Categories: Mobile: Android Samsung LG...

SOLVED: Samsung S3 Android 4.3 Camera Flashes on New Email or Phone Calls

If you have upgraded your Android device (in my case a Samsung S3) to Android 4.3 you likely have found that the camera flash goes off randomly.  Well, it is not so random after all; I found that on the 4 Galaxy S3’s that I experienced this problem, the camera would flash on inbound phone calls and emails.  This got me to thinking about notifications… ya, its not there.  However it IS under ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS.  This makes sense, if you are near blind or deaf or … having a flash go off when the phone rings might be very useful.

Oddly, in all of my 4 cases the FLASH NOTIFICATION setting was turned OFF, so I clicked it on and then immediately clicked it off and BINGO, the problem was solved.  I did not even have to reboot.

FIX:

  1. Swipe down from the top of your device to bring up the status window
  2. Click the round cog near the top right corner of the screen
  3. Click the MY DEVICE button at the top right corner of the screen
    1. Scroll to the very bottom of this list
  4. Click ACCESSIBILITY (in the middle of the screen on my Samsung Galaxy S3)
    1. Scroll to the very bottom of this list
  5. Click FLASH NOTIFICATION so that it has a check mark  (i.e. turn it on… .ie. the opposite of what you would expect)
  6. Click FLASH NOTIFICATION so that it does NOT have a check mark (i.e. turn if off… i.e. what you expect)
  7. Have a nice day

 

View Comments

  • Thanks! The flashing was very annoying, your solution is amazing as you had the ingenuity to try a totally counter-intuitive thing. It worked! Thanks

  • Thank you for the advice! Your fix did resolve the same camera flash problem I was also having with my Galaxy S3 after upgrading to Android 4.3. Go figure!

    • Yes, it is a mess. I spoke with Samsung Business support about this and they claimed they has not seen this issue but according to various media reports it was a big enough problem to pull the Android 4.3 update from the UK until they had it fixed.

      I am glad this help you!

  • Like Rob, I also was wondering if my phone was hacked and sending pictures somewhere. Your 'fix' worked perfectly on my Samsung Galaxy S3. Thanks a million!

    • I have seen this on 30 of 40 Samsung S3's that I have worked on and this fix has resolved the issue every time. ALL of the units I have worked on were the North American I747's that were previously running Android 4.1.3 , perhaps yours was the 'international' model.

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Published by
Ian Matthews
Tags: Android 4.3 Camera FlashesFLASH NOTIFICATION
10 years ago

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