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I find it incredible that for a phone with a non-removable battery that you can turn the device off without having to get past the lock screen security. This is a major security flaw in my opinion.
If you were unable to power down at the lockscreen, then if your phone were to be stolen, then at least you would have the time it takes for the battery to eventually die to attempt to track it.
A long-press of the power button at the lockscreen should only be allowed if the lockscreen type is set to none/swipe.
If anyone is in a position to put in requests to Samsung themselves, could you please submit this.
Any further thoughts welcome....
What if you're stuck on your lockscreen, your screen doesn't respond and you have to reboot your phone to solve the problem ? how are you supposed to do if this option is removed ?
Terrible idea you have here
And if there was no way to turn it off from the lockscreen, the stealers would just have to wait until the phone have no battery left, then the phone would be off
BigBen60 said:
What if you're stuck on your lockscreen, your screen doesn't respond and you have to reboot your phone to solve the problem ? how are you supposed to do if this option is removed ?
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A long-long press of the power button (approx 8 seconds) will force a reboot as per all Samsung phones, so if you do have a problem you can then go into recovery (eg. to wipe cache etc.). Ok, the thief might also be aware of this and do a factory reset in recovery straight away, or even keep the phone in recovery until the battery dies, but some may not be aware to do this. And, even if a thief did a reset, then at least your data would be wiped, which is half the battle when a phone is stolen.
BigBen60 said:
Terrible idea you have here
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Click to collapse
Cheers!
BigBen60 said:
And if there was no way to turn it off from the lockscreen, the stealers would just have to wait until the phone have no battery left, then the phone would be off
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Click to collapse
But at least you would have the time it takes for the battery to die to track it, which I already stated. So once stolen, you could have anything up to a day to find it again. Currently if someone steals your phone, all they need to do is switch it off immediately, and you will have no chance of ever seeing it again.
A nice firmware feature would also be to send an e-mail to yourself of the phone's current location when battery level reaches a low level (eg. 5%). Some apps (eg. Lookout) have the facility to do this.
As the S7 has a non-removable battery, it should at least have the option to disable the power key menu at a secure lockscreen.
All phones with non removable batteries are like this for the reasons the person stated above. This function is exactly the same as if the phone has a removable battery. If a thief stole an s5 they could just take the battery out immediately and you couldn't track it either... The battery isn't a security feature. It's just to power the phone. They need to have a way to cut the power on devices. This is standard for most electronics. Hold the power button on your laptop and see what happens.
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
Don't know if you are aware but if you setup and use Samsung's Find My Mobile, you can lock, disable shutdown, and display a message on the screen with a button to call a number of your choice should you lose the phone. Try it out.
Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
Considering the fact that should your device become unresponsive/problematic you can always fall back on a long-long press of the power button at any time, including at the lockscreen, in order to reboot / go into recovery (which is an inherent hardware feature across all Samsung phones), I therefore still believe that allowing a power off at a normal long press at a secured lockscreen prior to passing the lockscreen's checks represents a flaw in your device's security. I think power off (but not reboot) should be omitted at the lockscreen popup and only included when a longpress of the power button is done after the device has been unlocked.
And what makes it worse, you can also pull down the quick panel shortcuts at the lockscreen which would enable a theif to turn off location from there too.
Basically, find my phone type functions are only of any use only if your phone is ever lost, but useless if ever stolen.
Dri94 said:
All phones with non removable batteries are like this for the reasons the person stated above.
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And I believe having a non-removable battery could be seen as an opportunity to enhance security for reasons I've explained above.
hawkerpaul said:
And I believe having a non-removable battery could be seen as an opportunity to enhance security for reasons I've explained above.
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It does seem that Samsung have missed a trick with shutdown from the lock screen that could be very simply enacted and give another string to the security bow.
or you can just disable power menu on lockscreen via Gravity box..viola ?
hawkerpaul said:
Considering the fact that should your device become unresponsive/problematic you can always fall back on a long-long press of the power button at any time, including at the lockscreen, in order to reboot / go into recovery (which is an inherent hardware feature across all Samsung phones), I therefore still believe that allowing a power off at a normal long press at a secured lockscreen prior to passing the lockscreen's checks represents a flaw in your device's security. I think power off (but not reboot) should be omitted at the lockscreen popup and only included when a longpress of the power button is done after the device has been unlocked.
