S20+ restarts in cold climate

[RomanPaulov]

Hi,

I bought my S20+ a couple of days ago and noticed that if I'm outside and ambient temperature is below -10 °C it restarts itself, and it stays on the first «Samsung powered by Android» screen until I restart it with Volume Down + Power. Sometimes (rarely) it manages to boot completely, but in most cases it stays on that first screen. When it happened first time it stayed on the first screen for an hour until I figured out how to restart it 😞

When it restarted charge was about 50-70%. Usually it takes around 10 minutes after I leave my home and before it restarts.

I called the support and they told me to try safe-mode and data-wipe. I tried both — no luck. 10 mins outside and it starts restart. It doesn't turn off... it restarts 😞

Is this a common issue with these phones? Anyone faced something like this?

Since I live far north and we have 6 months winters I have no idea how to use a phone which can't withstand sub-zero temperature 😞

[CrazyTom2k2]

Hey there RomanPaulov!

I'm gonna be honest, I live in England, and our weather's all over the place! 😅

Some electronics fair better than others in cold temperatures. Sounds like it could be a faulty unit though - some components like your Lithium Batteries and the OLED panels really don't like cold temperatures - again, that's a limitation of the hardware.

Personally, I've noticed a couple of weird glitches in cold weather with my handset, but nothing as catastrophic as what you're describing, so maybe you should get your handset looked at by a Samsung Rep.

Pretty sure these things should be able to withstand cold temperatures - Samsung are a South Korean company, gets pretty cold over there too.

All the best, and happy holidays!
Tom 🙂

[andyboi]

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[andyboi]

Most smartphones stop working at - 4/-5. Minus 10 degrees is a bit extreme!

[RomanPaulov]

Hmmm..., I owned Galaxy Note 1 (which I'd bought in Thailand), Sony Xperia XZ (which I'd bought in Malaysia) and XZS, my father-in-law owns Galaxy S20 (not plus) and owned Galaxy 7 before that, my mom uses Xperia (I can't recall model), my mom-in-law uses iPhones from 4 to 11, and non of these devices restarts in cold.

We live in Siberia and -5 °C is not even a winter temperature here it's an autumn temperature. Median winter temperature here is -20 °C and all these devices I mentioned above work pretty fine. I even travelled to Mongolia in January, and it was -40 °C there, and I took shots on my Xperia XZ. Phone was slow, battery drained fast, but it worked. And it's not some remove village I live in. I live in a city with 1.5 million population and majority of people use smartphones here and Samsung is a pretty common brand.

I understand that li-Ion battery loose capacity when cold. It's physics. And it's OK if phone shuts down when cold. But when phone constantly restarts and stuck on loading it doesn't make any sense for me. I've heard that some phones shut down itself when cold due to low power from a battery and I'm OK with that. But I think it's not OK when phone restarts and still shows 60% of charge.

[RomanPaulov]

Thanks for advice. Today I'm gonna visit Samsung store

[RomanPaulov · Accepted solution]

OK, yesterday I visited a local Samsung shop where my unit has been bought. We came outside with a shop manager and in 7 minutes unit restarted. It was -10 °C. Today unit was disassembled in Samsung service center (to verify that the problem wasn't caused by any external actions) and unit was replaced with a new one.

Shop manager ang guys in the service center told me that they've never seen anything like this before...