Accidental hard reset of Samsung Galaxy S5 - How is it possible??

[AC Question]

Today I had a very disturbing event with my Samsung Galaxy S5. It had an unintentional hard reset when the phone was "safely" placed in my pocket. How is that even possible?? I've never done a hard reset on S5, but I've read about how to perform it and seems impossible to do unintentionally.

I had the phone with me when I went out running, something which I normally don't do. It was placed in my jacket pocket and wrapped in a plastic bag the entire time. The phone was (to my knowledge) on the entire time and the screen was locked with pin code. It could be

I had the S Health app step counter activated, and I could hear a sound towards the end of my run when I passed 20 km. This could either be notification for 20000 steps for the day or a sound from OS or some other app. I finished running a few minutes after that. When I stopped running I noticed that my phone had restarted and asked for pin code. Hard reset was completed and all my apps and data were deleted.. Fortunately all accounts ensure that I have backup of the most important things. But I am still in shock and disturbed that this happens. I bought the S5 just 3 weeks ago and worried this might happen again.

Any suggestions to how this could have happened?

 

[Golfdriver97]

Honestly, I am not sure. I have heard of this only a few times, counting yours. To this day, I am still not sure why it happens.

 

[FredMD]

Just had this happen to me today - wondering if it has something to do with entering the wrong pin code on the front screen too many times?

 

[belodion]

^^^That's a brilliant bit of diagnosis if I may say so. Or are you the OP? Whichever, you may be right. I've heard of self-factory-resetting only once on these forums.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[nick estrada]

This not something new has happened too me like 6 times on 3 different androids. It sucks [Removed by Moderator].

 

[nick estrada]

Don't let your phone die it contributes some how to it resetting.

 

[SweetRen75]

It just happened to mine (which is how I ended up at this thread.) I had removed my case to clean up the phone before replacing into the case, which I did rather absentmindedly while watching TV. I looked down and noticed my phone was doing the restore process and there was nothing I knew to do to stop it.. then noticed I had put the case on upside down, which may have pressed the outer buttons in some kind of sequence..? It did not give me any options to wipe all data, confirm, or anything. Just.. done and gone. Was able to retrieve most data from cloud but lost all my apps and settings.

 

[deepdemocracy]

Today I had a very disturbing event with my Samsung Galaxy S5. It had an unintentional hard reset when the phone was "safely" placed in my pocket. How is that even possible?? I've never done a hard reset on S5, but I've read about how to perform it and seems impossible to do unintentionally.

I had the phone with me when I went out running, something which I normally don't do. It was placed in my jacket pocket and wrapped in a plastic bag the entire time. The phone was (to my knowledge) on the entire time and the screen was locked with pin code. It could be

I had the S Health app step counter activated, and I could hear a sound towards the end of my run when I passed 20 km. This could either be notification for 20000 steps for the day or a sound from OS or some other app. I finished running a few minutes after that. When I stopped running I noticed that my phone had restarted and asked for pin code. Hard reset was completed and all my apps and data were deleted.. Fortunately all accounts ensure that I have backup of the most important things. But I am still in shock and disturbed that this happens. I bought the S5 just 3 weeks ago and worried this might happen again.

Any suggestions to how this could have happened?

This just happened to my moments ago.

 

[deepdemocracy]

Yep...just now, same thing happened.

It just happened to mine (which is how I ended up at this thread.) I had removed my case to clean up the phone before replacing into the case, which I did rather absentmindedly while watching TV. I looked down and noticed my phone was doing the restore process and there was nothing I knew to do to stop it.. then noticed I had put the case on upside down, which may have pressed the outer buttons in some kind of sequence..? It did not give me any options to wipe all data, confirm, or anything. Just.. done and gone. Was able to retrieve most data from cloud but lost all my apps and settings.

 

[Kjell Stura]

Same happened to me. Was tryin out a selfie stick and some buttons were pushed, but not the combination a hard reset requires. Something wrong here...

 

[Flockjam]

I got a Samung Galaxy 6 a week ago and I did the same thing - put it in it's case the wrong way. It totally did a hard reset. I was so upset! I wonder if this happens to enough people if they will come out with a patch or something? Not cool at all!

 

[Gerry Catalano]

This has happened to me twice in 2 weeks. Both times, I pull my phone out of my pocket to unlock and read a text message... the pin code to unlock my phone is already there with too many characters, and I hit OK, thinking I can unlock the phone with my pin code, like it was getting hit in my pocket by accident, and it resets, erases and is a new PHONE...

Yes, I have a corporate Exchange account that prevents me from toggling the setting to prevent this

 

[Triton87]

This just hapened to me, and I found out why.

