How do I keep my Android phone from turning itself on immediately after turning off?

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I have a Samsung S7. For as long as I've had it it's had this extremely annoying cork where whenever it's turned off for any reason it turns itself back on. Note that it does not have a faulty power button. I can press and hold the power button to bring up the power menu no problem and turn it off from there, but after it's done shutting down it turns itself right back on.

This is of major concern because it also exhibits this behavior when it runs out of battery power. After it runs out of power, supposedly, it sits there and reboots for multiple hours getting hotter and hotter and hotter until it finally actually truly runs out of power. And I've noticed that over the past year the length of time that it's rebooting like that is getting longer and longer indicating something in software is telling the phone that it's out of power sooner and sooner than it actually is because if it really was out of power it couldn't possibly reboot constantly for longer and longer. It takes energy to produce that much heat.

I'm suspecting that the issue with it going on for longer and longer is unrelated to the problem making it boot up right away, probably some planned obsolescence that Samsung is doing maybe out of an attempt to prolong battery life, but that's the kind of thing that could actually cause a fire in this csse. If the software thinks the battery is shrinking, but it isn't, it's going to ha more and more power to reboot for longer and longer with. The issue with it turning right back on is identical to what you would get with Windows 10 if you had some power settings misconfigured.

Once I get it plugged into a suitable power source after I let it fully discharged it will stay turned off. That's another reason why I'm sure it's not the power button because if it was a pressed in power button it should turn itself back on as soon as it has a power source and it doesn't do that. It only turns itself back on if there is enough power in the battery to turn itself back on after something in software instructs it to shut off.

If I plug in a suitable power source before it fully discharges it will stop the reboot cycle and have a chance to somewhat cool down, but for all day after apps keep crashing due to it being overheated. So I get especially paranoid about running out of power. I would love to be able to just turn the phone off once in awhile and conserve power, but I can't do that.

What can I do? No update is available for the phone and its not carrier branded. I'm afraid of ever getting another Android phone now.
 

L0n3N1nja

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Jan 11, 2014
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Sounds like your phone has a hardware failure, defective battery, or electrical short triggering the reboot.

Android software wouldn't turn a phone back on after it powered off and your device wouldn't be getting hot like that if there was nothing wrong with it.
 

J Dubbs

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Jun 4, 2016
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I think your only options would be to try clearing the cache partition (which leaves your data intact), and if that doesn't help a factory reset (which erases all the data on the phone). My wife's kindle was having what I thought was a charging port failure, it would charge slowly or not at all with every charger and cable I tried (including the one it came with), and wriggling the cable where it plugs into the kindle or propping a pen underneath it would sometimes help. I also thoroughly cleaned the charging port (although it didn't need it). It was also a known problem with that model of kindle, and we got a newer model replacement under warranty and they said keep the broken one. So I factory reset it to get it ready to recycle... and out of curiosity tried charging it. It now charges perfectly lol.

Never give up on a device till you've tried a factory reset ;)