Database Users

[Q] Gallery apk problem

Hello,
Ars Technica seems to have written a rather harsh review of the note 3. They are mostly critical of the software. Has anyone with the phone actually experienced this freezing in the gallery app? I am surprised it has not been more widely discussed.
http://bcove.me/e41lnia4
Full Review: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...-big-and-it-pulls-some-benchmark-shenanigans/

I suspect the reviewer is jumping the gun a little here. Looking at his video demonstration, I notice there was Dropbox folders. In my experience with the Note 2, anytime i loaded the gallery for the 1st time (or 2nd or 3rd or 4th and so on if I got impatient and exited) when it had cloud accounts to sync with like Dropbox or Facebook, it took a VERY long time to populate all of the thumbnails. Especially if like me, there were thousands of images in Dropbox. The trick is to just leave it to do its thing the 1st time, go have a coffee, then afterwards opening gallery will be almost instant.

My gallery opens up instantly, I think he has some sofware or app conflict

thanks guys. I expected more of ars technica.

He also complained about poor battery life, which is completely contrary to most everything I've read elsewhere. So hmm, performance issues + battery issues? Sounds like a bad app.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

I can only speak from my experience but I have had the gallery lag everytime I open a folder. I have also have pretty poor battery life.

Just to add some piece of mind, I can confirm that I have now checked the gallery since getting my Note 3 delivered today and it's as fast and smooth as could be expected. I've made a short video showing how responsive it is so you can decide for yourself but seeing as I'm new to posting, the forum won't let me show the link. I'll edit this post to include it once my post count is high enough.

Thanks guys. I guess I already pre-ordered the device anyway. Maybe the bad app is carrier specific (some sort of conflicting bloatware)? Do you guys mind adding your providers to the posts?

flybass said:
Thanks guys. I guess I already pre-ordered the device anyway. Maybe the bad app is carrier specific (some sort of conflicting bloatware)? Do you guys mind adding your providers to the posts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My stock Gallery opens fast, but its so laggy i can't use it. If you have many photos and/or use Dropbox/Facebook sync photos it's going to be a PITA to use. I tried downloading Gallery ICS from the play store and it works as it should, blazing fast.
Probably a easy fix for Samsung, i imagine.
My experience it's with 400 photos. I can only imagine how it would be with more.

flybass said:
Thanks guys. I guess I already pre-ordered the device anyway. Maybe the bad app is carrier specific (some sort of conflicting bloatware)? Do you guys mind adding your providers to the posts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine is the SM-N9005 from Three UK
And here is the vid of my gallery as promised
http://youtu.be/r3VsYVU10fM

Datafiend said:
I can only speak from my experience but I have had the gallery lag everytime I open a folder. I have also have pretty poor battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second that, my battery life has been horrible. It's draining at the rate of 12% in one hour. It's crappy compared to G2 which had awesome battery life. I used G2 for a week. So disappointed
Sent from my SM-N900T using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Hang - no.
But the Gallery is not really smooth when you had a lot of photos.

Samsung will not be able to fix this, they don't have the work force.
The gallery app (SGallery.apk) is 50MB. Fifty megabytes! QuickPic as a comparison is 0.39MB. Okay, it doesn't have cloud sync, so here is Flipboard: 4.7MB
All of the Samsung apps are this crazy large, which is the sign of total lack of optimization. They throw something together in some very high level scripting language, and the first time it appears to run they ship it.
Samsung phones have great hardware (yes, i think plastic is the ideal material to make phone from), great specs, good expandability. Samsung's marketing division is top notch. What the company lacks are designers and software developers.
Until they pull themselves together in these areas, our only bet is to root, delete the Samsung garbage (gain a lot of space!) and buy / install replacement apps.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 4

gallery apk problem
I can confirm that this issue exists.. My gallery app takes a while to load photos from album and it screen freezes when i open up a photo from an album

