I pre-ordered this phone back in Sept. 2020. It was brand new, the unlocked 512GB version (close to $2,000). It has been a great phone up until yesterday.
I was at work, listening to music from my phone via the Youtube music app on a Bluetooth speaker. Then my phone rang. It was extremely loud through the Bluetooth speaker, like much louder than normal. I thought it was strange. Then as I went to slide the button to answer the call, the screen went black and the "SAMSUNG" logo in white letters appeared on the screen.. I thought it was weird, but maybe it had just crashed and needed to reset.
When the screen came back on, I noticed that the lock screen image was not of me and my fiance the day we got engaged, but a different one (the stock one when you first get the phone). There was no fingerprint button and no code needed to turn it on. Immediately I was concerned. I swiped and it opened it asked me what language I wanted my phone to be. Now I am panicked. It asks me to connect to a wireless network. I skip through everything and get to my home screen, and everything is wiped clean. All my apps, pictures, videos, notes, memories, ALL GONE. The SD was wiped clean as well. I had thousands of pictures from over 15 years of Samsung phones erased in an instant. EVERYTHING PERSONAL TO ME WAS WIPED OUT. I have nothing. There were pictures I will never get to see again. I am beyond saddened by this.
Why would my phone do this? I understand needing to reboot here and there, but a complete factory reset UNPROMPTED is unacceptable. How in the world did this happen? And how can I get my personal memories back!? Is there any hope for me? I am literally so upset by this, I feel that I am going to go into a deep depression.
I have tried several file recovery methods on the SD card but they are all finding nothing. I truly think everything is gone forever. Thanks a lot Samsung for designing this phone with this function to self-factory reset without permission... it has ruined my life.
One thing I forgot to mention, this was one day after I updated the phone to a new software. So, I think something with the new update caused this tragedy to happen. I am sickened by the fact that everything was erased. I am stupid for not backing things up, but I also never anticipated that my phone was nuke itself for no reason. This is truly unbelievable.
Hello! Thank you so much for reaching out. We are saddened to hear about what happened to your phone! We want to try to do everything possible to bring stuff back to your phone after they have been wiped out of the device. Have you tried to place your SD Card into another device to see if the images will appear from there?
-Kevin
Hi Kevin, yes I tried this. I put the micro SD card into a reader and then put in my computer. I tried several recovery programs but none of them were able to recover any media files. Just an unbelievable occurrence. I am completely destroyed by this
liferuinedbysamsung - I can't even imagine losing everything on my device. Sometimes we add features such as Google backup and forget about it. Is it possible you had it?-Dolores
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