indeed there is plenty of it. (where does the phone gets this information? it measures the voltage coming out from the battery or it queries the battery for informations that might be wrong, so even if there is power, the battery reports itself as drained?)

But there might be other things to take into account: I asked myself whether the internal storage have become corrupted or even failed completely, but I believe that download mode would not even start in case of a failed flash ROM. (correct me if I’m wrong) Does the phone asks for the battery serial number so it remembers it is faulty and refuses to boot up? Could the phone power management circuitry be broken so that it is unable to distinguish drained from full battery? Could the continuous reboots have damaged the ROM, because one of them occurred when an application was writing on it?

Too many questions but I’m unable to answer. So here is the big one: While waiting for the battery to be delivered, is there something else I might try to revive the phone?

Thank you in advance. — Gabriele

P.S. Tech Specs of the phone are the following: Phone: Samsung Note 4 OS: Android 6.01 with latest security patches applied Root: No Custom Roms: No Battery: Mugen Power 6640mAh HLI-N910XL

Solution: Hi Gabriele. We appreciate the time and effort in giving us a very detailed description of the problem and history that might had led to it. If only most users who contact us are as detailed, it should make it a lot easier for us to identify the issue.

First of all, we want to make it a point that almost all Android issues can be caused by either a software glitch or hardware malfunction. Knowing which is which is always tricky and does not always guarantee a solution that a user can do on his or her end. Although majority of software-related problems are fixable at a user’s level, some may still require intervention from Samsung or carriers because they’re simply way beyond a user’s ability to solve. That said, we usually go through a series of logical troubleshooting steps to help a user narrow down possible causes, especially if they don’t mention the troubleshooting steps they’ve already tried before contacting us. In some rare cases like the one you’re doing here, we can skip the usual troubleshooting steps because you’ve already performed them ahead of time.

For instance, a random reboot issue like the one you’re experiencing here will require checking a number of things such as:

  • the battery (to see if it shows physical symptoms like bloating)
  • the apps (by booting the device to safe mode or doing a factory reset)
  • the bootloader (by flashing it with a stock one, especially if you’re running a non-official firmware, or if you rooted the device)

That you’ve already did these checks ahead of time gives us better insight as to what may be happening.

Secondly, we think that the main problem here is caused by a hardware malfunction. Remember that power surge at your friend’s place? We are almost certain that’s where the problem started. Although power surges happen all the time, majority of them are negligible and most household electronics including smartphones can handle them without incurring any negative effects. However, in some rare cases like the one that happened in your friend’s place, the sudden extreme voltage spike must have generated enough heat within the power IC and the circuit board to cause the problem right now.

Keep in mind that power surges can both have instantaneous and long term effects. In some cases, an affected device may simply fail right away, while in some, the damage won’t really become apparent until at a much later time. Smaller power surges can slowly degrade electronic components, effectively shortening the overall lifespan of a critical parts like the power IC.

We have no way of knowing which of the two is happening on your device right now but we believe that the power IC may have been damaged. This is often the main reason for unexplained random reboot problems in many Samsung devices. There’s been mixed results in replacing the power IC because it’s also possible that other components may be malfunctioning as well. In most cases, Samsung service centers and a lot independent service centers will opt for a full motherboard change instead of spending more time checking hundreds of components individually.

Do-it-yourself repair won’t be of much help either. Unless you’re lucky and the issue is isolated to the power IC only, which is highly unlikely given how you arrive at this predicament right now, motherboard replacement is the only effective solution that you can do on your end. To do that, we assume of course that you have access to needed tools and has the knowledge to do basic electronic stuff. If you think you  can do a motherboard replacement yourself, try looking for a good guide from some websites. iFixit is a good place to start.

Thirdly, no, this is not a battery issue. We don’t think getting a new replacement battery will improve the situation but you can definitely try that. And no, a smartphone like your Note 4 won’t question a battery inserted to it for a serial number. As long as the specifications of the battery connected to your phone match what its needs, there shouldn’t be any problem.

As regards your question “is there something else I might try to revive the phone?” it depends on the extent of damage on the system. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know that for sure. We know that your ultimate aim is to recover your data but again, that depends how long your phone stays on to allow file transfer. Because the issue is a malfunctioning hardware due to unstable or unmet power in the circuit, there’s no amount of software tweaks that you can do to bring everything back in order.

Problem 2: A portion of Galaxy Note 4  screen is unresponsive

Hello. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910F which I purchased 9 months ago. Since the first time I used the device, there was a problem in the screen that a small area of about 1 cm, exactly in the middle of the screen, throughout the width of the screen (from side to side). Is doesn’t respond to finger touches. it responds only to the S-Pen touches. Mainly, when I touch this screen area with my fingers it doesn’t respond, but sometimes it widens the screen or shrinking it. it happens with both applications or internet browsing. It also happens in soft mode. I tried to uninstall the Facebook Messenger but it didn’t help. I tried to Soft Reset it but it didn’t help. when I use the Stylus everything works fine. How do I fix it? Thanks. — Ariel.di

Solution: Hi Ariel.di. This is definitely not normal and the unresponsive portion of the screen may be a sign of a bad digitizer, one of the major components of a screen assembly. Digitizer is the top layer of the screen that converts analog touches into digital signals. Any time a portion of a screen appears to be unresponsive, it’s mostly due to a bad digitizer, which unfortunately almost always require repair. To check if your screen’s digitizer is at fault, do the following:

  1. Open the Phone or dialer app.
  2. Dial “*#0*#” (without the quotes).
  3. Tap the box that says Touch.
  4. Draw a line from top to bottom by dragging your finger. If the portion of the screen you’re having problems with shows a break in the line, that’s proof that you have digitizer issue. You should have the phone repaired or replaced.

If there’s no break in the line and the phone registers all your touches in service mode, the cause of the issue may be due to software glitch. Do a factory reset and see how it works afterwards. Here’s how:

  1. Create a backup of your important files such as photos, videos, contacts etc. You can use Smart Switch for this task.
  2. Turn off the Galaxy Note 4 completely.
  3. Press and hold the Volume Up and the Home keys together, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the Note 4 vibrates, release both the Home and Power keys but continue holding the Volume Up key.
  5. When the Android System Recovery shows on the screen, release the Vol Up key.
  6. Using the Volume Down key, highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset’ and press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Vol Down key and press the Power key to begin the reset.
  8. When the master reset is complete, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and hit the Power key.
  9. The Note 4 will restart but it will be longer than usual. When it reaches the Home screen, then begin your setup.

Problem 3: Galaxy Note 4 can’t receive calls, gets delayed SMS

Samsung Note 4 does not receive any calls. When someone phones, it rings at their end then cuts off. it does not go to an answering machine, just cuts off. My phone does nothing, does not light up, does not say missed call. Nothing at all. I can phone people from it and it works fine. When someone texts me, their text does not come through for hours or until I use my phone e.g. I use my mobile and phone someone and I get the text through and the text sender gets the delivery report for sent text. Could be minutes after they send text or hours. Phone has not been damaged or anything spilt on it. It just stopped working properly. There is no call barring or anything set up on phone to stop me getting calls. Please help. Thanks.  — Feebeedafabriano

Solution: Hi Feebeedafabriano. Your issue appears network-related but if you haven’t tried device troubleshooting at this time, make sure that you do.

The first step that you want to do is to clear the cache and data of your messaging and Phone apps. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6 or 7.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Data and Clear Cache buttons for the application.

If the problem remains after clearing the cache and data of Phone and messaging apps, do a factory reset. Refer to the steps above.

Should the issue continue after wiping the phone via factory reset, contact your carrier for direct support.

Problem 4: Galaxy Note 4 SD card got corrupted

I was at Disney World with my son when the SD card in my Note 4 suddenly stopped working. I could see pictures in Gallery but I could not delete them or do anything with them. The phone didn’t sustain any damage or anything that I know of. When I got home, I unmounted the card to try to download everything from it onto my iMac using a card reader, but the reader cannot read it and it never mounts to my desktop or shows up in disk utilities. I put it back into the phone and now I get the message “The data on this SD card is corrupt. To use it, it must be set up” and it gives me a prompt to fix. I stupidly did not back up my phone manually in almost a year because I mistakenly thought my pictures were being backed up to the cloud…I have small children so this is a terrible loss for me and I really don’t have the money to spend on a data recovery service. I think there’s a chance that if I allow the phone to go through with the fix on the card it will format and then I may be able to use a reasonably priced recovery software to get my pictures and videos from the formatted card, but I’m terrified to try. Googling this error message is yielding very few results and zero advice, can you please help me figure out what to do? — Barkingkazak

Solution: Hi Barkingkazak. It’s terrible to lose irreplaceable digital memories but once an SD card gets corrupted, there’s very little to nothing that can be done much. For one, there’s virtually no troubleshooting that you can do about it except to try and insert it to another device to see if it will read it. There are no tweaks an average user can do about a corrupted SD card.

Secondly, yes you’ll need a specialized software to recover bits and pieces from a corrupted storage medium. You read that right, just bits and pieces. Software recovery is not perfect and does not guarantee that you’ll get everything back. Recovery software, due to their highly technical nature, are only available for trained professionals. This is why file recovery is expensive and unfortunately, this is the only option available for you. We know it may be an issue for you to pay for it, but you can’t simply will this one.