And what makes it worse, you can also pull down the quick panel shortcuts at the lockscreen which would enable a theif to turn off location from there too.
Basically, find my phone type functions are only of any use only if your phone is ever lost, but useless if ever stolen.
And I believe having a non-removable battery could be seen as an opportunity to enhance security for reasons I've explained above.
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Click to collapse
You seem to be missing the whole point. Every phone behaves this way. Whether a removable battery or not. You can disable the power to every fun from every manufacturer at any time no matter what type of battery. It's not a security flaw. Also you can go into settings and disable the notifications from being pulled down before the device is unlocked.
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
They should make phones with no batteries to fix the battery flaw, powered by air. Working in this field, I've seen a lot of broken and stolen phones come and go, if you really want to remove the battery, it'd take 2 minutes max if you arent worrying about replacing a 10 dollar back glass.
People consider iPhone's battery non-removable too, you can get that thing disconnected in less than a minute. Also there are dongle tools (Can even DIY one) that can force your phone into recovery/download mode simply by plugging it in.
So I think this is just needless worrying.
OK, so most of us already know about "Google device manager" feature or Samsung's "Find my Phone", you can lock your phone, erase all the data, locate it if it's online.
But in all this cases your phone can be still hard reseted (vol button + home button + power button, any of this combinations) and be used again.
What am i asking is, if you got your phone lost or stolen, can you lock completely your android phone, so any bad guy who find it and doesn't want to return it, can not use your phone at all (hard reset feature disabled), so the only think the thief has left is to throw the phone away or to sell it for pennies for it's battery, screen and so on.
P.S. This feature is already included in all iphones
This feature is not on iphones, a simple bootstrap and DFU mode can still initiate a wipe
Also if a thief still wants, they just have to JTAG the device and wipe it that way.
Reactivation lock is a better alternative
Hi all,
Just wondering if you Android pro's can tell me whether the G930F (Australian) can boot into maintenance mode?
My girlfriend bought one new on the way to the airport for her dream holiday in the USA mainly for the camera, then promptly forgot the swipe pass for the secure startup when she arrived home. USB debug is off, so I'm looking to get it back on. Got no problems with the FRP, she knows all the details for that, but it's just that the phone won't power on and connect to the network so we can do an account recovery. Or, at least get to a point where we can pull the photos off and then just do a hard reset.
If it's a no go on maintenance boot, would flashing the stock ROM back on get us past the swipe and at least to a point where we can actually recover the account from Google?
Just to be clear - the phone boots past the Samsung logo and then stays in "To start up your device, draw your pattern." and the option to go to an emergency call. We cant call the phone at this point, it just goes straight to voicemail.
Thanks heaps!
The 930F is the international model, Australia has no specific firmware or hardware differences so shouldn't have any reason not to be able to.
It sounds like you have the set to have the pattern required to start the device as opposed to just unlock it, and I'm not sure how early it kicks in preventing boot modes.
If I recall correct boot to recovery is vol up + home + power, boot to maintenance is vol up + power, and boot to download is vol down + home + power
Couldn't tell you if recovery or maintenance will let you pull data.
A factory reset within recovery might get past the pattern lock, but will wipe your photos.
A stock firmware flash in Odin should do it if recovery doesn't work, but also will wipe your photos.
Ah, I see. I appear to be able to get into Recovery and Download boots, but not maintenance. I'd seen that once you get into maintenance, you can turn on USB debugging from there, and I'd be all sorted. Hmmm.
That's a pity about the stock ROM flash, I thought that might be my best bet after maintenance boot.
Maintenance might be a snapdragon thing, googling it I can only see people doing it on the US model.
Oh right. Could I do anything like in this article -
Google "Physical Imaging Of A Samsung Galaxy S7 Smartphone Running Android 7.0" (sorry, I can't post outside links yet!)
- down to step 4? Is there an appropriate boot image available for the G930F?
Thanks heaps for the help so far!
Should be, every ROM zip I've seen has one in them. Not sure where you could get a stand alone stock one.