aamirkhanjadoon said:
I can confirm that this issue exists.. My gallery app takes a while to load photos from album and it screen freezes when i open up a photo from an album
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been conducting a little bit of research about this issue. I moved my class 4 32GB sd card from my Note 2 to the Note 3 with no problem whatsoever. over 3500 photos and videos (that apparently totaled to 16GB), various TiBu files & old Custom ROM zip files, downloads, mp3's, PDF's, etc. the first week that I had my phone, there wasn't any kind of difficulty whatsoever. then in that second week, i noticed that i had a broken photo, kind of like the same glitch with the Note 2 when empty/corrupted files would show up in the gallery alongside your actual photos. it was only then that the gallery would freeze on me. not any of the other folders on there, just the folder with the photos that i captured. i tried to find that file and delete it, but it inadvertently corrupted other files in that folder too. the gallery would force close, and my battery life was horrible as a result of it. i tried to use QuickPic as an alternate gallery browser to find the files, but it froze that app too. i also changed up the settings on S Finder, deleted some other files i had on the memory card, but still a no go. (there was a link over on Android Central that suggested alot of the other things I've done too, http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...-stopped-screen-freezing-every-2-minutes.html). i figured that the first thing i would need to do would be to replace the memory card altogether. moving the files to my PC i found the corrupted files and videos, left them on the old memory card, deleted them, reformatted it, but still threw just about everything else on a new class 10 64GB card and put that in the phone. so far the gallery is performing as normal, though instead of 3500 pics/videos, i left about 1200 of them on my PC to just free up some space. i'll let you all know if it persists as well.

derrtydee said:
I've been conducting a little bit of research about this issue. I moved my class 4 32GB sd card from my Note 2 to the Note 3 with no problem whatsoever. over 3500 photos and videos (that apparently totaled to 16GB), various TiBu files & old Custom ROM zip files, downloads, mp3's, PDF's, etc. the first week that I had my phone, there wasn't any kind of difficulty whatsoever. then in that second week, i noticed that i had a broken photo, kind of like the same glitch with the Note 2 when empty/corrupted files would show up in the gallery alongside your actual photos. it was only then that the gallery would freeze on me. not any of the other folders on there, just the folder with the photos that i captured. i tried to find that file and delete it, but it inadvertently corrupted other files in that folder too. the gallery would force close, and my battery life was horrible as a result of it. i tried to use QuickPic as an alternate gallery browser to find the files, but it froze that app too. i also changed up the settings on S Finder, deleted some other files i had on the memory card, but still a no go. (there was a link over on Android Central that suggested alot of the other things I've done too, http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...-stopped-screen-freezing-every-2-minutes.html). i figured that the first thing i would need to do would be to replace the memory card altogether. moving the files to my PC i found the corrupted files and videos, left them on the old memory card, deleted them, reformatted it, but still threw just about everything else on a new class 10 64GB card and put that in the phone. so far the gallery is performing as normal, though instead of 3500 pics/videos, i left about 1200 of them on my PC to just free up some space. i'll let you all know if it persists as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have installed a custom ROM.. and since then i didn't find this issue issue anymore.. it could be ROM specific too.

My Gallery continues, after the most recent firmware update, very very laggy. But i can browser the photos with the Samsung Link app, which is very very responsive and fast.

Those of you with lagging/freezing issues, does the gallery work smoothly if you disable Wi-Fi? If so...
Solution:
On a rooted device:
Navigate to system/app
Rename AllShareMediaServer.apk, AllShareMediaShare.apk, and the identical named .odex files to .bak extensions
or
Install Titanium Backup Root and freeze:
Nearby devices 2.0.0 (or later)
Nearby Service 1.4r476 (or later)
Once done with either of the above methods, the gallery app will not freeze while WiFi is enabled simultaneously.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BTW, if you're not rooted, I think going through App Manager and disabling those two apps may have the same end result.
This worked for me, gallery is now butter smooth. Hopefully it will help others.
JSB

Oh yeh, nice tip justsayinbro.
Unfortunately i can't disable those apps, i don't have root access, i can only force closed them in the App Manager.
When Wifi is OFF the Gallery is completely smooth and fast. When i turned it on, can't use it.

tWoBrO said:
Oh yeh, nice tip justsayinbro.
Unfortunately i can't disable those apps, i don't have root access, i can only force closed them in the App Manager.
When Wifi is OFF the Gallery is completely smooth and fast. When i turned it on, can't use it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome @tWoBrO. Disabling Wi-FI is definitely useful as a temporary work-around for non-rooted users. :good:
For whatever reason, AllShare Media apps aren't playing nice with Wi-Fi right now (in our case, maybe others). With Wi-Fi enabled, the gallery app seems to trigger the AllShare services to scan for media that users may want to share with capable devices. Either it's working damn hard in the background to have such a taxing impact on the gallery, or there's a bug or two that needs to be squished.
To my understanding, AllShare is actually a nice feature to take advantage of. I just hope its issues on the Note 3 get resolved.

