S7 secured lock time is automatically resetting itself to default settings

[AC Question]

Received my S7 last week. I like to keep the secured lock time set to lock "everytime I hit the power button or screen timeout." however it seems to hold that setting during the day but when I get up in the morning after charging at night it has reset itself to the 15 minute setting which I believe was its default. Any known issues? I've read it could be an app making the change, is there any way to identify which one? I do have some security settings that are automatically set by exchange email account but I don't think they would be automatically setting it to a less secure setting. thanks for any info.

 

[LeoRex]

I'll move this over to the S7 forum to see if someone has a better idea.

 

[zerospace-net]

I would guess this might be an app that's doing it, because on my S7, I have mine set the same -- to lock immediately upon screen timeout or power button press, and I put my phone on the wireless charger every night. My secure lock setting has remained exactly as I set it on day one.

 

[Stash409]

Thanks guys, looks like its the email admin settings from my work's exchange server. I turned off their permissions (which removed the email account off my phone) and then when I re-installed the account with permissions it automatically changed the lock settings from immediate to 15 minutes just like it's been doing at night. I'm guessing it sends a refresh to the phone settings at night. I'll check with them to see if they can change it, when I had an iphone they would automatically set it to immediate lock so I don't think they're aware. Thanks again for the assistance

 

[dlivezey]

Prior to Marshmallow, "Lock instantly with power key" was a separate setting. Now, after the Marshmallow update, "instantly" is grouped in with the other options. I think the problem is that, if your Device Administrator application wants to enforce some particular setting for screen lock timeout, it will undo your setting of "Instantly with the power key or when the screen times out," and change it to one of the other options. (I'm having the same issue, and in my case, it's the "5 minutes" setting. Prior to the update, the Device Administrator could have their desired setting/limit, and I could still have the option to lock immediately.)

I'm not a fan of this "enhancement" or "simplification" or whatever was the rationale for the change. It made more sense before, as one could: 1) have the flexibility to allow the screen to time out, yet not be locked out immediately, and also 2) have a way to immediately lock the phone with the power button. I'm going to hunt around for an explanation for the change, as I'd like to understand the intent. If anyone else knows why it was done, please share.

Thanks

 

[Christian Jorgensen1]

I am having the same issue too. I setting the secure lock time on my S6 to "instantly with the power key" but after some minutes it comes back to "30 minutes". This is horrible!! I do not want to have my phone unlocked for 30 minutes. This started happening after the upgrade to Marshmallow last Thursday. WTF Samsung!!!

 

[Wren W]

I have the same problem since the Marshmallow update. Galaxy S6, corporate e-mail policy applied. In my case, the change led to a chain reaction that caused my phone to hard reset. Normally, I have it set to lock right away with the power button like others in this thread. It makes my phone much more secure than my company's default ~30 min lock time, plus it prevents the phone from unlocking itself in my pocket, which would happen frequently and then permit all kinds of weird actions to be ran on my phone without my knowledge. Indeed, after the Marshmallow update, random games would launch while my phone was in my pocket. If the "don't turn on screen while phone is in a dark place" setting was enabled, it never helped, and I honestly forget if that feature even was in Samsung's Lollipop or not. I do see it in Marshmallow now and it's enabled. We'll see if it helps. Anyway, I thought I'd fixed the problem by resetting things to the way I wanted, figuring Marshmallow or a refresh of corporate policy at update time had reset my settings one time only.

Well, thanks to my more secure setting being repeatedly overridden and the security being automatically downgraded behind my back after I'd set it to my instant lock, my screen must have turned on on my pocket and then unlocked, and then somehow got to a hard reset condition. The next time I went to use my phone, it asked for my password, and then started a factory reset. I won't go into what I lost or point every finger in one direction; the bottom line is Google's change was a very poor one here and had the net effect of reducing security. And leading to data loss. But as to how the factory reset occurred so easily is another flaw. As far as I know, the "erase phone after X failed login attempts" was not enabled, but on the reset phone, the option is grayed out yet appears off.

I'd say for me, it was a perfect storm of severe software flaws between Google and Samsung that led to this. Google certainly created the initial condition by permitting the silent security setting downgrade in this version, and then Samsung took it from there all the rest of the way to hell. I own some blame too for whatever data loss I got since my last backup (at least the cloud has most things).

Would be great if we could get this fixed. I don't trust my phone's current settings to work perfectly until I can get preferred lock settings to stick beyond a few hours (yes, it reverted back to ~30 min during the day after only a few hours). Terrible.