My S10e (SM-G970F, up to date OS and apps) got bricked today the moment I updated AR Emoji Sticker from the Galaxy Store. It didn't happen a day or an hour after the update -- it literally happened while the update was underway, I watched it happen in front of my eyes.
By "bricked" I mean the phone is bootlooping. Hard reset (maybe dozens of times), wiping cache partition, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, replacing the battery -- all of it doesn't work.
Samsung Kies doesn't recognize the phone while in Download Mode (although it does recognize something is being connected).
The only thing I haven't tried is to factory reset but I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible.
Few important notes:
1. I'm aware that in October 2024 there was a VERY similar issue but that was when the SmartThings Framework app got updated:
This makes me wonder if this could be similar to that.
2. The AR Emoji Sticker app is not auto-updatable, you have to update it manually. I did it as I'm an update freak, and it came back to bite me. This makes me fear that this could be a widespread issue, but almost no one will encounter this as the user has to search for the app and update it, and it even doesn't (and never) appear in the Updates section in the Galaxy Store app.
3. I rarely do this manual update process for Samsung apps from the Galaxy Store, and don't remember when was the last time I updated this app (but I did it numerous times already in the past), so I don't know how long this update was pending.
4. I've contacted Samsung phone tech support and was directed to a service center. Spoke with a rep from a Samsung service center and asked to service the phone with the details mentioned here, and asked to diagnose but WITHOUT wiping the phone. I was told this is not a human decision but this is something that could be done automatically via the center's diagnostic utilities. Not sure how true that is but I didn't want to risk it so I didn't leave it there to be serviced.
Please, is there anything else I can try?
Since this could be an actual issue that not many (if any) user may encounter (see #2 above), local Samsung phone and service centers can't help me as this isn't officially acknowledged by Samsung. Is there any way an official Samsung rep could comment on this, and maybe confirm this by doing the same update on a similar phone, or something?
@SamsungLK@SamsungAl@SamsungRei@SamsungLena@SamsungTam Sorry to ping ya'll out of the blue but I'm getting desperate -- I spoke with Samsung in my region and asked them to escalate this but they said they don't do that, I tried contacting Samsung UK and the agent was willing to escalate but didn't continue further once I told him I'm not from the UK or Ireland.
Is there anything you can do on you side to escalate this? I'm not looking to send the phone in for repair, just want this to be confirmed as an issue, have it fixed an offer a solution for those affected by it, like me and the others in this post.
Ok so I’ve found this Reddit thread where people report having their phones repaired without losing the data after the October issue with Smart Things:
then brainstormed the whole thing with a friendly android dev magician and after he explained how system updates (including flashing stock firmware) work now it all seems to make sense
1. system apps (including Smart Things, AR emoji stickers) are included as .apk files in ROM image.
2. They are installed (copied over to /data partition) only conditionally i.e. they would overwrite the installed app (in /data) only if the apk in ROM is newer than the apk installed. In other words - the update won’t downgrade system apps
3. If you’re flashing the device, you either overwrite /data (normal CSC) which is equivalent to wiping everything out & installing everything that comes in ROM image OR you preserve /data (HOME-CSC) and have the upgrade-but-not-downgrade behaviour for system apps
4. The trick is - in our scenario if you do HOME-CSC, you keep as well that newer broken version of an app which causes the boot loop
so… how could these Reddit users have their phones repaired without losing data? The answer is simple - Samsung was kind enough to rebuild the .apk & the firmware!
Taken my example fw build date is somewhere in March 2023, so versions of system .apks are not newer than that ( let’s assume apk versions are from Feb 2023)
What’s needed to succeed
- have a fresh build of the problematic app, it could be either a new patched version of the app (best)* or a “fake update”, i.e. rebuilding (not sure if also changing version number?) an old version of the app (I.e. anywhere from Feb 2023 till last version which didn’t brick s10 phones)
- rebuilding ROM image to include that specific app
… and that’s it, it should trick the update mechanism that what’s included in the image (even older but working version of an app that’s freshly built) is newer than what the user has installed in /data (i.e. a broken version of AR Emojis from 2025-01-20 if I’m not wrong) so it would effectively fix the boot loop problem.
i believe this is what happened in October: a new version of Smart Things .apk was released fast by Samsung + images were rebuilt by Samsung to include it so that flashing with HOME-CSC would both resolve the issue and preserve user data.
Could someone from Samsung confirm if it’s possible to have
Has anyone been able to recover their data? I was playing with the ARemoji on Thursday. I've literally used it less than 5 times in all the years I've had the S10e. Randomly decided to use it, and it bricked my phone. I had nearly 6 years of data that is now unaccessible. 😭 Please post if you found a solution. I've followed all the suggestions from the October smart things problem.
My understanding is that as it's considered a system app, there are just 2 avenues:
1. Fix now with factory reset, losing all the data
2. Wait for samsung to patch the app, rebuild the firmware with it, and have the new firmware flashed (home csc, which preserves the data).
So (assuming you have stock firmware & bootloader) until samsung solves the issue on their end, you can't "fix the phone while preserving the data" - neither at home nor at their service center.
I have the same problem, happened 1 hour ago. My s10e bricked after AR emoji update. I have important datas inside of it, is there any way to fix without losing data?
I'm starting to think this isn't the right platform for raising such issues. Is there any other?
I chatted with the Samsung online reps which initially suggested to report the issue from and gather logs from the Samsung Members app, but they failed to understand the phone isn't booting to begin with.
I've used every available channel to contact Samsung. My husband and I both have been on phone calls, chat bots, and text threads for four days now. We talked to Samsung support, UbreakIfix, I've used the CEO email from the "contact us" section of their website. Nothing has been helpful. Please continue to let them know that this is an issue so that they'll send out a firmware fix like they did after the huge problem with the smart things update in October. I've lost six years of aand am devastated. If this can't be resolved, my family of six who has been loyal to Samsung for 15 years will definitely be switching to a competitor.
I am also affected by this problem. (S10e) I have sent several emails to Samsung but no response. They don't know about the problem. Local samsung service center informed me that the problem will be examined and factory reset if necessary for a fee. It is also funny that Samsung is asking me for a fee in this situation caused by its own fault. I can do this too.
I had to solve it by doing a factory reset. I lost more than 4 years of pictures and files.
It's not over yet... I couldn't transfer the GW7 after doing factory reset. It gave me "an error occurred" warning even though I tried 20 times. I also had to reset the GW7 device.
Long story short, when I was thinking of buying s25 this year. I am now thinking very clearly about switching to iPhone.
I think that all this is done consciously or that they are consciously releasing new applications without testing them on old devices.