To minimize losing more data, make sure to unmount the card from the phone. Do not re-insert it to another device unless you’re ready for a file recovery procedure.

 

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Galaxy S7 charging erratically when using regular chargers after installing Nougat, other issues

Hello Android community! Welcome to another #GalaxyS7 article. As usual, we’re addressing the issues reported to us only. For those new to our site and wanting to know how to report their own questions, be sure to use the link provided below.

Here are the specific topics we’re discussing in this material:

  1. Galaxy S7 flickering screen | Galaxy S7 general flashing instructions
  2. Galaxy S7 screen icons becomes too big after an update
  3. Galaxy S7 home wifi won’t work
  4. Galaxy S7 stock messaging app keeps getting duplicate text messages
  5. Galaxy S7 unresponsive after installing Android Nougat
  6. Galaxy S7 Nougat update corrupted the SD card
  7. Galaxy S7 charging erratically when using regular chargers after installing Android Nougat

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S7 flickering screen | Galaxy S7 general flashing instructions

A few weeks ago my boyfriend did an update on his phone. I’m unsure of what he updated but I’m thinking his Android version. He says he didn’t like the layout of his phone afterwards so he did something…? To restore it back to what he previously had which is unknown which of the delicious yet frustrating android versions he had.. i would check, but I’m unable to do anything with the phone. 2 days ago a notification came up for the first time stating he had insufficient storage space so he moved a lot of files/apps over to the Sandisk card.

Last night he was on Skype and his phone sent a screenshot to the person he was talking to. my boyfriend did not take or send the screenshot and thought it was peculiar so clicked on the picture which I’m not sure if it was a link, hackers, or a corrupted file from a dodgy app, third party admin, dodgy downloads. Anyhow, so as he did that, the phone froze and started flickering a green white and black yet mostly green, with a locked frozen screen yet still responds to button pressing and when i plug it in the charger. i couldn’t swipe the screen to access factory data reset and he had already done a soft reset reboot and tried hard reset. Then i tried everything that i read on your post that the phone would allow me.

i managed to access safe mode yet still green flickering frozen.

I plugged it into a PC and i couldn’t access anything on the phone. The computer read it as a blank Samsung so I took out the memory card and put it in my phone, which asked me to format the corrupted SD card. scared of losing files, i put it in my PC which i was then able to view files.

So i went through everything looking for this screenshot and came across a notification as i went into a certain apps cached data.. then the PC failed to read the card and shut down and rebooted itself into safe mode, restoring itself back to last restore. So I’m guessing the file corrupted my laptop.

Then my bf managed to get the phone into the screen where you can choose to reboot factory reset, delete cache files etc. but we could hardly read the options yet we chose to delete cached files and then chose factory data reset yet nothing has improved.

Now it’s just flickering every now and then. i rung tech support and I’m not sure if they will cover this in the warranty. so I’m just curious as to if you can tell me or help me out here. Is there something i can do to absolutely wipe the phone of everything and reinstall the drivers or whatever and start again?

I’ve read you can download something like that but then how would i first wipe what’s on it now? i can’t even swipe the screen to unlock it to turn it off to do a reset or anything.

Sorry about the novel. I’ve just been up all night literally with no sleep, crawling up any avenue i read on Google yet only fails lol. I rung tech support and they say the phone may have to be taken to headquarters and fixed there, which is only 29 kilometers away from me. If i drive it there i can have it done the same day, but is it worth it? I’m not licensed. Can i possibly fix this at home? I’m not that tech savvy but i do surprise myself all the time when i can follow blog instructions from Google, yet I’m still stuck in the mud. Please if you can help me out im desperate. Thankyou in advance. Once again my apologies for the novel. — Kirra

Solution: Hi Kirra. Based on your problem description, it looks like the phone has a hardware problem. First of all, it’s not normal for a screen to randomly or regularly show any colored flickering. There’s no doubt that this is a hardware issue as factory reset did not fix it. When you factory reset an Android phone, you are basically wiping all user data, apps, and customizations from the phone, leaving only the software in its factory form. This means that everything is removed from the phone’s storage — photos, videos, downloaded documents, apps and custom settings — introduced after the phone was unboxed. If the cause of the problem is software related, factory reset should effectively remove it from the system. This means that if the screen flickering problem was being caused by a software glitch, the screen would have returned to normal after a factory reset.

The screen assembly on your phone is composed of three major parts — the LCD, the digitizer, and digitizer flex cable. The LCD is the monitor that displays the images while the digitizer is the thin layer on top of screen that converts your touch commands into digital signals. These digital signals are transmitted to the logic board via the flex cable. Flickering usually occurs when the LCD or monitor is damaged like after an accidental dropping of a phone or when it’s exposed to liquid. We are not aware any malware or virus that can cause a Galaxy S7’s screen to be damaged but if you think that’s the case, you can also try to flash the software to fully replace the existing one.

Flashing is the Android equivalent of installing a software. You can try to flash an older stock firmware to your phone to revert it back to its previous state. Like factory reset, flashing will wipe the phone’s internal storage device when it replaces the current operating system with a new one. We recommend that you flash Android Marshmallow instead of Android Nougat to see if it will make any difference. The steps on how to flash a software for a particular phone varies so we don’t provide them here. We suggest instead that you look for a good guide in Google on how to do it. If you are not familiar on how to flash a software, try to do some research on the subject first. There are tons of literature in the web that will help you enlighten about the general steps that you must take. Once you feel comfortable in doing it, that’s the time that you want to look for the right firmware for your phone.

Firmware, also known as ROM/Operating System/Software, is phone model-specific, meaning you can’t use one designed for a different phone model. Firmware is also carrier-specific, which means that you can’t flash a Galaxy S7 firmware from a rival carrier to your phone. Installing the firmware of Telsta’s Galaxy S7 to an Optus phone will not sure and is the surest way to brick the device. Needless to say, you want to know what the phone model of your phone first is before you want to look for a corresponding firmware. A good repository site for firmware is Sammobile. We recommend that you visit it first to get the firmware you need.

Problem #2: Galaxy S7 screen icons becomes too big after an update

I’m not sure what is going on with my phone. It updated last night and this morning it seemed to be ok, but it was slow so I restarted it. but when it restarted, all my theme and wallpaper settings had been reset and all the icons and everything on my phone are oversized, like it thinks I have a bigger screen than I do, so nothing fits. I tried to go in and rearrange my screens and change it back to 5×5 in hopes it would fix it, but it won’t let me change it. I have no clue what’s going, on but it’s cutting off parts of the screen since it thinks the screen is bigger than it is. I can’t soft reset it since the battery cover doesn’t come off. — Katrina

Solution: Hi Katrina. We hope that you created a backup of your phone before installing an update. If you didn’t and your phone won’t allow you to back your important files now, you will lose all of them in this troubleshooting.

The first thing that you want to do is to wipe the cache partition. This will ensure that you delete the current system cache and other downloaded items such as APKs (app installation files). The main goal here is to replace the existing system cache with a new one. Sometimes, issues can appear after an update because the system cache had been corrupted. To fix the issue, you want to delete the system cache so the system will be forced to create a new one afterwards. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Once you’ve wiped the cache partition, make sure to check the phone to see if it fixes the problem. If it doesn’t, your next step is to install available app and system updates. There may be an app that’s causing the problem due to incompatibility. Installing updates may help fix the problem. Make sure to check that ALL apps are up-to-date and compatible with the Android version on your phone. If you are not sure if an app is updated or compatible, visit its Play Store page or consult the developer.

Finally, if nothing changes, you want to restore all software settings to their defaults. If you haven’t tried factory reset before, here’s how it’s done:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Factory reset will erase all data in the phone’s internal storage. Make sure to back your files up before doing it.

NOTE: There’s a way to make screen icons and font size bigger under Settings. If you haven’t checked it before, be sure to set it to your desired size by doing the steps below (these steps are for Galaxy S7s running Android Nougat):

  1. Open Settings app.
  2. Tap Display.
  3. Tap Screen zoom and font.
  4. Change icon sizes and font sizes accordingly.

Problem #3: Galaxy S7 home wifi won’t work

We moved a couple of weeks ago. We had Xfinity Comcast Internet at our old home. Never had any problems connecting. Last week, we had to go with AT&T Internet. When I have my WiFi turned on, my Samsung Galaxy S7 edge says I have full strength connection, but no apps run well. All games says I’m not connected to Internet, they won’t connect to Facebook or Google Play. Any videos from Facebook, Netflix, Tumblr, etc won’t play. As soon as I switch back to my data, everything connects & runs fine. I can go to restaurants & other places, and it works fine. I’ve called AT&T several times. They say nothing is wrong on their end. Since I can’t have Xfinity anymore, I need to find out what is causing this problem. Thanks for any help. I’ve tried everything that I can think of. I’m tired of watching the spinning loading circle & using up my data. — Shann

Solution: Hi Shann. We’re assuming that you’ve tried checking if your wifi works fine with other wifi networks outside of your home at this time. If wifi works fine on other networks but not on your home AT&T network, the problem must be due to the configuration of your network. This means that your S7 may be blocked from connecting to the internet when you’re on your home wifi, or there’s a problem with your wifi that causes this issue.

