note 4 won't factory reset, won't turn on, no safe mode. sometimes it turns on...

[timoat]

a Note 4 SM-N910F, Android 6.0.1, BB N910FXXU1DPE2, kernel 3.10.40-7733605 dpi@SWDD6721 #1

i feel I have tried everything... History:

Phone has been working fine for a year, upgraded to 6.0.1 no problems about 2 or 3 months ago. no new apps installed. Last week it started getting very laggy, keyboard strokes took for ever to register. I thought, ok, time to to a factory reset to blow out any old cobwebs. Did it via the menu. However the phone froze midway thought. I left it for an hour and then pulled out the battery. I popped it back in and it performed the reset without me having to press anything. Cool, thats good I thought.

Now I was going to change the battery, so I powered off as normal and put my other 2 week old original samsung battery in, and it would not power on. After a few reinsertions it powered back on. I though i have to do another reset. So I tried, and it would not reset. It just died. I cant restart the phone, it dies. If I shut it down normally. it wont turn on back on, I have to take out and reinsert the battery multiple times, holding down the powerbutton between to discharge. this can take up to 10 tries now. Sometimes it will go th the unable to bot in normal mode and "downloading , do not turn of target, but it will stay there for ever, more than an hour.

Every 15-20 tries it would turn on, let me get in via pin, only to start freezing up within a min, and then die again. Somewhere I read that a guy hada similar problem, and he used wakelock and that worked, on level 4. I managed to download that and used it, and hey presto, it works!

Now I had to power down the phone for a reason, and it took me about 30 min of battery and powerbuttonholding before it managed to boot up, and I was quick enough to start wakelock on level 4.

It wont boot in to safe mode, it wont boot in to recovery mode, it wont boot in to the factory reset mode. Its the same with either battery, and different cables.

Any ideas what i can do here, or what could be wrong? I havent gotten it wet or banged it.

 

[nahoku]

I find it so strange that so many people are experiencing this kind of abnormal behavior with their Note 4's. It's as if the OS is so bad it's destroying the phone! It seems you've tried everything you should. My 23 month old Note 4 is running just the same as day one, but then, I'm still on Kitkat.

With as many lock ups, shut downs, freezing, etc, I tend to think the OS is messed up. I mean, I can't even think of any other reason. Perhaps your carrier store can reflash the OS for you. You might also consider dumping MM and dropping back down the LP 5.1.1. I reverted a VZW Note 4 from MM to LP straight away with just flashing LP in Odin. I'm not sure if this is possible with your 910F though, but you might visit the XDA forums for this info.

One last thought... pull the SD card and sim and see if that makes any difference. If you have your SD set as shared memory it might crash worse though. I don't know, because I don't run an OS that allows that.

 

[Denise Nonya]

My phone had the same problem. Husband bought same phone at same time and his still works. No idea what happened but the same exact thing happened to me with the downloading and battery and after 15-20 times it turns on.

 

[Rukbat]

Look in Settings/Battery. Tap the graph to get to the next page.

Look for a sudden drop to 0. If you see that, the battery is throwing a dendrite and has to be replaced. (It's a price we pay for not having to lug a lead-acid battery around to power the phone.) Some batteries run for years without ever having problems, some start throwing dendrites in a few months - and even though it's a design problem (see Lithium Battery Dendrite links - the automotive industry is spending money to find a way around it like they were being paid to spend money), manufacturers don't warranty batteries.

 

[pduffer]

Try doing a factory reset by holding down the power, home, and volume up keys then selecting reset in the menu displayed.

Works better than selecting from options under settings.

 

[timoat]

battery is brand new, 2 weeks old and original.

as i wrote, this doesn't work at all unfortunately. I cannot get in to the boot menu on upstart.

 

[Daniyal zafar]

Facing same issue with my Note 4 ....can u tell me if ur issue was resolved or not??? If resolved wat did undo...

