Phone freezing - suggested cause

[Klaus_K]

Hi,

I am an Android newbie, though with > 30 years experience in IT, inc. around 15 years using *nix, so not totally new to software etc.

A few months back I migrated from iPhone to Galaxy S3, with Three mobile (in the UK). This had been working perfectly until a few weeks ago, when my phone suddenly started freezing, for no apparent reason (e.g. it didn't seem to coincide with any new installs that I had done). This occurred when I was using all kinds of apps, and the general symptom was that the screen would remain exactly as it had been at the point of the crash, but all buttons/screen interaction would be dead. The only way out was to either press the power button until a reset occurred, or else take the back off and remove/replace the battery. Occasionally, the phone would even do a complete reset spontaneously, when I wasn't even using it, which was particularly annoying when it happened in the middle of the night.

After speaking to Three I did a backup (using Kies) and reset. After doing this, the problem seemed to go away, which was a big relief, though a bit frustrating, since a 'hard' fault would be easier to isolate/fix. After waiting a few days though I decided to pick up the courage to do a restore and to re-install most of the apps that I'd previously had installed. Although there are quite a few (~60 or so) there is still plenty of memory remaining (~9.5GB).

Unfortunately, at this point, the blasted thing started hanging again :'( (especially during the bulk app download process).

Having said that, now all the downloads are completed, it seems to have gone stable again.

So, my question is this: is there a known bug (or rumours of one) which raises its ugly head when the network (i.e. wifi) is being heavily loaded. If so, this would probably explain my problem. If this is not the case, then I'm worried I may have a h/w fault after all, which will mean me sending the thing away for a week or so, which will be a pain. For further background, I am running 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) on a standard Three mobile, with no root mods or other fancy stuff. All my apps are pretty regular too, from the Play Store. Although I did have an SD card installed initially, I removed this in order to reduce the risk that this might be causing issues.

Sorry for going on for quite so long, but any response would be most appreciated

KK

 

[patruns]

My guess is that you have an isolated app causing a system freeze at some point. The only real way to be sure is to reinstall the apps one at a time until it happens again.

 

[Klaus_K]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for that input. It makes sense and is consistent with the fact that since doing the full reset, wiping all my old apps, and then re-installing them, the problem seems to have gone away. I did think that it had come back during the bulk re-install process, but that just might have been the system being overloaded (hope, hope). Either way, it seems to have been stable since that point, so fingers crossed :-\

One thing I don't understand is how the apps get corrupted - is it during the download or later on, in ram/flash? Is this a common problem?

Thanks!

KK

 

[patruns]

There are a lot of ways an app can get corrupted. Some other event takes place while the app is writing to disc, the app is faulty, a virus, data gets written to a disc that is failing..... many reasons. While I understand we are talking about flash memory and not an actual disk, the failure principle is the same.

 

[Klaus_K]

I've finally come to the conclusion that the issue was almost certainly caused by bugs in AccuWeather. I had this installed before I did my reset/re-install and I see that the latest release say that the older version (V3.0.5.4) included bugs and caused crashes. When I did my fresh install I purchased (!!) the latest version (V3.0.5.5). As noted previously, it was around this time that my phone started crashing again. I noticed that this occurred when I was running the AccuWeather app on a number of occasions, so I removed it completely. Since then, my phone has been embarrassingly stable, to my huge relief

This is a shame since I found the app very useful and fairly accurate. However, I'll stick with Google Now until I find a better alternative.

 

[qaiserina]

Hi KK! First, your detailed description of the problem, its potential causes, your solutions, and the results and updates are all MUCH appreciated. I've had this phone (the S3) for about 6-7 months now, and this exact same problem started up about 2-3 weeks ago. And I can't seem to isolate a particular app that may be causing this. I backed up all my data and just did a reset. So far, its been about half an hour and I've already had one hard freeze where I had to force reboot using the lock button. Now I'm deathly afraid of restoring all my apps and data in case the problem still hasn't gone away. I'm so scared that it'll turn out to be a hardware issue!!

Is your phone still stable, a month on from the last time you updated here?

 

[Klaus_K]

Yes Quaiserina , it is still stable It has become the phone that I always wanted, and I've learned a lot along the way, after getting responses to this and other queries that I raised on this site - e.g. I installed the Nova desktop manager. It really does feel like a pocket computer Thanks for your kind words - I know from past experience how frustrating it is when people raise an issue, then say they've fixed it, without giving any indication of how!

 

[Tadeu Cunha]

Well, guys, I am having the same problem. But I already did 3 resets and it keeps crashing.
My phone is a Galaxy Note 2 with android 4.1.2. No root or anything like that. It just freezes from nowhere and sometimes resets itself, 4 times per day.
It began 3 weeks ago and really seems to be related to network activity.

Any ideas?