Let me preface this by saying a couple things:
I know I'm brand new to the Android forums but I have been following this issue for awhile. THIS IS APPARENTLY AN ISSUE FOR MULTIPLE MANUFACTURERS/ MODELS, NOT JUST MY SKYROCKET. I'm not claiming to be an authority on this subject. I'm just passing along my personal experiences and information I've been given in the hopes of saving other people the hassle I've been through. Oh, also, I might not have been using my phone long enough since the "fix" to be certain it's fixed.
Some Background:
I bought a Galaxy SII Skyrocket this past December (2011). The phone worked great initially. It was ultra-smooth and I was getting an LTE-only (no wifi) download bandwidth of over 15Mbits/s regularly.
View attachment 29645
I'll try to briefly summarize the worst of the symptoms:
Within three to four months the data upload/download bandwidth had slowed to a trickle. I was in the top 10% of data users and my speeds were being throttled down. In one instance 50 MBytes of data was used inside an hour (while I was asleep!) with no programs running.
Programs using any data were essentially dysfunctional. The battery drain was immense: A full charge would last as little as an hour. The phone was almost too hot to touch at times. There were more symptoms, but I'll spare you the details unless you want more. The symptoms progressively got worse. Near the beginning of the symptoms, I deleted all third-party apps and every Android app that I could so.... This was obviously some sort of glitch within the OS.
The Issue:
To this day, I can't get any answers from AT&T tech support. Eventually, approximately April, I went into one of their stores and a sales rep said AT&T had issued some sort of internal memo admitting there was an issue. Today, I just couldn't take it anymore. I demanded a new phone from their customer service. They gave me the green light and suggested I go to a local AT&T Device Support Center, rather than mail it.
Their contracted rep at the Device Support Center confirmed a theory I had seen several places; he said the issue was Gmail going into this endless attempt to sync.They had previously verified it with someone else's phone as best they could by downloading a program called 3G Watchdog Pro. (Pro, as opposed to the free version, allows you to monitor data usage over time by individual programs.) Sure enough, Android was hogging all the bandwidth. He suggested I download the free version to keep an eye on it in the future. (I've since bought the pro version and highly recommend either the free or pro version.)
The "Fix":
I've temporarily fixed (a month or two) my phone in the past by doing a factory data reset. It's amazing; the difference is immense and the effect is immediate. But it's a pain in the arse having to do it repeatedly because the symptoms start again within a couple months.
In contrast, the contractor at the AT&T Device Support Center said that their fix should be permanent. He said the reason for this is that they not only reset it, but they wipe the entire phone completely clean and reinstall the firmware. It's a 7-10 minute process.
He said they've been aware of the issue for awhile but have only been performing this fix since early June. Reportedly, any AT&T Device Support Center, nationwide, should be able to do the same thing for you. Around only 1% of Android users are affected by this glitch. It affects many different makes and models of Android phones.
ONCE AGAIN, I haven't had the "fix" long enough to be entirely certain of its long-term success but I'll keep this thread updated. I can say at this point that my average battery life is back up to about two days and all other symptoms have disappeared.
What Went Wrong at AT&T:
I started asking the contractor why Tech Support remains clueless about this problem. I suggested that maybe they should forward their findings up the chain-of-command to corporate. He says they have. He thinks AT&T only listens to what the manufacturer, Samsung in this case, has to say.
My personal theory is that AT&T, Google and/or Samsung have deemed the 1% of us with this issue as not important enough; it's not a big enough return on their money to fix our issue; it's more cost-effective to ignore us and hope we'll still buy from them later.
_____________________________________________
If you have any questions or comments about my experiences, or you'd like to add your own, please don't hesitate to chime in. Also, feel free to correct any typos or assumptions I've made. Just keep it civil. I apologize if this is a re-post; I searched and found many related topics but I feel I have included some information that is more global.
I know I'm brand new to the Android forums but I have been following this issue for awhile. THIS IS APPARENTLY AN ISSUE FOR MULTIPLE MANUFACTURERS/ MODELS, NOT JUST MY SKYROCKET. I'm not claiming to be an authority on this subject. I'm just passing along my personal experiences and information I've been given in the hopes of saving other people the hassle I've been through. Oh, also, I might not have been using my phone long enough since the "fix" to be certain it's fixed.
Some Background:
I bought a Galaxy SII Skyrocket this past December (2011). The phone worked great initially. It was ultra-smooth and I was getting an LTE-only (no wifi) download bandwidth of over 15Mbits/s regularly.
View attachment 29645
I'll try to briefly summarize the worst of the symptoms:
Within three to four months the data upload/download bandwidth had slowed to a trickle. I was in the top 10% of data users and my speeds were being throttled down. In one instance 50 MBytes of data was used inside an hour (while I was asleep!) with no programs running.
Programs using any data were essentially dysfunctional. The battery drain was immense: A full charge would last as little as an hour. The phone was almost too hot to touch at times. There were more symptoms, but I'll spare you the details unless you want more. The symptoms progressively got worse. Near the beginning of the symptoms, I deleted all third-party apps and every Android app that I could so.... This was obviously some sort of glitch within the OS.
The Issue:
To this day, I can't get any answers from AT&T tech support. Eventually, approximately April, I went into one of their stores and a sales rep said AT&T had issued some sort of internal memo admitting there was an issue. Today, I just couldn't take it anymore. I demanded a new phone from their customer service. They gave me the green light and suggested I go to a local AT&T Device Support Center, rather than mail it.
Their contracted rep at the Device Support Center confirmed a theory I had seen several places; he said the issue was Gmail going into this endless attempt to sync.They had previously verified it with someone else's phone as best they could by downloading a program called 3G Watchdog Pro. (Pro, as opposed to the free version, allows you to monitor data usage over time by individual programs.) Sure enough, Android was hogging all the bandwidth. He suggested I download the free version to keep an eye on it in the future. (I've since bought the pro version and highly recommend either the free or pro version.)
The "Fix":
I've temporarily fixed (a month or two) my phone in the past by doing a factory data reset. It's amazing; the difference is immense and the effect is immediate. But it's a pain in the arse having to do it repeatedly because the symptoms start again within a couple months.
In contrast, the contractor at the AT&T Device Support Center said that their fix should be permanent. He said the reason for this is that they not only reset it, but they wipe the entire phone completely clean and reinstall the firmware. It's a 7-10 minute process.
He said they've been aware of the issue for awhile but have only been performing this fix since early June. Reportedly, any AT&T Device Support Center, nationwide, should be able to do the same thing for you. Around only 1% of Android users are affected by this glitch. It affects many different makes and models of Android phones.
ONCE AGAIN, I haven't had the "fix" long enough to be entirely certain of its long-term success but I'll keep this thread updated. I can say at this point that my average battery life is back up to about two days and all other symptoms have disappeared.
What Went Wrong at AT&T:
I started asking the contractor why Tech Support remains clueless about this problem. I suggested that maybe they should forward their findings up the chain-of-command to corporate. He says they have. He thinks AT&T only listens to what the manufacturer, Samsung in this case, has to say.
My personal theory is that AT&T, Google and/or Samsung have deemed the 1% of us with this issue as not important enough; it's not a big enough return on their money to fix our issue; it's more cost-effective to ignore us and hope we'll still buy from them later.
_____________________________________________
If you have any questions or comments about my experiences, or you'd like to add your own, please don't hesitate to chime in. Also, feel free to correct any typos or assumptions I've made. Just keep it civil. I apologize if this is a re-post; I searched and found many related topics but I feel I have included some information that is more global.
Last edited:
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