How to Turn Off Without Password a Samsung Galaxy S10, S20, Note 10 and Note 20

Samsung has a plethora of excellent flagship devices in its arsenal, all capable of giving you a seamless Android experience. Despite not bringing a stock Android flavor, Samsung has managed to create quite a fanbase for itself, which is primarily down to its easy-to-master user interface.

However, despite bringing one of the cleanest UIs out there, Samsung One UI has taken the liberty to change some pre-established truths, one of which happens to be the topic of our discussion today — the procedure of turning off a Galaxy flagship device when you don’t remember your password.

What is the old method and what happens on current flagships?

As you may already know, Samsung smartphones ask you to enter your password when you try to turn it off from the lock screen. Now, for some reason, if you failed to remember your password and wished to turn a Samsung device off, the older flagship allowed you an easy way out. All you had to do was hold down the power button and the volume down key, together, for 8/10 seconds — or until you felt a vibration. Then the recovery menu would appear, allowing you to navigate to the bottom of the screen and hit ‘Power off.’ That’s all it took to power off an older Samsung flagship.

Now, on the previous or current generation flagships, pressing the volume down and power button together doesn’t lead you into the recovery menu. Instead, it forces the phone to restart, leading you straight back to your lock screen.

How to force turn off a Samsung Galaxy device

Samsung currently has four flagship families on the market. First, we have the Samsung Galaxy S10 series, which was then succeeded by the Note 10 lineup. Then, in 2020, came the S20 and Note 20 lineups, respectively. The S10 series had a dedicated Bixby button, which makes troubleshooting a little different on it. The other three lineups, on the other hand, have the Bixby key integrated into the power button.

Force turn off Galaxy S10

As discussed in the previous section, it’s not possible for us to turn off a Samsung flagship simply by pressing down the volume down key and the power button anymore. Doing so now makes your phone restart, instead of leading you to the recovery screen.

To turn off your phone, the first step is to push it into restart mode. To do so, press and hold the volume down and the power button, together, for 7 to 10 seconds. You’ll feel a little vibration and see the phone booting up. Just before it does, release the volume down button and press the volume up. Be sure to keep the power button pressed down throughout the process. Now, you should see the recovery screen in front of you. Navigate to the ‘Power off’ option at the bottom of the list and hit the Bixby button to confirm your action. With any luck, your phone would turn off for good.

Force turn off Galaxy Note 10

Since the Galaxy Note 10 doesn’t have a dedicated Bixby key, and for good reason, you’ll need to use the power button to finalize your selection.

So, first, press down the volume down button and power key for 7 to 10 seconds to force your phone to restart. After you feel a little vibration, release the volume down button and switch to the volume up, while keeping the power button pressed. Your phone should now boot into recovery. Navigate to the bottom of the list to ‘Power off’ and confirm your selection using the power key.

Force turn off S20 and Note 20

Since the process is identical to the one discussed above, we’ve decided to club the two current generation flagships together. These One UI devices don’t come with the Bixby button, which means the power button has to be used to confirm your selection.

Press and hold the volume down and the power key together for about 7 to 10 seconds — or until you feel a little vibration. Now, swap the volume down key in favor of volume up and keep the power button pressed until you see your phone enter recovery. Use the two volume keys for navigation; move down to ‘Power off’ and hit the power key to confirm your selection.

Force turn off any other Samsung Galaxy device

Well, whatever Samsung Galaxy device you have got, be that from the Galaxy A series, M series, Z series, or any other model, at least one of the tricks given above shall work. So, try the methods given above on your device and one of them should definitely work. In case a method doesn’t work, it simply will restart your phone.

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