If you are the administrator of your home wifi (and there’s no one that can reset it like that geeky teenager), contact AT&T support and ask them to help you reset all settings to default. The exact steps on how to do this varies by router so it’s best if someone with knowledge of your equipment walk you through the entire process. Resetting all settings to their defaults will ensure that there is no restriction or blocks created somewhere that may prevent your phone from connecting to the internet. Keep in mind that even if your is connected to the wifi, such connection may stop in the router level only. Think of your internet connection as a chain. Once the phone has successfully talked to the router, it must then be allowed to also communicate with remote services beyond the router to be able to connect to the internet. If the chain is broken because the router is blocking your device from going beyond your local wifi network, that may be the cause of your problem. Make sure that you exhaust all possibilities when talking with AT&T technical support to ensure that this does not happen. If you have other computers or devices connected to the same wifi network and they can connect to the internet fine, the problem must either be due to a router restriction or a phone issue. If you are 100% certain that the router is fine and there’s no block whatsoever, that’s the time that you want to troubleshoot the phone.

The first step that you want to do in this case is to boot the phone to safe mode. This will help you determine if a third party app has been installed and blocking the wifi internet connection. When the phone is in safe mode, only pre-installed apps and services will run so if wifi will work normally, that’s proof that one of the installed third party apps is to blame. To fix the problem, you must uninstall third party apps until the issue is eliminated.

If nothing will change after booting to safe mode, make sure that you install any pending app or system update. As mentioned above, doing so may be an easy fix for an issue like this. The phone modem’s firmware may be corrupted and installing an update may be the solution that it needs.

Like above as well, don’t hesitate to factory reset your phone should nothing change after doing the steps above. Again, be sure to back up your files before proceeding.

Problem #4: Galaxy S7 stock messaging app keeps getting duplicate text messages

Hi. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I have a Samsung S7, running Android 7.0.

I’m getting duplicate texts in the stock messenger app. I do have the auto combination enabled, which I am under the impression that when I get a text that is 3 messages long (example) I should receive the one combined total text message. That’s happening but I am also getting additional duplicates 1 of 3, 2 of 3, and 3 of 3 individual messages that follow. It’s mildly annoying getting the one… and then 3 more with same info later.

I’ve cleared the cache of stock message app. Reboot phone too. Neither helped. Can’t remove battery. Any suggestions or is what I’m experiencing exactly what auto combine option does — though that seems like a poorly intended function if a person was on a limited text plan; unnecessary use of texts. Thank you for any insight.        — Matt

Solution: Hi Matt. This is the first time that we heard of this problem so it may be an isolated case. It can easily be due to inefficient or poor firmware coding, or a network issue that coincidentally happens at this time. We suggest that you follow the usual dose of software troubleshooting for any update-related issue such as cache partition wipe, installation of app and system updates, booting to safe mode, and factory reset. If not one of them will help solve the problem, you can report the issue to your carrier (if you download OTA updates) so they can help you (if at all).

As a remedy, you can try to use a third party messaging app for now.

Problem #5: Galaxy S7 unresponsive after installing Android Nougat

Alright, S7 has been running pretty well …. until Nougat came last week. Apps were not behaving normally, occasional resets. Then about 2 days into Nougat reset to a black screen. Power button unresponsive, Power+Volume Down unresponsive, Power+VolUP+Home unresponsive, plugged into charger unresponsive. So I let battery drain completely and voila, plugged in to charger, hit power and battery showed up on screen. Charged for a bit then did Power+VolDwn and was back in business …until the evening, it did the same thing, it crashed to black screen with blue light this time … but unresponsive to everything. Did a battery drain, and charged with Power+VolDwn … and it booted. Did a hard reset, started reinstalling, but crashed an hour later. Battery drain, charged, Power+VolDwn … took out SDcard did hard reset. And it works but crashes every few minutes. When it crashes, it is able to reset itself 3 out of 5 times, and 2 out of 5 the Power+Dwn button reset it. Tried doing the VolUp+Power+Home … Samsung screen and let go of power button only, says Android updating, then gives Dead Android guy with triangle and exclamation saying “no command” but continue holding home+VolUp and I get to Recovery Screen. Have tried another Hard reset, and wiping cache. In the end, left with phone with no additional apps which still crashes about 3 times every hour. I did call my carrier when I the Black Screen of Death was unresponsive and I am sending it in for repair … they’ll give me a cheap replacement phone. Sigh. — Mark

Solution: Hi Mark. It’s hard to diagnose your issue especially that we don’t know its full history but an issue like this may be caused by a bad bootloader. Since factory reset did not improve anything, the only other choices you have now includes flashing the bootloader and the firmware. Both procedure can brick your phone though and may invalidate the replacement order you’ve put in so it’s up to you if you want to try them or not. Flashing is obviously a fix for a possible software cause so it won’t be able to solve the problem is the true cause is hardware in nature.

If you haven’t tried manual flashing before, make sure to do some research how to do them so you’ll become familiar with the general steps for each one. The specific steps vary for every phone model so make sure that you follow a good guide. We don’t provide flashing specific guides in our blog but you can refer to the general steps below on how to flash the bootloader first:

  1. Look for the correct firmware for your phone model and download it. Make sure that select the right one. It should be the same exact firmware that ran previously on your device. We assume that you list down the firmware version somewhere. If you did not take note of it before, there’s a chance that you may pick the wrong one. As you may know now, using an incorrect firmware can cause complications so good luck with that.
  2. Let’s now say that you have identified the correct firmware. You then want to download it to your computer. The firmware file should have a bunch of files in it like AP_, BL_, CSC_, etc.
  3. Look for the file that starts with a label BL; this should be the corresponding bootloader file for this firmware. Once you’ve identified the bootloader file, copy it to your computer’s desktop or to any other folder that you can easily access.
  4. Proceed with the rest of the flashing procedure using the Odin program.
  5. In Odin, click on the BL tab and make sure to use the bootloader file you’ve identified earlier.
  6. Now, make sure that the “Device Added” status and its “ID:COM box” has turned blue before hitting the START button. This will initiate the flashing of your phone’s bootloader.
  7. Restart the phone once the procedure is finished.

Problem #6: Galaxy S7 Nougat update corrupted the SD card

On March 17, 2017 my phone alerted me that I had a software update, so I proceeded as usual. After the update was complete it said it was auto syncing messages. That message appeared on my notification bar for 24 hours. During that time everything on my phone was fine. Once the “sync” was completed, all of my photos disappeared and my phone notified me that my and card was corrupt. When I plugged my phone into my laptop to see if I could pull my photos that way, photos of people I don’t even know came up. Super creepy. I called AT&T and the lady said they have never heard of this. We tried putting the SD card in my laptop, we tried it in another phone, we tried a soft reset. Nothing worked. The AT&T lady said for some reason the update fried my SD card. That’s it. Hundreds of photos just gone. Any ideas? — Paige

Solution: Hi Paige. We’re sorry to hear about what happened to your photos. If no device can read the SD card right now, that means that all contents in it are gone. There’s just no way to reverse what happened and create a copy of those files at this time.

Regarding the sync issue you encountered, it may be a coding issue with the firmware so make sure that you do the basic troubleshooting like wiping the cache partition and factory reset. Steps for them are provided above.

To prevent losing data in the future, make sure to make it a habit to always create a regular backup of your files. Also, be sure to backup irreplaceable files before installing any Android update.

Problem #7: Galaxy S7 charging erratically when using regular chargers after installing Android Nougat

Hey there, i have an S7 and Samsung charging block/cable (two, actually). with both chargers, when i connect my phone, the phone quickly cycles (2 or 3 seconds) between charging, fast charging, and then not charging. it repeats this until the charging plug is removed from the unit. i thought it strange, and discovered that my Anker portable charging bank connects and charges fine. This solution works for my lifestyle, so i moved on. A visit home came with the discovery that my mother’s phone, also an s7, is behaving the same with one of her two charging block (again, both Samsung). we both bought the phones in August, and we bought the same secondary chargers from Amazon, but they at least appear to be official Samsung chargers (potentially they could be really impressive fakes). It seems the problem began after the nougat update for me, but before the update for my mother, so i ruled out a firmware issue…. not sure what’s up here. Thanks for hearing me out and helping 🙂 — Anthony

Solution: Hi Anthony. Like the case of Paige above, this issue may be an isolated case and may only be limited to a particular carrier-provided firmware (assuming your mother’s phone is downloading the same firmware version from the same carrier). Since your phone charges fine with a portable charging unit, you can rule out possible hardware issues such as a malfunctioning charging port and bad battery. This must only be a firmware problem. If wiping the cache partition and factory reset won’t solve the problem, be sure to report the glitch to your carrier so they can, in turn, inform their developer team about it. There may not be an immediate solution for it but reporting it for now is the best thing that you can do. Let’s just hope that the firmware developer of your carrier will act on it in time so a patch can be released.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy S7 edge not playing audio, won’t accept any password for accounts, other issues

Hello Android fans! Here’s another #GalaxyS7 post that answers more issues about this device. Don’t forget to also visit our main Galaxy S7 troubleshooting page if you can’t find similar problems and solutions in this one.

