[Galaxy S6 Active] a-ll:
Currently have a G890A, AT&T, Android 6.0.1, Baseband: G890AUCS5CPK4

I've spent days of time trying to understand and fix repeated freezes/crashes, and am curious if you think my understanding of the problem is likely accurate and if the next steps make sense. Below are current issues, my previous solution attempts, best guess at the problem, and next steps to solve it. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Issues:

- Starting at the Android 6.0 update, the phone began freezing intermittently when installing/updating certain apps.

- Freezing was unaffected by subsequent firmware updates

- Freezes happened before I could see which apps were starting to auto-update.

- During a freeze, the phone gets warm and drains the battery quickly. Power+down will reboot the phone, then it usually freezes again.

- After the first freeze, freezes and crashes would then continue on bootup, sometimes over 20+ reboots, usually while drawing "SAMSUNG" letters or soon thereafter

- Eventually whatever was installing/updating/uninstalling seems to take, and the phone finally stops rebooting.

- Disabling auto-updates prevents freezing

- After a factory reset it takes hours of rebooting, getting lucky enough to see the home screen, and for luck to hold long enough to open the play store before a freeze happens

- Freezing does not happen when updating every app. Installing/updating Google Inbox and Khan Academy both caused 20+ reboots/hangs. Trying to uninstall Khan Academy produced another 20+ until the uninstall finally seemed to take. I haven't tried to uninstall or update Inbox.

Current efforts to fix the problem:

- Safe mode: no improvement

- 3 factory resets: no improvement

- 3 factory resets + safe mode: no improvement

- Disabling auto-updates: effective, as long as I never install or update apps

- calling ATT: They said go to a Samsung rep at Best Buy

- talking with Best Buy Samsung rep (closest is an hour drive away): Best Buy says they can re-flash G890AUCS5CPK4, but my concern is that whatever got corrupted in an earlier update won't be fixed by re-flashing that version.

- calling Samsung: Samsung says they'd be happy to look at it if I send it to them a couple weeks. They also state that they'll send it back untouched if I try flashing it myself.

Best Guess About the Problem

Something got corrupted in Play Services during the 6.0 update; something that runs early in bootup and continues any in-progress installation/update processes.

Next Steps

- Determine on this thread whether it makes sense to reflash G890AUCS5CPK4 at Best Buy

- If so, take the phone to Best Buy for a reflash. If not, find a backup phone for a couple weeks and send the GS6 to Samsung

- Prefer not to try flashing it myself since I have no experience and don't want to brick it or remove the chance for Samsung to fix it as a backup plan.

Do the best guess and next steps make sense? I really like the s6 active. I've had it just over a year and want to keep it for a while. It's gone rafting, kayaking and hiking in all kinds of weather, and operated flawlessly in and out of water the entire time. Fantastic phone until this issue.

Thanks again!

Adam