Ok, cool. Would the one found in this thread -
"ENGBOOT for S7 and S7 Edge (Qualcomm/Exynos) (Untested) (Still Seems Legit)"
- on these forums be ok? There's a file in the download labelled G930F_XXE1APBG_ENGROOT.tar (after extracting the .7z) that appears to be standalone. Is that what I'm after?
For reference, in Recovery boot, it tells me that the current PDA is G930FXXS1DQF6, and from that I can find that the CSC is G930FXSA1DQEF.
So she can't remember the pattern to unlock it? Or does it not boot properly despite entering the correct pattern? The S7 comes encrypted by default and the pattern is the key. No data is actually usable at the point it displays the pattern screen with the black background(because it can't actually access the wallpaper yet). If you can't get the pattern right all data currently on the device apart from the external SD(unless it's encrypted too) is lost It's a security feature, the only other way is a factory reset.
Yeah, black background is where we're at, and yeah, can't remember the pattern. So there's no way to get past that at all? Not even flashing the boot image?
Hmmm. Is there any way to reset the amount of attempts? We can at least keep trying different patterns that way.
JamesMudd said:
Yeah, black background is where we're at, and yeah, can't remember the pattern. So there's no way to get past that at all? Not even flashing the boot image?
Hmmm. Is there any way to reset the amount of attempts? We can at least keep trying different patterns that way.
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NOTE: This is based on what I know. If anybody else has any ideas please don't hesitate to share!
Does it let you enter a backup password? She might have some ideas there?
Your best bet would maybe be a firmware reflash, but that's a very slim chance. So try that first(Remember to use HOME_CSC!). You can try flashing the boot image but beware, if the phone is full stock then the encryption system has some self-defence mechanisms that can permanently lock the data if unauthorized firmware is detected(or anything else suspicious like resetting the attempts). It technically *shouldn't* disable secure startup though; Remember, the whole point of encryption is to make it physically impossible to access data without the key, so it wouldn't be doing its job if you could just disable it at will. Samsung is also pretty anal about security these days.
Edit: Does she have a Samsung account? It might have backed the photos up already.
The problem I have is with the galaxy z flip 3, it worked just fine inthe morning but after it ran outta juice and I charged it to a certain percentage, it stopped working properly, and got into an infinite boot loop, I tried forcing it to restart by long pressing volume down+power , but it didn't work, then I tried opening the recovery by long pressing on volume up+power and yet it also didn't work (I think that maybe it's because it was trying to boot at the time), so have you guys any solutions , please do help me cuz this phone really is important and with all honestly, isn't even mine XD, I'll be waiting for an answer
Your failsafe options are contact Samsung or do a factory reset (and then potentially contact Samsung).
If you can't boot it to anything, the only real option you have is to flash firmware, which likely won't help without wiping.
Unfortunately, not booting doesn't have a whole lot of options that don't wipe data without being rooted. Even then, you'd need recovery.
I see, then I may consider giving it to samsung, as long as they won't reset it, cuz the only reason why the phone is so important is because of the data, altough, isn't there any other way to acess recovery? Cuz I had this problem with the s10 before and I fixed it somehow (a certain Bixby key combination), but this time it seems there isn't any hidden combination.
Samsung is going to reset it. It's a required first step for them to do any work on it, even if the work has nothing to do with the software. What may help find a way to recover the data is starting with how it got to this point. Did you install anything new, change any important settings, or anything else that could have been a part of the issue? If not and it is an unexplained hardware failure, the data is likely gone already.
If it's something you might have installed or changed, it's possible that putting the phone in safe mode and undoing it may solve the issue and let you boot normally.
Booting into Safe Mode:
Make sure the device is powered off (charging is ok, as long as it is not currently trying to boot)
Hold the side key to power on and continue holding until "SAMSUNG" appears and the device vibrates
Immediately release the side key and begin holding volume down until boot completes
If the device has booted into safe mode, you will see a translucent "Safe Mode" in the bottom left
twistedumbrella said:
Samsung is going to reset it. It's a required first step for them to do any work on it, even if the work has nothing to do with the software. What may help find a way to recover the data is starting with how it got to this point. Did you install anything new, change any important settings, or anything else that could have been a part of the issue? If not and it is an unexplained hardware failure, the data is likely gone already.