Below are the topics that we bring for you today:

  1. Galaxy S7 edge not playing audio, any sound
  2. Galaxy S7 won’t fast charge via USB cable
  3. Oculus won’t work after Facebook app was removed from Galaxy S7
  4. How to recover files if Galaxy S7 won’t turn on anymore
  5. Galaxy S7 keeps getting false SMS notification from the same contact
  6. Galaxy S7 browsers won’t accept any password for accounts
  7. Popping, crackling sound when playing video on Galaxy S7
  8. Accidentally dropped Galaxy S7 edge screen keeps flickering
  9. Galaxy S7 receives long SMS in multiple parts
  10. Galaxy S7 SD card corrupted after installing system update
  11. Galaxy S7 loses cellular connectivity during morning

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S7 edge not playing audio, any sound

About a month back I noticed that my S7 edge wasn’t playing sound of any kind even with the sound turned all the way up. I restarted the phone and it worked again. It happened again about a week later. Restarted again, it worked fine. Then about 4 days later it did it again. Same thing, a restart fixed it. But now it’s happening every other day and sometimes more than once a day. I’ve noticed that it happens more frequently if I use Amazon Music, but it doesn’t stop working right away. Several hours after I close the app, usually while I’m sleeping, it just stops, causing my alarm to be silenced. No sound at all. With or without headphones. I don’t want to uninstall Amazon if I can avoid it as I have 900 songs “downloaded” for offline listening that would have to be redownloaded. Any suggestions? — Audra

Solution: Hi Audra. This can be due to a bug in one of your installed apps so the first step that you must take is to observe how sound works when the phone is in safe mode. Once the phone runs in safe mode, all third party apps and services will be blocked. If audio will work while phone’s in safe mode, that’s proof that an app is the reason why audio does not work as expected. To restart your S7 to safe mode, follow these steps:

  1. Turn your Galaxy S7 off.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7’ logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.

Should the issue persists and there’s no change even when device is in safe mode, do a factory reset. This procedure will revert all software settings to their defaults, thus it’s an effective method in clearing bugs that may have developed over time. Be sure to observe how the phone works immediately after doing the reset to notice any difference. Also, be sure not to re-install apps and system updates during the observation period.

  1. Create a backup of your important files such as photos, videos, etc.
  2. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  3. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  5. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  6. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  7. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  8. Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  9. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  10. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Problem #2: Galaxy S7 won’t fast charge via USB cable

Hi. I have a Galaxy S7 with problems regarding fast charging. It will fast charge on the fast charge pad but not through the micro USB hub. I think this eliminates software issues and the battery, leaving the charging port/board. I use fast charging in my car and when I’m using my phone in the evening. Wireless isn’t optimal for my daily use, only overnight charging when it doesn’t matter if it’s slow anyway. Is there anything I can try before replacing the charging port? Thanks for your help. — Nikki

Solution: Hi Nikki. Looks like you’ve already isolated the problem yourself. You’re right to think that it’s a charging port issue. In fact, most fast charging problems are caused by defective charging port. Unfortunately, there’s really nothing much an end user can do regarding the problem. You must send the phone in so it can be repaired or replaced.

Problem #3: Oculus won’t work after Facebook app was removed from Galaxy S7

Facebook was preloaded on my S7. Since i don’t use Facebook I removed it or at least it appears i did because i can’t find it anymore but everywhere i read it says it can’t be permanently removed, only disabled. reason I care about it now is I did not realize Oculus and my Gear VR won’t work correctly without Facebook. after I felted Facebook, i tried using Oculus and it wanted to update before I could use it but now it won’t update and from what I have read the problem is my Facebook is now gone. My phone is not unlocked. How do I get Oculus to work like it used to? thanks for any info you can give me. — Mike

Solution: Hi Mike. Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus back in 2014 makes the two integrated in Samsung Galaxy S model phones so if installing Facebook app in your phone won’t work, you must factory reset the device to revert all software settings back to their original state. This will also reinstall whatever pre-installed app you disabled before.

  1. Create a backup of your important files such as photos, videos, etc.
  2. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  3. Find and tap Settings and then touch Backup and reset.
  4. Tap Factory data reset and touch Reset device.
  5. If you have screen lock feature turned on, enter your password or PIN.
  6. Touch Continue.
  7. Tap Delete all to confirm your action.

Problem #4: How to recover files if Galaxy S7 won’t turn on anymore

My phone won’t turn on in regular/safe/recovery modes. When attempting to charge it, no lights are seen and the back of the phone gets fairly warm after a few minutes. I don’t care about the phone, but the pictures of our newborn are on the phone and didn’t get backed up. A local tech said that the motherboard is toast. Is there any way to pull the board or hard drive and pull the pictures? My wife is heartbroken and we don’t know what to do. Please help! Thanks. — Douglas

Solution: Hi Douglas. The internal storage device or Nand chip that stores user data is integrated to the logic board so it’s very challenging to remove it, put it another board, and access its contents. Technically, it’s possible but it requires manufacturer level tools and software, both of which are not publicly available. Samsung does not do this type of repair so there’s basically nothing that you can do if what the technician about the motherboard being toast is true. We are not aware of any third party companies that that can do the job either.

We know nobody wants to lose precious digital moments in our smartphones but to prevent losing important files in the future, make sure to keep it a habit of always keeping a backup. Storage devices or any electronics can fail at any moment so you only have yourself to blame if you lose irreplaceable data.

Problem #5: Galaxy S7 keeps getting false SMS notification from the same contact

I have a Samsung S7 Edge and my husband has a Samsung S6 Active and we’re both on the same AT&T plan. We’ve had these phones for almost two years without any issues. This past weekend whenever I send him a text message he receives the notification that I text him but when he selects my text from the notification bar there is nothing there. Not even my phone number. When he goes into his messages app none of my recent texts to him show up. I receive all texts from him though. We’ve tried the force stop and restarting on both phones and nothing changed. We also both deleted each other from our contacts and then put our numbers back in and that hasn’t worked. He has no problem receiving texts from anyone else. His messages app also continuously shows a count of his recent texts (all mine) and it never goes away. — Aekrack

Solution: Hi Aekrack. There may be a bug causing this problem so the first thing that you can do on his phone is to delete the cache and data off the messaging app. Here’s how to do that:

  1. Open the Settings menu either through your notification shade (drop-down) or through the Settings app in your app drawer.
  2. Navigate down to “Apps”. This may be renamed to something like Applications or Application Manager in OEM skinned versions of Android 6.0.
  3. Once in there, click on an application.
  4. You’ll now see a list of stuff that gives you information about the app, including Storage, Permissions, Memory Use, and more. These are all clickable items. You’ll want to click on Storage.
  5. You should now clearly see the Clear Data and Clear Cache buttons for the application.

Should the problem continue after doing that, ask him to factory reset the device, and to contact AT&T if that won’t work either.

Problem #6: Galaxy S7 browsers won’t accept any password for accounts

Please help me! This has been so frustrating. I have had my S7 for 3 weeks now – it was just fine until about 2 days ago and now anytime I try to log into an account on the Samsung internet, Chrome or any other browser and some apps – I get a message back saying the password is incorrect. Passwords work fine on my desktop, just not on my S7. Thoughts? I have powered off and cleared the cache. — Lisapoort74

Solution: Hi Lisapoort74. if you are 100% positive that you are typing the passwords correctly in your mobile, the only solution we can think of is factory reset. We have no idea what happened to your phone prior to noticing the problem and you have not provided anything that might make it easy to pinpoint the cause. Simply do a factory reset, then try to log in to your accounts again immediately, and see what happens. It’s definitely not normal for all browsers in a smartphone to refuse all passwords so you may have introduced the cause by installing an app or malware in your device. Kindly refer to the steps above for steps on how to factory reset your phone.

Problem #7: Popping, crackling sound when playing video on Galaxy S7

Dear Sir or Madam. Are you familiar with the popping/crackling/sound distortion that happens when recording audio or videos? this problem seems to exist since the Samsung Galaxy S4 came out and its happening on my S7 all the time. if you have heard of that issue and know how to fix this I would be grateful forever. here is a link with a video sample https://youtu.be/GNVoEcEYJ0Q. — David

Solution: Hi David. It’s our first time to encounter such experience from a Galaxy S user. We also don’t notice the problem in our own Galaxy S4, S5, S6 edge, and S7 edge so this might be an isolated case. Please contact Samsung and see if they can shed light on the problem.

If you want to troubleshoot the phone, there’s only so much that you can do.  Head over to Settings, tap Sounds and vibration, scroll down to Advanced section and tap Sound quality and effects. Under this section, you should find UHQ upscaler. This option is disabled by default so in order to enable it, you must first insert a headset to the phone. We recommend that you let UHQ upscaler ON to improve the audio out when playing a video or music.

If the problem remains after turning on UHQ upscaler, you can also try a possible workaround by enabling Prevent USB audio routing under Developer options. If Developer options is not turned on in your phone, go under Settings and tap Build number 7 times.

Problem #8: Accidentally dropped Galaxy S7 edge screen keeps flickering

Hi. I recently smacked a Samsung S7 Edge out of someone’s hands and it dropped. When picked up, the screen started to flash continuously and would continue to after turning it off and on again but only stops flashing when it is locked or turned off. When turned on, it flashes but you can still see the home page, apps etc. It is not cracked. Any tips? — Sumaiya.xo

Solution: Hi Sumaiya.xo. If the problem was not there before the phone got accidentally dropped, stop looking for solutions. Simply send the phone in so the hardware can be checked and repaired. Better still, just try to have the entire unit replaced as there’s a possibility that the unnecessary may have damaged other components as well. If you’re hoping for a software fix, there’s none.

