Can anyone help me with my Nexus 5 Reboots / Reception Issues?

[andyjmoore]

Nexus 5 Reboots / Reception Issues

My Nexus 5 is 6 weeks old and has recently developed a habit of random reboot or wifi / cell drop outs. Was fine for the first couple of weeks. Although not chronic, the issue is happening at least once per day, enough to be a little annoying.
I have deleted Easy Batter Saver and Task Manager - not yet noticing any drop in battery performance but in last 24 hours have not had a reboot or drop out.
Do I actually need these apps or is Kitkat 4.4.4 managing all this stuff without them?
Maybe I have slight receiver issue with my N5 - some threads out there talking about wifi / cell dropouts that can last ages despite reboot attempts, and this is what occasionally happens to me. I'm in the UK with strong 3G but iffy 4G signal (have already set preference to 3G), have strong home wifi router signal. Previous S4 (thank god I got rid of it, horrendous laggy thing) had no reception issues on 4.4.4.
Thanks for any hints.

 

[Devhux]

Re: Nexus 5 Reboots / Reception Issues

In general, task manager-type apps are not recommended, as Android handles task management pretty well on its own. It's possible one of those two apps you had on there was causing the crashing/reboot issues, so see how things go over the next few days.

As for the Wi-Fi / cellular dropouts, I've seen cell droputs on the Nexus 5 a few times, though as far as I can remember I didn't have issues with Wi-Fi. Hopefully one of the others here can assist with that.

 

[andyjmoore]

Re: Nexus 5 Reboots / Reception Issues

Thanks for the fast answer, much appreciated as I am no expert.
Will indeed keep monitoring the reboot issue.
Would you say battery saver apps are also not needed in general? Just asking, as in the event my symptoms return I was wondering if a battery saver app re-install would be recommended (if so, which one in your opinion)?

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Nexus 5 Reboots / Reception Issues

As far as battery savers, the most good any of them do is turn off radios you're not using - GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi and mobile data. You can do that yourself.

Your phone should be in deep sleep most of the time it's not being used. (Settings/General/Battery - tap the graph at the top and look at the bottom of the next page. Color (I don't know what colors the Nexus uses) is awake, no color (white or black, whatever the background is) is sleeping. If the phone is awake much of the time you're not using it install Wakelock Detector (free) to see what's keeping it awake. You shouldn't need to check your emails more than once an hour in most cases (some people really do need to check them every few minutes - almost everyone doesn't) - that wakes the phone up.

If there are apps waking the phone when you're not running them, install Greenify and hibernate that app. (When you run it, it wakes up. When you close it, Greenify hibernates it - keeps it from running.) Never Greenify Phone or your email program or you won't get incoming calls, texts and emails (you'll get emails when you run the email app - you may get incoming texts when you open the app - your phone calls will go to voicemail). Also don't Greenify your alarm, if you want it to wake you up.

Basically, pick the apps you want running in the background and Greenify everything else. (There are some apps it can't hibernate unless the phone is rooted, but Greenifying those it can will save battery.)

(From the Greenify page on the Play Store)

IMPORTANT: Greenifying an app implies that you are aware that all the background functionality (service, periodic task, event receiver, alarm, widget update, push message) of this app will become out of service during the hibernation except when you are using this app.

NEVER greenify alarm clock apps, instant messaging apps unless you don't rely on them. Please do verify the impact of greenified apps on which you heavily rely.

As far as task manager apps, if they close a process needed by some app that's still running, it takes battery (and time) to open that process when the app needs it again. Then the task manager closes it again. Etc. (Which is why you can kill some apps, only to have them open up again.) Android is a lot better at this than any task manager app. Multitasking the Android Way is a pretty thorough explanation by one of Android's software engineers.

 

[andyjmoore]

Thanks Rukbat, much appreciated