[Q] Changed from IPhone 5S to Samsung Note 3 n900aucucnc2 on 4.4.2 and need some help

OK to start things off this is going to be a long list of questions/issues and various impressions, some opinionated and some fact. I've had apple phones for years and appreciate both, I changed because my iphone couldn't do some things my note 3 can do such as open up 200+ MB pdfs with relative ease, but then again the samsung struggles to do simple things the iphone did fresh out of the box. This is not meant to be a discussion of which is better but it would help to know what I'm comparing it to and how I think simple things should work. I use a PC just FYI.
1.) Data Transfer of large files from various desktops to the Note 3 either through internal memory or external sd card.
My first issue is that I cannot move large files from my internal memory to my sd card. The sd card in question is a sandisk 128gb but have also tried to few others just to make sure it's not the card. If I download a large file on utorrent such as a 720p movie or better, I cannot move it from internal memory to sd card. I just won't do it. Not only will it refuse to move large files but any photos are sometime hit and miss, sometimes it moves them with no issue at all, most of the time the files stay in the parent folder and don't end up in the destination folder. I can move various files if I connect it to my desktop and drag and drop them onto the sd card but sometimes moving the file corrupts it where it cannot be played on the phone. I've also tried this with numerous computers with the same result. to move files on the phone i go to my files, select the directory and then select the file I want to move. I hold down on it to select it and then press move, it then shows the internal and external storage options, i select the sd card and the folder I want the file in and then press move here in the top right hand corner. If there is another way let me know.
Second issue is when dragging and dropping large music files directly to the sd card or internal memory from a pc. If a drag and drop a FLAC album it corrupts it about 50% of the time. I routinely go to play the album and get the message that it does not support the file type or something to that affect. I often just delete it and redo the process, most of the time that works. On MP3's, if I drag and drop an entire discography of an artist (say 8gb or so) it's corrupted 100% of the time. When I go to playback the albums they play at double speed. I have to go back and drop them one by one and sometimes (but rarely) that has the same issue.
2.) Audio Playback/Microphone/Headphone/Bluetooth Issues
Firstly, I thought that all 3.5mm headphone jacks were on a standard. I did not realize that the note did not come with headphones and that the headphones that I used with an apple device would not fully function on an android device. This seems like something so simple it shouldn't even be an issue. All of the headphones, earbuds, etc I have that have inline controls do not adjust the volume or skip tracks on my android device. You name it, like a half dozen brands. It just doesn't work...
When trying to use talk to text for a text message either with headphones with inline mic or with a Bluetooth headset it does not use the microphone on the accessory device, it uses the internal phone mic which is an issue for me. So instead of using the mic right next to my mouth I have to hold the phone up to my mouth in loud places. I don't know any way to change this...I couldn't find it in any settings.
3.) Lockscreen (I don't know how this is supposed to work, I looked it up and I'm assuming its something I'm doing.)
I want my lockscreen to be simple but I cannot seem to get the weather off of my lockscreen. It does not appear unless I swipe down and there it is. How do I remove it? If I open up the lockscreen editor by swiping from left to right its not there. I only have one lockscreen page so I don't know whats going on.
When I have notifications on my lock screen and click on them it puts a box around the lower part of my lock screen where you normally swipe as to say swipe here stupid to unlock. Is that the case or am I missing something else? It seems as though if my phone doesn't have a security lock on it and I press on my notification it should just open it. Or is it intentionally non-intuitive for some other reason?
4.) GLITCHES!!!!!!!! Various other issues
