Hi, thank you in advance for anyone who can offer help...
I'm fairly tech savvy but in all my years haven't seen anything like this. My Samsung S8 Plus often interrupts me while using the phone with the characteristics of a notification, with a vibration and with a sound, and swipes left whatever screen I'm using to replace it with a white background screen with an amber/orange frame, only momentarily, before switching back to whatever app I'm using. It happens with the following characteristics:
Mostly but not necessarily when I unlock the phone
Mostly but not necessarily when I rotate the screen
Often 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 times in a row and then goes quiet for a while
Only ever during the daytime (8am to 5pm) although I'm in HK currently so those are UCT+8 hours
May not happen for a good hour or two and then kicks off again
I have restarted, restarted in safe mode, closed all apps (and even with no open apps the issue just keeps going), put to sleep all apps, ran Avast cleanup, and who knows what. Have installed some apps but can't recall which ones so could go back and uninstall those but none were "out-there" apps.
I managed to record a video from another phone of it happening so could share that here so the problem better explained / visible (as it's difficult enough to describe)
On the video, when I play it back, there clearly appears the word "Connecting..." on the screen for the briefest of moments (frame by frame) before it disappears and then go back to wherever I was with the phone the moment before.
Hope someone has seen this before and can explain this most bizarre and extremely annoying occurrence which had not been going for about 10 days.
Ok, I managed to take a picture screenshot from another phone of this issue happening...my user profile picture here shows that image...you can see my WhatsApp screen shifting to the left to make space for the briefest of moments for this white screen / orange frame to appear before WhatsApp will move to the right again and lets me continue (it's not only WhatsApp, it's whatever application I'm in!) Please check my profile picture here on this board for a clue of what the issue looks like...thank you!
If your phone is misbehaving, it's possible that a third-party app is causing the issue. To figure out what app is acting funny, you can use the Safe Mode feature. In Safe Mode, your phone won't run any third-party apps. This allows you to easily identity and remove the app that may be causing the problem. Give this link a try:
Hi Adam, thank you for replying. I did mention in my text that I already tried safe mode. Also, I'm not sure how that is supposed to help. The article you shared states "Once you're in Safe Mode, you can remove the third-party app that is causing issues on your phone." I'd very much like to know how I get from setting my phone to Safe mode (when all 3rd party apps are disabled) to identifying which third party app is giving the problem (given that I can't bring back the 3rd party apps one by one to test which one causes the problem). So being in safe mode helps...not at all?
However, I think I may have stumbled upon the issue. I have had my bluetooth switched on recently and think the issue dates back to pretty much then. The issue also only happens while I'm in the office at work, which makes me think that some device is trying to connect to my phone, or the other way round, and that's what causes this notification interruption (and explains the "Connecting..." description that appears for the briefest of moments). I'll test that on Monday and see how it goes...
Meanwhile, if you could kindly elaborate on how to actually use the phone in safe mode to identify a potential third party app causing the issue, I would be most grateful, thank you...
Safe mode helps determine if there is a third-party application causing complications or symptoms with the phone or if the symptoms are being caused by a pre-installed application or update to the device. If the symptom does not occur in safe mode it means the symptom is in fact being caused by a third party app and it is then up to the user to determine which application is the problem.
This can be gone about a couple of ways you can either go through your recently installed applications to determine which app was installed when the symptom started to occur and uninstall that application or if there were multiple apps installed at the time the symptom occurred you can disable or uninstall them one by one to see which is causing the symptom, if you have a recent back up of your device from before the symptom started to occur you can revert to the saved back up.
We do see with some applications they will not allow the user to uninstall them unless the device is entered into safe mode which is why the recommendation of uninstalling and removing the apps while the phone is in safe mode is present on the troubleshooting article.
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