Problem #9: Galaxy S7 receives long SMS in multiple parts

Last night I was texting someone and they weren’t receiving my texts. She sent me a screen shot and I saw that she only received part of the text. So she would get (2/2) but wouldn’t receive the first part. Then she didn’t receive any texts and I had to use Facebook messenger. Is there any way I can send texts that aren’t split up into sections? Why can’t it just be one big text? Half the time they are out of order anyways? Same with receiving them too. Thanks. — Jared

Solution: Hi Jared. Your question is best addressed to your carrier than to us but to give you a brief explanation, it’s mostly due to how your carrier handles SMS. A standard SMS that’s been in use for decades now limits one message to only 160 characters. If your SMS goes over this character limit, your carrier’s system automatically breaks it down to individual 160-character segment. Thus, a 300-character message from your end will be chopped into 2 160-segments when it arrives to its designated target.

Some carriers may use concatenated SMS to present a long message as one continuous single message but it’s subject to compatibility on the other end. If your own carrier uses  concatenated SMS while the receiving carrier does not, complications can occur resulting to mixed up or out-of-order messages or even total loss of parts or entire message. In order to know more about how SMS works in your network, try to do some research or contact their technical team directly for answers.

Problem #10: Galaxy S7 SD card corrupted after installing system update

Hi! my issue is that shortly after my S7 did a new system update last week I started to see a message on my screen telling me the SD card is corrupt – “tap here to fix.” So I tap on the cue. It takes a couple of seconds, then says, card is now formatted–but when I go back to main screen or go to settings>storage, it still says the card is corrupt. I have re-booted the phone, shut it down and started it back up. I even removed the card and re-inserted it-but I still get a “corrupt SD card” message. — Andres

Solution: Hi Andres. The first thing that you want to do here is to create a backup of your important files in both the SD card and internal storage device. After that, troubleshoot the SD card by removing it from the phone and inserting it to a second device such as another smartphone or computer. This will allow you to check if the SD card is indeed corrupt or not. If it shows as corrupted, reformat it before inserting it back to the Galaxy S7. If it doesn’t show as corrupt though, the problem probably lies in the phone so you must focus your troubleshooting there.

The first step is to wipe its cache partition. Here’s how:

  1. Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  7. Now highlight the option ‘Yes’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  8. Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  9. The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Once you’ve wiped the cache partition, insert the SD card again and see how it works. If the problem continues, do a factory reset. Refer to the steps above on how to do it.

Problem #11: Galaxy S7 loses cellular connectivity during morning

Hello Droidguy. I’m currently using a Galaxy S7 Sprint SM-G930P. It was working fine, but in the morning there is no network it keeps saying searching for network. I cannot switch Mobile network from CDMA to GSM. It is stuck. And by dialing *#0011# In the service mode it says Non -Fatal MIPI Device fail. My Device IMEI is cleaned everything if perfect. Please help me with this issue. Kindly identify it and Kindly suggest me A solution. I’m in an Asian country there is no Sprint store here. — Mahmood

Solution: Hi Mahmood. Have you talked to your carrier about this issue yet? If you haven’t, we recommend that you do, especially if the problem appears to occur in certain parts of the day only. This is most likely a service interruption problem and not a phone issue.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Galaxy S7 keyboard app constantly lagging and pop ups keep showing, other issues

Here’s another compilation of more #GalaxyS7 issues reported to us this week so far. Some of the issues may appear to previously published ones so the solutions may also be familiar. Should you want to revisit our main S7 troubleshooting page, please visit this link.

s7

 

Below are the topics included in this material today:

  1. How to recover possibly corrupted files from SD card in a Galaxy S7
  2. Pre-owned Galaxy S7 keyboard app constantly lagging | Second-hand Galaxy S7 keeps freezing
  3. SD card causing Galaxy S7 Edge to freeze
  4. Pop ups keep showing on Galaxy S7
  5. T-Mobile Galaxy S7 stock messaging app and Handcent not working
  6. Galaxy S7 won’t boot normally

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: How to recover possibly corrupted files from SD card in a Galaxy S7

Gallery pictures replaced with grey. I removed SD card yesterday and downloaded images. All seemed to be present. Videos not playing but that may be due to old PC (Windows Vista). I did a power/volume down button reboot. Some pictures on the phone have returned but majority remain as grey thumbnail. Incidentally my PC today will not turn on. Making intermittent fan noise no screen. Could be a coincidence. Do you have any suggestions as to how i could retrieve my images in the gallery? I do not know which Android version the phone has. Kind regards. — Carly

Solution: Hi Carly. The process of recovering files from a storage medium can sometimes be tricky and may require advanced software. If the greyed out files have been corrupted, even advanced software may not be able to recover them at all. The easiest way to see if you can recover files from a Galaxy smartphone is by connecting it to a PC. So yes, you must need to have a good working PC first in order to see if another device (computer) can read those files. If a Windows or Mac machine cannot read the files anymore, try looking for third party services online that can help you recover them. Our blog does not have offer file recovery services so use Google to search for good ones. These services are not free and there’s no guarantee if their software will work. But then again, as we’ve said, file recovery process itself is full of uncertainties. If a third party software won’t be able to read the storage device in the first place (because there’s a chance it’s been corrupted), you may have to simply accept the fact that those files are gone.

Problem #2: Pre-owned Galaxy S7 keyboard app constantly lagging | Second-hand Galaxy S7 keeps freezing

I recently bought a second hand Samsung Galaxy S7. Upon buying I noticed that the phone’s keyboard was constantly lagging, very slow and did not type the letters I touched. I tested the touch screen using the code *#7354# and found out that there wasn’t anything wrong with the touch screen of the phone so that wasn’t the issue.

The S7 also freezes up and the only thing that can unfreeze it is holding the low volume button and the power button simultaneously.

Also the phone frequently restarts itself randomly. I have tried codes, resetting, rebooting, restarting, I have cleared the cache partition and finally updated the phone to Android 6.0.1 and still nothing has changed. Please help ASAP. — Sabah

Solution: Hi Sabah. Buying a pre-owned electronics is always risky, especially if you don’t personally know the seller. Since you did accept the risks involved, you must be ready to accept the consequences of your action. There’s always a chance that you can inherit a problem that may be unfixable at your level. If you can still return the phone at this time though, we strongly suggest that you do so to avoid heartaches in the future. The combination of being a second-hand device and having multiple seemingly unrelated issues right off the bat is definitely not a good sign of a properly working phone. The issues you mention may be indicators of a hardware issue that the original owner was not able to address. The only suggestion that we have for you is factory reset. If the same issues remain even after a factory reset and without apps, there must be a problem with the hardware department.

Problem #3: SD card causing Galaxy S7 Edge to freeze

Hello. I tried to find my problem in the troubleshooting page but i was terrified when i didn’t find anyone complaining about the same issue! My problem isn’t an app or 3rd party app. It happens when i mount my SD card — it’s a 125GB original Samsung memory card that came with the S7 edge. And i only used 50 to 60GBs from it. It worked fine for 6 months but suddenly now it causes my s7 edge to freeze. When i mount the SD card, it acts normal for about 30 to 60 seconds, then it suddenly freezes. It doesn’t restart on its own and becomes totally useless and not responsive. All i can do is force restarting it by holding Power + home + volume down for 10 seconds. And then it happens again and again and again. After 30 to 60 seconds, the issue stops when i unmount the SD card!

Oh i would like to mention something that might be important too. A week ago or maybe 10 days, i had a ~35 Mb software update.

What should i do? Please help. — Riyad

Solution: Hi Riyad. If your S7 works normally when the SD card is unmounted or perhaps when physically disconnected, then that’s a clear sign that you must do something about the SD card. These are the steps that you must do:

  1. If you keep irreplaceable files in your SD card, make sure that you copy them to another device like a computer to avoid data loss.
  2. Once you’ve move important stuff to a computer or cloud, or another smartphone, the next step is to reformat the card. Here’s how:
    1. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
    2. Find Settings and tap on it.
    3. Scroll to and tap Storage.
    4. Now tap on SD card.
    5. You are given two options; to ‘Unmount’ it or ‘Format’ it. Choose the latter.
    6. The phone will warn you that you will lose all files inside your SD card if you continue the process but since you still don’t have anything in it yet, it’s safe to continue. So, hit Format in the bottom-right corner.
    7. Wait until the formatting process completes.
  3. Now that the SD card has been reformatted, you also want to make sure that the phone’s system cache is refreshed. This is done by wiping the cache partition. Follow the steps below on what to do:
    1. Turn off the device.
    2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
    3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
    4. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
    5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
    6. Press the Power key to select.
    7. Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘yes’ an press the Power key to select.
    8. When the wipe cache partition is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
    9. Press the Power key to restart the device.
  4. Observe how the phone works afterwards. Make sure that you restart your S7.

Keep in mind that even original SD cards can fail anytime. To avoid losing important files in the future, make it a habit to create a backup of important files in another device all the time.