Routinely my music apps gets stuck on a page. Say if I'm listening to an album and try to back it up to my list of albums it just loads the same page over and over again. I have to hit my homebutton and open up the music app again from the icon and sometimes that causes it to crash. It does this on the stock Samsung music player and on play music. Normally my phone plays music 24/7 so it may be just how much I use it for that purpose.
Apps crash on a regular basis, at least a few times a day. I'd say I have an app crash maybe 3-5 times a day on average. Some more than others. Because of all the glitches I did a factory reset weeks ago to see if there was another issue. I've also tried uninstalling and re-installing all the apps that normally crash but that hasn't seemed to help. I don't believe apps used by millions on other android devices such as Bank of America (crashes literally every time I use it) or Pandora could be the problem.
Google integration is sketchy at best, It routinely doesn't delete e-mails off the google server when I delete them off my phone. It's really hit and miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it will load the same e-mails dozens of times even though I've deleted it daily. The google+ photo backup is hit and miss and even updates over cellular even though its set to only update over wifi when plugged in. All of the sync settings seem appropriate for what I want it just doesn't work.
Text scaling under most situations is completely absurd. I've got 5.7" of screen and have to re-scale practically everything that loads so I can read it. This is especially and issue when reading forums which I'm on frequently. Is there a way to change this? If there isn't there definitely should be! Not a glitch but an issue.
All social media apps that load from a page (a wall, forum, feed, whetever) always reload when I click on something and go back forcing me to start over from the beginning. I've only had this issue on this phone, my previous iphones just take me back to where I was. Is there a way to change this annoying problem?
5.) The Photo Gallery
It just doesn't work. I don't know any other way to put it, its the second biggest failure on the phone. i wouldn't trust it with important anything! It routinely just looses photos, online account's don't update at all, s health photo that I've deleted dozens of times keeps showing up in my photos, all my album covers end up in my gallery and I have to manually go back and delete them all, photos end up corrupted and not able to view them whether on sd card or on phone, it goes on and on. Is there another application I can use? Can I make another app my default gallery app? Some online photos like picassa/google+ don't load correctly, it'll show the preview photo and when clicked on it'll show a completely different photo from that album. I would just delete it but can't delete online account photos from my phone gallery app and when I delete them online it doesn't update it on my gallery.
6.) Voicemail
I recieved a voicemail the first 10 minutes I had my phone and clicked on it in my notifications and it called my voicemail. I was confused at first, was i holding a 700 dollar phone or 90's Nokia? Seriously? And on top of that it didn't come with ATT visual voicemail out of the box, I had to download it. WTF! No I don't need voicemail on a phone I need 20 other google apps instead...seriously? On top of that att visual voicemail app is crap. I routinely miss voicemails because it not reliable enough to show all my voicemails in my notifications. Is that how all android devices are? I may be a little spoiled by the voicemail being on a tab in my phone app but it seems as though if there is an att specific model this should work better than it does...
7.) Text messaging
I don't use the stock mesaging app because it wouldn't reliably send a photo...that is all. I use textra now and it works better but still isn't what I would consider to be reliable...
8.) General Gripes about the phone app
The buttons are so large it looks like its designed for the seeing impaired.
Color scheme looks like I'm 4 and trying to push blocks into the appropriate holes...
I can't figure out how to change the color scheme on it, can you change it?
I hate the cartoonish figures for people that don't have photos.
Okay, it generally looks childish or like it was designed by Mattel. I need something far more professional looking.
On a positive note, speech and handwriting recognition is second to none, S Pen apps and S pen integration in general is very refined. It's extremely fast with very little lag in all situations. There are lots of positives so I'm not downing the phone at all but it just needs to fit my needs better. That's not everything but a good start. Thanks for your time and patience.

