WTH just happened to my phone??

[loclhero]

I'm sitting at my computer and my Samsung S5 makes some weird noise, like a woosh noise. I pick it up and it had shut down. I started it up again and everything, every picture, every contact, all messages gone. The phone is literally asking me to go through the start up wizard as if I just bought it. I have some pictures on my computer and some in the cloud but a lot are not and gone forever.

My carrier is Verizon so I don't know if it's an issue with them or with the phone. Does anyone have any idea what the hell would cause this?

 

[Hadron]

That sounds like a full-blown factory reset. I don't know what would cause that spontaneously - it can be triggered remotely using Android Device Manager, and presumably Samsung's security tools too, but obviously that should only happen if you tell it to. I don't know whether VZW also have a tool that can do this.