Galaxy S23 Ultra Crashing and Slow Death

Bayou · April 30

Hey everyone,

Up until March of this year, I was using a Galaxy S23 Ultra, loved the phone didn't plan on upgrading anytime soon, still missing the boxiness of the phone, made it feel more professional in the hand.

Sadly, while I was attending a funeral out of town the phone randomly shut off while in my pocket. Before it shut off it was at roughly 50% of charge and was working completely normal, I had just made a mobile payment at a restaurant and was driving back to the hotel. When I got back to the hotel, I pulled it out to call my family to help grab the food and the phone was dead, with zero signs of life. Wouldn't vibrate or give any acknowledgement of me trying to turn it on. Wouldn't light up when plugged in either to corded or wireless chargers. I used the phone of the family member who passed (My Samsung account was already signed in to theirs) and Find My showed the phone as offline.

I let the phone sit off the charger overnight, got it to light up for about 3 seconds (while plugged in) the next day before it shut back off.

Once I got back home I ordered a replacement battery and a S26 Ultra (I had little to no hope at this point)

Replacement battery came in, and the phone powered up, I had high hopes and started to transfer everything, only for it to freeze 5 minutes later and then hard crash, it would immediately start back up and continue this crashing process, the length of it staying on would shorten each time before it would eventually not boot into Android and just loop the Samsung logo. I noticed it would heat up rather quickly and get uncomfortably hot. I've also tried unplugging everything but what is absolutely necessary for the phone to function (Screen, battery) incase something was shorting out the main board.

The phone has never had any issues with overheating. It's never been in touch with any kind of water (water indicators aren't tripped) and has been taken care of it's entire life. The only thing mentionable is that the back glass came off on it's own about a month prior. I had it re-adhered by a Samsung repair store (to try and keep the IP rating).

I'm at a complete loss on what to do here. I've already replaced the phone however I've come to discover that Google ONLY backs up your Camera Roll by default. I've lost a ton of screenshots, downloaded items, documents, etc that I'd like to recover. Has anyone seen this before?

Jimkirk363 · April 30

Backup your data and do a reset on the handset to see if this helps.

MiloJT · May 25

On 4/30/2026 at 9:35 PM, Bayou said:

Hey everyone,

Up until March of this year, I was using a Galaxy S23 Ultra, loved the phone didn't plan on upgrading anytime soon, still missing the boxiness of the phone, made it feel more professional in the hand.

Sadly, while I was attending a funeral out of town the phone randomly shut off while in my pocket. Before it shut off it was at roughly 50% of charge and was working completely normal, I had just made a mobile payment at a restaurant and was driving back to the hotel. When I got back to the hotel, I pulled it out to call my family to help grab the food and the phone was dead, with zero signs of life. Wouldn't vibrate or give any acknowledgement of me trying to turn it on. Wouldn't light up when plugged in either to corded or wireless chargers. I used the phone of the family member who passed (My Samsung account was already signed in to theirs) and Find My showed the phone as offline.

I let the phone sit off the charger overnight, got it to light up for about 3 seconds (while plugged in) the next day before it shut back off.

Once I got back home I ordered a replacement battery and a S26 Ultra (I had little to no hope at this point)

Replacement battery came in, and the phone powered up, I had high hopes and started to transfer everything, only for it to freeze 5 minutes later and then hard crash, it would immediately start back up and continue this crashing process, the length of it staying on would shorten each time before it would eventually not boot into Android and just loop the Samsung logo. I noticed it would heat up rather quickly and get uncomfortably hot. I've also tried unplugging everything but what is absolutely necessary for the phone to function (Screen, battery) incase something was shorting out the main board.

The phone has never had any issues with overheating. It's never been in touch with any kind of water (water indicators aren't tripped) and has been taken care of it's entire life. The only thing mentionable is that the back glass came off on it's own about a month prior. I had it re-adhered by a Samsung repair store (to try and keep the IP rating).

I'm at a complete loss on what to do here. I've already replaced the phone however I've come to discover that Google ONLY backs up your Camera Roll by default. I've lost a ton of screenshots, downloaded items, documents, etc that I'd like to recover. Has anyone seen this before?

Your Galaxy S23 Ultra is suffering from a documented hardware defect. The rapid overheating during boot, the shrinking time before crashes, and the back glass detaching on its own point to a failing motherboard, likely a solder joint separating near the CPU, RAM, or power management IC.

When setting up your new S26 Ultra, make sure you don't rely solely on Google's default cloud backup. Download Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive and manually configure them to sync your Documents and Download folders, or periodically plug your phone into a PC to manually drag and drop your local files.