And to sum it all up, I think you should go back to i... :sly:
Sent from my N9005

Dejan Sathanas said:
And to sum it all up, I think you should go back to i... :sly:
Sent from my N9005
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your note does all of this also?

Lythropus said:
So your note does all of this also?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First - ur post is too big to even read.
You are in xda and there is ton of information here. If you search , u will realize that most of the issues have solution...
When moving from another OS its always difficult but stay and you will love it.

Let me rephrase, it's not an android problem that I'm aware of: is my phone ****ed up and in need of replacement our does every note 900a cnc2 do this stupid ****?
The new os doesn't seem to be an issue this is mainly a hardware issue unless you're saying all android phones corrupt photos straight out the box. Which I know that isn't the case.
Some of my gripes are android related but mostly sounds like a hardware issue.

Try moving the large file using "my files", 3rd party file manager cannot move file from internal to external sd (a limitation introduced in kitkat).
Also try copying your music collection using card reader.

stonedead said:
Try moving the large file using "my files", 3rd party file manager cannot move file from internal to external sd (a limitation introduced in kitkat).
Also try copying your music collection using card reader.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've only tried my files to move it on the phone, it will not move them.
I basically have to use a card reader to copy anything over a gig or so reliably. I can drag and drop it but that doesn't always work.

Lythropus said:
...
My first issue is that I cannot move large files from my internal memory to my sd card.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really, and you did that just fine on the iPhone? :silly: That would be quite a full miracle given how (as far as I know) the iPhone never had a SD card :silly:
Read around - if you are on 4.4 there are some new security restrictions on writing to the external SD. If you are on 4.3 you are probably doing something wrong.

xclub_101 said:
Really, and you did that just fine on the iPhone? :silly: That would be quite a full miracle given how (as far as I know) the iPhone never had a SD card :silly:
Read around - if you are on 4.4 there are some new security restrictions on writing to the external SD. If you are on 4.3 you are probably doing something wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course I didn't, I.used third party software to drag and drop mp3's on internal storage of a jailbroken device. It worked 100% of the time.
But you're still missing the point. My files are being corrupted whether on the external sd card or the internal storage. There aren't any examples off this on my model phone on your forum...

As far as I know my files isn't a third party so it should have full access to read and write to my sd card per 4.4
That does explain why u torrent won't do it though.

Did u use your iTunes mp3 files? My girlfriend is also into that icrap and when she used my computer for music files I learned that you don't wanna use iTunes. Don't take this as a apple...uhm... disliker read about it if u don't believe it. Itunes messes with the music files and therefor I had to do my whole music storage from the scratch.
I think what @Dejan Sathanas was trying to say was: that if you are not ready to switch u will find strange issues that nobody else encounters and end up spamming the threats. For example: I haven't had any issue moving any files ever on any android device!
So long story short
1. Get the device u prefer (even if it is an apple)
2. Try some music files that didn't run through apple tech

4aces said:
Did u use your iTunes mp3 files? My girlfriend is also into that icrap and when she used my computer for music files I learned that you don't wanna use iTunes. Don't take this as a apple...uhm... disliker read about it if u don't believe it. Itunes messes with the music files and therefor I had to do my whole music storage from the scratch.
I think what @Dejan Sathanas was trying to say was: that if you are not ready to switch u will find strange issues that nobody else encounters and end up spamming the threats. For example: I haven't had any issue moving any files ever on any android device!
So long story short
1. Get the device u prefer (even if it is an apple)
2. Try some music files that didn't run through apple tech
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't use the ALAC files from my Apple device. I was under the impression they wouldn't play on here, just used mp3s and flacs. I tried to upload a pic of what the corrupt files look like on my phone but got an error that said could not complete this operation due to low memory. I'll figure it out when I get off work and upload them.

Took it to best buy\ATT, they sent me to the Samsung rep/dealer in store. He couldn't figure out what was going on, why it wouldn't move files, why some would corrupt, update Google anything, etc so they are sending me a new one.

[Q] CAUTION! S4 Deletes Pics/Vids-An unpleasant surprise&hypothesis as to why

I made a discovery regarding pictures disappearing and videos becoming permanently corrupt that I find hard to believe, considering the presumed maturity of development (Product Management) on Samsung's Galaxy S4.
Discovery came in a "painful" way, i.e., emotionally - frustratingly - angering
It started when I lost several priceless pictures and videos from my daughter's graduation from the College of Nursing.
On our way home, I decided to move the pictures to a folder, I then deleted some pics and moved the entire folder to the memory card. I uploaded a few to my Onedrive but wanted to wait to get home to transfer the rest because of 4G costs.
Well, when I got home, most of the pictures were gone!!!
I was stumped.But it also explained what may have happened to the pics/vids I took of conversation between my mother and sister when my sister was breathing her last breaths, falling to cancer.
The good news for my daughter's pics is with Onedrive Synching, and WiFi in most places where I've taken photos, I've since retained most of my pictures, but some are gone forever, or so it would seem.
Here's my hypothesis I'd appreciate a response to.
I hypothesize that the cameras, during "capture" write to a temp folder in internal memory, then transfer the photos to either the internal camera folder, or to external "card" if that's how you have the camera set.
That's where the problem is. What if your SD card is bad, as I discovered was the case with mine? You can not write to it.
And here's my accusations against Samsung/google for what I consider to be minimally amateur Product Management/Development Management, at the least, if not injurious and worthy of a law suit by some ambulance chaser.
Based on observation and hypothesis, here are my accusations/analyses, :
AT&T/Samsung/google:
1. Do not allow me access to internal memory any more. The phone is "locked down" and therefore I cannot get to internal memory with undelete software.
2. Did not think through the ramifications of what that would mean in the event of accidental deletion of files, let alone priceless photos and videos, and so their amateur, imbecile brains failed to provide an undelete "button".
3. Do not verify written/moved files, before deletion, when the camera is configured to store images on the external card. They ASSume, rather, they surely were written, and simply delete them from the temporary area.
4. Do not warn me that the external card cannot be written to, and therefore fail at the move function.
laughable amateur stuff!!
Can anyone verify my hypothesis?
I'm further speculating the files remain in the temporary folder, deleted. Is this a correct hypothesis. One reason I believe it is, is because upon inserting an SD, the popup tells you it is configuring the SD for camera, except "burst". Of course, this adds 5. to the list above.
5. Do not test to then warn me, by simply writing a quick file to the card, that the card cannot be written to.
So when you shoot vids and photos, you can review them for a few minutes, then they "magically" "mysteriously" disappear (pics), or become corrupt (vids). I uploaded a video of a dolphin jumping fully out of the water to my facebook last week, I then went to show it to my daughter and it was gone, except it was on facebook,, in very poor quality.
Can anyone tell me where the temp folder it is? Is it accessible without "root" ing?
Will "root" ing format it?
I found a utility that can recover even after a format. Has anyone tried any of those after "root" ing?