Problem #4: Pop ups keep showing on Galaxy S7

Phone keeps getting pop-ups. Even when trying to message. I mean a TON of pop ups. Did factory reset twice. Did not help one bit. Sent it in under warranty to be looked at. They can’t replicate the issue. Returned phone unfixed. Since the return, 36 pop ups in one week. Can’t send text, takes 10 minutes to send ONE. Don’t get pictures. Just a gray square with exclamation point. Got a lemon. Don’t know where to return it to get a new one. Samsung or AT&T. HATE this phone! — Pam

Solution: Hi Pam. Pop ups that show advertisements are usually brought about by bad apps or malware. To fix the issue, you can do the following:

Scan your device with an antivirus app. This must be the first thing that you should do if you haven’t done it yet. With a lot of free antivirus apps available for download, every Android user must be doing this step all the time. Just make sure not to overdo it by installing more than one antivirus in your phone as doing so can lead to a problem than resolve one.

You must know though that some recent or advanced malware be able to get through most antivirus apps, so if no antivirus can help you stop the pop ups, proceed to the next step.

Boot the phone in safe mode. If the pop ups started showing up after you’ve installed an app, chances are that app comes from a suspicious developer. In order to check if these pop ups are caused by third part apps, try to boot the phone in safe mode. If the phone works normally and no pop ups show, that’s a confirmation of our hunch. Your next move then is to uninstall apps individually until you have eliminated the offending app. Safe mode won’t pinpoint the bad app so you must do trial-and-error to identify it. That’s done by observing the phone after every uninstallation. But first you must boot in safe mode. Here’s how to do that:

  • Turn off the phone completely.
  • Press and hold the Power key.
  • Once ‘Samsung Galaxy Note5’ shows, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  • The phone will restart but keep the Volume Down button pressed.
  • Once the phone has finished restarting, ‘Safe mode’ will be display in the lower-left corner of the screen.
  • You may now release the Volume Down button.
  • Observe the phone for 24 hours to see the difference. Remember, if the issues you mention here won’t happen when safe mode is enabled, one of the third party apps must be to blame. In this case, you need to uninstall apps until the problems are eliminated. Safe mode won’t help you pinpoint the actual offending app so you must do trial-and-error in identifying it. The most effective way is to uninstall apps individually then observing how the phone behaves afterwards.

Factory reset your phone. Restoring all software settings to their known working state via factory reset is the most effective way to get rid of a virus or malware from an Android device. Refer to the steps above on how to do it. Make sure that you observe how the phone behaves after a factory reset. Here are the steps on how to factory reset your device:

  • Create a backup of your important files and contacts.
  • Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7.
  • Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  • When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  • When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  • Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  • Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  • Now highlight the option ‘Yes — delete all user data’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  • Wait until your phone is finished doing the Master Reset. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  • The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

Do not install app outside of Google Play Store. After a factory reset, ensure that you don’t just re-install the same set of apps. Many Android users tend to do this, rendering factory reset procedure useless. Installing the same apps after a factory reset will just re-introduce the problems. Try to install apps individually so you can observe how the phone works afterwards — install an app, observe, install and app, observe. Doing this cycle will take some time but it’s the most effective way to get rid of bad apps. Also, make sure that you check if an app has lots of positive reviews. Visit its Google Play Store page and check if there are many positive reviews about it. This will give you an idea whether or not an app can be trusted or not. If you notice that a lot of users mention getting pop ups after installing this app, you may have found the reason for your woes.

More importantly, try to avoid installing apps from sources other than Google Play Store. Only install apps from third party sources if you are 100% sure that they are harmless. Keep in mind that most of the Android malware that were recently discovered were introduced via these third party sources. If you  want to break this rule, do it at your own risk and be ready to face the consequences.

Problem #5: T-Mobile Galaxy S7 stock messaging app and Handcent not working

I have a Galaxy S7 with T-Mobile, and had used Handcent SMS with my old phone – loved it. Now on my S7 everything is screwed up. I thought it was Handcent (none of their updates helped), but am now having the same issue on the native messaging app. If I create a new message to one contact, it will send out and then appear as part of an old group message including other contacts. I go back into that specific message and there is no way to create or respond to the message and I’m not sure if my message went to all of the recipients or just the one I sent it to. This issue is driving me nuts, even deleting strings and then creating a new message to a single contact does the same thing. I’ve searched high and low on message boards and I must not be using the correct terminology because I can’t find the issue. Please help! Thanks. — Allison

Solution: Hi Allison. If the problem occurs to both pre-installed app and third party app, it’s highly possible that the issue is on the firmware level. Try doing a  factory reset then observe the phone for 24 hours (without apps) to see the difference.

Problem #6: Galaxy S7 won’t boot normally

Hello. I have an S7 running Android 6.0. I’ve been using it for 2 1/2 months and everything was smooth. However yesterday, I was on a normal cellular call with the Wi-Fi running in the background and around 20% of battery left. Phone turned off all of a sudden. It wouldn’t turn back on. When I charged it, the led indicator was not working.

I wasn’t sure if the phone was even charging at all, so I used the original charger on my sister’s phone and it was working. plus I used a power bank on my phone and the power bank’s led was blinking which means it recognized that my device was plugged to it. After charging it with my power bank for a while I pressed the volume up + volume down + power buttons all at once and kept at it. I felt a vibration but nothing else. Left the phone charging for another two hours then tried again, and this time ( and some other times afterwards ) the Samsung logo appeared on my screen as it usually does when I open my phone normally, but this time nothing happened afterwards. It just turned off after 5-10 seconds, and again no led indicator when I charged the phone and it wouldn’t power on. Battery, of course, is non-removable. Can you please help me? Thank you in advance. — Babis

Solution: Hi Babis. The very first thing that you want to try right now is to check if your phone will still boot to other modes. If it can, you may be able to bring it back to life after doing a specific procedure depending on what mode the phone decides to boot on. Here are the boot modes you can try:

Boot in Recovery mode:

  • Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  • Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  • When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  • When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  • Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  • You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Boot in Download Mode:

  • Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  • Press and then hold the Home and Volume DOWN keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  • When the Samsung Galaxy S7 shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume DOWN keys.
  • Wait until the Download screen appears.
  • If you can boot the phone in download mode but not in other modes, that means that your only way out may be to flash a stock or custom firmware.
  • Use Google to look for a guide on how to do it.

Boot in safe mode:

  • Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  • Press and hold the Power button.
  • Once the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7’ logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  • Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  • Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.
  • The only difference of safe mode from normal mode is that the former prevents third party apps from running. If you can boot the phone in safe mode but not in normal mode, uninstall all apps until the issue (that prevents you from booting normally) is eliminated.

If the phone remains totally unresponsive and won’t boot to any of these modes, find a way to have it repaired or replaced.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

SD cards inserted in Galaxy S5 keep getting corrupted, other issues

Here’s another list of #GalaxyS5 issues we’ve collected over the past few days. If you sent us a request for assistance but are yet to see the issue published in this blog, keep watching for upcoming posts in this next few days.

s5

For now, these are the specific topics that we cover in this material today:

  1. Galaxy S5 won’t charge
  2. SD cards inserted in Galaxy S5 keep getting corrupted
  3. Cannot allow permissions for apps on Galaxy S5
  4. Galaxy S5 turns Wi-Fi on and off on its own
  5. Galaxy S5 won’t connect to cellular network after charging port repair
  6. Galaxy S6 won’t accept PIN | Galaxy S5 “currently unable to download please try again later” error

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S5 won’t charge

I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 and it stopped charging a couple days ago saying that i need the original charger. i had the original charger plugged into it later that night and it would only charge for like 15 minutes and then it would stop saying the same message. well now it has completely stopped charging and the screen doesn’t light up when i hold the power button, due to it being so dead. Today i tried to charge it via usb and my computer then got a notification saying that my phone is unrecognizable. And now i don’t know what it is because my computer detected it so it’s not that the USB port is dirty or damaged. i also did the spin test with my battery and it passed so i know it’s not a faulty battery. Very confused. please help. — A. Lee

Solution: Hi A. Lee. USB connectors, whether in female form (the USB port on your S5) or male form (the male form on your charger cable) have at least four contacts — one for ground, one for power, and two lines for data. The Galaxy S5 uses the USB 3.0 standard, which means that it has more than four contacts. Although we can’t really know where the problem lies in your case, we believe that it may be the power connector that transmits current to and from the device. There’s no need to actually speculate on this one since it won’t help fix the issue a bit. There’s no other trick that you can do to make the device charge again. The best thing that you can do is to recognize that the S5 does not charge anymore and that the hardware must be checked. Contact Samsung or your carrier for repair or replacement.

Problem #2: SD cards inserted in Galaxy S5 keep getting corrupted

I installed the PIXMA photo editing app on my Galaxy S5 & played with it a bit. The next morning, the phone didn’t show any micro SD card photos (as if it wasn’t even there). When I searched the phone, it told me the SD card was corrupted. I powered down & removed it, put it back in, still nothing. I tried to look at the SD card on my laptop & no-go. Took to the Verizon store — no access. Removed PIXMA from my phone. Got a new micro SD for my phone. Took many photos & videos. Periodically noticed when I opened the SD photo file, some of the pictures would be 1/2, 3/4, or entirely grey…like they were being erased. When I tried to load all photos onto my computer (via adapter in SD port on laptop), they wouldn’t load. Tried taking to a Walgreens machine, it would load about 1/2 of the photos & videos & then tell me to reinsert the SD card (as if I’d removed it). The photo tech said there must be corrupt files. I was finally able to load most photos to the laptop via Bluetooth, but certain files simply wouldn’t transfer. — Julie Ann

Solution: Hi Julie Ann. If some files can’t be transferred to your laptop, I guess you already know our answer — they must be corrupted. There’s nothing that you or we can do about that. The only thing that you can do starting now is to prevent this issue from happening again. To do that, try checking some suggestions below.

