[Galaxy S6 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hellofromtheotherside:
0. Specs

My Samsung Galaxy S6 G920F 128GB keeps crashing.

N.B.: This is also a bit of rant....

The device is unlocked and was flashed just after it was bought with the BTU firmware for minimal bloatware and crapware, and of course that B(r)itish Humor ;) Since then it was updated several times OTA. It's running 5.1.1 right now.

OffTopic: Seriously Word, Exel, Powerpoint, OneNote, OneDrive. I didn't want any other apps on my phone... ESPECIALLY AFTER AN UPDATE ! ! ! In any case WTF SAMSUNG?

1. Symptoms

- Nature of crashes:

1.1 - Screen freeze

1.1.1 - If music is playing on internal speakers the device will emit a "noise loop", does also happen with headphones.

1.1.2 - After a freeze the device will:

1.1.3 - only restart if a soft reset is performed (DOWN and POWER pressed for 7 seconds)

1.1.4 - reboot

1.2 - Reset immediately without rebooting to lock-screen

1.3 - The device also freezes in Safe Mode (DOWN while booting)

1.4 ! - The device also freezes sometimes while charging and powered of: The LED is red and it does not react to POWER or HOME

1.5 ! - The device also freezes while on recovery menu (HOME and UP at boot)

1.5.1 - It even froze when factory resetting; I then did a soft reset and it rebooted with that blue screen with the Android; after a few seconds it added "Erasing...."; it rebooted successfully into ANDROID with lock-screen....

1.6 - If the device is charging a reboot will not be initiated; it's only powered off

1.7 - The phone also powers off sometimes

1.8 - Crashes at random intervals

1.8.1 - Some just after booting and before any SIM-PIN entry is possible

1.8.2 - Some take place after a few minutes of usage

1.8.3 - Very rarely does the device function longer than half an hour without a crash

2. Already tried (unsuccessful in eliminating crashes:

2.1 - Reset of cache (several times)

2.2 - Factory reset/Data wipe (several times)

2.2.1 - From recovery menu

2.2.2 - From settings

3. Other Symptoms:

3.1 - The device will not display "Starting Android Apps, or whatever it says..." on startup

3.2 - Sometimes it emits a disturbing crackling noise right after the lock screen; actually I kind of like it now, it gives you a nice warm feeling just like the old tube TV had that crackling noise...

3.3 - I think it has a shorter battery life for the last week or so, I might be wrong, or it might be due to normal usage

3.4 - It gets quite hot while fast charging, especially the OEM-MICRO-USB-TYPE-B-CONNECTOR gets very hot, so hot you would burn yourself if holding for a sufficient amount of time (probably more than a minute or two), I'm not sure if this is related to the original issue

As with capitalism one thing is sure: The next crash will come. While writing this( using the auto save feature) the device restarted more than a dozen times. The device goes from not usable at all to annoyingly usable.....

4. What might cause it:

4.1 - Something in CACHE or RAM or TEMP (temporary files on the file system) is not deleted as it should be.

4.1.1 - The other day I read that there is an issue with ENCRYPTION as the device will boot WITHOUT PASS CODE if it has crashed or shutdown due to lack of battery, maybe the issue is the same?

4.2 - Hardware defect:

-Maybe but: I had the issue a few months ago and a factory reset resolved it, but why not now?

4.3 - Maybe I'm using too much internal storage?

- Apple Music had ~30 GB and

- Videos ~40GB most ~100MB

- Music ~ 3GB

4.3.1 - Just some crazy thought: Does ANDROID have TRIM? If not might I have not left any free pages for it to write to?

5. What can be done:

5.1 - Continue using the phone

5.2 - Bring it back to shop (the phone came with a contract for two years) and try to get a new one, but how am I going to reproduce random crashes?

5.3 - Eventually buy an iPhone ;)

- I'm actually not joking on this one; I will. But how will I put music on it, just how, how???

Thanks for reading. Do you have any suggestions?