So many problems, mainly streaming/playback and freezes

Dark Penguin

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I've been having so many issues with my Sprint Optimus S that I'm not even sure I should try to describe them all in one post. On the other hand, I suspect that these issues are all more or less related, and they seem to crop up either when I'm streaming live audio, or listening to saved content.

  • Problem the First: Device freezes up and the screen flashes "android...android...android...". So far it's been happening while trying to navigate around Double Twist, mostly. There's no way to power it down other than popping the battery. IIRC it's also happened when using TuneIn Radio.

  • Problem the Second: This just happened last night for the first time. Phone becomes temporarily bricked, screen goes dark, device completely unresponsive. Popping and reinserting the battery and rebooting seems to fix it at least temporarily. Again, I was trying to use TuneIn.

  • Problem the Third. While listening to TuneIn Radio, stream cuts out, and the UI says "An error occurred. Tap to retry." I generally do most of my listening late at night and using my household WLAN rather than the 3G network. Last night, I was listening to German radio broadcast by Bon Harris, playing historical 20th century recordings that had influenced his own work. I'm crazy about 1950s R&B, and when the stream failed halfway through Ike Turner singing and playing "Matchbox" I was vexed, let me tell you. IIRC this preceded the temporary bricking problem already mentioned.

  • Problem the Fourth. After restarting the phone, which I had to do in another room because of the ridiculously loud boot chime (Silent Boot doesn't work after popping the battery), I recognized it was time to give up on the streams and listen instead to some of my stored audio. But that didn't work either. No matter what I tried to listen to, it would play only part of the program and then skip ahead to the end. If it was short piece of music, it played to anywhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of the way to the end before skipping; if it was a longer recording, like a half-hour radio broadcast, it skipped to the end after 5 or 10 minutes.
  • And there have been a number other minor issues, like my earbuds suddenly ceasing to work for phone calls though they do work for everything else.


I should point out that I still haven't rooted, which is one reason I decided to put all this into a single post. The members of this forum, generally speaking, seem to think very highly of rooting, almost to the extent that it seems like a magic wand that can fix all manner of problems--including, I hope, some of the ones I've mentioned.

Aside from the possibility of rooting, is it possible that some of my streaming issues are caused by the phone deciding to use the 3G network even though I have wifi enabled? With my old HTC that's a non-issue because it no longer has any 3G access.

I have moved every app possible to my 16G SD card. Even so my old HTC Pure with the WinMo OS had less memory but ran so much better.
 
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hlxanthus

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Is the microSD card the stock card that came with it? The cards could be class 2 4 6 8 or 10, with the higher the number a faster transfer rate. The stock card is 2gb and I believe class 4, but dont quote me on that.

As for having transfered apps to sd card, are the problem apps stored on your sd card? Most date intensive apps work much better stored on internal memory, I would start there. Move them back to internal. Another thing to try is to connect your phone to your computer, back up all data on it, and do a full format of the disk. After doing so, copy back all your files to the sd card, and once disconnected from the computer, shut down and start the phone back up.l

Hope that helps.
 

Dark Penguin

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Is the microSD card the stock card that came with it? The cards could be class 2 4 6 8 or 10, with the higher the number a faster transfer rate. The stock card is 2gb and I believe class 4, but dont quote me on that.

The stock SD card is indeed 2G but I don't see anything to tell me what class it was. The 16GB card I replaced it with is MicroSDHC but I don't know what class that is, either.

As for having transfered apps to sd card, are the problem apps stored on your sd card? Most date intensive apps work much better stored on internal memory, I would start there. Move them back to internal. Another thing to try is to connect your phone to your computer, back up all data on it, and do a full format of the disk. After doing so, copy back all your files to the sd card, and once disconnected from the computer, shut down and start the phone back up.l

Hope that helps.

If moving some of these apps back to the device would help, it's easy enough to try. But help me understand the reasoning here. When you say "date intensive", you mean "data intensive", is that correct?

Obviously, keeping even a significant portion of my media collection in the device memory is out of the question, since I already have filled up half the card. So I hope you mean that just the playback application itself should be moved.

Also, I was already mulling over reformatting the card, or at least deleting all my media and resynching it. I may simply proceed with that option.
 

Ez Duzit

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Dark Penguin

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For a start I'm proceeding with the format. And no, I hadn't considered going back to Froyo but it sounds like it might be the way to go. It was after I got GB that my problems started to compound.

One concern, though, is this: assuming I keep the phone for the duration of the contract, is there any major downside to not keeping up, or at least within a couple of versions, of the latest OS? Ice Cream Sandwich does sound pretty good I have to admit. I'd love to have the option of touch screen buttons for home, back, menu, and search.
 

Ez Duzit

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For a start I'm proceeding with the format. And no, I hadn't considered going back to Froyo but it sounds like it might be the way to go. It was after I got GB that my problems started to compound.

One concern, though, is this: assuming I keep the phone for the duration of the contract, is there any major downside to not keeping up, or at least within a couple of versions, of the latest OS? Ice Cream Sandwich does sound pretty good I have to admit. I'd love to have the option of touch screen buttons for home, back, menu, and search.

Sounds like most, if not all of your problems will go away if you downgrade. Go back to the ZVD baseband and you should be fine.

As far as keeping up with the upgrades. If the phone works fine and you're happy with it, the upgrades aren't really necessary. The only downside is that you don't have the latest software and features.
If you want something rock stable but still leaps and bounds better then stock, after restoring your phone to Froyo, root the phone and install either Reborn or sROM. Both are based on Sprints own Froyo version (ZVD baseband) so they are very stable and everything works.
As far as Ice cream sand. coming to this phone, unless the devs whip up a version for the optimus s, it ain't ever gonna happen. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if sprint never even bothers fixing their mistake with a patched gingerbread version for this phone.
 

vapore0n

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First, if you accepted the sprint gingerbread update, you need to roll back. No questions on that. Sprint pulled that update because it was defective.
Second, the stock memory card is also defective. I would recommended changing it.
Third id recommended a phone reset. Maybe its an app causing problems too.
 