SprintGalSII said:
Will "root" ing format it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We need more information... but there is a good chance you can root without losing any data.
Go to your About Device and provide us with the listed fields.
Model Number
Baseband Version

THANK YOU!!! Here you go.
NighthawkXL said:
We need more information... but there is a good chance you can root without losing any data.
Go to your About Device and provide us with the listed fields.
Model Number:
Baseband Version:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
[*]Model Number: SGH-I337
[*]Baseband Version: I337UCUFNC1
NOTE: I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 through AT&T. I can't figure out how to change my screen name from my first on here which was S2.

SprintGalSII said:
[*]Model Number: SGH-I337
[*]Baseband Version: I337UCUFNC1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your in luck, simply go to https://towelroot.com/ on your phones web browser, tap the Lamba symbol which will download a APK, open the APK and install Towel Root, once the app is open hit the "Make it Ra1n" button. Once that's done head over to the Play Store and grab the SuperSU app. If you need further instruction you can PM me or call me via Skype.

[Q] Photos have been corrupted somehow?

First post so, sorry if this is in the wrong section or doesnt have the right flair or whatnot mods feel free to move this/edit if need be.
So onto the problem. Heres the situation I was taking a lot of photos (possibly at the time 200+) and I was telling the phone to put them on my extSD card. The SD card is the officially branded Samsung 64gb version. So when I was finished taking all these photos I went back only to realize that about 15 were showing up normal in the Gallery. The others has that weird symbol with the crack/lightning bolt through it. Weirdly enough even though the images don't load the thumbnails do, on some of them. And the ones that I have gotten to load are extremely blurry and not very hi res.
Some things that I should probably write here to help narrow down a solution. I am running the default Android 4.4.2, the phone didnt get too hot since it was out most of the time. I had it turned up to the highest resolution 5312x2988. I'm currently on vacation so I didnt have a carrier, or connection to the internet at any time. The photos are also taking up the amount of space they normally would so I have no idea whats really happening.
I have tried opening it in windows directly and to my surprise a few of the thumbnails did load but when I went to click on them windows photo viewer or whatever said it couldnt open them. I tired then opening the photos via IE but that didnt work either. I'm just wondering if theres any way to get them back or to see whats wrong with the card. If you need any clarification what so ever please let me know. Thanks a bunch!

I have the same issue
Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk 2

Google photos backup sync broken after flashing G955U1

I've come across an issue concerning Google photos backup not functioning properly after i converted my Canadian G955W to G955U1, XAA. Another member on XDA forum has also confirmed the following issue though on a US Metro PCS S8+. Please test and post your results. Here are the steps to test.
Have a SD card in the phone
Make sure the Google photos app has backup/sync enabled but DOES NOT HAVE SD CARD FOLDERS SET TO BE BACKED UP
Make sure your camera is set to save to DEVICE by default and not SD card.
Copy about 1-2GB, or more, worth of video files e.g mp4 from your PC or anywhere and put them on your SD card.
Go in google photos app and browse to device folders from within the google photo app and confirm you can see the videos you copied. If so, then proceed to next steps below.
Take a picture with the phone camera and go to the google photos app(make sure wifi is ON). Check if the picture you just took gets backed up to google or does the app get stuck at showing "1 photo left to backup!
Please test this and report. This could possibly be a some bug somewhere in the G95XU1 firmware, Google photos or something in the flash process causes this behavior. I have done multiple re-flashes and factory resets and still have this issue.

