My S3 freezing and glitching so bad I can't even do anything!

[Peugeot Rocket]

So during the past few days I have been having to force close apps (mainly Opera Mobile) a few times a day. I really didn't think much of it but then yesterday everything went to hell.

I was playing Temple Run and all of a sudden it started running extremely choppy and the game wasn't responding well to my commands resulting in my dieing. My battery was around 10% so I plugged it into the charger and tried to continue playing. That didn't help and the next thing I know the phone shut off and then came up with the charging picture on the screen showing the battery was completely depleted.

So I let the phone fully charge and now it is completely unusable. After turning the phone on about 50% of the time I am unable to to even unlock the screen. The other 50% of the time I am able to unlock my phone but then it freezes within a few seconds. I am able to navigate to my settings but that is it. By the time I launch the settings the phone freezes and I am unable to do anything.

If I wait a 30 seconds or so, the screen will turn off and in another 30 seconds or so it will turn back on but I can't do anything. It will keep turning on and off nonstop. If I turn the screen off and then back on I do get another few seconds of use but I start over at the lock screen so again run out of time before I can do anything.

If I leave the phone on it starts to feel a little warm. Not hot, just warm.

I tried doing a soft reset right after boot which takes forever and doesn't fix anything. The phone won't respond to a hard reset. I can't do a factory reset because I can't fully get into the settings before it locks up. And even if I could do a factory reset, I need to backup all of my pictures which is stored on the internal memory.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Also, how long does the warrenty last?

EDIT: Btw, the phone is not rooted and still on the factory Verizon rom.

 

[SPD]

Well you have a 1 year warranty to exchange it if you need to. If you can somehow backup the pictures I would factory reset it. There's a way to do it from the bootloader. I forget which buttons you have to hold down though while simultaneously turning the phone on.

 

[funkylogik]

its volume (up or dnwwn i cant remember), power and home button all at same time for a few seconds and i think that takes you to recovery mode where you can select factory reset. do you have anti-viruses? ive never heard of this on the s3. good luck mate

 

[Forgetful]

its volume (up or dnwwn i cant remember), power and home button all at same time for a few seconds and i think that takes you to recovery mode where you can select factory reset. do you have anti-viruses? ive never heard of this on the s3. good luck mate

Up. Down gets you to download mode.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[funkylogik]

Up. Down gets you to download mode.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

cheers so whats download mode mean mate?

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Download mode would be used with ODIN if you're doing a manual update, restore, or some type of hackery.

 

[funkylogik]

thanks Kev. im gona have a play with odin sometime does odin give sumsung international updates more reliably than Kies? (unrooted)?

 

[forever a king]

I am having the same issue and I am on my 4th phone. The only difference is if i let mine sit for about 30 min or so it will start to work again. If there is a fix I would love to know.

 

[funkylogik]

mine is getting slow at re-writing homescreen i stopped usin LWPs but gpgt still takes about 1+half minutes for my clock to appear and folders to fill with apps. take it its coz i have more on my screens now?
is this the price im paying for only havin 1Gb RAM? my last phone only had 520Mb and never had this problem. wonder if JB will fix it?

 

[mattlach]

I have the same issue as well.

A Verizon U.S. model GS3 (SCH-i535).

The phone is almost a month old. Was working perfectly until today. No new apps, or configuration changes made before the problems started.

Now, I only have a few seconds after boot until it freezes.

If I don't touch it for a while, it will come back from being frozen, and I will - again - only have a few seconds until it freezes again.

I tried booting it into recovery mode and wiping the cache partition, this did nothing (except make the next boot a little slower).

Removing the battery and restarting it does nothing. Again, only a few seconds post unlock, it freezes again.

Did you find any solution to your problem?

The phone is more or less a paperweight in its current condition. Can't be used for anything.

Just like the OP, the phone has never been rooted or hacked in any way.

 

[SteveISU]

Well the logical thing is to take it back and have them give you a replacement.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy SIII

 

[mattlach]

Well the logical thing is to take it back and have them give you a replacement.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3

Agreed.

