My Note 4 reset by itself

My Note 4 reset by itself and I had to re-download everything. This is the second time it has happened to me. It was just sitting on the table, then I noticed the Verizon screen popped up. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Any reasons why the phone would reset itself? I wasn't doing anything on the phone.

Thanks for your help.

Accepted answers

MiiHere

If you're keen to keep your phone then I would just research any 3rd party apps you want to install to see if anyone else has reported them messing up their phone. Apps always want access to everything inside your phone so to me it seems reasonable enough that eventually it could cause a problem such as the one you're experiencing.

You could also check and see if your updates are set to automatic. In fact, go into settings>system update (or whatever route you have to take to get to system update) and see when the last time it updated.

All comments

MiiHere

It factory reset it's self?

Punkoz

Yes, everything was deleted. All my apps and photos. I had to redo everything.

MiiHere

Did you install any apps prior to this happening both times?

Punkoz

No new apps. I wasn't even doing anything. I was playing a game earlier then put down the phone. 5-10 minutes later, I noticed the Verizon screen. My screen lock is set to 30 seconds, so it had to have auto locked prior to resetting.

Jimweda

I've noticed in the last couple of weeks my phone had been acting up and continued to get worse every day. Slow and/or sluggish, constant self restarts, brief phone freeze only showing wallpaper, my taps on the phone would be about 20-30 seconds ahead of screen actions etc... Yesterday while at work, (I use it for camera, scan and check lists and the red Verizon screen was there and I hadn't figured out how to make it go away so I have to do a battery pull. This time during the restart it didn't get past the red Verizon start up screen and rebooted and now the name, language screen pops up like when I first bought the phone.

There is one thing I've never seen before. A few days ago during one of the restarts there was an unlocked "padlock". Doing a Google search others have run into this with varying circumstances. Couldn't really see anything in common that would link the phones. The only divide seemed to be rooted or not rooted but then that was shot down because I, like others have not even rooted or attempted to do so.

Doing a search it seems like this is not a rare issue. My question is what is the problem and how do we fix it. I don't want to set everything back up only to have to do it again. Verizons cloud is an issue as well as some of the other back up apps and not having my phone fully backed up was even more irritating since I really could have used it now. Isn't there an app that will make a carbon copy or mirror your phone for back up purposes so some could pick and choose what they want to restore on the phone without root.[Removal required by the Verizon Wireless Terms of Service] Thanks and I hope someone can figure this out.

Verizon_Support

We certainly want to ensure that your device is up and running, Jimweda. Did you enter in the presented information after the restart? How much available storage is on the device? Typically these occurrences begin to occur when there is low storage or the RAM becomes full.
YosefT_VZW
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Jimweda

Same here. My Note 4 started restarting itself randomly over a short period. As more time went by it would happen a lot in a 24 hour span then one day during my lunch hour at work in pulled the phone out of its holster and saw the welcome screen. I seriously had to fight to keep myself from throwing the phone at the wall as I was already blowing a fuse from all the previous restarts.

So far I haven't been able to find any real answers as to why this happened. There are a ton of armchair techs who continue to throw out babble speak which I have to say is almost as irritating as the restarts. I'm not trying to be mean or rude but it doesn't help anyone except their egos when they say things like "have you tried taking the battery out" or "you have to do a factory reset", etc... Obviously there are steps to take when trying to diagnose a problem. Starting from the easiest or simple deduction all the way up to the extreme which would be a factory reset before a real tech would have to take it so hard tests could be done to find the culprit.

My first impulse was to shut the phone down and do a battery pull. No luck so I pulled my SD card and a sim card reseat. Still no good so wiped cache and finally safe mode. Found a few other slightly out there methods but to no avail. I can only suspect a few things which I think might be the sim card, a hardware issue or an OS issue. Although I've seen a ton of Samsung phones having this problem I have seen at least one other brand claiming the same problem.

This problem doesn't seem to be a new one so my concern is that no one including the real experts know what the problem is or at least not sharing it with the end users. It would be great to have a fix but I'd really like to know the why. This would be like the difference between Western medicine (a fix or bandaid) and Eastern medicine (the why, finding the root of the problem and fixing that). To date I've gladly taken the Western approach, but I've never had any problem that took my phone and factory reset itself which is why I am more concerned with the "why?" and not just the bandaid. I really hope that somewhere out there is a techie or natural doodles who finds the answer and shares it with the community.

Well, time to keep digging in hopes of finding the answer I'm looking for. I haven't read any of the threads in here yet and for all I know could have wasted my time and everyone else's with my babbling when the answer is somewhere in these threads.

Jimweda

YosefT, I just noticed your reply. Dealing with a few of your CSA's and Techs Ram/memory wasn't the issue. After all was said and done no one had a solid answer so they ended up blaming it on the sim card or a hardware issue so they are sending out fresh ones of each. Factory refurbs, I'm sure but hope fully functioning. Being without a working phone for about a week is not easy especially when it's a work tool also. How did we ever get by in life without cell phones? That question is actually scarier than the answer. It would be great to figure out why this happened and how it could possibly be avoided. I've been using cell phones since they were honkin bricks and have never had anywhere near this kind of, in my opinion serious issue. A factory reset on its own is something to be concerned about. That's a machine or non human entity thinking on its own. Paranoid? Hmmm, how about the factory worker in China "accidentally" killed by one of the robotics which replaced human workers. Sure it could have been an accident or user error. What if an attack drone had a glitch and suddenly instead of a particular target it somehow changed to moving target. I'm just saying.

Verizon_Support

Having your device reset on its own is certainly an inconvenience, Jimweda. I appreciate all the steps you have taken. I know you mentioned pulling the SD card. Can you clarify if you left the SD card out and if the issue occurred again? Was the SD card formatted?

AndreaS_VZW
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Jimweda

Hello AndresS. Thanks for your reply. Although not mentioned, yes that is something I did also try without any luck. The SD card is also the same one out of my galaxy s4 which never had this kind of issue. It's kind of hard to imagine that a phone could actually do a factory reset on its own as opposed to just stop working or brick itself unless that set up or commands are burned into ROM with a bare bones OS. So how does the phone take the steps required to factory reset itself without user input or self running script, etc? I'm just curious.

Verizon_Support

Jimweda - Putting a stop to the factory reset issue is what we will do. We need additional details to uncover the root cause of this issue. Do you have a cover on your device? If you do, please let me know the brand name.
JacobV_VZW
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If my response answered your question please click the �Correct Answer� button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!