Sprint Galaxy S4 on Ting Mobile Crashes when Data Connection Lost - Please Help

[Cooper Drinkward]

So,

I have a Sprint Galaxy S4 on Ting Mobile. I have had it for about 3 weeks. On Wednesday, for the first time, my phone started into a crash loop while I was crossing the SF bay (low/no reception area).
I have gone through extensive trouble shooting and here is what I know.

1) The crash occurs if my mobile data connection is weak/no service.
2) It does not occur if I am on Wifi.
3) It does not occur in Safe mode.
4) I can actively cause the crash by selecting the option to "Restrict Background Data" and then turn off my Wifi. This will cause the crash 100% of the time almost immediately after I turn off the wifi.
5) The crash still occurs after deleting all 3rd party apps.
6) The crash still occurs after doing a Hard Reset to reset the device to factory settings.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Is this a hardware issue?
The last idea I have is to reset all factory apps to their pre-updated states and repro the crash there, but I am starting to conclude that the bug may be in the hardware.

Thanks,
Coop

 

[Mark J99]

I have the same problem with the Galaxy S4 w/ Android 4.2.2 on Ting: If I try to turn off background data on any of the processes listed in the "data usage" menu, the phone will crash and reboot as soon as 4G is the only data source.

Basically, you can use WiFi and 4G, or WiFi alone, or WiFi and 4G off. But you can't use 4G w/o WiFi if ANY process has "Restrict background data" checked. Well, OK, you might get away with restricting data on 'YouTube'; but that's about it.

Obviously, Ting doesn't want us to turn off background data. And why would they? Background data is a HUGE part of their revenue stream. And though I'm not (yet) claiming that Ting intentionally tweaked the Galaxy S4 to crash if background data is turned off, I don't expect them to fix this problem anytime soon. Like, ever.

Your best bet for limiting all that sneaky background data, is to 1) turn off 'Mobile Data' via the pull-down menu if you don't absolutely need it, 2) uninstall unneeded apps that use BG data, and 3) disable unneeded built-in apps that use BG data.