I was just hoping I could save my data on it before doing so...

 

[s14tat]

If you guys have a external SD card try to see if the problem goes away after you remove it. There is a glitch in GB and ICS that when the sd card gets too full from apps ( only apps not from photos or media files ) it will constantly reboot every 2-5 minutes.

I would move all the apps from the sd back into your internal SD card and the problem should go away.

 

[mattlach]

If you guys have a external SD card try to see if the problem goes away after you remove it. There is a glitch in GB and ICS that when the sd card gets too full from apps ( only apps not from photos or media files ) it will constantly reboot every 2-5 minutes.

I would move all the apps from the sd back into your internal SD card and the problem should go away.

No SD card in mine.

I took it in to the store, and they gave me a new one.

Could not get it to stay alive long enough to transfer my data, so I lost everything since my last backup

Hope this doesn't happen again...

 

[534n]

This sounds like a memory issue to be honest, not SD, but RAM. Once the system reached beyond a certain pointer, RAM corruption and readdressing and then corruption and readdressing would take care of the rest. Probably a bad batch of RAM chips or controllers.

If you could get it alive enough to root/unlock (~30s per boot) you could transfer everything using adb in recovery, but you would have to move fast.

 

[mattlach]

This sounds like a memory issue to be honest, not SD, but RAM. Once the system reached beyond a certain pointer, RAM corruption and readdressing and then corruption and readdressing would take care of the rest. Probably a bad batch of RAM chips or controllers.

If you could get it alive enough to root/unlock (~30s per boot) you could transfer everything using adb in recovery, but you would have to move fast.

Well, too late now. I only lost a few days of data anyway.. I forgot I had backed it up with Kies a few days earlier.

To me it sounds like a software issue.

If it were hardware, I would have expected the RAM to act up from day one.

The phone worked perfectly for almost a month, and then suddenly mid day yesterday, the problem started and would not go away.

I did a factory reset from the recovery boot before handing them the device back to make sure my data wasn't flying around out there. I was in a hurry so I didn't test it after doing so. It would have been interesting to see if the factory reset made the problem go away...

 

[534n]

Well, too late now. I only lost a few days of data anyway.. I forgot I had backed it up with Kies a few days earlier.

To me it sounds like a software issue.

If it were hardware, I would have expected the RAM to act up from day one.

The phone worked perfectly for almost a month, and then suddenly mid day yesterday, the problem started and would not go away.

I did a factory reset from the recovery boot before handing them the device back to make sure my data wasn't flying around out there. I was in a hurry so I didn't test it after doing so. It would have been interesting to see if the factory reset made the problem go away...

Could be, but the way others described it it sounded like hardware. Semiconductors are very sensitive to various conditions, so if there was a nanobreak in a trace or a junction, heat, vibration, shock, or other conditions could cause it to act up. It could be perfectly fine until one of those conditions became present.

 

[Peugeot Rocket]

So in the end I had to do a factory reset. It "fixed" the problem and it is running smoothly again.

I am extremely lucky that I was able to backup my data. I was able to connect it to my computer for about 30-60 seconds at a time and then it would disconect. I had to transfer like 20 or so files at a time but in the end I got everything off.

I am wondering what could have caused this. Could something just have gotten messed up in the software or could there be a problem with the hardware? It seems to be working fine now so I am not sure if it is worth exchanging it.

 

[534n]

Good news, could have just been a bad flash or a corrupted setting somewhere in the root filesystem?

 

[virtualjen]

Glad and sad to hear that this happening with mine last night is not an isolated incident.

I didn't try a hard reboot before going to Verizon, but mine has done the same as you describe. Working perfectly, in the middle of a game, battery died, plugged it in and then bam - pretty much critical injury. Booted up and froze within seconds of hitting any function, app, screen swipe, etc. Am now waiting on a new phone, completely dead in the water and just hoping most of my stuff was backed up.

Just thought this was a way better tried and tested phone than to have this kind of issue@!