Help Things keep"resetting" and other issues

[Junior1026]

Hi my name is Junior and I have a Galaxy S4 Active model 1537 with Android version 5.0.1

Problem 1: It's a great phone but recently whenever I boot my phone, it displays Samsung custom with an unlocked padlock which is strange knowing my original boot up would say Samsung galaxy s4 active

Problem 2: Now when I start up my phone, a few moments after unlocking it, there will be a pop-up that says LocationServices with a black screen under it. I usually have to wait 5 seconds for it to go away but it never happened before.

Problem 3: there's a white screen that says launcher loading and it installs a random app from the play store which is quite annoying since I have to uninstall it after its done

Problem 4: Videos keep pausing. Everytime I'm on the YouTube app, the videos would pause after a certain amount of time throughout the entire video. This doesn't only happen with YouTube however, it's with Facebook as well. I've seen it on Snapchat where I go to other peoples stories and it takes me back to the default home screen. Lastly, I've seen it on my camera app when I press the gear button, then once more but it takes me back to the default home screen. This problem is the most annoying by far.

I have tried doing a factory reset and wiping the cache partition but I still get the same problems after

Please help

 

[mikedt]

Hi my name is Junior and I have a Galaxy S4 Active model 1537 with Android version 5.0.1

Problem 1: It's a great phone but recently whenever I boot my phone, it displays Samsung custom with an unlocked padlock which is strange knowing my original boot up would say Samsung galaxy s4 active

Have you rooted, or attempted to root it at all. Also have you been sideloading apps and games from outside of Google Play or Amazon Appstore? Like the phone could have been rooted and modified unknowingly by a malicious pirated app or game.

The other problems could very well be related to problem 1.

 

[Junior1026]

Have you rooted, or attempted to root it at all. Also have you been sideloading apps and games from outside of Google Play or Amazon Appstore? Like the phone could have been rooted and modified unknowingly by a malicious pirated app or game.

The other problems could very well be related to problem 1.

I have never nor tried to root my phone
I've heard that the cause could be any battey saving app but I've uninstalled those

 

[mikedt]

Supposed battery saving saving apps are usually adware/spyware snake oil, not recommended anyway. If they're only installed from Google Play, then they shouldn't be malicious. However it seems the firmware has apparently been modified, that's what the "Samsung custom" and open padlock are all about. The phone shouldn't do that by itself, unless there's an actual fault, like the internal flash storage is going bad and has corrupted. However there are malicious pirated apps and games, from places other than Play or Amazon that can sneakily root the device, unknown to the user. You haven't got any Chinese app stores on there have you, things like 1Mobile Market, because they could very well have malicious apps and games

 

[Junior1026]

Supposed battery saving saving apps are usually adware/spyware snake oil, not recommended anyway. If they're only installed from Google Play, then they shouldn't be malicious. However it seems the firmware has apparently been modified, that's what the "Samsung custom" and open padlock are all about. The phone shouldn't do that by itself, unless there's an actual fault, like the internal flash storage is going bad and has corrupted. However there are malicious pirated apps and games, from places other than Play or Amazon that can sneakily root the device, unknown to the user. You haven't got any Chinese app stores on there have you, things like 1Mobile Market, because they could very well have malicious apps and games

The current apps I have at the moment are the ones with the phone and Snapchat, Steam, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger. I don't think these would be malicious but could you inform me with other common apps that would modify the firmware

 

[SomethingWeird]

Think of any app that was installed from anywhere outside of play store.
If an app has made changes to the firmware simply uninstalling it wont fix the problem. If that is the case you will need to flash a stock firmware.