 

[Prncss_J]

a Note 4 SM-N910F, Android 6.0.1, BB N910FXXU1DPE2, kernel 3.10.40-7733605 dpi@SWDD6721 #1

i feel I have tried everything... History:

Phone has been working fine for a year, upgraded to 6.0.1 no problems about 2 or 3 months ago. no new apps installed. Last week it started getting very laggy, keyboard strokes took for ever to register. I thought, ok, time to to a factory reset to blow out any old cobwebs. Did it via the menu. However the phone froze midway thought. I left it for an hour and then pulled out the battery. I popped it back in and it performed the reset without me having to press anything. Cool, thats good I thought.

Now I was going to change the battery, so I powered off as normal and put my other 2 week old original samsung battery in, and it would not power on. After a few reinsertions it powered back on. I though i have to do another reset. So I tried, and it would not reset. It just died. I cant restart the phone, it dies. If I shut it down normally. it wont turn on back on, I have to take out and reinsert the battery multiple times, holding down the powerbutton between to discharge. this can take up to 10 tries now. Sometimes it will go th the unable to bot in normal mode and "downloading , do not turn of target, but it will stay there for ever, more than an hour.

Every 15-20 tries it would turn on, let me get in via pin, only to start freezing up within a min, and then die again. Somewhere I read that a guy hada similar problem, and he used wakelock and that worked, on level 4. I managed to download that and used it, and hey presto, it works!

Now I had to power down the phone for a reason, and it took me about 30 min of battery and powerbuttonholding before it managed to boot up, and I was quick enough to start wakelock on level 4.

It wont boot in to safe mode, it wont boot in to recovery mode, it wont boot in to the factory reset mode. Its the same with either battery, and different cables.

Any ideas what i can do here, or what could be wrong? I havent gotten it wet or banged it.

Has there been a solution? My situation is similar, and last night through this afternoon....it's not turning on. I have a coworker that has the same phone as me and I swapped out out batteries...mine is at 90% in her phone, and it's a month old Anker battery so it isn't a battery issue. I beleive it's a software issue...is this some sort of planned obsolescence?

 

[Procopis Christodoulou]

Good afternoon. Had the same problem this week. My Note (SM-N910F) was running MM 6...(something) for a couple of months. Approximately 4 weeks ago there was a new update. I installed it. Wrong move. Phone started to drain battery. I said "ok it's a 2.5 years old battery, let's replace it". Bought one on Monday, original Samsung. And the whole Hell broke loose. At first the phone didi not boot. Had to remove battery and reinstall. Then it started to vibrate continuously. Had to remove battery and reinstall. Then it was "trapped into bootload". Had to remove battery and reinstall. All these sound familiar yes? Now my phone boot and reboot ok-so far- all day today, whenever I choose.

This is what I did. A small internet search, (with some market search on the side that cost me 500 euros for Sam's Tab2 S) showed that many people that updated to MM 6.0.x had the same or similar problems with there phones, especially the Note4s (don't now if this has to do with the most expected 8 or if its actually time to put aside the 4). Anyway I ended up using the Odin tool, and after several attempts and experiments (like rooting, catch deletion, factory resets etc) I came to a procedure that seemed to work. Again phone is ok for now. Using the Odin I boot into download mode and install the original firmware of my phone from Sammobile web page (it was 4.4.4 kitkat). Please note that there are several firmwares depending on the country that the phone was send. On mine I had to download the one with the 3-letter code CSV (Czech republic although I don't live there). I did a recovery boot on the phone and deleted the cache data (5 times in a row, because my single previous attempts didn't seem to have any results). Then I reboot in recovery mode, again deleted cache once and then did a factory reset. Phone rebooted ok and android 444 kitkat was installed as bought. Restarted on my command for several times with only one failure. So I proceeded to update 4.4.4 to Lolipop 5.1.1 via OTA. New version installed ok. Now the phone seems to work ok. Pls also note that I removed SIM and SD cards. Haven't insert them yet. I think what Nahoku said above is very correct. Hope this will help.

Sorry for the .... short version. ������

 

[Tim_Ah]

Has there been a solution? My situation is similar, and last night through this afternoon....it's not turning on. I have a coworker that has the same phone as me and I swapped out out batteries...mine is at 90% in her phone, and it's a month old Anker battery so it isn't a battery issue. I beleive it's a software issue...is this some sort of planned obsolescence?

