Database Users

[Q] Galaxy S4 died after 4.3 update

heya guys,
I'm on stock FW on my GS4S i9505 and yesterday morning i update to 4.3 OTA.
It was working all day just fine without issues or lag for the matter.
Today morning when i woke up, my phone was plugged into the charger and was turned off.
I turned it on by couple of mins later it would freeze and wont unlock, just black screen with a red light flashing on the top left of the phone.
I had to pull out the battery and put it back everytime i wanted to try and boot it.
I did that 3 times within 10mins and the 4th time it just stopped turning on all together.
Anyone has this issue and maybe can give tips on how to fix this if possible?
Thanks in advance.

re: auto updates
Smokie Smokerson said:
heya guys,
I'm on stock FW on my GS4S i9505 and yesterday morning i update to 4.3 OTA.
It was working all day just fine without issues or lag for the matter.
Today morning when i woke up, my phone was plugged into the charger and was turned off.
I turned it on by couple of mins later it would freeze and wont unlock, just black screen with a red light flashing on the top left of the phone.
I had to pull out the battery and put it back everytime i wanted to try and boot it.
I did that 3 times within 10mins and the 4th time it just stopped turning on all together.
Anyone has this issue and maybe can give tips on how to fix this if possible?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You will need to go to SamMobile.com and download the official odin flash firmware
for your phone's exact model and flash it using Odin.
That will get the phone into good working condition with the stock 4.2 firmware.
After that you can use the phones built-in updating system again and most likely it
will work just fine. Just be sure that the battery is at least half full before the phone
starts the auto-update process.
Perhaps you installed some app or game from the playstore which did not play nice
with your phone and caused the 4.3 update to get stuck or it could have been the
battery if it did not have enough charge in it.
You should try to get the phone into download mode to see if it can be Odin flashed.
Hold the volume down key at the same time while holding the the power key down
for 20-30 seconds and see if it goes into download mode.
If it does you have nothing to worry about.
NOTE: before trying download mode be sure to remove the battery for 5 seconds
and replace it, making sure the phone is in a power off state before trying to boot
it into download mode.

Misterjunky said:
You will need to go to SamMobile.com and download the official odin flash firmware
for your phone's exact model and flash it using Odin.
That will get the phone into good working condition with the stock 4.2 firmware.
After that you can use the phones built-in updating system again and most likely it
will work just fine. Just be sure that the battery is at least half full before the phone
starts the auto-update process.
Perhaps you installed some app or game from the playstore which did not play nice
with your phone and caused the 4.3 update to get stuck or it could have been the
battery if it did not have enough charge in it.
You should try to get the phone into download mode to see if it can be Odin flashed.
Hold the volume down key at the same time while holding the the power key down
for 20-30 seconds and see if it goes into download mode.
If it does you have nothing to worry about.
NOTE: before trying download mode be sure to remove the battery for 5 seconds
and replace it, making sure the phone is in a power off state before trying to boot
it into download mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply dude.
I'd love to do that, but i dont see how this is possible since the phone doesnt boot up at all anymore.
Any ideas?

Maybe your battery is dead? Because it's known issue on Galaxy S4 phones.

Try another charger.

I tried with my wife's S4 battery and my colleague's S4 battery.
Also tried with 3 different charges that came with the S4, no dice... :/
I had to take it back to the store, it was under warranty still.. they are sending it back to Samsung and will get it back in 2-3 weeks, same phone repaired or a refurb i guess.
After doing more search and with the help of some falks from #Android @ EFNET, we came to the conclusion that its an issue with the EMMC chip just like the first generation of Note 2 and S3.
What's pissing me off is that Samsung fixed the issue on Note 2 with a new patch of phones, so newer phones didnt have the EMMC issue as far as i can tell. SO why the hell would they still use it for the S4 is beyond me.
Just a word of advice, if this happens to anyone, make sure you run a backup as soon as it boots back up the first time.
In my case, it booted 3 times by removing the battery and putting it back and froze 3 times, there was no 4th.
If i tried to backup the phone the first or second time it booted, i could still have my data to be restored on the new repaired phone.
This should be marked as closed unless some other people with the same issue want to discuss it here.

