S8+ Restarting, Freezing, Battery Issues 5 Months Later

[Targatheory]

I know there have been other threads about this but honestly not a lot of them went anywhere or had any solid conclusions. Also especially regarding the restarting issue, most articles or help threads I found were from back in April and May when the phone first came out and there hasn't been any current updates since.

I got my Sprint S8+ first week of May and everything had been great. The phone restarted about three times in total due to heavy Play Store downloading, game DLC downloading and multiple apps open, or so I believe, and I was okay with that. Everything was otherwise perfect.

After the "full" release of Bixby, I had to factory reset in order to get Google Assistant and Bixby Voice to play well together. I made a thread on it btw. Afterwards, again everything perfect.

Now, I believe with the most recent update, I started to notice the so sudden immediate decline of overall performance including multiple daily restarts/freezings. Such a dramatic change. My battery started dying out by noon to afternoon. The phone was lagging more often. And if the phone didn't smoothly restart, it would bug out displaying only a half frozen "Sam-" with the blue indicator solid for several minutes, sometimes not even powering down, or if it did, not able to power back up for several moments. And I began to try to trouble shoot.

I cleared cache from recovery startup. I deleted all my media pics vid etc. I removed the SD card. I went back to stock launcher from Nova. I went back to a lot of stock apps ie messaging, clock etc. I deleted several games.

I began to feel the problem was that I was nearing my storage capacity as my phone would alert on an HOURLY basis that I only had 10G left to spare.

After deleting everything mentioned I still only had 13G left somehow, but at least the alerts were gone and I thought I had resolved the issue.

But it didn't. So long story slighly shorter, I did another factory reset. I kept it stock for a couple days.

Guess what I'm doing right now at 6AM out of pure frustration for what reasons?

Yup. Even though the factory reset gave me back 51G of storage, all stock apps including launcher etc, my phone has decided to restart again. Actually it has happened about three times tonight (I've stayed up late).

I will say though that the battery performance definitely came back for initial two days before now, but the phone still restarts. I will also say that I DID just try downloading about 8 Play Store apps at the same time with a few apps open, but that shouldn't be the trigger to restarting at all...

So here I am waiting on ANOTHER factory reset, this clearing cache first and initiated from the recovery boot menu rather than the settings General Maintenance menu. I've also decided to restore from date 7/11 to see if that will make a difference.

Did the last update cause this? Any idea other than the "go back to store" answer given to early owners who actually had the opportunity to do so? I can't just ask for a replacement now, it's too old. And even though I have the insurance through Sprint, it's still a 200$ deductible for a refurbished device!

This phone was a complete BEAST for 5 months. I had well over 300 apps, using Nova Prime, browser ALWAYS had about 10 tabs saved even when not in use, all performance settings to max, entertainment mode on etc, 64GB Evo+ card acquired from Samsung's Entertainment Kit promo, lighting fast in all social media and news and other media app, internet connection...everything...

Then all of a sudden???

Sorry guys, I'm in a bad mood.

 

[Keeblers16]

I'm on my third phone from Verizon. Original one was freezing almost daily. Kept having to reboot. Verizon sent me another phone and I think that one was a bad apple. That was doing the same thing. Now...this phone just froze this morning. Going to call tomorrow and let them know. Maybe Samsung needs to put an update out there that can possibly fix this otherwise, I'm headed over to the dark side...APPLE. I don't want to but I might be forced to. Stay tuned.

 

[Targatheory]

Thanks for the response. I bet a lot of people are ignoring this because its "been beaten to death".

However, I've yet to come encounter cases of people who had PERFECT phones since launch, go from that to a POS in the span of a few weeks.

My thoughts is all on the August 30 OTA security patch.

Also, I'm currently on my third Factory Reset since last week.
And yes, the phone crippled me today while I was craigslisting/google mapping/texting meetups today with multiple people to view their items for sale. So, real world scenarios are definitely being affected. Plus, the battery dying from 11Am to about 3-4PM didn't help either.

What I'm now mostly worried about is the warranty issue.
I have Sprint USA and their 11$ total protection plan. They won't give me a replacement without going through Asurion, paying the 200$ deductible, and all for a "refurbished phone"

I know Samsung itself has a 1 year warranty, but is it at no cost? Any can help?

 

[fxsoap]

What I'm now mostly worried about is the warranty issue.
I have Sprint USA and their 11$ total protection plan. They won't give me a replacement without going through Asurion, paying the 200$ deductible, and all for a "refurbished phone"

I know Samsung itself has a 1 year warranty, but is it at no cost? Any can help?

super late reply to this but for others it may be helpful.

The 1 year warranty from Samsung is incredible. You can have your phone fixed at a bestbuy/ubreakIfix store or 2-day UPS mailed to their Plano Texas location.

It covers any issues you have that aren't caused by physical damage (drops/water damage.)

They have a Premium Care warranty that stacks with your manufacture warranty that outdoes any of the Tmobile plans/Asurion Refurb garbage offered. I can't highly stress how bad those plans are for you as a consumer, you'll end up buying a new phone if you break it and it won't be new.

* Max. 3 accidental damage claims per 12-month period. $99 deductible applies.

* An extended warranty is a service contract that covers repair costs but is not an extension of the manufacturer’s warranty.

 

[mark7914]

Reading through the story the problem seems to have started or been exacerbated by "the latest update".

So the logical thing to do would be to regress the phone back to the version before that update and then disable all updates (let me know if you need advice on how to do that, it requires something of a brute-force approach) and see how it performs then.

However I've never seen my S8 restart by itself and have indeed had multiple apps downloading simultaneously without problems. You saw restarts back then, before the update. And this makes me wonder if there's something wrong with, for example, the storage - maybe the phone keeps hitting corrupted sectors (like a failing disk drive) and that forces the restart. As does installing a certain number of apps or loading it with data.

So if you do regress it back to a factory install and then turn off all the updates don't immediately load the phone with stacks of stuff but instead build gradually and see if all is well at each stage.

Any restart of the phone during an app download should then be investigated as that may enable you to hone in on the issue.