Factory reset the device. We can’t know what causes your SD card to get corrupted as there are many factors to consider so you have to make sure that it’s not the software. This can be done by wiping the phone clean first. Hopefully, factory reset will eliminate the glitch and prevent it from developing again in the future. For instructions on how to factory reset your S5, follow these steps:

  • Turn off the device.
  • Press and hold the following three buttons at the same time: Volume Up key, Home key, and Power key.
  • When the phone vibrates, release the Power key but continue to press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key.
  • When the Android System Recovery screen appears, release the Volume Up and Home keys.
  • Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  • Press Power button to select.
  • Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
  • Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  • When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  • Press the Power key to restart the device.

 

Reformat the SD card. Once you’ve factory reset your S5, the next best thing to do is reformat the SD card. This will ensure that both the S5 and the SD card start fresh. Make sure that you use the S5 to reformat the SD card.

 

Never interrupt the device when it’s reading or saving something on the SD card. One of the most common reasons why SD cards get corrupted is due to human error. Sometimes, it can take longer for a device to load something from an SD card and our impatience can make us do something stupid. Keep in mind that some apps can be stored in an SD card so loading some them or their associated files and services may take longer to load. The same is true when a device tries to write something to an SD card, like when it’s saving a video or photos, or documents. Make sure that you wait until the process is done before attempting to do anything on the phone. Doing otherwise almost always lead to SD card problems.

 

Avoid encryption. Although it’s good practice to secure important or critical data, doing so for almost everything may backfire for you. Encryption can significantly degrade a device’s performance because it will have to do more processes in the background. If you really want to safe guard some important files in your phone, you must contend with slow performance when your device loads or saves something. In some rare cases, encrypted SD cards also get corrupted for some reason.

Problem #3: Cannot allow permissions for apps on Galaxy S5

Hello. I can’t seem to allow permission on my applications. I had already reset my phone before due to this problem but it’s still the same. For example, I wanted to send my sister a photograph then the box appeared asking me if i want to allow my gallery to sync with messenger. When i clicked on allow it asked me to turn off the screenover which i did but it still is not working. I even went to application manager and tried to allow permission from there but the problem is still the same. Please help me. It’s kind of frustrating that any application i install and try to open the same is happening. I hope you can help me. Thanks. — Asmita

Solution: Hi Asmita. We’re not sure if we understand your situation correctly. Permissions are usually set during app installation and you’re not supposed to tinker with them afterwards to prevent apps from malfunctioning. Assuming you did not root your device or flash a custom ROM, you may be able to fix the issue by wiping the cache partition. Here’s how:

  • Turn the phone off.
  • Press and hold the following buttons together: Power, Volume Up and Home.
  • Release the buttons once the Android system recovery menu appears.
  • Use the Volume buttons to navigate to Wipe Cache Partition option.
  • Press the Power button to confirm selection.
  • Select Reboot System Now option after deleting the cache. Wait for the phone to reboot.

Should the issue remain after refreshing the system cache, make sure that you reset all software settings back to default by doing a factory reset. Refer to the steps above.

Problem #4: Galaxy S5 turns Wi-Fi on and off on its own

Samsung Galaxy S5. I just replaced with factory rebuild phone thru Verizon in June 2016 due to it freezing up during a software update. horrible experience. My new phone has started turning the wifi off on its own CONSTANTLY even though it is set to ‘keep wifi on during sleep’ in settings. The Bluetooth automatically turns on constantly. The wifi turning off is the biggest problem because I am constantly having to monitor it and turn it back on to not exceed my data plan. the Bluetooth turning itself on isn’t as big a deal except that it drains my battery faster. Any ideas on why this has happened?

I asked Verizon at our local customer service center and they are worthless…they don’t staff anyone with a tech 2 or 3 or higher on site. The rep told me she didn’t see a problem since I’m not exceeding my data plan yet!! Clueless. this is the same store that told me to go to best buy and see if the geek squad could help me with the software update freeze issue…even though I didn’t buy my phone from best buy. they weren’t pleased with that either. Ugh. — Jean

Solution: Hi Jean. In fixing Android problems, a simple guideline is followed by technicians like us — if solutions don’t work, then hardware must be to blame. With all sorts of apps readily available to be installed and the many different Android versions out there, there’s no surgical way to identify the cause of a particular problem like the one you’re having. The only thing that we can do is trial-and-error. That said, we suggest that you start with the basic wiping of the cache partition.

If that won’t help, boot the phone in safe mode for as long as you can (a few days is best) so you can observe how it goes. The main purpose of booting your phone to safe mode is to see if a third party app is the cause. While safe mode is enabled, all third party apps and services will be prevented from running. So, if the issue won’t occur during the observation period, you are right on the money. The only next thing to do is to uninstall third party apps until the cause of the issue is removed. To boot in safe mode, follow these steps:

  • Turn the device off.
  • Press and hold the Power key.
  • When ‘Samsung Galaxy S5’ appears on the screen, release the Power key.
  • Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
  • Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
  • Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
  • Release the Volume down key when you see Safe Mode.

Should nothing work, do a factory reset.

Finally, if factory reset won’t work either, you can assume that there’s a problem on the hardware department. Contact Samsung or your carrier for a unit replacement.

Problem #5: Galaxy S5 won’t connect to cellular network after charging port repair

Hi. I don’t have Data or Cell connection. I called the AT&T store and they made a connection with the phone and i saw a few bars and 4G but since then it has gone. I had my port repaired and it is charging and working right and good, but there is little or no connection to the tower. My Wifi is working very good and no problem. I have Factory resetted the phone and it is Samsung Galaxy S5 SM-G900A. It worked fine before i changed the port. What should fix this? or is it simple the SIM card not working, but then i would think that i woun’t ever get even a small connection? Thanks. I had the phone updated to the latest software. — Benjaminwurtz

Solution: Hi Benjaminwurtz. To check if it’s a SIM card issue, insert your current SIM card to another phone that supports AT&T connection. If the issue happens on the second phone, then find a way to have the SIM replaced. Otherwise, the problem must be your Galaxy S5 itself. Since it’s been repaired, there’s a chance the network chip that manages mobile data connection or an associated component that works together with the mobile data connection chip has been damaged. That factory reset did not change anything is an indicator that software is not to blame here. If you badly need mobile data connection, find a way to have the phone replaced; our blog does not provide hardware troubleshooting and solutions.

Problem #6: Galaxy S6 won’t accept PIN | Galaxy S5 “currently unable to download please try again later” error

Wondering if you could help please. My phone keeps showing me “Currently unable to download please try again later.” I was using fingerprint to lock and unlock it when I removed it and put PIN, the PIN refused to work. At the moment, it automatically started using a swipe and when I try to enter the PIN I use for the phone, it will tell me it is the wrong pin. Now I can’t use pin, I can’t use fingerprints. When I am cycling the phone unlocks itself in the pockets and sends messages and calls without my knowledge. — Obinna

Solution: Hi Obinna. The error message “Currently unable to download please try again later” is a generic one and does not really point us to a specific problem. Since you’re also having an issue with security on this device, we suggest that you restore the software settings back to default by doing a factory reset. Refer to the steps above.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.

How to prevent Galaxy S7 losing data stored in SD card, other issues

Due to lack of space, we only provide you three issues in this #GalaxyS7 troubleshooting page. We hope that the solutions, or rather recommendations, will be helpful for our Android community.

s7

Below are the topics covered in this material:

  1. Galaxy S7 keyboard randomly resets itself
  2. How to prevent Galaxy S7 losing data stored in SD card
  3. Moving files from Galaxy S7 to laptop

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S7 keyboard randomly resets itself

Hi. So my phone does a few annoying things. The first one is that sometimes the keyboard settings will randomly switch itself off. So autocorrect will stop working, the predictive text will turn off, and the continuous swipe will stop working. Each time I have to go back into settings and turn it back on. There is no “save” button once I’ve adjusted these settings so I’m unsure how to make it stay.

My other issue is that the audio will randomly turn itself down. And persistently. It will be working fine and then suddenly turn it down until it is muted, and when i turn it back up, it will instantly do it again. And eventually it will stop bugging.

But both of these things are driving me insane and I really hope you can help me figure it out.

Thanks so much! — Emma

Solution: Hi Emma. Issues such as these usually happen after updating an app or operating system. Sometimes, installation another app can result to minor issues with other apps. If you did an update or install anything before the issues started to appear, the first thing that you want to do is to wipe the phone’s system cache. Try to follow these steps and see if they make a difference:

  • Turn off your Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.
  • Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  • When the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  • When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  • Using the Volume Down key, navigate through the options and highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  • Once highlighted, you may press the Power key to select it.
  • Now highlight the option ‘Yes’ using the Volume Down key and press the Power button to select it.
  • Wait until your phone is finished wiping the cache partition. Once completed, highlight ‘Reboot system now’ and press the Power key.
  • The phone will now reboot longer than usual.