Note 4 Randomly Turned Off Won't Turn On Anymore

Hi everyone, after trying everything I could to fix this phone I don't know what to do anymore so I'm here asking for other options.
So the story is, I was just using my phone as I usually would that day and it just randomly turned off and won't turn back on anymore.
(it randomly turned off before a couple of times but it would always turn back on)
- It won't go into recovery mode or any other of the 'modes' (I tried all the different combinations of pressing the keys).
- It's not a battery issue as I've tried my battery on my brother's phone (he has a Note 4 too) and it worked fine and I tried his battery on mine and it wouldn't work.
- I tried the 'drain' method (removing the battery and holding the power button for a minute or more).
- I tried using multiple cables to charge my phone nothing worked.
I didn't drop my phone, wet it, root it or anything and it was working fine the day it happened until it just powered off by itself. When I plug it in my laptop it would make
a sound indicating I've plugged something in but nothing happens. It was version 5.1.1 model SM-N910F.
TLDR; Is there a way to somehow recover the files in the internal phone memory?

This is happening to me as well, also started in February. I'm suspecting a hardware issue. Tried it ALL but rooting. In the past 30 minutes my phone has booted and rebooted itself till it died. If someone can confirm it is a hardware issue. Maybe it's time to unite and get it fixed for free. ~Tamarnouche

Recovering data from a brain dead phone may not be possible, as it probably need some internal component replacement which may erase the data(Mostly). Have u tried connecting it to pc? Better give it to service immediately. Good Luck.

My phone has done exactly the same thing, happened in February too, initially it did the random freeze then started to reboot itself, went back to stock software and full wipe but no improvement; now it will only boot if I leave the battery out for a prolonged period, otherwise it doesn't respond to the power button at all.
I occasionally see MMC Read Fail on boot but not all the time so presumably the internal memory has a bad contact or is failing.
Can it be replaced?

HXOY said:
My phone has done exactly the same thing, happened in February too, initially it did the random freeze then started to reboot itself, went back to stock software and full wipe but no improvement; now it will only boot if I leave the battery out for a prolonged period, otherwise it doesn't respond to the power button at all.
I occasionally see MMC Read Fail on boot but not all the time so presumably the internal memory has a bad contact or is failing.
Can it be replaced?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem with my Note 3. Only if I keep the battery out for a long (over 24 hours) time I can see the boot logo. So if you find a solution to this kindly don't forget to tag me, will really appreciate it.

I was wondering..
I came across this Forum group since I was looking for boot problems with my SM-N910T3
I hope flashing pit will resolve this..
I recently started to have some low level issue and was hoping it was partition/boot related and not hardware.
Randomly phone boot directly into Download mode with error;
ddi: mmc_read failed
Often I have to pull battery and hold down /power / home for 10 sec to boot up again.
Thanks

