Note7 inconsistent boot loop

[greenvironmentalist]

I have an OG note 7 (N930V). Updates blocked with the methods before there was an alliance shield app (2 different apps are used to block everything iirc). The shield app is installed, 0.5.8 because was told that there was no reason to update (and it might have been a conflict with the old method and new app). It has been a while. The only thing that was never done was the good ui replacement, as my phone would never let me install it, so always get the warning when plugging in or when it boots.

With everything blocked, I never got any of the problem battery updates. Not really had any issues (other than annoyance of having to overnight ship it since can't fly with it, the few times I fly). Every once in a while it would randomly restart. Didn't seem to be any sort of cause as plugged in and not, unlocked with something open or locked and screen off, been on for some hours or a week, and so on. Yesterday it started "rebooting".

It would start booting up and freeze during the sam logo, note 7 logo, or verizon boot screen (with colored animated dots). When it froze, the screen would stay at that graphic point for a few seconds and then the screen would go off and the blue notification light would be on. Plus if you plugged in an otg it provided power to devices. Hold down the power button and it would start booting again. Sometimes it would reboot instead of going to a black screen. After a while I used otg to help drain the battery faster (after verifying it does charge still). After it went to 0%, trying to turn it on did that needs power screen. Charged it to 100% and tried to turn it on. Now it stops at one of those points and instead of going to a black screen it just reboots.

Removed the sim and sd, and it behaved a little better (tends to get farther in the boot and gets to full boot more often), but still loops. Recovery mode is accessible, and clearing the cache didn't seem to help at all. There are times where it will boot to the blue android installing system updates screen, or the teal updates screen that has 2 gears on it (saw gears one less often so idr the text, but think that one might have been about analyzing apps).

Now I'm concerned that it might be more of a hardware issue, since I was just able to boot all the way into android, unlock it and open the shield app to see what version it was and close a few of the apps that were open from before it had the issue. Then it restarted, but came all the way back to the unlock screen. At that point I just turned it back off for now since it behaved better (it turned off no problem).

I really don't want to do a factory reset. For one thing, all the many 2fa apps would be a nightmare to reconfigure all of them.

Hopefully this paints a picture of what is happening with the details that are needed to know what to do...assuming there is a fix.