In many cases, wiping the cache partition is enough to bring everything back to normal. However, if nothing will change, your next step is to check if a thir dparty application is to blame. Thankfully, you don’t need to check every app you’ve installed to do this troubleshooting. You can simply boot the phone in safe mode. This mode prevents all third party apps and services from running. If the issue won’t occur in safe mode, that’s an indication that one of them is to blame. Keep in mind that booting in safe mode as a troubleshooting will only cover third party applications. Apps that came with the phone when you first unboxed it are considered first party apps and thus, will continue to run even if you restart the device in safe mode. To boot your Galaxy S7 to safe mode, simply follow these steps:

  • Press and hold the Power key.
  • As soon as you can see the ‘Samsung Galaxy S7 EDGE’ on the screen, release the Power key and immediately hold the Volume Down key.
  • Continue holding the Volume Down button until the device finishes rebooting.
  • You may release it when you can see ‘Safe mode’ in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Finally, nothing appears to change even when your S7 is in safe mode, don’t hesitate to do a factory reset. Kindly refer to the steps below.

Problem #2: How to prevent Galaxy S7 losing data stored in SD card

I have a brand new Samsung Galaxy S7. I ordered a Sandisk 16GB micro SD card and transferred the data from my nearly full 2GB memory card to this new Sandisk one. I did that this morning, and this evening when I was browsing through my gallery I noticed done pictures were half showing. I thought this was odd and restarted the gallery, but the same thing happened. I clicked on the half creaked picture and the gallery then shut idled down saying that it “stopped working.” I then restarted the phone.  

After restarting my phone, I went back into my gallery and there were no pictures whatsoever. I went into settings and storage and the memory card was not showing. All it says was “mount memory card” which I clicked but nothing happened. I then removed and re-inserted the memory card and it now says “blank memory card/formatting issues” and it had said that every since. I even tried it in my old mobile phone.  

I have tried using the adaptor and pouring it into my laptop and netbook but nothing loads up in my computer. 

Now I’m stuck with what to do and I’m worried I’ve lost my data. — Amir

Solution: Hi Amir. If other devices, that is other smartphones or computers, don’t read the same SD card either, you’re out of luck. That means that the said SD card has become unreadable, most probably due to file corruption. The problem is that there’s nothing that you can do about it. A corrupted SD card can not be fixed and the only way to use it again is to reformat it. Of course this means wiping whatever traces of bits are there in the uncorrupted sectors. Right now, the best thing that you can do is to condition yourself to accept the fact that your data are gone.

If you want to attempt file recovery though, make sure that you stop using the SD card right away to prevents files from being overwritten.  You then want to search for third party file recovery services online that may help you. We don’t know a particular third party file retrieval service so it’s your call. The thing about file recovery though is the fact that there’s no 100% guarantee that you’ll get what you want. If you think the contents are worth the time, effort, and ultimately, money, then go ahead.

Right now, the best thing that we can impart to you is to teach you how to prevent this situation from happening in the future. Technically, a corrupted SD card means the said storage medium has ceased to function properly, resulting to it becoming unreadable. This means that it’s dead and there’s very little chance that its contents will ever be recovered. It is therefore very important to prevent SD card corruption from happening. Right now, there’s no technology that can “fix” a corrupted SD card, if by fix you mean making it readable (by other devices) again. It is therefore worth anyone’s effort to avoid the SD card from becoming corrupted. Most of the time, SD card corruption is due to human error so below are the basic things that you can do on your end.

Avoid interrupting a save when saving

This is a general principle that can be applied to all things digital. There had been countless tales of regret and sadness across the years from users losing precious digital memories and important data because of this. Sometimes, a smartphone or electronic device can take a long time to process and save data so making sure that you let your phone do its job is the key. Be patient when your phone tries to move or save files from one storage medium to another, such as transferring files from internal memory to an SD card.

Do not remove the SD card from a device without unmounting it properly

The option to mount and unmount as SD card in a Samsung device is provided to avoid SD card from getting corrupted. Make sure that you don’t remove the SD card prematurely while your phone is still writing to or reading from it. In our hurry, we sometimes forget to unmount the SD card before removing it from our device. If you’re lucky, doing so may not result to anything but should you realize it, make sure to create a backup of your files to another device as soon as possible.

Do not let your phone run out of gas

Sometimes, SD card corruption can happen if your phone loses battery power while it’s trying to use the SD card. Keep in mind that your phone can access your SD card without you actively navigating to Settings or checking the Gallery app (which is often times what average users do to check photos, videos, etc). Some apps are kept in the SD card instead of being stored in the internal memory so the battery conking out all of a sudden can potentially kill the card. This is one of the common reasons why users suddenly find their SD cards becoming totally unusable, despite being new.

Format the SD card using the device it’s supposed to work with

At other times, an SD card can suddenly become corrupted if inserted to a different device. If you are fond of moving SD cards from one device to another, there’s a high chance of corrupting the said card in the process. Make sure that you format the SD card using the device it’s intended to be working with to minimize the chance of file corruption.

Keep apps in internal memory

To further minimize the chance of corrupting as SD card, ensure that all apps are stored in the phone’s internal memory. This will not only help lessen the risk of damaging the card when your phone runs out of battery often, but also to hasten loading time. Apps kept in internal storage loads faster compared to those stored in the SD card so it’s a win-win situation for you. Your SD card can be used as a backup of photos and videos stored in the phone’s internal memory.

Avoid saving to SD card when battery is low

This is often hard to do and mostly slip under our radar since we tend to forget our phone settings. In light with your situation though, we recommend that change all settings that allow the device to store to SD card automatically to prevent it from becoming corrupted. These settings include camera setup wherein you let the device store photos to an SD card, or other apps saving their cache and other files to the SD card. As mentioned, if your phone suddenly loses battery power while, say, saving or processing a photo, there’s a high chance of it resulting to SD card corruption.

Don’t be a fool to think SD card can not happen

Most of the time, an average user likes to think that while SD card corruption is a possibility, it cannot happen to him or her. Wrong! Any SD card, however expensive or “reliable” (as per their maker’s advertisement) can become corrupted due to so many factors that can come into play. If you want to make your digital life harmonious, avoid the false thinking that your data is safe where it is right now. Always ensure that any important personal file or data is copied to another device. There’s no guarantee that your phone’s internal memory or SD card will work in the next hour or day or week. Always, always create a back up. We can’t emphasize this enough. If you don’t do this often, you only have yourself to blame if you suddenly find yourself grieving over irreplaceable data.

Problem #3: Moving files from Galaxy S7 to laptop

Hello. I have an S7 and have 2 issues with it. Since the beginning, I cannot seem to stay online when others in our house have no issues. Don’t get it. 

The biggest issue I am having now is that my phone began to tell me that my memory was full and I needed to delete things. Not knowing much about computers or what to delete as I needed everything, I was awaiting my daughter to assist in removing/transferring photos etc (there was a lot) to a recently acquired laptop.  I started to do uploading (got the written instructions from my daughter) and was doing fine, uploading about 5-8 pictures at a time in case I screwed up, and then it froze and will not shut off or allow a reset. I am freaking as I need EVERYTHING on there (middle of a court case and evidence is on there). What can I do?

I didn’t have assistance to do this before and apparently text messages from family members never got to me but didn’t know that. I’ve had a stroke and have chemo brain from chemotherapy drugs so I have a difficult time understanding things at times. It is often hard to teach me unless it is written down and simplified. I don’t know what to do and am a mess.  Can you help me?

I also was never shown how to transfer files to my computer now that I got one and all my notes either. I would owe you so much if you could help me out.  Thank you so much. — Tina

Solution: Hi Tina. We can’t provide you the specific steps for both issues since we don’t have important information to begin with in the first place. For example, for the first issue (connection problem), we need to know whether you’re having an issue with mobile data or Wi-Fi. Giving us the error message or other useful information/symptoms would make it easy for us to isolate the true issue. We suggest that you visit Google instead and search for more specific troubleshooting for the issue you’re having. You can type the problem description in Google like “mobile data issue Galaxy S7” or “Wi-Fi not working Galaxy S7” as a starter. Alternatively, you can also follow these two links from our previous posts to help yourself:

The same situation confronts us with the second or main issue you’re having. We need to know whether you have a Windows laptop or an Apple device. Specific steps on how to move files from a Galaxy S7 can be found in this link: How to transfer files from Galaxy S7 to a PC.

If you have an Apple device or non-Windows laptop, go to Google website again and type the phrase like “transfer files from Galaxy S7 to Mac.”

Keep in mind, almost everything can be found in the web as long you know how to enter the correct search word or phrase. If you’ll be unable to follow online instructions by yourself though, consider asking help from someone who can.

 

Engage with us

If you are one of the users who encounters a problem with your device, let us know. We offer solutions for Android-related problems for free so if you have an issue with your Android device, simply fill in the short questionnaire in this link and we will try to publish our answers in the next posts. We cannot guarantee a quick response so if your issue is time sensitive, please find another way to resolve your problem. 

If you find this post helpful, please help us by spreading the word to your friends. TheDroidGuy has social network presence as well so you may want to interact with our community in our Facebook and Google+ pages.