Galaxy Note 4 keeps freezing after 2mins usage, gets in bootloop

Hello, so i've had this Note 4 for about 2 years, i had no problems with it thus far until recently ( 3 hours ago actually) i was just texting and browsing Instagram and out of no where the screen froze, it became unresponsive and the screen went black and started constantly vibrating so i quickly pulled the battery out and put it back in again, tried to start it again and it got stuck on the Samsung logo, i went for recovery mode and tried to look up latest cashe log and it froze right there too and restarted, pulled battery out and in again, tried to get into Recovery mode for a second time and a dm-verity verification failed error on the lower left corner popped up, i selected "Restart phone" and it got stuck on the Samsung logo again, battery in-out, tried to get into Recovery mode for a third time to do a factory reset but this time it got stuck whilst trying to boot onto recovery, and i had to out-in battery again, tried several times to get into recovery and it didn't work, i just gave up and started searching, then after 14 minutes i decide to give it another try and it normally booted up! i inserted in my PIN and browsed the apps for about 2mins but it froze, again, and the whole cycle kept repeating i let it cool down for 15mins and it boots up normally but freezes again after a few minutes of usage, i noticed that it insanely overheats before freezing (especially right above the SIM card area) and the four CPU cores are showing 2469MHz and on 100% (But that's also the case when the phone just boots up right?), Now i basically can't access recovery mode and i'm stuck with a Freeze-Reboot looped and i'm left with no other option but a full Stock ROM flash, the thing is i can't even get into recovery to do a full wipe before flashing in the ROM, can i just flash in again a TWRP recovery? and is there any way to fix this without having to do a full Stock ROM flash (i Tried the wake lock app it didn't work) and i'm on Android 5.0.1, this has JUST happened today and never before. i'm hoping this isn't a hardware issue.
UPDATE: i have just noticed something rather interesting, the phone immediately freezes and goes nuts with the reboots and failed recovery modes instantly after i connect it to a wifi network, and exactly when it's attempting to "send report", a sending report sign shows up in the notification bar and it immediately screws up the phone until i do another Factory reset, i just did another one without connecting to a wifi network and i've already gone 40mins with it without any issues but perhaps it's just because it's not on heavy usage?

Sounds like you have the eMMC issue.
You can try and reflash with Odin. Get the right version from Sammobile.
Do yu get to download mode in any of the scenarios you describe?
Try WakeLock again and select the level to 4

Having the same issue
I'm having the same issue and don't have any idea how to help, just hoping someone out there knows...:crying:

Cybrid013 said:
I'm having the same issue and don't have any idea how to help, just hoping someone out there knows...:crying:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have the Snapdragon version - it's highly possible to have the emmc problem. Which is a bummer and the phone is like dead.
Unless you can buy another 910C motherboard and swap it.
Sorry.

What is short name for emmc?

jjoeshua said:
What is short name for emmc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
embedded multimedia controller

Just been having a very similar problem. I posted this elsewhere, but it may be helpful:
"My issue was that I needed to recover data, docs, photos, phone numbers etc. When boot looping the note 4 got very hot . In particular around and to the left of the camera (looking at the rear). Thinking it could possibly be the dreaded eMMC problem which also manifests itself by creating heat, I thought cooling the device might help. I placed the Note on a cooler box freezing block and voilà! No boot loop. I was able to remove all, but necessary apps and do a full copy to my PC. Storage was reduced from around 90% to 50% and memory 80% to 60%. It's now been stable for 12 hours, but the jury is still out. Next will be full reset with he latest available firmware 6.0.1 as mine was still on 5.1.1."
Also now downloaded a eMMC bug check that says my eMMC chip is 'sane'. Guess we'll see

Boot up Issues

I am having boot up issue with my 10.1 android head unit which i purchase from amazon.
1. the issue is that when it boots up it take 5 to ten minutes to boot up stay stays stuck on the caution sign which i posted pics
2. once it turn on the memory is gone and i have to reset the entire radio
The company sent me a fix which seems like i have to do some modification to the fix. and when i installed the fix it seem like it did work but the radio is acting up again any help
with this issue

Reinstalling Android

Hope someone can help. I have an Android 8.1 head unit (Chinese) which has been working fine. I removed it from my car and powered it up in the house with a PC PSU, this enabled me to sit for a few hours and set all my apps and home screen up just as I want it. Once all was done, it was running great. I installed back in the car and on powering up, everything was good. A couple of days later, I got in the car and the android displayed “Erasing" and took about 10 minutes to boot. On boot it has gone back to factory defaults and deleted everything. Even worse, the original launcher screen will not come on and it just says “Starting android" but does not progress any further and I cannot get into any settings.
Does anyone know - How to Install the original or another Android that will work with my unit?
Or any other ideas? I'm fairly confident when it comes to fixing stuff, just need a walkthrough to get me up and running again.