I wonder if it's possible that Google Photo backup is failing because it doesn't recognize your device since you Flashed the US version?
Early morning guessing ?
Sent from my SM-G955W ??

shaggyskunk said:
I wonder if it's possible that Google Photo backup is failing because it doesn't recognize your device since you Flashed the US version?
Early morning guessing [emoji210]
Sent from my SM-G955W [emoji1063]
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I find that hard to believe because I flashed from a Xfinity US carrier phone to a metro pcs US phone and I still have that same problem. If I try to save the photos to the internal memory in the phone it has problems syncing it to the Google Cloud. If I save the photos to an SD card it has no problem to the Google Cloud. I haven't had the chance to check everything out but that is what I am seeing.
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tdamocles said:
I find that hard to believe because I flashed from a Xfinity US carrier phone to a metro pcs US phone and I still have that same problem. If I try to save the photos to the internal memory in the phone it has problems syncing it to the Google Cloud. If I save the photos to an SD card it has no problem. I haven't had the chance to check everything out but that is what I am seeing.
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Hi there, well what you list is the opposite of my issue.
Infact having the camera store on the internal memory of the SD card is irrelevant for me.
As long as I have some video files on the SD card e.g I copy over a movie from my computer to the SD card, Google photos stops backing up any new pictures I take from the camera.
Im also seeing an odd behavior where the photos app doesn't refresh the list of files and folders on the SD card until I umount and remount the SD card on the phone.
To add further to the confusion, as long as the photos app doesn't realize that I've copied over some videos into the SD card, the backup sync keeps working fine. The moment it sees the new files that sync breaks.
Do keep in mind, all throughout this process, I have NOT selected any SD card folders to be backed up in the Google photos app.
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Alirz,
By chance, did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the Google photos app?
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alirz said:
Hi there, well what you list is the opposite of my issue.
Infact having the camera store on the internal memory of the SD card is irrelevant for me.
As long as I have some video files on the SD card e.g I copy over a movie from my computer to the SD card, Google photos stops backing up any new pictures I take from the camera.
Im also seeing an odd behavior where the photos app doesn't refresh the list of files and folders on the SD card until I umount and remount the SD card on the phone.
To add further to the confusion, as long as the photos app doesn't realize that I've copied over some videos into the SD card, the backup sync keeps working fine. The moment it sees the new files that sync breaks.
Do keep in mind, all throughout this process, I have NOT selected any SD card folders to be backed up in the Google photos app.
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
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My phone is not rooted but using a regular file explorer I can see that all the folders on the SD card have permissions of rwxr-xr-x
Whereas internal memory folders have a permission of rwxrwx--is this normal?
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tdamocles said:
Alirz,
By chance, did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the Google photos app?
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
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Done that many times, even tried several older versions of Google photos, different SD cards, different video files, multiple factory resets.
I'm really contemplating flashing back to my original firmware to see if that reoslves the issue just for my sanity sake. I'm going nuts trying to figure this issue out. It doesn't make any sense.i had no problems before flashing the g955u1 firmware.
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I know this is not directly related to this thread but my problems only started after the G955U1 flash, hence im posting here an an FYI for others and also possibly get some help from other who might be seeing the same problems as me.
im also noticing that the Galaxy apps application is not realizing that there are updates available for the various installed samsung apps.
if I check under galaxy apps > my apps > updates. it shows nothing
however if go under Galaxy apps> All> it shows me that various apps need updating.

UPDATE: Well ****. Hesitantly i decided to flash back to my original firmware and guess what. I can still reproduce the problem. Im clueless now and dont know why for the past 3 months that i've had this phone, i did not run into this problem before! I copy video files to my sd card in the past many times and never had this problem before. Just to note that when i flashed back to my original firmware, i did not restore any backup or anything. Created a new Google account to test with etc to make sure everything was setup from scratch. So either all 3 of test SD cards are bad or the 30 different video files i have tested with, something is wrong with them

My phone originally is G955W with a CSC code of VTR here in Canada. My carrier supports "Smart call", "places" feature with my stock firmware and CSC.
However when i convert the phone to G955U1 , CSC of XAA. I lose those two features. Others using the G955U1 firmware have told me on reddit that as long as their carrier doesnt specifically block that feature then it shows up on their phone. however for me, those features dont even show up under settings when im on G955U1