If it's something you might have installed or changed, it's possible that putting the phone in safe mode and undoing it may solve the issue and let you boot normally.
Booting into Safe Mode:
Make sure the device is powered off (charging is ok, as long as it is not currently trying to boot)
Hold the side key to power on and continue holding until "SAMSUNG" appears and the device vibrates
Immediately release the side key and begin holding volume down until boot completes
If the device has booted into safe mode, you will see a translucent "Safe Mode" in the bottom left
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Click to collapse
Well I just asked the original owner (my mother), and apparently she doesn't remember downloading anything new into it, and it just went crazy by itself, also something else I wanna note, I tried charging it and it booted into recovery all by itself, I taught it was weird but Still went and wiped the cache and then when I tried restarting it it suddenly ran out of juice once again, also, it's second display shows some weird curruption/bug or glitch-like lines. So based off of this, can you really find the origin of this problem and if there is really any hope of saving it's data XD. Thank you btw, and once again, I'll be waiting for an answer
There are hundreds of reasons it could do that, including a faulty board. Thanks to the removal of physical sdcard support, you'd need to get it to boot into something with at least adb support to pull anything off it. Stock recovery doesn't provide any ways to perform a decent backup, but it sounds like the only option that wouldn't wipe the device didn't work.
I see, alright, thanks a lot, I'll consider resetting it
It may be worth trying to flash firmware first. Go into it knowing it may reset the device or leave you needing to reset it, but it doesn't hurt to try if you run out of safer options.
Same here, same symptoms, happened in front of my wife's and eyes face. We are fairly techy and understand our way around our devices. We also noticed the device crashed then would make it all the way to the home screen launcher and before catching signal the crash would cause a restart at that point I went in and did a cash swipe rebooted right back into recovery by itself then I unplugged the cable and it was acting as if it has a dead battery but when the cable was last plugged in during a couple of crash and then restarts all the way to the home screen I know the battery was at 70 something percent. My next step is going to probably be flashed the current firmware that just released on top of it as a dirty flash and see if I can get it to boot. If not then I'm going to do a hard reset and see if that works. When plugged in it automatically starts exhibiting symptoms as if the buttons are stuck. The devices in the OtterBox and it's fairly brand new I would say mint. Not dirty or any smudges either. all I'm saying is I'm one of those type of technicians that say yeah right when people say it just happened I don't know where but this actually happened I don't know when I was able to witness it. I'll come back and let you guys know what works and what doesn't. (By the way excuse my grammar I was voice typing while driving )
ariveraiv said:
Same here, same symptoms, happened in front of my wife's and eyes face. We are fairly techy and understand our way around our devices. We also noticed the device crashed then would make it all the way to the home screen launcher and before catching signal the crash would cause a restart at that point I went in and did a cash swipe rebooted right back into recovery by itself then I unplugged the cable and it was acting as if it has a dead battery but when the cable was last plugged in during a couple of crash and then restarts all the way to the home screen I know the battery was at 70 something percent. My next step is going to probably be flashed the current firmware that just released on top of it as a dirty flash and see if I can get it to boot. If not then I'm going to do a hard reset and see if that works. When plugged in it automatically starts exhibiting symptoms as if the buttons are stuck. The devices in the OtterBox and it's fairly brand new I would say mint. Not dirty or any smudges either. all I'm saying is I'm one of those type of technicians that say yeah right when people say it just happened I don't know where but this actually happened I don't know when I was able to witness it. I'll come back and let you guys know what works and what doesn't. (By the way excuse my grammar I was voice typing while driving )
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Hello everyone just a quick update. Once I got home I plugged the device into a Samsung fast charger and Samsung OEM USB type-c cable and realize the device booted all the way to the home screen but register the same battery level as I mentioned above. Device was working as if nothing happened to it. So I updated all the apps on the Galaxy store then updated all the apps left over from the Google Play store, I then proceeded to check for a firmware update because I know the April update just released and installed the update with no issues. Updated the apps that needed to be updated again somehow there's always something and unplug the device from the power cable. Everything was working if no issues about half hour later the device cuts off and does not want to power on. FYI I already had my wife contact T-Mobile and get a warranty replacement we only paid $5.00 so my thoughts and conclusion on what's going on something happened to the battery or it's defective. Btw we only use Samsung OEM cables and equipment at home and in the car while connected through Android auto. it's only working while being plugged in it's not charging all the way even though it's registering it's charge level while the device is on.
