Samsung Galaxy S3 I9300 freezes every hour or so.

[David Sutherland1]

4.1.2 is supposed to contain a workaround for the sudden death issue.

So while there is certainly a hardware issue, the symptoms of "sudden death" are that the phone is bricked. It won't work at all, and can't be turned on.

This does not seem to be the same issue of freezing and random reboots. At least for me, the problems started upon installing 4.1.2.

There is most likely two groups of people with problems - those with hardware issues which are likely to be severe (dead phone), and those with software issues which are likely to be annoying, but non-terminal.

I guess it's conceivable that these reboots are symptomatic of hardware issues, but tweaking the wifi settings is unlikely to make a difference in that case. But it did for me so I'm leaning towards software for now....

 

[thelegendaryjay]

David, what were the wifi tweaks you made?

This is driving me nuts, I can't even access the Play store to download any apps, so my phone is stock with no apps to use, no contacts sync'd with my Google account (I always said using the 'cloud' to store valuable info would someday be the end of me or at least piss me off a great deal if I couldn't access the info)

 

[betty_boop245]

I've also posted this on the other thread on this issue, but I've been having issues with my phone freezing and rebooting for the last 2 weeks, so I took mine to a Samsung service centre, and they sorted it for me by re-flashing the software, they had other people in with the issue. Its been fine for the last 3 days, no freezing, lagging, and no reboots

 

[David Sutherland1]

The wifi setting is a couple of posts above.

In the dialler, type *#0011#. You'll go into the service mode. Select wi-fi using the menu button and you should see a toggle to disable WPS mode. Change it to OFF.

I'd be really interested to know if this helps you. Most of my freezes were when I unlocked (or shortly after), so your symptoms sound a little different.

After tweaking and re-kerneling my phone has been up for two days without a crash. The longest period sans-crash since 4.1.2 went on there!

 

[thelegendaryjay]

Doh! How'd I miss that? :-X

WPS meaning Wifi Power Save, just turned that off now and started having a play with the phone and it's locked up again. Oddly enough since flashing XELL5 I've had a few lock ups, but not nearly as often as with XELLA, which were on every reboot or just about every time I tried to use the phone - unless wifi was turned off.

If it does continue I'll be visiting Vodafone's larger Oxford shop this week, expressing how annoyed I am by the SGS3 and reminding them what a good, long term (13+ years) my wife and I have been, and asking politely for a new SGS3.


EDIT: I applied the work around again and it crashed when using the phone. I'll restart my router (BT Hub3) and apply the patch again - "just in case", even though my wife's has been fine all day, also had my sister and mother round earlier and their SGS3's were fine ....

 

[Silentnoise3]

Update:

Well I tried downgrading back to 4.1.1 which went smoothly, resisted adding any apps and it still froze, left it a while without any apps and it made no difference, with wi-fi on, with wi-fi off, with apps, without apps I can't seem to see a pattern it seems very random, although I did notice towards the bottom of the phone it seemed warmer than normal, almost like when your playing intensive games, but i suppose this could be attributed to the various reboots etc.

Anyway the problem doesn't seem to be isolated to 4.1.1 so I've upgraded back to 4.1.2 which was nightmarish! Once I re-upgraded the phone went nuts, would just about start up and freeze, or would let me unlock it and as soon as i tried to open an app it would freeze and even in safe mode it was doing this!?

After about 20+ reinstalls, more reboots than i can remember the issue seems to have died down slightly, no freeze or reboot in over 12 hours (which doesn't sound like a lot) but at one point it was every minute or so.

I'm on holiday soon and can't really afford to be without a phone while I'm away but if the issue continues I will have to send my phone back under warranty, or I may take my phone in to Vodafone tomorrow and see if their willing to do anything about it as I'm a 10 year+ customer of theirs.

 

[thelegendaryjay]

This morning I flashed back to BUBLG3 / 4.0.4 which is the original firmware and it has been absolutely fine. I've tried replicating the lock ups and can't, I've installed apps from the Play store and Amazon App store, updated bloatware apps and used the phone like I have when it's locked up. I'll carry on running it on this for the time being and do update by update later on and test each to see if I can replicate the lock ups.

Download the firmwares I have from here https://skydrive.live.com/pagenotfounderror
or from my home server here which may be a faster download off my FTTP line http://tinyurl.com/bmvnptu - use the username anon without a password, if you can't figure that out.........