I had the same issue, then I realized that removing Sim card made it reboot differently. I went through several cycles of popping the battery out whenever it froze and removing or inserting the Sim card. Eventually it booted without the card, then froze after a point. Then I placed the Sim card in and it booted normally again

 

[datum9]

I have the same issue with one of my several Note 4s.
It's on 6.0.1.
Does not boot, does not react to the power button or any button configuration. Tried different batteries.
One time out of 10 it will boot apparently.

I tried removing the battery, holding the power button down, usually to avail.

What's going on with this phone? I have other devices on 6.0.1 with no issues. The same update level. This is an AT&T phone.

If I let it boot, it freezes eventually and shuts down.

How do I downgrade to a lower level of OS, 4x, is that worthwhile?

 

[datum9]

I solved the freezing and shutting down issues with the WakeLock app. It still however will not reboot on its own.

Have to do a soft reset every time.

Any idea why?

 

[Wiltonh]

I solved the freezing and shutting down issues with the WakeLock app. It still however will not reboot on its own.

Have to do a soft reset every time.

Any idea why?

I was given a Note 4 with boot issues. After a lot of playing around with it, I found that when it would not boot at all, it could be fixed by removing the battery and putting it in the freezer for a while. Once it was cold the battery could be reinstalled and it would boot. You immediately need to start the WakeLock app.

Now for my speculation on the real issue.

There is a chip that controls the power levels of the phone. There are three or more levels that the phone can run in. The lowest level has an issue. If the phone ever gets there it will not restart. The WakeLock app keeps it from going into the lowest level. It probably also shortens the battery life because you never let the phone go completely to sleep.

I worked as a component engineer for many years and we used to see this kind of thing often. It usually was caused by a internal bond wire that came loose on that power chip. The cold happens to make the bond wire touch again and the chip works correctly until it get warm.

The only permanent solution I know about is to replace the mother board. If someone has a better solution let me know.

 

[mustang7757]

a Note 4 SM-N910F, Android 6.0.1, BB N910FXXU1DPE2, kernel 3.10.40-7733605 dpi@SWDD6721 #1

i feel I have tried everything... History:

Phone has been working fine for a year, upgraded to 6.0.1 no problems about 2 or 3 months ago. no new apps installed. Last week it started getting very laggy, keyboard strokes took for ever to register. I thought, ok, time to to a factory reset to blow out any old cobwebs. Did it via the menu. However the phone froze midway thought. I left it for an hour and then pulled out the battery. I popped it back in and it performed the reset without me having to press anything. Cool, thats good I thought.

Now I was going to change the battery, so I powered off as normal and put my other 2 week old original samsung battery in, and it would not power on. After a few reinsertions it powered back on. I though i have to do another reset. So I tried, and it would not reset. It just died. I cant restart the phone, it dies. If I shut it down normally. it wont turn on back on, I have to take out and reinsert the battery multiple times, holding down the powerbutton between to discharge. this can take up to 10 tries now. Sometimes it will go th the unable to bot in normal mode and "downloading , do not turn of target, but it will stay there for ever, more than an hour.

Every 15-20 tries it would turn on, let me get in via pin, only to start freezing up within a min, and then die again. Somewhere I read that a guy hada similar problem, and he used wakelock and that worked, on level 4. I managed to download that and used it, and hey presto, it works!

Now I had to power down the phone for a reason, and it took me about 30 min of battery and powerbuttonholding before it managed to boot up, and I was quick enough to start wakelock on level 4.

It wont boot in to safe mode, it wont boot in to recovery mode, it wont boot in to the factory reset mode. Its the same with either battery, and different cables.

Any ideas what i can do here, or what could be wrong? I havent gotten it wet or banged it.

The battery you using orginal or some knockoff?

 

[datum9]

This is helpful. Thank you.

To do a soft-reset, I take out the battery, hold down the power button for half a minute.
Reinsert the battery, and it powers on.
WakeLock starts on bootup and runs continuously. I realize its day are probably limited but I managed to keep it running in that state.

I tried various batteries, none make a difference. It is not a battery issue. The batteries I am using are all fully charged.