A few days ago, I noticed a strange new lock screen on my phone that I didn't remember putting on there. It was a simple black background with a blue clock, blue notification icon, and the text of my last notification, also in blue. If I swiped across it, my normal lock screen appeared (complete with lock pattern) and I had to unlock it again.
I spent a few days troubleshooting it, uninstalling all my additional launchers, before I figured out what the issue was. I had Dynamic Notifications enabled on my phone. This was the culprit, because once I unchecked it, the mysterious lock screen disappeared.
You can find Dynamic Notifications in the Samsung Galaxy S3 settings by going to Settings > Accessibility and unchecking that bad boy (or checking it, if you like it.)
#android #s3 #galaxys3 #lockscreen #troubleshooting
Monday, April 21, 2014
Stuck in Recovery
This weekend I was at my mother in law's and I flashed a new custom recovery image on my rooted Samsung Galaxy S3. When I was finished, it asked me if I wanted to reboot into recovery mode, which I did because I wanted to 1) make sure it worked, and 2) make a backup of my phone.
Much to my chagrin, the phone would not boot into recovery mode. It flashed the Samsung logo, along with the dialogue at the top saying it was booting into recovery, but then the screen went dark and the phone became unresponsive (I'm not sure if it was off or not).
I held the power button and rebooted the phone, but it tried to go into recovery mode again, rather than boot normally. I pulled the battery and rebooted again, but it still wanted to go into a non-functioning recovery mode.
I tried to go into download mode (power + home + volume down), and this worked. So I pulled the battery and tried to boot normally, but again got stuck in recovery FUBAR.
I couldn't plug the phone into my computer and fix things with Odin, since I was at my mother in law's. And I couldn't research the problem, since my phone wasn't working.
What I found to work was to put the phone into download mode. It asked me if I wanted to continue (volume up) or cancel and reboot (volume down). When I rebooted via this menu, the phone booted normally and I was able to flash a different recovery image.
I figured I'd put this out to anyone else who has this problem. If you're stuck in a non-functioning recovery mode loop, try to go into download mode and reboot from there. It might just work.
#android #s3 #galaxys3 #samsung #recoverymode #troubleshooting
Much to my chagrin, the phone would not boot into recovery mode. It flashed the Samsung logo, along with the dialogue at the top saying it was booting into recovery, but then the screen went dark and the phone became unresponsive (I'm not sure if it was off or not).
I held the power button and rebooted the phone, but it tried to go into recovery mode again, rather than boot normally. I pulled the battery and rebooted again, but it still wanted to go into a non-functioning recovery mode.
I tried to go into download mode (power + home + volume down), and this worked. So I pulled the battery and tried to boot normally, but again got stuck in recovery FUBAR.
I couldn't plug the phone into my computer and fix things with Odin, since I was at my mother in law's. And I couldn't research the problem, since my phone wasn't working.
What I found to work was to put the phone into download mode. It asked me if I wanted to continue (volume up) or cancel and reboot (volume down). When I rebooted via this menu, the phone booted normally and I was able to flash a different recovery image.
I figured I'd put this out to anyone else who has this problem. If you're stuck in a non-functioning recovery mode loop, try to go into download mode and reboot from there. It might just work.
#android #s3 #galaxys3 #samsung #recoverymode #troubleshooting
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)