Secure Your Samsung Smartphone Using Maintenance Mode before Sending for Repair

If you have a Samsung smartphone and you are planning to send the mobile phone for repair, you must enable the built-in Maintenance Mode before sending the phone to repair shop to secure your phone data and safeguard your personal information including photos, videos and messages. This article will help you in learning more about the Maintenance Mode feature and how to enable and use it in Samsung smartphones.

Whenever our smartphone doesn’t work well and we need to send the phone for repair, we start worrying about the safety of our personal data such as pictures, videos, SMS, WhatsApp chat messages, contacts, apps and other important and sensitive information such as emails, passwords, bank account details, etc.

The mobile phone technician can browse and see our personal data and use the installed apps. We don’t want to reset or format the phone as it’ll remove all installed apps and delete all files. If we reset the phone, we’ll need to reinstall all apps and restore all data once we receive the phone back.

If you have a Samsung smartphone with latest Android version, here is a good news for you. Samsung has implemented a very useful feature called “Maintenance Mode” which prevents and restricts anyone from accessing your apps and personal data.

Maintenance Mode can be used when you are sending your smartphone for repair or giving the phone to someone else for few days. Once you turn on the Maintenance Mode, it blocks and hides all installed apps and user’s data from others.

Here is How Maintenance Mode Works in Samsung Phones

Maintenance Mode is a privacy feature which allows users to block access to their personal and sensitive information such as photos, videos, messages and contacts. It creates a new user account with default apps and settings so that the service guy can operate core functions without being able to access to any of your private and personal information.

Once the Maintenance Mode is activated, the mobile phone is rebooted. After reboot, all the personal information and apps are restricted.

The technician will be able to download 3rd party apps from Galaxy Store during repair process but all the newly installed apps will be automatically deleted along with any data or accounts created when the phone owner exits or turns off the Maintenance Mode.

How to Enable Maintenance Mode in Samsung Smartphones

You can enable and use Maintenance Mode in your Samsung smartphone using following steps:

1. Open Settings in your mobile phone.

2. Scroll down and tap on Battery and Device Care section.

3. Again scroll down at next page and you’ll see Maintenance Mode option. Tap on it.

4. Now you can tap on “Turn on” button to enable the Maintenance Mode.

Your mobile phone will restart and a new user account will be created to be used by the repair person. Now you can safely hand over your smartphone to technician and he will not be able to access your personal information and data. The technician will think that you formatted the smartphone to factory settings before sending the phone as the phone will look like a factory reset device.

Once you get your smartphone back, you can turn off the Maintenance Mode feature using the same steps and the new user account will be removed and your previous account will be restored.

Important Things to Know about Maintenance Mode

The Maintenance Mode is a part of the new One UI 5 and later. All Samsung smartphones which have received One UI 5 (part of Android 13 firmware), can be used to turn on/off Maintenance Mode feature. The S series phones such as S21, S22 and S23 contain the Maintenance Mode feature.

So whenever you are required to send your Samsung smartphone for repair, don’t forget to enable the Maintenance Mode.

Also Check:

[Tip] Run Two WhatsApp Accounts on Your Samsung Galaxy Mobile Phone

[Tips] 10 Cool Features of Samsung Galaxy Smartphones to Show Off

[Tip] Enable Hidden Secret Features and Menus in Samsung Galaxy Smartphones

Hidden Secret Codes for Samsung Galaxy Mobile Phones