If you (or your pocket) attempt to enter your lockscreen passcode 10 times incorrectly then you are rewarded with a factory reset. What really sucks is that the home button is raised and is easily pressed in pocket. It turns on the lock screen letting your pocket press away at the passcode screen.

There is no setting to turn off the home button's display function (LAME, SAMSUNG! PLEASE FIX!). However there is an option under settings to prevent the factory reset after 10 failed trys. Should be off by default. The S5 is pocket unfriendly by design. Very easy solutions are ignored by Samsung. Like they do it on purpose to promote cloud backup sales.

Big Brother is here.

 

[Kfeen]

Also happened on my S6 Edge. I had the phone in my case the wrong way while in my pocket.

 

[Mack Kelly]

I have tge galaxy avant. this has happened to me twice in two weeks. It deleted everything I have, my pictures, my text messages, my contacts, everything. this is really a pain in the [Removed by Moderator]. both times I was working and very sweaty and the phone was in my pocket. Then I take it out and it is restoring itself. so frustrating. I'm going to change services and change phones. [Removed by Moderator], you need to get this right.. It's wrong that I lose everything, as well as all of these other people in this thread. it's so frustrating that I feel I have no recourse in this situation.

 

[teamgreen02]

This just happened to me while I was out trimming. Galaxy S5 with Exchange Server set up that requires a pin. Phone was in my pocket locked for the last couple hours. I had hearing protection on and when I took them off I heard a bunch of beeping in my pocket. It was sensing my leg as a touch on the screen. It was already at the setup screen so I knew I was screwed.

This really sucks because everything I have is set up with two factor authentication so I need to go in and load everything in my authenticator app.

I'm guessing it was the 10 incorrect pins that got me. A simple bit of code like turn screen off automatically after 5 incorrect pins would eliminate this issue. Or just exponentially increase the wait period between incorrect pins and eliminate brute force that way. Either way, sloppy coding for a feature that completely wipes a phone.

 

[nate1dawgg]

I know for the Note 4 and S5 you can turn off the setting to factory wipe your phone after incorrect attempts. Settings-->Lock Screen-->Uncheck Auto factory reset (at the bottom). But I still keep managing to factory reset it, even with the option unchecked. I must be hitting some button combination while it's in my pocket.

 

[Luke Christensen]

So about 3 months ago i was playing ultimate Frisbee on a school trip with some friends with my S5 in my pocket. After about 30 minutes of play i heard my phone making a strange noise. I pulled it out and realized i was operating in Chinese on a screen that was seemingly a setup screen. All my phone data had been lost due to a factory reset. I was pissed but it wasn't that big of a deal because i had gotten the phone a week earlier. So I reinstalled the few apps I had, re downloaded my contacts, and didn't look into to it much. But today, four months later, I was doing the same exact thing, playing ultimate Frisbee with some friends, and it happened again. But this time I had a 32 GB SD card in that was nearly full of important pictures, videos, files, folders, documents and schoolwork. What I now know is those at Samsung made it so the phone thinks the SD card is part of the phone AND IT PERMANENTLY FORMATTED IT. I was am and still livid have no way to fix this problem what so ever. The phone has a defense mechanism that resets the phone after too many incorrect password attempts and the phone against my leg in my pocket did the trick! "So there is no way to recover the data?" "No its a permanent reset that protects the phone from intruders". How Stupid do you have to be to create something like that, that can be triggered by so many other means than an intruder, AND HAVE NO WAY TO FIX IT. DON'T BUY SAMSUNG . And don't buy Apple either because they are WORSE. Hopefully this helps someone hate Samsung a little more

 

[Paul Lawhead]

A factory reset just happened to me - the third time in about 4 months, I have a SGS5 with a PIN code. Twice it happened while cutting the grass, the other time while just walking around. Each time I was wearing shorts so I suspect it has something to do with the material or something. I never had it reset or show several incorrect password attempts while at work. I have a corporate Exchange Account and Airwatch for security. It will wipe after 10 tries - including my SD card :-(.

I suspect it has something to do with the home button. When it's pressed, the screen lights up and there is a chance to enter an incorrect PIN. From what I understand, there isn't a way to disable the home button from waking the phone without rooting it - something I can't do.

I wouldn't mind so much if:
1) the restore process actually restored my apps AND settings!
2) we could disable the home button without rooting
3) it didn't take so long to GET EVERYTHING resetup!

Paul.

 

[toasta]

This has happened twice to me - very annoying. I've tried to turn this off so that even if I accidentally do it again it wont reset but cannot find where the option to do this is - can anyone help?