PS: if you screw your phone flashing it, it's your fault, not mine as you decided to, tough titties if you brick it, read up on flashing woth Odin first.

 

[thelegendaryjay]

Guess a mod didn't like the links to the firmware files? If anyone wants alternate links, to most of the released firmware files, Vodafone or BTU, just message me.

EDIT: Never mind, it's now been approved - see above

Anywhoo, on 4.0.4 now and not had a single lock up since flashing it this morning, which is a freaking miracle.Downloaded and installed all App updates, installed a few apps via Play and Amazon stores, played an hour of Another World and been using the phone for web browsing and facebook - no problems! I miss some of the features from later firmwares and will update via OTA instead of flashing via Odin a bit later on once I've used the phone on 4.0.4 a bit more "too be sure" It's all gravy baby.



EDIT 2: I had great success with 4.0.4, so upgraded to 4.1.1 via OTA updates, which ran flawlessly for hours while I was trying to put load on the device / wifi chip, no crash, no lockups, no freezes of any sort, so I proceeded with the next OTA update which took me to XELL5, which again ran flawlessly for hours, so I've now upgraded to XELLA via OTA and it too has been fine for hours - Lets hope it stays that way for Vodafone's sake (they provided the phone, thus they are responsible for replacing / taking ownership of the repair).

 

[Pranav Nigam]

What if I don't want to root my device..!

Anyways i was having the same issue since i updated it to 4.1.2. I tried things like formatting/factory reset etc but like everyone else it didn't worked out well.. Earlier the issue was for 5-6 times a day but one night it was freezing every time i switch it on within 5 mins interval.
So i decided to take it to Samsung Service center (Chandigarh, India).. They tried to change the software version and I had some different baseband version which according to them is latest. I got the mobile next day but that also didn't solved the issue.

I called them up again explaining the scenario and they said if its not the software issue then they have to replace the motherboard.. Now today i have again given them the mobile and they will replace the motherboard,...

I don't know if its good or bad but i was personally afraid to keep a phone(motherboard) which is freezing like this. :/

Lets see what happens next...!

Thanks,
Pranav

 

[maschenazi]

Somebody came up with a solution to this problem:
xda-developers - View Single Post - Galaxy S 3 keeps freezing every 5 mins (50+ freezes a day) - FDisk80 found this thread on Xda
That is if you are willing to root and install a custom recovery.
I have not tried it because my phone seems to behave now... 69 hours without any freezes and I did nothing. Very strange one this is.

 

[richo1973]

Update. Since resetting my phone and installing only minimal apps (for now) coming upto 72hrs it has frozen once which I'm not convinced was not an issue with Twitter. So..for me so far so good. Slowly will now start installing my main apps and see how it goes. Good luck for everyone else out there who has had the same issues....

Well after 4 days of getting this problem in anything I'm doing and having to reboot my phone 20+ times a day I've decided to factory reset. What I've done and intending to do is:-
* Factory reset
* Leave for upto 72hrs with minimal apps and see results
* If problem reoccurs roll back to 4.1.1 (currently on 4.1.2)
* If problem reoccurs have little choice but to take the phone back to the shop.

Similar to everyone else I had no problems at all with my phone and 4 days ago this started completely out of the blue with no new apps or changes made to my phone.
I'll post back with my results as I'm sure everyone else is finding this as frustrating as me...
Cheers....

 

[Silentnoise3]

Ok I've taken mine in for repair. I tried going back to base ICS 4.0.4 which still froze without any apps installed so I'm convinced this is a problem with the phone. Also to those people saying it's only freezing once every now and again, dig out a spare old phone and take it in for repair, I wish I'd done this in the first place as my phone was pretty close to being bricked by all the various updates, downgrades etc.

Once i'd gone to ICS I and there was still a problem I thought I'd try a OTA update, however it froze halfway through and now the phone is dead, literally will start up but not go any further, just gets to the Samsung logo and then all pixelated colour blocks flash up like it's corrupted, Kies recovery doesn't recognise it, Odin doesn't detect it, the power + UP vol + home key method doesn't work, it's almost like android is wiped from the flash memory somehow - so please BEWARE when doing these updates and downgrades with a phone that is likely to freeze at any time.

 

[bsnguy]

All,

I've been following several threads on this issue as I've had it while traveling over the past week. I find it also fails when WiFi is completely off. When traveling and moving in/out of cell coverage areas or where the signal is very low for several minutes, the phone also freezes and/or reboots. It will do this while on a call, running apps or just doing nothing.

