Galaxy S3 shutting off randomly

By David M Diller
in Android Support

 Share

Recommended Posts

Neowinian

David M Diller

Posted
Posted

I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S3 about two weeks ago.

I have been using it with absolutely no problems up until Monday night.

For some reason, every night my GS3 will actually shut itself off at some point in the evening. I have it charging at night, and sometimes it shuts off before it's completely charged, other times after - there's no consistency. This has caused me to be late to work, miss picking up people that I'm carpooling with, etc. - it's caused a pretty big impact to my life for being something so trivial.

Has anybody experienced the same issue or have any ideas on what it possibly could be? As best I can tell, everything is normal. I didn't change anything between Sunday and Monday - and on Sunday everything was working fine. I woke up Monday to an alarm bright and early with no problems...since then, I've had nothing but issues.

I have one battery saver app installed but disabled the power saving options for Nighttime, so it shouldn't be of any impact.

any help anybody can provide would be really appreciated. I'm worried that without the alarm the Galaxy S3 will literally ruin my working career when I'm traveling (aside from setting the alarm in hotel rooms or asking for a wake-up call).

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1113209-galaxy-s3-shutting-off-randomly/
Share on other sites
Mentor

nekkidtruth

Posted
Posted

There are any number of things that can cause this. First thing I would recommend doing is a full factory reset of the phone. If you have anything you need, back them up to your computer. This way you can completely reset the phone and clear the internal storage as well. Once you've done that, if you're still having issues with it turning off I would return it for a new one.

Defective batteries, defective hardware (including the charger), horribly written software/apps can all cause this issue. If you have a lot of apps, I would recommend adding them one by one and waiting a bit between to see if any of them might be causing the issue.

  • 3 months later...
Grand Master

shakey

Posted
Posted

I just had my galaxy s3 turn itself off during the night... I think. It had to boot back up, with the logos and all... but its weird.

Luckily I woke up an hour before the alarm on it was supposed to go off. I tried to wake the phone to check the time, and noticed it was completly off.

I'm not sure if this is due to some random crash or app, though I haven't downloaded anything new in months. I could have very well accidentally turned it off when setting it down as well.

What I find odd is, I made it from 9am to 12am and only lost 25% of my battery. It was at 75% when I went to sleep. When I turned my phone on after finding out it had somehow turned itself off, the battery was at 52%. It less than 7 hours, it had somehow drained another 25% almost. Also, it says that my phone has been on "battery" for 12 hours and some minutes... even after only turning it on a few hours ago.

The only things that show for battery use is : Screen 40%, Media Server 15%, Andriod OS 10% , Android System 8%, device Idle 8%, Cell Standby 7% and Music Player 6%.

I think if my issue was caused by anything, it was the Media Server. I have no clue though what would have used it? Does youtube videos count as that? I read that playing music does... but then why would music player show up on the list when a percentage that is much lower?

So many questions... Hopefully I'll figure the answers out soon enough.

Grand Master

shakey

Posted
Posted

My S3 turned itself off also, and it wasn't until I formated my external SD card, the problem stopped. So, if you're using an external SD card, try without it for a few days to see if the same happens.

I'll give that a try if this happens again. I don't even use the External Card, though it is in. Haven't ran out of room on the phone yet :p

  • 3 weeks later...
Enthusiast

Androidslave

Posted
Posted

Myself and the wife both have S3's bought on the same day and both shutting down randomly. Hers worse than mine.

I don't think I can bother returnin mine to 3 mobile because I let it fall some months ago and if has a broken screen which will be used as a bs excuse as to why it's faulty.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • AltSendme 0.4.1

      By Copernic · Posted

      AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Why Delta Chat is the best decentralized messenger you have probably never tried

      By zikalify · Posted

      You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.
    • You've tried DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, now get serious with SearXNG

      By zikalify · Posted

      OK so SearXNG is a meta search engine that you can install locally or use via a public instance. It scrapes other search engines which you choose and then sorts the results. Not as complicated as multiple relays
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By excalpius · Posted

      The only difference here is that you think you came up with these reasons. You didn't. These age old fearmongering lies (that were NEVER true) were funded by and the anger stoked by Putin through proxies like Farage (and later in the USA, Trump) and filtered down through the skinheads, Neonazis, etc. until it reached the uninformed, ignorant, and gullible -- never realizing they were being played for fools against their own best interests. Even now, despite all of the EVIDENCE proving that Brexit was a terrible mistake for ALL citizens of the UK and that its supporters were tricked by Putin's proxies into sabotaging their own nation, you're still here defending these well-known lies as if they were ever true. Not only are they not true. They NEVER were. So, when are you going to realize that you were lied to and actually get angry at the liars and charlatans who lied to you, instead of blaming the innocent people they lied to you about?
    • Windows 11 is getting redesigned taskbar settings in new build

      By felrefordit · Posted

      Dupe of "Microsoft further improving Windows 11 Taskbar with latest builds", published <20 minutes apart

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      152
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!