I have a Samsung s21 5g that is about 3 years old. A few months ago I got some debris in the charging port which physically broke the connector preventing it from charging. I bought a cheap third party part and had issues with cell reception/sim, so I paid up and replaced the charging port daughter board with a genuine Samsung from iFixit. It had been working flawlessly for a couple months, until last week.
The issue first started as the phone was freezing. It would just become unresponsive. I powered it down by the power/bixby button and vol down. It turned back on. This occured once again a few days later, same behavior but this time I got a message "System process not responding" message before it froze entirely. Thursday I was driving and all of a sudden my wireless android auto disconnected. I stopped and checked my phone, which had a blank screen. I pressed power/vol down, nothing happened. Plugged it into power, about 5 min down the road I try to turn it on and it turns on and works normally all of yesterday without any hitches.
Today I was just web browsing and then went to the home screen, where it freezes. It unfroze for a second to load the menu when I had swiped down, but then froze again. It eventually just went to a black screen. power/vol down, and then power, still a blank screen, won't show the samsung logo, anything. This is where i'm at now.
But what is interesting:
I pulled the back off, if I unplug the battery and then plug it back in, the phone will try to power on, every single time. Sometimes it freezes on the Samsung logo, sometimes it gets to the Samsung logo then black screen. Sometimes I get into android and can use it for a few seconds to a minute then freezes, often with a one ui and system process not responding message. Often eneds in a black screen. I have observed the phone is not actually turning off when the screen goes blank. I answered a phone call. 45 seconds into it the screen went black with the screen and side keys completely unresponsive. But the phone call never dropped until I told the other party to hang up since I could not.
I can get it into recovery mode on boot. I have cleared system cache, no change. I have looked at the log files but I don't know what to look for. I suspect there's some sort of hardware failure with the NAND or RAM, but am hopeful its a software or firmware bug there is some way to remedy. I am FAR more versed in the world of PCs than I am phones.
I do have a backup of this phone, that includes my photos, my contacts, documents, etc. However, this backup was last run just under 2 months ago, so it does miss my latest vacation photos, which I would really like to have. Google photos does not contain these photos. My main concern is that I really cannot afford a new phone right now, and would really love to know if there are ANY options to fix this, or what you think the issue may be?
The issue first started as the phone was freezing. It would just become unresponsive. I powered it down by the power/bixby button and vol down. It turned back on. This occured once again a few days later, same behavior but this time I got a message "System process not responding" message before it froze entirely. Thursday I was driving and all of a sudden my wireless android auto disconnected. I stopped and checked my phone, which had a blank screen. I pressed power/vol down, nothing happened. Plugged it into power, about 5 min down the road I try to turn it on and it turns on and works normally all of yesterday without any hitches.
Today I was just web browsing and then went to the home screen, where it freezes. It unfroze for a second to load the menu when I had swiped down, but then froze again. It eventually just went to a black screen. power/vol down, and then power, still a blank screen, won't show the samsung logo, anything. This is where i'm at now.
But what is interesting:
I pulled the back off, if I unplug the battery and then plug it back in, the phone will try to power on, every single time. Sometimes it freezes on the Samsung logo, sometimes it gets to the Samsung logo then black screen. Sometimes I get into android and can use it for a few seconds to a minute then freezes, often with a one ui and system process not responding message. Often eneds in a black screen. I have observed the phone is not actually turning off when the screen goes blank. I answered a phone call. 45 seconds into it the screen went black with the screen and side keys completely unresponsive. But the phone call never dropped until I told the other party to hang up since I could not.
I can get it into recovery mode on boot. I have cleared system cache, no change. I have looked at the log files but I don't know what to look for. I suspect there's some sort of hardware failure with the NAND or RAM, but am hopeful its a software or firmware bug there is some way to remedy. I am FAR more versed in the world of PCs than I am phones.
I do have a backup of this phone, that includes my photos, my contacts, documents, etc. However, this backup was last run just under 2 months ago, so it does miss my latest vacation photos, which I would really like to have. Google photos does not contain these photos. My main concern is that I really cannot afford a new phone right now, and would really love to know if there are ANY options to fix this, or what you think the issue may be?
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