Dark Penguin

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Thanks for all the tips. Regarding the version rollback, does it make any difference whether I resync my media to the card before or after I go back to Froyo, and possibly do the root as EZ Duzit?
 

Dark Penguin

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As far as keeping up with the upgrades. If the phone works fine and you're happy with it, the upgrades aren't really necessary. The only downside is that you don't have the latest software and features.

Well, I could probably live without the text-position pointer/cursor that came with Gingerbread, at that. But would rolling back to Froyo impact the apps I download from the Marketplace? IOW, are apps typically backward/downward compatible, at least over the length of time I'm likely to hold on to this phone?
 

Dark Penguin

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OK, so I'm following these instructions in the link:

Sprint said:
Note: Performing this system update will result in a device reset, removing all contacts and account information. To retain your contacts, please visit a full-service Sprint store to perform this update.

To retain your contacts, prior to the update please follow these steps to Export your contacts: Open Contacts > Press Menu > Import/Export > Export Contacts > Press OK at the pop-up.
After the update is complete please follow these steps to Import your contacts. Import Contacts: Open Contacts > Press Menu > Import/Export > Import Contacts > Import All vCard files.

Follow these instructions to install the Froyo software:

Make sure your device has a full charge before performing this update.
Make sure you have an SD card in the phone (go to Menu > Settings > SD Card & Phone Storage).

Download the file (via the Download link below) "update.zip" to your PC Desktop.

Make sure that you have installed the LG drivers on your PC. The drivers can be found here: Mobile Support.

Click on Mobile Drivers.

Select the Sprint LGALS670.zip (Sprint Android Drivers for XP, Vista, and Win7) package.

Select LGLS670 folder.

Double click on "LGUnitedMobileDriver_S498CA21_WHQL_ML_Ver_2.1.exe".

...and at the last step it gives me an error message: The setup has detected that version 3.02.001 of LG United Mobile Driver is already installed. This setup installs an earlier version of LG United Mobile Driver (2.1).

You will have to uninstall the previous version before installing this version.


This is dumb, I know, but I can't find this driver in Device Manager, so how do I uninstall it?
 

Ez Duzit

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Thanks for all the tips. Regarding the version rollback, does it make any difference whether I resync my media to the card before or after I go back to Froyo, and possibly do the root as EZ Duzit?

Resyncing after the rollback is fine.


Well, I could probably live without the text-position pointer/cursor that came with Gingerbread, at that. But would rolling back to Froyo impact the apps I download from the Marketplace? IOW, are apps typically backward/downward compatible, at least over the length of time I'm likely to hold on to this phone?

Most if not all of your apps should still work fine. But you will have to re-download and reinstall them again.


OK, so I'm following these instructions in the link:



...and at the last step it gives me an error message: The setup has detected that version 3.02.001 of LG United Mobile Driver is already installed. This setup installs an earlier version of LG United Mobile Driver (2.1).

You will have to uninstall the previous version before installing this version.


This is dumb, I know, but I can't find this driver in Device Manager, so how do I uninstall it?

You can uninstall the LG drivers by going to control panel and choosing "Add or Remove Programs". Scroll down the list of installed programs and find the LG drivers.

Ez :)
 
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Dark Penguin

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You can uninstall the LG drivers by going to control panel and choosing "Add or Remove Programs". Scroll down the list of installed programs and find the LG drivers.

Ez :)

D'oh, I should have thought of that, thanks!

Where's that smack-in-the-forehead smiley?
 

hlxanthus

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D'oh, I should have thought of that, thanks!

Where's that smack-in-the-forehead smiley?

Lol :p

It is recommended to do a full factory reset after rolling back. There somethings, especially some app data that MAY cause issues. Issues like poor battery life and data quirks. At the very least you will want to go thru and clear all data from your apps.

Good luck!

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk
 
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Dark Penguin

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I've completed the rollback and factory reset, and while I haven't used it enough since to verify first hand that the problems I cited won't recur, it is running noticeably faster all around.

Now you all can wish me luck on the rooting.
 

Dark Penguin

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I'll use this post to report my results with regard to the problems in post 1.

2011-11-30 15:26 Tune-In Radio still stops unexpectedly. I'm not seeing the message "An Error Has Occurred", but performance pales compared with the free GSPlayer I use on my HTC. And this happened today using my home wifi network, which averages 2.2 mbps. (ETA: No error message, just dropping the connection and having to rebuffer every few minutes. Not surprisingly, it was worse when I went out, relying on the 3G network. )

If I pay a little money to get the premium version of TuneIn or a similar app, will the performance be better?

Definitely I'm going to see if the wise and good creators of GSPlayer have done an Android version.
 
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hlxanthus

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How does iheartradio play?

Also I saw that you were going to root. What rom/custom recovery do you have? It is possible that an overclocked rom may be of some help, while some governors can cause performance issues too.
 

Dark Penguin

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How does iheartradio play?

Also I saw that you were going to root. What rom/custom recovery do you have? It is possible that an overclocked rom may be of some help, while some governors can cause performance issues too.

Haven't managed to root yet; I'm still trying to get my Android SDK together. I've installed the basic software but every time I fire it up it wants to do download and install additional modules, and this process seems to be interminable. I'm beginning to suspect that my Java SDK version is incorrect.
 
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