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As a curious newbie I went into downloading mode in my Samsung Galaxy S3 by pressing Vol down+center Home+power button. After that I got options to press Vol up key to continue and Vol down key to cancel. Out of sheer curiosity and thinking I can exit anytime I pressed Vol up key and the very infamous "downloading do not turn off" screen sits with the green Android logo.

All this was done without any cable attached to my computer since I don't want to root or flash my ROM. I just was curious as to what happens next. Now the screen just waited for Odin to connect, however I did not since after connecting I am unsure if there is no direct exit option from Odin without flashing ROM and not doing anything (in other words a simple exit from Odin with no rooting and no flashing and nothing happens).

Next I tried to go into recovery mode and tried all combinations of keys to exit this "downloading" mode but I failed. The power naturally went down as I was reading through many help articles and I put in another battery and now the phone doesn't turn on at all now; there is no reaction and it does not go into recovery mode either. Now I am in a soup as I want my photos and messages to be recovered (no external SD storage used)

I wish to know:

  1. If I do manage to go into recovery mode, then selecting option "reboot system now" will simply reboot my system and phone will work?

  2. If this does not work then does recovery mode option, "wipe cache partition" delete all user photos and messages? (I am absolutely sure factory reset option does delete all user data.)

  3. If my phone waits on "downloading don't turn off target screen", then how do I simply exit this mode? Should I connect to Odin (highly risky) and exit? (I don't know what will happen.) Does connecting to Odin necessarily mean that I have to flash my ROM?

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  • You should continue to hold all three keys until you get yourself over to the recovery menu. If you still don't find yourself over the Download screen, take the battery out, remove your SIM card or SD card and then again try turning it back and try turning the phone on. If the pone boots normally then let it finish and then power it off fully. And now put the sim or sd card back in place and see if it solves your problem. If not then I would say you may have to take your device to the nearest support.
    – Peter Carlos
    Commented Nov 5, 2014 at 6:52
  • Easy way to get out of downloading mode is by following trick, press and hold : Home button + Power button + Volume UP + Volume down for 5 seconds. It will restart and work !!
    – Pரதீப்
    Commented Sep 3, 2017 at 14:47

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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I enquired and found some answers to this problem.

1) If you press the exit button in the recovery menu, the phone will reboot and regular app screen should be seen.

2) as answered earlier wipe cache does not delete user data, (only system cache files are deleted)

3) to exit the download mode (when not flashing anything to the device) is to either pull the battery or long press the power button (which simulates a battery pull).

Anyways what I did was take the device to support center and they told that IC power chip needs to be changed and was charged abt 27$ or so. No data was deleted at all.

Thanks to everyone who helped and especially Golfdriver97.

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Not in all the Samsung phones you have to press the same buttons to start in safe mode, some combinations of button can take you to other places, depending the phone model (like it happened with me).

Check how to start in safe mode for your specific phone model (just Google it). Once inside you have to:

  1. wipe data / yes
  2. wipe cache
  3. reboot
  4. wait for a couple of minutes
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You have two options :- Hold volume up + power or just hold the power button. It depends on your device that which method will get you out.

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wipe cache won't delete user data at all.

a factory reset will preserve your photos, but not your messages... though they still might be retrievable.

formatting the drive nukes everything

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  • " but not your messages... though they still might be retrievable " So I understand that maybe messages may still be recovered after deletion/factory reset. Can some good utils be suggested which are freeware ? (i searched most of them are trialware)
    – ankur24
    Commented Nov 5, 2014 at 10:39

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