A Best Buy "Samsung Experience Consultant" (let's call her "SEC" for short) just wiped my Note 5 without asking me, after I explicitly told her not to. The words I used are "priceless data -- do not wipe under any circumstances". But then the SEC was talking on the phone to Samsung Support (SS for short) and following the instructions from SS. Booted my locked phone into some tech support mode (I don't know the right words) and just went ahead and wiped it. SEC put me on the phone with SS, and SS explained that she was just giving the instructions to SEC to write down -- didn't think she was following the instructions in real time.
But the upshot is my two weeks worth of vacation photos are completely gone -- is that right? Really no way to recover them?
Brand new phone, just arrived in the mail literally the day I was leaving, so my setup was minimal. I didn't set up any kind of cloud sync. I naively assumed that something like that happened automatically (it does on my wife's iPhone). Advice to a newb on how to avoid this in the future would be appreciated.
Anyway, here's how it happened: I set the lock screen to be Fingerprint and it worked fine for about two weeks. Since I was often up a canyon with no bars, I set the phone to Airplane mode because it seems to make the battery last much longer. Give me advice on that too, if that was a dumb thing to do.
Then the fingerprint reader stopped working. My fingerprints didn't change, no cuts or abrasions or burns, has to be a hardware or software failure in the phone. I typed in my backup password but it said that was wrong too. I know user error is to be expected here, but I really think I was typing it correctly. I tired a few times but not enough to make it brick my phone.
I called Verizon and they put me through to Samsung. Samsung said all their ways to fix it remotely depended on my phone being connected to a cell tower, which of course wouldn't work in Airplane mode. (The Android device manager webpage method couldn't work either.) They said to bring it to a Best Buy that had a Samsung Experience, and there someone would be able to fix it.
So I went to BB, where the SEC I spoke to immediately said she didn't know how to fix that. "I'm only level one tech support". She had me call Samsung back, and the SS I spoke to had me put SEC on the line, and the rest is history.
What's the lesson to be learned here? Don't use fingerprint unlock with airplane mode? Or just never use fingerprint at all? (I'll never trust it again, that's for sure.)
Grateful for any advice,
Bulgie
But the upshot is my two weeks worth of vacation photos are completely gone -- is that right? Really no way to recover them?
Brand new phone, just arrived in the mail literally the day I was leaving, so my setup was minimal. I didn't set up any kind of cloud sync. I naively assumed that something like that happened automatically (it does on my wife's iPhone). Advice to a newb on how to avoid this in the future would be appreciated.
Anyway, here's how it happened: I set the lock screen to be Fingerprint and it worked fine for about two weeks. Since I was often up a canyon with no bars, I set the phone to Airplane mode because it seems to make the battery last much longer. Give me advice on that too, if that was a dumb thing to do.
Then the fingerprint reader stopped working. My fingerprints didn't change, no cuts or abrasions or burns, has to be a hardware or software failure in the phone. I typed in my backup password but it said that was wrong too. I know user error is to be expected here, but I really think I was typing it correctly. I tired a few times but not enough to make it brick my phone.
I called Verizon and they put me through to Samsung. Samsung said all their ways to fix it remotely depended on my phone being connected to a cell tower, which of course wouldn't work in Airplane mode. (The Android device manager webpage method couldn't work either.) They said to bring it to a Best Buy that had a Samsung Experience, and there someone would be able to fix it.
So I went to BB, where the SEC I spoke to immediately said she didn't know how to fix that. "I'm only level one tech support". She had me call Samsung back, and the SS I spoke to had me put SEC on the line, and the rest is history.
What's the lesson to be learned here? Don't use fingerprint unlock with airplane mode? Or just never use fingerprint at all? (I'll never trust it again, that's for sure.)
Grateful for any advice,
Bulgie
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram