S8 Constantly Rebooting

[Mike Hughes]

Hello- new to the forum. My wife & I still have our S8 Actives and love them. However, her phone has had its share of problems. A while back her Bixby button froze 'on' and I had to install Bixbi Button Remapper in order to shut down the nuisance Bixby from always running and using battery. It worked great and stopped Bixby from running all the time and recording conversations. Fast forward a year. Her phone has suddenly shut down. It will not start unless it is plugged in. When it is plugged into any charger it goes into an endless restart/reboot mode. I have tried holding down the power button, w/volume down, with & w/o Bixby with no change. I have tried every button combination listed online to no avail. I can get to the Warning screen: "A custom OS can cause critical problems in phone and installed applications.... " Use Volume up to continue or Volume down to cancel. When trying to acknowledge w/volume up or down, the sequence repeats. If I hold no buttons, the phone starts to the Samsung screen and then reboots/repeats. The phone is dead unless plugged into a charger. I thought it might be the battery, so I swapped out a battery from my phone that was removed about a year ago. No change. I removed the power, volume and Bixby buttons thinking they may have been 'stuck'- no change. Any thoughts? Should I just count my blessings and move onto another phone for her?

 

[ocnbrze]

sorry, but your phone is done. looks like it is time to upgrade. there is nothing you can do at this point. your system partitions have been corrupted. if you can get to download mode , you should be able to flash a firmware update that should fix the issue. but if you can't get there, then there is not much you can do at this point.....sorry.

 

[olbriar]

The sad fact is that your wife's s8 active is beyond manufacturers designed lifespan. I realize it was a major investment but it's likely best to consider moving onto a newer device. As ocnbrze suggested, you might with some effort gain a bit more use out of it with some effort. But at it's age you will likely be looking at other problems soon.

 

[Mike Hughes]

sorry, but your phone is done. looks like it is time to upgrade. there is nothing you can do at this point. your system partitions have been corrupted. if you can get to download mode , you should be able to flash a firmware update that should fix the issue. but if you can't get there, then there is not much you can do at this point.....sorry.

Thanks for the fast response. I don't think I can get to the download mode. I presume it is in the same menu as the factory reset?? I have done that before, but cannot get back there.

 

[ocnbrze]

Thanks for the fast response. I don't think I can get to the download mode. I presume it is in the same menu as the factory reset?? I have done that before, but cannot get back there.

https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g950f-galaxy-s8/download-mode/

https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g892a-s8-active/download-mode/

 

[Mike Hughes]

https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g950f-galaxy-s8/download-mode/

https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g892a-s8-active/download-mode/

Thanks- but I cannot get to the download mode screen. As soon as I release my fingers to select the Download mode using the volume up button, the phone reboots. I cannot get there fast enough, although it might be fast enough, just another problem exists. My wife is very disappointed because she has literally loved the Active to death. She admits she is very clumsy, it has taken hundreds of face down flops on terrazzo floors and the screen looks like a bad target practice. Mine got rejuvenated last year with a new battery and is still running strong. We bought them in December, 2017. That being said, everyone is correct that there may be other problems down the road even if I got it working. Have spent a full day so far pulling it apart and putting it back together, surfing for solutions on a phone that looks like it spent its life in the center of a busy roadway. Time to move on. Appreciate everyone's input.

 

[Mike Hughes]

OK- another twist. Went to AT&T to get another phone for my wife(yes, I know it is a locked phone-I got $800 for this non-working phone). Anyway, after about an hour, I showed the salesperson what the phone was doing when plugged in and it started up to what I call the Recovery Mode. I did see the Android Installing Update Icon briefly and then a danger sign. In the Recovery Mode, I selected the Reboot System Now and the phone started up???? Of course it was half apart since I didn't bother to reglue the back after trying to swap batteries. Anyway, the phone worked and we were able to transfer most of the data over to the new phone after trying both the Samsung & AT&T transfer apps. (AT&T finally worked). My wife had been using the Samsung calendar with the data stored locally that did not transfer, so I decided to take it home to try and see if we could recover her calendar data. So I get it home and it repeats the original above problem of loading to the Samsung startup menu, shutting down and restarting. I tried letting the battery drain more, no luck. Then I plugged the phone into a high output charger (3A) and now I am back at the Recovery Mode. Now it will not start, it just returns to the Recovery Mode. After selecting the 'Reboot System Now', the Samsung startup screen appears, closes and then an Android Installing Updates appears for ~5-10 seconds. I briefly see an Android on its side and then I am back at the Recovery Mode screen. I have not been able to break this pattern yet. I did try clearing the cache, no change. The logs are not useful to me. I did see a message "This device does not have /odm and /product partition." as well as several "Skip disabled entry for partition" ...... Partition issues as ocnbrze mentioned?? I can get to the download screen when I hold all 3 buttons (the disable Bixby app must be disabled??). Anyway, so that is where I am. Do any of these other Recovery mode options save data on the phone?

 

[ocnbrze]

No as far as data backup. Stock recovery does not have this option. It very much seems like your system position is corrupted. The only way you might be able to fix this is to flash a firmware update. But like I said earlier, you need to be able to go to did download mode.

 

[Mike Hughes]

I thought I would check one last time, but presumed that residual data would not be recoverable. I can get to the download screen and plan to try that as a learning exercise before I turn the phone into AT&T. After constantly rebooting, shutting down and rebooting, It is just so weird that it booted up in the store and then it only returned to the Recovery mode screen at home. Thanks for all the help.

 

[Mike Hughes]

OK- so I have installed Odin3_v3.14.4 on my PC. I am struggling to find for lack of a better word 'the image'. I have gone here https://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads/?model=N0052149# and I get what looks like a driver for USB:
DEVICE(INSTALL),USB DRIVER
Version 1.5.65.0 (English)

Any suggestions?

 

[ocnbrze]

what model is your phone? who is your carrier? what is your baseband?

i usually go here https://www.sammobile.com/samsung/galaxy-s8-active/firmware/#SM-G892A

but i only see the unlocked models for the various carriers.