Anyone else have problems with WiFi completely off? I've had it off for three days and about 20 reboots/freezes a day over that time.

 

[Silentnoise3]

Yep had wi-fi off several times, for hours or even days at some points when also travelling but same thing happens, I notice this seems to be a recent issue, a lot of people like myself had no problems with the phone for 6 months + but recently this issue has started appearing. Could be something introduced with a ROM update but I can't understand why when rolling back to previous iterations of android the problem was still there unless a recent update and messed up some hardwired setting....

Anyway as mentioned if in doubt take it back if possible rather than messing around, and to be honest it's best to do these things while the phone is still in warranty...

All,

I've been following several threads on this issue as I've had it while traveling over the past week. I find it also fails when WiFi is completely off. When traveling and moving in/out of cell coverage areas or where the signal is very low for several minutes, the phone also freezes and/or reboots. It will do this while on a call, running apps or just doing nothing.

Anyone else have problems with WiFi completely off? I've had it off for three days and about 20 reboots/freezes a day over that time.

 

[vodkaandtonic]

Have now got a stable phone but very limited fufunctionality. Was running stock international firmware 4.1.2 and phone started freezing last Friday (never had a problem before and running 4.1.2 since December) - yesterday reflashed with Odin to Orange 4.1.2 stock but problem remained. Last night did factory reset and all ok until I signed in to Play store. Once in built apps started to update phone was freezing every 30 seconds. Did another factory reset, restored contacts, messages, schedule via Kies but haven't gone anywhere near Play store and phone is fine. Has not frozen since 11pm last night (new world record). Wifi is fine and using Chrome to browse (not updated) so the issue is being caused either by Play store or one of the in built apps updating. Over to Samsung now for the fix.

 

[FabP69]

Same here. Mine froze every 5 to 10 minutes or so for days after installing 4.1.2. Anytime between Samsung logo flashing at start, password entering, usings apps, or simply not doing anything. I finally realised that the Storage was nearly full (rougly 10GB used out of total space 11.25GB, as checked in Setting/ Storage). I deleted a few music and film and now everything is back to normal. It was runing perfectly fine before 4.1.2 version and I didn't increase strorage usage since (or not much). Can it be that the new 4.1.2 needs much more free space than previous versions?

 

[maschenazi]

Have now got a stable phone but very limited fufunctionality. Was running stock international firmware 4.1.2 and phone started freezing last Friday (never had a problem before and running 4.1.2 since December) - yesterday reflashed with Odin to Orange 4.1.2 stock but problem remained. Last night did factory reset and all ok until I signed in to Play store. Once in built apps started to update phone was freezing every 30 seconds. Did another factory reset, restored contacts, messages, schedule via Kies but haven't gone anywhere near Play store and phone is fine. Has not frozen since 11pm last night (new world record). Wifi is fine and using Chrome to browse (not updated) so the issue is being caused either by Play store or one of the in built apps updating. Over to Samsung now for the fix.

If you are having the same problem I have than it has nothing to do with the Google market. My phone was freezing before signing in to Google or Samsung accounts. In fact my phone has now been ok for more than 85 hours now with all my apps installed and all my settings, everything signed in and syncing. The funny part is that I didn't do anything to fix it.

 

[thelegendaryjay]

Bugger. My phone has now froze a few times on 4.1.2 XELLA, I got one after a few hours use and then a few yesterday at inconvenient times, on 4.1.2 XELL5 it seemed fine for the half day or so I was running it and I had no lock ups. To me it would seem that going to XELLA, writes data to the EFS where there are more likely to be fubar'd blocks and this just coincides with updating apps after a "fresh" factory reset.

I'll give that XDA solution a go if I get one more lock up, because I honestly could do without going to a Vodafone shop (20 miles away) - it's ridiculous that we have to find a solution to this.

 

[nombredeusuario75]

will try this solution too. My S3 started a week ago to freeze and i can't continue this way.

 

[betty_boop245]

Well after almost a week without incident since the Samsung service centre re-flashed the software, last night my phone went into total meltdown! I was browing on Chrome, and it froze, so I rebooted it, and it froze again, and it continued like that for at least 10 freezes and reboots. I turned it off for a bit, and turned it back on before I went to bed, it rebooted itself 3 times during the night. I turned it off at about 4am, and left it off until about 8am this morning. It has been OK so far today, but Im not taking any chances, its going back to Samsung, so they can either fix it properly this time, or give me a new phone!