Samsung Note 10, SM-970F
Magisk Rooted
Android 10, N970FXXS6DTK8
It's my GF's, and she uses a pattern unlock along with fingerprint. No new apps were installed or settings changed that she recalls.
Began as phone locking immediately after correct pattern was entered, but using fingerprint would unlock correctly.
With this immediate locking, the phone will by itself turn off the screen then turn it back on for two seconds as though the power button was pressed, then turns the screen off again.
When entering incorrect pattern, it says incorrect pattern and does nothing else.
She tried restarting the phone, which disabled the fingerprint unlock feature until the phone is successfully unlocked once.
Phone still locks immediately after entering correct pattern, and now she can't unlock it using fingerprint.
Now unable to unlock phone.
EDIT: If I repeatedly enter the correct pattern, after a random number of tries it will go to the 'starting phone' screen, but then will either restart by itself or sit there until I restart the phone. It really is random, once it took 7 tries, another time 20 tries. The phone doesn't show up on my windows PC as a mounted device during any of this.
USB debugging was not enabled, so I don't believe I can run any ADB commands. She didn't backup her phone and our focus is at least to get the photos off the camera, at which point doing a factory reset would be acceptable.
I've tried:
Entering a lot of bad patterns, trying to get to an option of unlocking with the google account associated with the phone, but the option never comes up.
Removing the phone case, only external item on the phone now is the stock screen protector.
Starting into recovery, clearing cache, repairing apps.
Starting into safe mode.
Booting in and out of root.
Letting the battery discharge completely to do a hard power cycle.
But no luck. The phone still locks immediately after entering the correct pattern. I haven't tried taking the phone's stock screen protector off, but will probably do that in case there is something wrong with the proximity sensor.
This is the international two SIM version of the Note 10, the only Note 10 variant which was rootable. I haven't worked on the phone for at least a year since it was rooted and setup.
SEU or a hardware failure. Either way when this happens your only option is to backdoor in. If it was a SEU after resetting you're good to go. If hardware it will likely reoccur... Even with a hardware failure many times nothing happens if no lock is set, you still have access. Setting a lock password introduces added failure modes.
SEU's are very rare but they do happen, randomly and just one bit of data is flipped. Interesting they cause no hardware damage. Higher altitudes elevate the risk as does exposure to man made high energy particles. That's one reason why spacecraft have 3 or more redundant computers. Apollo fights have logged half dozen or more SEU's per flight.
I never screen lock my N10+'s, double tap on/off. This is one reason why. Same with PC bios, no password is ever set. Once bitten, twice shy as the user is always the most likely person to get locked out... as I learned the hard way
@blackhawk, I hear you on getting burned with device security. And for any electronic device, secured or not, backups and redundancy are the only reliable difference between your device being useful and useless. It's been hard not to say any 'I told you so' about this, since I was telling her both to use a pin instead of pattern and to let me setup a regular backup. I don't know that a pin would have been different, but I think it would have since the fingerprint was working before the restart.
Do you have any resources you could point me to on how to backdoor into an android with a password/encryption? I know you can unlock a device using ADB, but I believe you need USB debugging enabled first and I don't know how to make that happen without first unlocking the phone.
mc_squirrel said:
@blackhawk, I hear you on getting burned with device security. And for any electronic device, secured or not, backups and redundancy are the only reliable difference between your device being useful and useless. It's been hard not to say any 'I told you so' about this, since I was telling her both to use a pin instead of pattern and to let me setup a regular backup. I don't know that a pin would have been different, but I think it would have since the fingerprint was working before the restart.
Do you have any resources you could point me to on how to backdoor into an android with a password/encryption? I know you can unlock a device using ADB, but I believe you need USB debugging enabled first and I don't know how to make that happen without first unlocking the phone.
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Click to collapse
Samsung repair can do it. A local shop or yourself, maybe. If there's an associated Samsung or Google account, start there. I never had to do that but the information isn't hard to find. The data will likely be lost though.
Meh, it's a very rude surprise.