Author: Draineh

Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Swollen Battery

Draineh Leave a comment

It almost sounds like a fairy tail, doesn’t it? Somehow I always end up writing a post about problems with my Samsung Galaxy phones. Just to be clear, they are very good phones but they just seem to have silly problems, this time with my Galaxy S4 its a little more serious,

I purchased my Galaxy S4 back in August and before it even reached 6 months old I noticed it had started to switch off randomly. This started as a fairly rare event, growing to at least once a day. Eventually I decided that it might be an idea to remove the battery for a bit and re-insert to see if that helps, funnily enough the battery just dropped out as I took my case off. Thats right, the case, not the back cover. I didn’t think anything of it and started to try and piece the phone back together when I realised that something wasn’t quite right, the battery had expanded – perhaps swollen is a better word. Whilst previously it was a small rectangular, flat battery. It was now this rectangular, bulbous thing which wouldn’t quite sit right.

First port of call was Samsumg, they explained that this is a known issue that affected a number of models shipped within Europe. They also pointed me towards my nearest Samsung approved service centre to get it repaired. Alas, the swollen battery could have damaged something internally so the phone has to be sent away to be inspected and the battery replaced.

I plan to do this over the weekend and I’ll post an update once its back. In the meantime, if you have noticed your Samsung Galaxy S4 behaving oddly or switching off at random times, check your battery!

 

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Restore Samsung Galaxy S2 to Factory Settings

Draineh Leave a comment

Earlier this week I hit a bit of an issue, my Samsung Galaxy S2 wouldn’t let me open the settings option, every time I tried it just displayed the message, “Unfortunately Settings Has Stopped”.

Looking around I found a few suggestions, one was to load into safe mode as this would disable any problem apps or services I might have installed by mistake… this actually did nothing. It then occurred to me that I had no way to actually reset my phone if I couldn’t get into the settings panel!

Just to be sure, I loaded up Klies on my laptop to see if there was a way and thankfully there is, but… it didn’t work. Klies refused to recognise my phone as a Samsung mobile. I should probably add at this point that my phone is un-rooted and completely vanilla in every way (apart from the odd Samsung provided update). I then took to another round of Google-ing and it turns out that I was pretty alone in this problem, until I finally I hit on some instructions on how to load into a recovery mode that I had never discovered!

The instructions for how to enter this and reset your Galaxy S2 are below but please remember a few things; try and take a backup of anything important before you do anything like this and remember to only do this at your own risk – if you don’t feel like taking the risk then get in touch with your phone operator or Samsung to try and get them to reset it for you.

  1. First, turn your phone off.
  2. When the phone is completely off, you need to hold down the Menu, Power and Volume Up buttons simultaneously. Don’t let go of them!
  3. Keep holding the three buttons until the phone switches on and loads to a Green Android logo, you can now let go.
  4. On this list is an option titled, “Wipe Data/Factory Reset”. Use the volume down button to scroll down and press the power button to select.
  5. Scroll down using the volume down button to select Yes, delete all user data.
  6. Select the option to Reboot System Now. This will reboot and your Samsung Galaxy S2 should now be reset to factory settings.

You now have the pleasure of getting everything set back up how you like it 🙂

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